C.J. Helweg

Mr. Robbins

English 1310

11/27/2007

Word Count: 1002

The Distribution of Sport

Technology has allowed information to be transferred faster than ever thought possible. Information is not the only thing being transferred at a rapid rate though. Clothing, food, electronics, automobiles, entertainment and fashion are crossing international borders as soon as they become available. One of the most influential things to be crossing borders is sports. Sports have made the jump from country to country with very little resistance and vast acceptance by the population. It is a universal language that everyone in the world can understand. The languages may not be the same, but the feelings of passion and support are mutual in all nations. Baseball, soccer, and golf can be found in nearly every country in the world.

The exact date of origin is unknown, but the sport of baseball was organized in the late 1800’s (Early Baseball Law). Since this time, baseball has attracted many athletes from different countries and has become established in many countries as well. Baseball is most popular in the Caribbean region, Asia and the United States. Players from these countries come to the United States to participate in the MLB, Major League Baseball. The Dominican Republic has the most non-U.S. players on the roster with ninety-eight, followed by Venezuela with fifty-one, Puerto Rico with twenty-eight, Canada with nineteen, Japan and Mexico had 13 each, Panama with seven, Cuba with six, South Korea with 3, Colombia and Taiwan two each, and Aruba, Australia, Curacao and Nicaragua each have one. This equals about twenty-nine percent of the all MLB rosters including inactive lists and disabled lists, which is a record high for the MLB (National Pastime). While the MLB in America is the most popular in the world, there is an international league called the World Baseball League. The league was established in 2005 and contains sixteen teams from around the world that include Australia, Canada, China, Chinese Taipei, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Italy, Netherlands, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, South Africa, United States, and Venezuela (World Baseball Classic). It’s not only the adult players that are making world travels and playing different countries. The Little League World Series has exploded in popularity in the past few years. The first World Series was played in 1947, and since then 21 countries have joined the rush for the little league World Series trophy. When the Little League World Series started to be broadcasted on ESPN and ESPN2, the world started to get more interested and supportive of the little leaguers.

Soccer is the most popular sport in the world. It’s very simple to play, which makes it so popular among the masses. All you need is a round ball. Anybody can kick a ball,which makes it nearly available to everyone. There are many leagues in which soccer athletes participate in. The World Cup League involves thirty-two national teams competing for the world cup of soccer (World Cup). The Premier League in England has twenty teams (England). There are twenty-eight teams in the Champions League (UEFA). The popularity of soccer is growing in the United States.

“The growth represents a nice increase in total, but it's not huge on a compound-growth basis. Frequent players (40+ times a year) grew from 3 million to 5.3 million during the period. But it remains a youth sport. Participants aged 7 to 11 went from 44.2 percent of total participation to 36.3 percent. Participants aged 12 to 17 fell from 29.8 percent to 26.7 percent. That translates to 63 percent of all participants being under age 18” (Carr).

Cities are building new, major league soccer stadiums in the United States because the popularity of the sport is continuing to grow. The United States also has a professional soccer league, the MLS. The league had an eastern and western conference and includes the Houston Dynamo, Chivas USA, the Colorado Rapids, FC Dallas, Los Angeles Galaxy, and Real Salt Lake in the Western Conference. The MLS Eastern Conference includes the Chicago Fire, Columbus Crew, D.C. United, Kansas City Wizards, New England Revolution, Toronto FC, and New York Red Bulls.

Golf has been around for thousands of years. "It is known that golf was played at St. Andrews before the founding of the university there in 1403, and there is sufficient evidence that it was being played in one form or another in Scotland as much as a century before that, about 1300" (History of Golf). Since these early beginnings, golf has expanded to include a number of tours which go around the world. The tours included are the PGA, LPGA, European, Champions, Nationwide, PGA of America Canadian and the USGA. There are over 110 courses that are included on these tours that are from around the world. Golf is not an exclusively English sport. There are players from around the world that are changing the traditional stereotypes of golfers. Three of the six top players in the world are American. The other three are from vastly different parts of the world. The exceptions include Vijay Singh from the Fiji Islands, K.J. Choi from South Korea, and Rory Sabbatini from South Africa (Tour Statistics). Driving ranges and new courses are popping up all over the world, making golf a fast growing sport that nearly everyone can play with little athletic ability. The relaxation of golf makes it more appealing to a larger part of the world population. Beautiful courses with friends make golf an enjoyable experience.

Sports are only one example of the way the world is coming together. Sports are something that can bring an entire nation together to cheer for a common goal. Everywhere you go there will be someone to talk about sports. Sports are a universal language that everyone can understand no matter what part of the world a person is from. Different sports have come from different parts of the world and are shared by everyone. They have been shared and swapped throughout the generations by people who love to share their ideas and customs. The thought of “Americanization” of sports is absurd and obsolete.

