Pages THE BATTALION
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1980
sports
Aggies try style
on TCU Frogs
By KATHLEEN McELROY
Sports Staff
The Texas A&M basketball team will
play Texas Christian University
tonight in G. Rollie White Coliseum
at 8 p.m., and if TCU plays as they
have been, Texas A&M players
might need to wear maroon tuxedoes
again before the televised game to
psyche themselves up.
The sharp-looking Aggies will take
on a shabby TCU team which has a
2-12 record in the Southwest Confer
ence and has won only seven games
during the whole season, the last vic
tory coming in mid-January.
Texas A&M is fresh from whipping
the Texas Longhorns 84-61 Saturday
in G. Rollie in front of a regional
television audience. To pick up emo
tionally, senior guard David Britton
and junior foward Vernon Smith
wore the tuxedoes to the locker room
before the game.
Smith scored 21 points and Britton
got 20. Casually dressed Rudy
Woods pumped in 15 and Rynn
Wright had 12.
TCU has a lock on the S WC cellar.
But Coach Jim Killingsworth makes
no excuses for the Frogs.
“We’re not good enough,” he said
before he started the Homed Frog
practice session Monday night. “The
other teams are just better. ”
Is his team going to try anything
fancy — work a hill-court press the
whole game, play a stall the whole
time, or wear purple tuxedoes?
“No, we’re just going to play,” Kil
lingsworth said. “We haven’t got any
tricky stuff.”
This is the last home game for the
Aggies, who close the season against
the University of Houston in
Hofheinz Pavilion Friday.
The Aggies, by virtue of Arkansas’
Monday night loss to SMU, are now
in sole possession of first place in the
SWC. Victories against TCU and at
Houston Friday would give the
Aggies the crown.
Four seniors, Dave Goff, David
Britton, Steve Sylestine and John
Schlicher, will be playing their last
game in G. Rollie White Coliseum
tonight. The game will be regionally
televised.
Staats enjoys
quick success
By JON HEIDTKE
Sports Reporter
In a seven-year span, Dewayne
Staats, radio voice of the Texas A&M
basketball network, has seen his
career blossom from doing play-by-
play for a small Illinois high school to
doing play-by-play with the Houston
Astros’ baseball organization.
Staats’ short but successful career
seemed to come right out of a Holly
wood script when he said: “From the
time I was about 13 years old, I
wanted to do radio broadcasts for the
Astro baseball games.”
How does a person feel who
reaches his childhood goal at the
young age of 24?
“I remember sitting down in the
press room and meeting Jack Buck
and Lindsey Nelson, and suddenly at
the age of 24, I am in a sense, one of
their colleagues. That was an over
whelming feeling.”
According to Staats, only Vin Scul
ly, longtime voice of the Los Angeles
Dodgers, began at an earlier age
then himself.
The curly-haired, mustachioed
Staats’ key to a successful career has
two ingredients: “First, you have to
have the ability and secondly, you
need good fortune.”
And fortunately for Staats, he has
been blessed with large amounts of
both.
Staats, who was bom August 8,
1952, in Advance, Mo., began doing
play-by-play in the fall of 1970, the
semester he enrolled at the Univer
sity of Southern Illinois at Edward-
sville.
His first play-by-play broadcast
came from the top row of the
bleachers at an Edwardsville High
School football game. By the time he
graduated from SIU five years later,
he had done play-by-play for all the
school’s major sports, including an
internship in 1973 doing radio work
for the Oklahoma City 89ers, a minor
league baseball club.
“In my mind, if I hadn’t gone to
Oklahoma City, I wouldn’t be doing
Houston Astro games now,” Staats
said of his internship.
“It takes a certain temperament
The Texas A&M job might have
provided Staats a long-range alterna
tive, that is if he ever gets tired of the
major league’s demanding schedule.
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SMU upsets Arkansas,
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United Press International
DALLAS — Gordon Welch calm
ly dropped in two free throws with
six seconds remaining Monday night
to bring Southern Methodist a stun
ning 62-58 victory over Arkansas —
Texas A&M University undisputed
possession of first place in the South
west Conference.
SMU, taking advantage of sloppy
Arkansas floor play and poor Razor-
back shooting, opened as much as an
11-point lead in the second half, only
to have the Hogs cut the deficit to
two with 3:14 to play.
