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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (March 2, 1988)
Wednesday, March 2, 1988/The Battalion/Page 9 Sports 'only foi ice tii iops aw| ndtablel group md j ansi ss whati Jnderdogs, ciiuuun | a /: ake a bow 1966 — A little-known West Texas col ie called Texas Western knocks off tradi al power Kentucky 72-65 in the NCAA ision I basketball finals. 1969 — The New York Mets beat the tirnore Orioles four games to one in the rid Series. 1969 — Joe Jmath leads the delegattBw York Jets to a e startflBnning 16V7 upset 1 albi'if the Baltimore directioBlts in Super Bowl letting the upswulSrld know that as fro® fledgling Arner- alreaii|pi Football Con- Kelletrence was for I V' 1980 — The held mBi i t e d States ietop)lympic hockey cetoimfim shocks the fcd with a 3-2 ation jir over the seemingly-invincible Soviet lifferenlnion. The U.S. goes on to defeat Finland studencKthe gold medal. :mselvA 1984 — A struggling 5-5 Texas A&M me aofitball team takes the field against the ■hly-regarded University of Texas Long- ran lhapi ns and promptly executes them 37-12 limilinjC national television, providing the cat- :e, BJyM for the Aggies’ three consecutive g nowipiithwest Conference championships, m dowffll'here’s a point to this brief chronology ■ sports events. All were upsets, and I ■ik it’s high time to celebrate one of lerica’s greatest institutions: the under- Loyd Brumfield Sportsviewgoin^ T Colo. lowhere else can you capture the true aloe of sport until you see a team like the finnesota Twins go from nobodies to odd champions in less than a year, and fen didn’t cheer for Great Britain’s upstart lie Edwards in the ski jump during the ently completed Winter Olympics? l)n the other side of the coin, did any- tty (except for those souls who had bets | the series) want the Boston Celtics to Firing anything but blanks Aggies hitbulls-eye with pistol team By Stan Golaboff Reporter Most students know about the success of the T exas A&rM’s foot ball team and most know about the women’s softball team win ning the national championship last year, but few know about one of A&:M’s most successful collegiate teams, the pistol team. Mark Benden, a junior bio engineering major and a team member, says the pistol team consistently has been one of the top 10 teams’in the nation over the last 14 years. 1 he team competes in air pis tol, free pistol and standard pis tol categories as a team and as in dividuals. The air pistol competition consist of the shooter shooting 60 rounds using a pistol that re sembles something similar to a pellet gun. Team Coach Curtis Burns says, “We start most people out in this event since it is the easiest of the three events to compete in. Once the shooters get better, then we move them up into the other events”. The next event is the standard pistol, which has the shooter us ing a .22 caliber at 50 yards. The shooter still shoots 60 rounds. The shooter shoots 20 rounds at his own pace, 20 rounds timed and 20 rounds at a rapid pace. The hardest event is the free style, Burns said. Photo by Teresa Montz Mark Benden practices standard pistol. He ranked first in state and 13th in the nation in the event last year. Benden said that the team has 1 1 members, but only four com pete as a team for competition. This year’s varsity team has three members returning from last year’s team that advanced to the nationals. Benden says, “We should have . good shot at returning to the n tionals, but it’s hard to tell because a score that would have qualifed last year may not qualify this year.” Burns says A&M hosted a sec tional competition two weeks ago and won. Teams from all over competed, including Texas Tech, the University of Texas, the University of Texas-Arling ton and Sam Houston State. There is also an individual from Long Beach State attend ing, Burns says. T he sectionals will determine who goes on to compete in the nationals held at Colorado Springs on April 5 through 10. The top 30 individuals and the top 10 teams in the nation will compete at the nationals. “A&M recently held a warm up meet a couple of weeks ago for these sectionals and A&M did rather well,” Burns says. A&M won first place in the overall team category. Scott Fos- dal, a senior political science ma jor, won first place in the free