14 - Wednesday, July 6, 1994 - North Shore News r) SIDELINES CELEBRITY CARNIVAL... Join members of the B.C. Lions, the Vancouver 86ers and the Vancouver Voodoo this Sunday, July 10, at Park Royal Shopping Centre south for the B.C. Lions Society Celebrity Carnival. The event runs from 11 a.m. to 4 p-m. Along with sport celebrity appearances, the carnival will feature midway games and even a chance {o get your pic- ture taken hoiding the Grey Cup. Admission is $3 per per- son, or $7 for a family of four. All proceeds go the B.C. Lions Society and B.C. Special Olympics. Tickets are avail- able at all Master Player loca- tions and by calling 737-3078. ese LACROSSE... The North Shore Indians continued their freshman season trend of ios- ing to top teams by one goal as they dropped a 9-8 decision to the league-leading New Westminster Salinonberries on Monday night. During May and June, the North Shore squad lost four straight games by one goal The disheartening loss at Lonsdale Arena on Monday kept the Indians in the base- ment of the WLA standings, two points back of the Burnaby Lakers. Last week the Indians put on their best performance of the year, blast- ing holes in the Lakers’ defense in a 14-5 win. With just five games left in the season (twe home, two away), the Indians, while not mathematically eliminated, stand on the precipice of elim- ination The Indians’ next game is on Friday night in Burnaby to face the bottom-dwelling Lakers. On Monday, July 11, the Indians host the Coquitlam Adanacs at Lonsdale Arena. Game-time is 8 p.m. WLA STANDINGS (as of July 5) GP W L Pts New 14 11 3 22 West Victoria 14 9 5 18 Coquitlam 15 9 6 18 Surrey 14 7 7 14 Burnaby 14 4 10 8 North 15 3 12 6 Shore ROWING... West Vancouver rower Jeff Siefred was part of the silver-medal-winning Canadian eights crew at the recent United States national rowing championships in Indianapolis. Indiana. A day eartier, Siefred and Montreal's Jeremy Howick finished fifth in the men’s heavyweight Straight pairs. Canadian rowers won 10 medals at the international regatta. Blacksox beat league-leading Jacks - THE BLACKSOX came in through the back door to beat regular season league leaders Jack Lonsdale’s 5-0 and win the league’s mid-season tour- nament last Sunday in North Shore men’s baseball action. THE HOT BOX By Kevin Gillies The win ended Lonsdale's ten- game winning streak. The Biacksox beat the Pirates 10-0 in the tournament’s first semi- final game Sunday, scoring nine runs in the first inning on six Pirate errors. Kimio Roddick pitched a full game of shut-out baseball (four hits). Ghalib Gulam made a spectac- ular catch to rob Lonsdale’s Desi Joseph of a sure extra-base hit in the sixth. The winning run was scored by Gary Watt who stole home during a rundown between first and second. Lonsdale’s defeated Yerkton Indians 6-5 in the other semi to advance to Sunday afternoon's showdown. Dennis “Birdman” Burgess pitched a complete game against Yorkton, then went the distance against the Blacksox. Larry Baxter hit a two-run double in the fifth to drive in the winning run in that game. At the end of round-robin play, Lonsdale’s led Group B with a 3-0 record. The Blacksox were secona with a 2-1 record. Their only round- robin loss came at the hands of Lonsdale’s on Saturday morning. Jay Knight’s bases-loaded double proved to be the difference in the Sox’s 8-5 ioss. They beat the Giants 9-1 in the tournament's opening game on the strength of three-hit pitching by Roddick and Korm Trieu’s three RBIs. They also beat the Queen’s Cross 9-2. SENIOR GIRLS’ FAST- PITCH The North Vancouver Athletics girls’ fastpitch team won YORKTON INDIANS’ pitcher Steve Edwards unleashes a pitch during his team’s 9-3 win over Starlight in North Shore men’s baseball action fast Sunday. The Blackssx bianked Jack Lonsdale’s 5-0 to win the league’s mid-season tournament. two ard lost two in last weekend's 16-team, provincial championships in Terrace, 8.C. The team beat Cequitlam 14-6, then Vancouver Metro [0-3 on Friday. Saturday they ran into a couple of brick walls when they faced Terrace and North Delta. Terrace won 10-3 and North Delta killed the Athletics’ hopes of reaching the final with an 8-1 blowout. Aska Casano hit a solo home run to score North Van’s only run. “The defense really came together for the tournament,” coach Alex Chisamore said. “Pitching was the difference.” The Athletics beat Squamish by default to qualify for the provin- cials. The hows and whys of the sports desk A.P. McCredie etka VIEW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS THE MOST commonly asked question sports editors get is “How do you decide which sports stories get in the paper and which don’t?” (“I’m sorry sir, your Visa was not accepted, do you have another card?” runs a close second). In some cases —— inevitably those involving an overlooked tid- dlywink champ from Deep Cove — the priority question is accompa- nied by a snide rhetorical quip like “only sports you like?” or “only boys’ teams?” To determine a definitive answer to the “what-the-hell-are- sports-editors-thinking?” question, UBC's School of Human Kinetics has prepared a study of 74 Canadian daily newspaper's sports departments. And while the Conditions and Trends Affecting Sports Reporting at Canadian Daily Newspapers report comtains its fair share of ivory-tower jargon (facilitate, amenable and forward-thinking). the paper does shed light on the decision-making process of the cigar-stained sports desk. The experiences of the smaller city dailies is much like those of a community paper such as the North Shore News. First off, it’s obvious a line must be drawn between professional and amateur sports. The report marks that line, When asked about reporting pri- orities, over 85% of the 74 big-city dailies listed men’s major sports as their number-one choice. No big surprise there. As soon as the Stanley Cup playoffs fin- ished and relinquished the front page. World Cup soccer coverage kicked in to claim the lion's share of column inches in most Canadian papers. Seamless. The second choice was interna- tional or national calibre competi- tions. Women's professional sports was third, At smaller papers, however. the trend is more toward recreational sports. They edged out men’s major and high school sports as highest priority. Amateur athletics, the poor cousin in the sport's world, was a different story. The number-one reason sports departinents select amateur sport stories, the study found, is if the athlete’s hometown is the same as the paper’s (the ol’ local-makes- good angle). Next on the list of determining factors is if the athlete is ranked in the world’s top-ten (the ol’ local-is-a-world-beater angie). This is usually the guiding prin- ciple used by sports scribes at com- munity and small daily papers. This is at the heart of the find- ings, between the lines really, of the UBC study. As larger papers continue to dis- tance themselves from grassroots sporting events and amateur athlet- ics (what do you think will get cut from the Vancouver dailies when the NBA comes to town?) commu- nity papers should step in to fill the void. An old-school, cigar-chomping, tobacco-spittin’ Alabama sports- writer once told me a sure-fire way to run a successful newspaper: “You find yourself a town with four or five high schools, and you publish a paper covering their sports. You fill that sucker full of names of student athletes, and you'll have parents jumpin’ like bulffrogs to get their hands on a copy.”