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C.J. Helweg

Prof. Robbins

English 1310

October 29, 2007

Word Count: 774

Restriction of Freedom or Freedom of Restriction?

It is Friday night, and a small town’s entire population has made their way to the football stadium. The teams run on to the field, the bands play, and everyone in the stadium stands. A lone student is at the microphone of the Public Address system. “Let us pray…” he starts. In Texas on a Friday night, it is not uncommon to hear a student delivered prayer before football games. Texas high school football followers often see the sport as some sort of religion. What was at one time accepted by the majority of the spectators and participants has gotten more and more criticism. People have different opinions, athletes have different ways of bringing religion to sports, and a few court cases have ever come from this topic.

Football spectators that I have had conversations with said they don’t like the prayer idea before games because it implies that everyone is a Christian and that’s the way that everyone should behave. These people don’t like the single religion aspect that seems to come from these prayers. They would feel more comfortable with a moment of silence or no prayer at all. But I have also conversed with people who embrace and support the prayers. The reasoning that I have heard for this mindset is the fact that it is not forced, and the prayer is just a simple one that asks that no person get hurt in the upcoming athletic contest. They are not meant to be derogatory or discriminative in any way. As Mark Shaw, a trustee on the Santa Fe school board, said, "Football games are ... attended on a voluntary basis, so if you don't like the prayer, come later." On the other side of the debate, Dena Marks, of the Anti-Defamation League, said, "It could be that there are certain people who don't believe the same way the person who says the prayer believes, and because of that, by definition, [saying a prayer] excludes those people" (Prayer). Incidents like this one are a sign that people are changing their views about religious tolerance at sporting events.

People have taken school districts to court because of prayer before a football game. "In 1963, the case of Engle v. Vitale , the Supreme Court ruled against mandated school prayer in the classroom." By extension, this ruling also applied to school events such as football games. "In 1989, the case of Jager v. Douglas County School District , the 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that pre-game invocations by coaches, officials or students at high school football games were unconstitutional." In 1995, Doe v. Duncanville School District , The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th circuit found that informal student-initiated, student led prayers at sporting events were constitutional. They found that students "are not enjoined from praying, either individually or in groups. Students may voluntarily pray together, provided such prayer is not done with school participation or supervision. ” (Robinson). This means that students are allowed to pray, only on their own time and not using anything that has to do with their school. In 2000, the Santa Felead school district was brought to court. The charge was allowing a student , student initiated prayer before a football game. The prayer was allotted by the school district and therefore deemed unconstitutional (Robinson).

But what do athletes do in this situation? I have seen prayer in locker rooms, in pre game warm ups, during the huddle, and after touchdowns are made. Locker rooms are often a main place for prayer. Team prayers occur before every game asking for protection, the will to win, and the discipline to be sportsmanlike. These are often lead by both athletes and coaches. A majority of athletic spectators find little harm in this, but there are a few people who disagree with this pre game prayer. They feel that a coach should not be encouraging or participating in prayers. The thought is that all prayer should be student lead and spontaneous without any connection to the school. Even if prayer is barred from football games, the players will continue to pray.

The controversy of prayer before school events is not near to being over. As long as there is

football, there will be prayer before games. Not every person is happy about this, and I cannot see

any time in the near future where every spectator and athlete will be satisfied. It is an ongoing

debate that will continue to be argued over and over by everyone that attends sporting events.

Prayers will continue to be read, and players will continue to pray no matter what happens on the

political side of the battle.

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Oblivious? America? Couldn't be..

In "The Oblivious Empire", Mark Hertsgaard explains that for being such an "educated" country, we know very little about the outside world as a country. The American feeling that this country is superior than the rest of the world, "may be fanning the flames of anti-Americanism around the world" Hertsgaard says. I liked what was said about American ignorance. Hertsgaard says,"Ignorance is an excuse, but not a shield. Even though Americans are largely ignorant of what is being carried out in their names, they are all likely to suffer a very steep price". I agree completely. If America continues to blindly reach out and touch other countries, we will suffer our downfall. We may be the most powerful nation in the world, but when it comes to terms of intelligence on other countries, we are severely lacking.

American Imperialism

In "Under the Sign..", Todd Gitlin explains how the American culture has influenced nearly every part of the world. This was evident in "Babel" in a number of ways. At the beginning when the couple was eating, what did they have to drink? Coca-Cola. Also, Mc Donalds was present in Japan, along with Coke products. According to Gitlin, "Entertainment is one of America's top exports". In the dance club in Japan, American music could be heard (eventhough the girl could not hear it). Also, American values are transferred to differnt places. The actions of the deaf girl protrayed the american thought that sex is everything. American Imperialism is the reason that images and sounds of America become omnipresent according to Gitlin. With technology today, it is no suprise to me that all of these images are being transferred.

