Issue 4 | December 17, 2013 12HOOFBEAT SPORTS

Everybody grows up with a dream, and in the sports world, many guys want to play professional sports and make a living out of something they love. Unfortunately, only the best of the best athletes make it into the pros, so what is a man with NFL dreams supposed to do that still involves football.

Ever since the founders of the game cre-ated fantasy football in 1963, it has swept the nation. It has turned Sundays from just watch-ing football to cheering for teams and players you don’t even like, but need them to perform well. The fantasy craze has even created TV shows on ESPN and NFL Network to help the players know what’s going on around the league.

Fantasy football is easily one of the best things to ever happen in the sports world be-cause it gives everyone a sense of managing their own team of players they wish could play on the same team. It’s also for bragging rights. Determining who can compile the best team and win the playoffs can earn somebody major credit because they can rub it in anyone’s face.

Although fantasy football can involve money, it can be enjoyed if it’s free. A major-ity of bets are just small amounts, but there are websites now that you can win money every week. This activity has become a popular hobby within friend groups because they need some-thing to do while the NFL is playing rather than just talking about the games over the weekend.

Anyone can play, but just be aware that it’s easily the most addictive virtual sports game. Projects and homework will become af-terthoughts when playing fantasy football be-cause someone will need to keep up with all the news and information around the league to gain an advantage on everyone else playing. Focusing on daily tasks will become difficult be-cause fantasy football consumed so much time and effort that there is no free time. I person-ally have played fantasy football for about five years now and each year is better than the last. Whether it’s with friends or with strangers, I find enjoyment in the competitive battle each week.

Fantasy football can be taken any-where since it’s available in mobile apps that make sharing team information and play-ers with friends much easier than in the past. It has taken a surge in classroom discussions with friends although it may get us off task.

Even with the consumption of time and ef-fort followed by the distraction that ensues in ev-eryday tasks, playing fantasy football is the best decision that anyone interested in football can make. Owning an actual football team takes more money than most people can afford and play-ing football takes skill and hard work that some people are just not born with. This is the alterna-tive route and it’s possibly the best one available.

Keeping football fans involved is the intent of this creative activity and with the increase in players, it will never die out. With so many leagues and members, it proves that a major-ity of the viewing population is playing fan-tasy football. No one is certain how it became so popular, but people love owning a team of players that they would like to see play together and gives the fans great enjoyment and causes frustration as well when their players don’t per-form. Fantasy football is the best way to stay involved with football and have fun with it.

Colton StoneSpor ts Editor

Two Birds, One Stone

Fantasy feeds off reality

Basketball Wrestling Basketball

MN athletes share their interests in, out of sports worldJock Talk:

SwimmingOlivia Grasso, 10 Hannah Davidson, 10

Any J-Biebs remakes

Rap or rock300 violin orchestra

A Coca-Cola

Bad Santa Christmas Story

Life-size statue of Darth Vader

12 Days of Christmas

Home Alone

A Jeep

Hip-Hop/Rap

None

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

CATS

Imagine Dragons

Rudolph

What is your favorite holiday movie?

You just won the lottery, your first purchase is...

Trevor Smith, 11

What is the worst Christmas carol?

Who is one opponent you would be afraid to face?

Mark Gilbert, 12

What’s the best genre of pump-up music?

From the field to the court: Junior makes jump to basketball

derek nosbischstaff writer

As young kids, many students at MN played every sport available to them at the time. But when most student-athletes get to high school, they find one or two sports that they favor, and stick with them throughout their four years.

This year, Junior Hailey Humphrey, who throws shot and disc for the girls track and field team, was looking for another sport to play. She decided to try out for the girls basketball team, and made JV since playing in eighth grade.

“I’d always been kind of interested in it. A lot of my friends said I should, and my friend Holly [Hild] came up to me and said ‘I’m going to get you to play basketball,’ and here I am now,” Humphrey said.

Hild, who is a senior on the girls varsity squad, approached Humphrey about trying out for bas-ketball because she thought she should give it a shot.

“I’m really good friends with Hailey, she’s a really good athlete, and I thought she’d be good at basketball. She’s also tall, so that’s a bonus,” Hild said.

POST UP: Junior Hailey Humphrey posts up in a home game against Burke’s Lady Bulldogs. Humphrey is play-ing basketball for the first time in her high school career. Photo by Regen Tokos

Hild put Humphrey through a series of drills and exercises based on fundamen-tals and concepts that the girls basketball team uses to get her ready for tryouts. Hild chose them based on experience.

“We went to the gym four to five times, and we worked on simple techniques and conditioning, as well as ball handling, post moves, and defensive work, all getting her ready for preseason,” Hild said.

All that fundamental

work has paid off, as Hum-phrey now plays down in the post for the girls JV team.

“Before I started working with Holly, I’d say my skill level was incompetent. Now, I’d say it’s slightly less incompetent,” Humphrey said, jokingly.

Girls varsity basket-ball coach Scott Persigehl thinks that Humphrey has a ways to go still, but is im-pressed that she came in with the skill set that she did.

“It’s not unlike a foreign

exchange student coming in and having to start from scratch, everything that you take for granted from a kid with five years of ex-perience normally just isn’t there. So that she came in with any idea of the funda-mentals, and a concept of how we run the team was to her benefit,” Persigehl said.

For Humphrey, switch-ing from track and field to basketball was an interest-ing transition. Her approach to the game and her train-ing regimen had to change.

“They’re very, very dif-ferent. In shot and disc, we focus on lifting a lot more, where in basketball it’s a lot more running and condi-tioning,” Humphrey said.

Hild believes that Humphey made the transi-tion smoothly, and attrib-uted it to Humphrey’s abil-ity to pick up the concepts.

“I thought [the transi-tion] went really well, and she picked up the tech-nique really early. She’s got-ten a lot better from where she started, and she just seems to have an innate skill for basketball,” Hild said.