pistol. A&M began pistol competi tion in 1944. Burns says that when he retired from the Air Force in 1973 he came back to A&M and found that the team no longer existed. With help from a captain in the ROTC department he started the team again in 1974 and has been coaching the team ever since. The team receives funding from the Texas A&M Bookstore profits like all other campus or ganizations and also charges dues to cover the teams ex penses. ■t the Detroit Pistons in the 1987 NBA 8 . tfte Item Conference finals, or the Houston t ' ,1|ir rackets the year before in the com hampionship series? ICS ' underdog is a cherished institution, * >as( ne that somehow seems unique to the ,e ' 1 ‘ l Inited States. My theory is that the whole jfthe Ijition of the underdog began way back ulen J776 or so, whenever those 13 miniscule nized 1 urdfl* J1 - i-que, 1 is’ lc- I colonies picked a fight with the British Em pire to kick off the Revolutionary War. Do you think anybody outside of England wanted the British to tame America once and for all? 1 don’t think so. The underdog has flourished since then, and occasionally an underdog has gone on to be an American or world power. College basketball provides a good example here. DePaul was unheard of until it made it to the Final Four several years ago, and al though the Blue Demons haven t equaled that success of yet, they are now a house hold name among basketball fans. Texas has seen plenty of underdogs of its own. Take the 1980 and 1986 Astros, for instance. Both made it to the National League Championship Series, and they lost both times. But they played classic games against teams considered far superior to them in the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets. And let’s not forget A&M. Many aju un ; derdog has worn an Aggie uniform. Not only can Aggies relish in the 1984 walloping of Texas, they can also look to the 1986 A&M basketball team that came alive to thoroughly thrash TCU, Texas Tech and Baylor in the post-season tournament to ad vance to the NCAA playoffs, or the 1987 baseball team that came within a game of advancing to the College World Series, or the A&M’s women’s tennis team that won the SWC championship in the spring of 1986 behind Gaye Lynn Gensler and Kim Labuschagpe, qnd on and On and on . . . Long live the underdog. ,-7W. ^ r\ - * * !* ST 1 - - Lady Ags fall to UT 79-57 Those Texas Lady Longhorns keep on rolling. The Texas A&M women’s basketball team couldn’t stop them, losing 79-57 Tues day night at the Frank Erwin Special Events Center in Austin. A&M’s Donna Roper had 23 points in the loss, and forward Nette Garrett chipped in 10. The Lady Aggies outrebou tided the Lady Horns 36-33. “The pressure bothered us,” A&M Coach Lynn Hickey said. “Considering Roper had a bad ankle and that she played 40 minutes against (UT’s Yulonda) Wimb- ish, I thought she played an excellent game.” The Lady Aggies are now 13-12 overall and 7-8 in the Southwest Conference. UT’ improves to 27-2 and 15-0 in the SWC. The game was relatively even until the 6:47 mark of the first half, when UT made a string of shots to pull away and take a 38- 24 halftime lead. It didn’t take long for the Lady Horns to take control in the second half, increasing .1 48-32 lead to 56-32 at the 14:42 mark. UT was led by Wimbish with 21 points. Beverly Williams added 12, all coming in the first half. “We came in here with one purpose in mind — to play hard,” Hickey said. “We got beat by 21 points but we didn’t play scared. We just don’t have the personnel to match up with them for 40 minutes. “Texas has one of the finest teams in the country, no doubt,” Hickey said. “We tried not to get the team too hyped up that it wouldn’t carry over to the TCU game.” A&M will play TCU Saturday at 5 p.m. at Daniel Meyer Coliseum in Fort Worth. Men’s hoopsters at UT tonight The Texas A&M men’s basketball team will play Texas at 7:30 tonight at the Frank Erwin Special Events Center in Austin. The Aggies will be trying to avenge theit 52*49 loss earlier this season at G Rotiic White Coliseum. A&M is in sixth place in the Southwest Conference at 7-7. UT is 9-5 and fi^‘ for a third or fourth seed in next wee! Southwest Conference Classic. none said. | 10 to nd kac- tired i- de- ; SIS- ! ding e, to terns. 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