Fight the System

Fight the System
Fourteen years of public education are completed by me. I went from Pre-school straight on through to my senior year of high school. Every day it was the same thing. I would wake up, get on the bus, and head to school. I would go through the day with no problems, easily get though my work, and constantly wonder what the point was. Looking around me all those years I caught the impression that I wasn’t the only one with these feelings. I often encountered the same bored, glazed over eyes from a majority of my classmates. The American public school system disempowers the students of the system because of a lack of passion from the students, standardized testing, and unnecessary courses.
I have come to find, through my experiences in sports, that if someone is not passionate about the sport, then they will not try to do well in the sport. They will not practice hard and rarely care if they succeed or fail. I think the same principle applies to the U.S. public school system. The students that apply themselves will often succeed in their efforts. They will push themselves to do the homework and push themselves into the advanced classes. The students that don’t care simply won’t succeed. They will not do homework, sleep in class, and not apply themselves. So who is to blame? How about the teachers? Or perhaps we could blame the students themselves? No, the system is wrong. There needs to be changes made to the whole public school system to stimulate and motivate every single student. According to College Board.com, of the estimated 2.7 million students that graduated college in 2006, a mere fifteen percent were enrolled in and passed advanced level courses, roughly 406,000 students (Advanced Placement). These are the students that apply themselves and are motivated enough to take these courses. Where does this motivation come from? It can come from external sources such as parents or athletics, or it can be internal such as dreams of graduate school or the simple desire to be in the top ten percent of their class. So what about the other eighty-five percent? They lacked the motivation, and therefore got the minimal amount of their education. How can we motivate the unmotivated? Offer rewards for good grades and advanced classes. No finals, periods off, and extended lunches may be a few ways to get the motivation level higher.
Also according to College Board.com, college dropout rates are rising and the big cause of this is the gap between high school graduation standards and college course requirements (Advanced Placement). The public school system is not teaching kids to think for themselves. Standardized testing has made sure of that. Standardized tests are used to judge how well a school is doing academically. Better tests equals more money for the school. These tests are not a good way of judging comprehension of material in a classroom. Instead of giving money based on test scores, the government should give schools money based on dropout and graduation rates. The more students that stay in school and complete their high school education, the more money the school should get. A number of students, including myself, have issues with taking tests, such as anxiety, lack of confidence, and completely forgetting material that is mastered causing mixed and wrong results of a student’s knowledge. Because of this money for good test results, students don’t learn material that they need to learn. They are taught how to take these standardized tests. I remember in my years in school that we would set apart entire class periods to “practice” taking TAAS or TAKS. Not the material that the test included, but test taking skills such as, underlining important aspects of a passage, eliminating answers and how to bubble in a scantron properly. I understand that getting money for schools is important, but I also believe that kids should learn, for example, about how an eco system works for a class period and not spend that entire period on learning how to bubble in an answer.
The public school system is more of a hindrance than a help. Students are required to fulfill state requirements that have little to do with furthering their education. Fine Art and foreign language are the first that come to my mind. Unless pursing a college degree or a career or if a student wants to take one of these classes in pursuit of their own knowledge in one of these subjects, they should not be required. I understand the purpose behind them, to broaden the mind and expose the kids to cultures other than the ones that they are used to, but the kids taking them are not aware of that. They are bored and not applying their minds to the cultural aspect. They are more worried about what they are going to eat at lunch and what the weekend holds.
Michael Moore quoted Julie Walker in Idiot Nation saying, “The knowledge students acquire in school is not going to serve them throughout their lifetimes…It will be their ability to navigate information that will matter” (Moore). This holds true in the American public school system. Schools are more concerned with the pursuit of high standardized test scores to get more money than trying to give an education to every student. So getting rid of the standardized test, learning to motivate students, and taking out unnecessary courses are three simple ways to completely revolutionize and optimize the public school systems of America.


















Works Cited

"Advanced Placement Proves Gateway to College Success." College Board.
25 Jan. 2005. 12 Sept. 2007 .

Moore, Michael. "Idiot Nation." Rereading America. Ed. Gary Colombo. Boston, New York: Bedford/St.Martins, 2007. 141.

Hat Creek Cattle Co.

