A Rhyme and Reason for Choice of College

Rebecca Kielpinski was a star prep basketball player in Mandan, N.D. Major colleges recruited her, but the University of Alaska at Anchorage landed her after agreeing to participate in a test dreamed up by the athlete’s mother.

UAA Coach Jody Hensen completed a scavenger hunt designed to teach her about Rebecca and her hometown. Poems were hidden around Mandan and contained bits of information and clues as to where the next poem could be found.

“It was Rebecca’s life story almost,” Nancy Kielpinski told the Anchorage Daily News. “She got to see the history behind Rebecca and how she developed as a basketball player and a person.”

Add scavenger hunt: One of the poems, wrapped in green-and-gold shoelaces and found at the local park, read:

Put on your shoes and tie up the laces, this Mandan girl will take you places.

Give her a ball, hop on the plane. She’ll play really tough in the lane.

She has four state championships to her name. She’ll help UAA claim new fame.

Kielpinski is off to a good start. She had 27 points and 16 rebounds in a recent victory over San Diego Christian.

Trivia time: On this date in 1991, Tony Sands rushed for what was then an NCAA-record 396 yards to lead Kansas past Missouri. Who now holds the record?

It’s unanimous: After watching Saturday’s victory by USC over Fresno State, and the electrifying performance of the Trojans’ star tailback, Ron Rapoport of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, “All right, hand me my Heisman Trophy ballot and let’s get this over with. First place: Reggie Bush. Second place: Reggie Bush. Third place: Reggie Bush. There, that was easy.”

More Bush: Reader Bob Uzzo of Hermosa Beach was watching the game when his wife, Sue, asked who was winning. When told that Bush had rushed for almost 300 yards, she wondered aloud how that was possible “if a football field is only 200 yards long.”

We don’t make this stuff up.

Pass interference: The Province of Vancouver reports that an autographed football sent in August by the B.C. Lions to Canadian troops in Afghanistan still has not arrived.

To which Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times responds: “Alert statisticians immediately declared it the longest incomplete pass in CFL history.”

More likely, it was intercepted.

Nothing but prairie: Noting that a 1,400-pound meteorite was discovered in Kansas, Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel wrote, “Witnesses said it looked surprisingly like one of Shaq’s free throws.”

Trivia answer: LaDainian Tomlinson, who as a junior in 1999 for Texas Christian rushed for 406 yards and scored six touchdowns in a 52-24 rout of Texas El Paso.

And finally: Talking turkey, Bob Hille of the Sporting News referred to tryptophan, the amino acid in the flesh of the bird that makes people sleepy, as “the second reason people take Thanksgiving naps, right after being a Lionphan.”