Nicholas Backus reports:

Tyler Kivel has made it to the Class 2A championship match in the 135 pound division at the 2008 wrestling state tournament, but the Scott West Panthers fell to Perham Friday night in the team competition.

Kivel will wrestle against Joe Selly today at 3:30 p.m. His team will wrestle at 10 a.m. when they meet Milaca/Faith Christian in the third place meet.

For the second time in as many games, the Hubmen basketball team needed every second of playing time in order to beat their opponent.

The Hubmen beat the Le Sueur-Henderson Giants 72-71 as time ran out.

The Jordan squad led for most of the game, but the Giants evened the score at 69-69 with just over a minute to go. Junior guard Kyle Coglitore missed two free throws that could have put the Hubmen back in the lead, and the Giants capitalized by sinking a three-pointer with five seconds to go.

Nicholas Backus reports: 

Lee Goldberg defeated Daniel Woiwor of Becker in wrestlebacks semifinals by fall at 1:10. He will rematch with Dan Dick of Simley for third place in the Class AA 103 pound division at 12 p.m. Saturday. He had already beaten Dick in the championship bracket with a 4-2 decision on Thursday.

Nicholas Backus is a freelancer for the Jordan Indpendent.He and other freelancers can be reached by sending an e-mail to the newspaper at editor@jordannews.com.

Trying to regain our creativity can be somewhat difficult as we get older. Our childhood days of writing, singing, dancing and making up wild fantastic stories have been pushed to the wayside. Our time is now filled with housework, family obligations, bills and the like.

Creativity is basically making something out of nothing, and unless creativity is actively nourished it can't present itself. If we could just reach back into our childhood and recall some of the fearless skills we all once had, we could begin to develop our creativity and weave it into our everyday lives.

It's possible to rid a person of creativity.

Through various methods, the outside world can itimidate, reject and even humiliate creative souls. The reason for this behavior is to get creative beings to be "just like everyone else."

This morning, an analyst for ESPN SportsCenter predicted that the Detroit Tigers would win in the strong Central Division of Major League Baseball. Cleveland got a mention, too.

He thought Boston and Anaheim will be the other American League powerhouses.

The only time the Twins were mentioned was during the National League segment, while the analyst predicted the New York Mets would be the team to beat, namely because of a guy you might know.

This analyst said the only comparison he could think of for the swap of Johan Santana was the trade of Babe Ruth.

Who's going to win the rematch to decide the Class 2A state wrestling champion at 135 pounds?

Nicholas Backus reports:

Scott West's Tyler Kivel and Montgomery-Lonsdale-Le Center's Joe Selly will rematch for the state championship at 135 pounds tomorrow.

Kivel pinned Colter Uscola of Park Rapids at 5:28 in the 135 semis. The Class 2A indvidual state championship round begins at 3:30 p.m. Saturday.

Also today, Scott West's Lee Goldberg lost in a major decision to Matt Nelson of Big Lake 15-6.

Nicholas Backus reports:

The lower weight divisions set the tone in the quarterfinals of Scott West’s run for the state championship at the Xcel Energy Center Thursday night.

Lee Goldberg pinned Aaron Haley of Plainview-Elgin-Millville in 54 seconds to open the meet 6-0 for the Panthers. In the next match, Tyler Zilverberg received a solid 5-2 decision against PEM state individual qualifier Ben Swanson.

As of late, we have had a number of loved ones leave this planet.

When these unexpected things happen we may not be prepared for what we must achieve to celebrate their lives.

Organizing our memories from boxes of photographs can be very healing and stressful at the same time. Often we may know the people and locations in the photographs and what they were doing at the time. From experience I can tell you that it sure helps if the names, dates and locations are noted on the back of the photos.