A handmade wooden fence holds a sign advertising the Hat Creek Cattle Company. The sign is made of five horizontal pieces of barnwood behing held together by two vertical pieces on both sides. At the top of the sign stretching the length of the first board, burned in to the wood is "HAT CREEK CATTLE COMPANY". The sign also says that the company doesn't rent pigs or goats, and is also a livery. At the bottom of the sign there is Latin writing saying, "una unam vivendo varia fit". I like this picture because the wording on the sign being burned in to the sign.

remake of beauty

C.J. Helweg

Micah Robbins

ENG1310.115

1 September 2007

Word Count: 535
The Beauty of Simplicity
In the complexities of today’s world and society, who has time to stop and admire the beauty of things? But who defines what beauty is? Beauty all depends on how people define what beauty is, so therefore beauty can be just about anything. In today’s complex American society, I find my grandma’s farm to be the most beautiful place I know. She lives right outside of Brenham, Texas in a little town called Industry. The way that the landscape comes together and forms this beautiful scenery that never ceases to amaze me. Everything from the old peach trees behind the house to the pond in the woods is as near to perfect as I have ever seen.
She lives on the very end of a dirt and gravel road that winds back in to the countryside. Coming down over a small hill, you can see her house settled in a small grove of trees on the edge of a forest. It is a perfect looking farm house. There is a large front porch that stretches the entire length of the house and a tin roof that is perfect for listening to the rain under. As soon as I walk in I get an immediate sense of home. Everything is just so inviting and beautiful. Right when I walk in to the front door, I am greeted with an overwhelming stimulation of the senses. There is a great feeling of warmth and belonging. Sunlight is flooding in through the large windows that overlook the property, and reflects off the original hardwood floor. As you walk in you start to smell the goodness of home cooked food made from scratch. My grandma makes everything imaginable from rolls, cookies, cakes, soups, casseroles and an infinite amount of other delicious foods that stimulate the nostrils and make the mouth water. It is all so beautiful in so many different ways.
Her property spans out over the countryside. Acres and acres of land are laid out over hills, streams, and ponds in the country. Off to the side of her house is a forest which has a road winding back to a pond. Walking down this path, silence falls except for the crunch of leaves under your feet. You can smell the trees and the fresh air, and you can literally breathe in the beauty that surrounds you. Once the path opens up, the pond is full of fish and turtles. Again, this is pure beauty at its finest. Walking back towards the front of the house, there is the road that comes over the hill and a field that opens up with a barn just off to the right. Again, it’s another picture perfect scene. It’s so simple and so beautiful. The solitude of walking through the old peach trees makes you feel at one with yourself and nature allowing you to see the unimaginable beauty that is surrounding you. After night falls, my family and I will sit out on the back porch and relax in the warm night and watch the stars and fireflies. Nobody is talking much. We’re all just sitting and absorbing everything in that we can. All of the senses are stimulated. Everything that I feel and sense is so amazing, so simple, and so beautiful.

The Graduate

In Norman Rockwell's The Graduate, I think that Norman put the student in front of the paper to relate the era and the major events going on at the time. In my opinion, the headlines show how scary and dangerous the real world can be. Atomic weapons, inflation, and job woes are just some of the things that the young graduate must now face. I think the posture of the graduate signifies the realization that his simple life that he had enjoyed during school has now come to an end. He must go out in to the cold, and very real, world where he has to deal with problems he had not had to face before. We are fortunate these days, as recent high school graduates, that all we have to worry about after graduating is going to college. The majority of the high school population does not have to worry about going out in to the work force for another couple of years. Very few of us are completly dependent on ourselves, unlike the graduate who will soon be.

Let's Talk About College

One of the things that bothered me the most was a passage from Michael Moore's Idiot Nation. He talks about once you get a degree from a top school such as Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth or Stanford that you are set for life. However, at these schools, seventy percent of the students had not heard of the Voting Rights act or Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. These are supposed to be the top schools in the nation and they can't recall high school material. I'm not saying i remember everything from high school, but i like to think i retained a fair amount. These are our leaders of major corporations and government that can barely pass a high school test. Something wrong with this picture? I think so.

Back in the Day...

When I started high school, I moved from a different district and therefore I knew nobody at my new school. I had always been a big sports fan and was planning on playing sports throughout my high school career. I started out in football in August of 2002 not knowing a single person. Going through the one hundred plus degree heat with all of my teammates brought us all closer together and got people talking to eachother. We would talk after games about what happened and what we could do to improve during class and in the hallways. By talking to them, I started to branch out my connections and talk to other people until by my senior year, I knew and talked to, 90 percent of my senior class and a majority of underclassmen. So for me, football was the best thing to happen to me during high school.

who are you?

i was talking to a friend last night on AIM about her rleigious beliefs. she is at a university up in north Texas, and she is a Catholic. a majority of the population at the university belong to the Church of Christ, and look at her differently because she is a Catholic. she wanted to know if she should stop announcing that she is a Catholic and simply say she is a Christian, or just put up with it. and it got me thinking, why are we under so much pressure to conform even if it makes us uncomfortable? i personally would have continued saying that i was and if that makes you not want to associate with me then fine, i dont have time for you. there are other people out there, its not the end of the world. im not saying every one is like this, but people go out of their way to be someone they're not. we are who we are and don't you think we should start to embrace our individuality? if you feel differently about something, stand up and say it don't just agree because everyone else is. be individual. be yourself.