The Mustangs still led by two with
1:17 left and managed to stall the ball
until 10 seconds remained
Harris made two free tk
point to give SMU
advantage.
But Mustang guard Da\>|
fouled Arkansas’ U,S.
seven seconds to play and
free throws moved Arkana]
in two again.
Welch was fouled
ter the hall came inboiindi]
two free shots wraj
prising victory in the Mi
regular season game
Arkansas dropped to 12j|
action, a half game belli
A&M. The Razorbacksan
the season.
FOR FINDING
Jackson St. takes
NAIA track crown
ZACHARIAS
GREEN HOUSE
CLUB & GAME PARLOR
GOOD MUSIC, FINE DRINKS AND
LOTS OF FUN —
and certain independence for a re
lationship to live in a situation like
mine,” Staats said. “And my wife is
self-sufficient and can operate in an
environment like mine.”
After another season in Oklahoma
City, Staats became sports director
at KPLR-TV in St. Louis. “I felt at
that time, that if I needed anything,
it was TV experience and exposure,”
Staats said.
During his two-year stint at
KPLR, he anchored the sports seg
ment of the evening news and co
hosted and co-produced the Emmy
Award-winning program “Weekend
in St. Louis,” a sports magazine
show.
But in the back of Staats’ mind, he
still wanted the Astro job.
“I had kept in touch with Gene
Elston (longtime Astro broadcaster)
since I had met him when I was 14
years old,” Staats said.
“The Astros had come to town for a
series with the Cardinals and I heard
there might be an opening. I called
Elston and he said there might be
one at the end of the year.”
One thing led to another and
Staats ended up in Chicago doing a
fill-in broadcast for the Astros late in
the 1976 season.
A couple of months later, the Astro
organization called and offered
Staats the job, and he jumped on it.
In 1978, Staats began work as the
play-by-play announcer for the Texas
A&M basketball network. In his two
years as “voice of the Aggies, ” Staats
has been impressed by the school’s
tradition and conduct of the Texas
A&M student body at the games.
“There is a sense of fairness with
the A&M crowd,” Staats said. “It is
called ‘class’ behavior.”
United Press International
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It didn’t
really surprise Jackson (Miss.) State
University coach Martin Epps that
his team won its sixth straight NAIA
Indoor Track and Field Champion
ship during the weekend.
What surprised Epps was that his
team is still alive.
A week ago, a van the Jackson
State team was taking out of Louisvil
le, Ky., skidded off an interstate,
flipped over once and then smashed
into a tree.
“It was the kind (of wreck) that you
don’t survive,” Epps said. “And
there’s no way we couldn’t have sur
vived if it weren’t for the good Lord
above. ”
Epps remembers catching two
athletes as the van careened down
the steep hill off the interstate.
Epps, a big burly man, recalls that
after the van flipped — and as the
roof began collapsing — he jumped
up from his seat and hit the roof with
both hands.
“I put everything into it — every
ounce of strength I possess,” Epps
said. “I think that helped keep the
roof from collapsing and crushing
us.”
As it turned out, the only person in
the van injured was Epps, who suf
fered serious gashes in his legs and
arms from flying glass.
The rest of the team escaped com
pletely unscathed, although a little
shaken.
“But everything that happens,
happens for a reason,” Epps said. “It
taught some people a lesson about
life. Living through an experience
like that helps your attitude.”
Epps, whose team has won seven
NAIA indoor titles in the past eight
years, credited the championship to
his team’s attitude during the three
days of the competition.
Jackson State out-distanced the
field by a whopping 27.5 points,
scoring 81 points to second-place
But for now, Staats is content to be
involved with Texas A&M basketball
and Astro baseball, and who could
blame him? After all, it isn’t every
body that gets to fulfill a childhood
dream.
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Prairie View’s 53.5. Abilene Christ
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Christian fifth with 23 and Spring
Arbor (Mich.) sixth with 16 points.
Jackson State won four events, in
cluding the 440 yard dash, the triple
jump, the distance medley and the
1,000 meters. Prairie View also won
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lay and the 880-yard run.
Prairie View’s Evans White, who
won the 880 year run and anchored
an NAIA record-breaking mile and
two-mile teams, was named the out
standing track performer. The out
standing field performer voted by
track writers was pole vaulter Billy
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There were seven men’s records
set or tied in the three-day meet,
which ended Saturday night.
The most dramatic of those was
the mark of 17-6V2 Olson tied in the
vault.
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