COURTESY PHOTO
Nahant resident Patty Demitt holds the Division 3 North softball trophy with her granddaughters Lauren and Caroline Sablone.
By STEVE KRAUSE
Idle chatter while waxing philosophical on anything and everything as we make the transition from spring to summer.
When the Austin Prep softball team goes up against Turners Falls today (1 p.m.) in the Division 3 state championship, there are a couple of local angles to follow.
The first is that pitching coach Michelle Bruno is a former pitcher for St. Mary’s — and a good one too. The Revere native has also coached Babe Ruth softball in the city as well.
More than any of that, though, she is the niece of Austin Prep football coach Bill Maradei, who is one of the deans of high school coaching in this area, and one of the real good guys in the world besides that.
Also, Nahant’s Patty Demitt has two grandchildren on the team: Lauren and Caroline Sablone, both of whom played pivotal roles in the Cougars’ win over St. Mary’s in last Sunday’s Division 3 North Final.
Turners Falls won the title last year, and lost to Greater New Bedford in the 2014 title game.
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For the first time in quite a while, the Massachusetts Baseball Coaches Association’s annual North/South, Central/West all-star game, scheduled for Tuesday, will not be held at Fraser Field. Instead, it’ll be held at J. Donald Monan Park, the athletic facility that was dedicated last month and that is used jointly by BC High and UMass-Boston.
Father Monan, who is 91, is the current chancellor of Boston College and was the school’s 24th president, a post he held from 1972 through 1996.
Marblehead’s Jason Tarasuik will be one of the coaches for the North Squad. Tarasuik coached the Magicians to the Northeastern Conference/South championship this spring, and defeated Concord-Carlisle in the tournament before falling to Reading.
The Central/West game begins at 4, followed at 7 by the North/South game. Matt Costanza of St. Mary’s, Brandon Devin of Classical and Andrew Olszak of Danvers are on the North squad.
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Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari is due to make an appearance at Marblehead High Aug. 4 as part of a clinic being run by former Lynn Tech/University of Memphis player Antonio Anderson.
The clinic goes Aug. 1-4 at the school, and it’s for fourth to 12th graders. Also there will be Coach Cal’s assistant, John Robuck, as well as his son, Bradley, who will play for his father at Kentucky next year.
Anderson was on the team Calipari took to the national championship game while he coached the Tigers at Memphis.
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My grandfather, who died in 1973, was convinced that pro sports were fixed. He used to tease my mother, who took these things very seriously, by saying that it was “in the bag” every year, because of the money involved.
This used to infuriate my mother. Or so she said.
He’s probably having a real good chuckle, then, over this latest dustup with the Golden State Warriors and the NBA over the status of officiating in the finals. Stephen Curry’s wife, Ayesha, got into the act, tweeting (and then almost immediately taking the tweet down) that the finals were rigged. This came after her husband fouled out, was ejected, and the Warriors lost to force a seventh game.
I’ve often heard it said that of the four major team sports in the U.S., home advantage in basketball is the most important. Unless there is a marked difference in overall ability on the part of the teams, or an injury that affects the chemistry on the court, the visitors are always at a serious disadvantage in the NBA, and one of the reasons is that no matter how much the referees try to remain neutral, it has to be almost impossible to do that with 15,000 people screaming for the home team.
The home teams is almost invariably more aggressive, which means that the visitors are often back on their heels, which ends up creating more reach-in fouls (also defined as ticky-tack if they go against your team) and more trips to the free throw line for the homies.
The Warriors were on the road Thursday night. They’re home Sunday. If they lose, and there’s a pronounced disparity in the refereeing, then perhaps Ayesha Curry will really have a reason to complain.
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The summer baseball season will be upon us before you know it. The District 16 softball tournament begins Tuesday and Little League baseball begins the following Sunday, June 26.
This year, there are 14 teams looking to dethrone district champion Salem (the 15th team).
Good luck to all of them. And Happy Father’s Day to all.