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Good morning!Shake the Skribiski family tree and out fall bats, balls and a Hallmark movie. Brothers Dave, Ed and John, and sister Cheryl were raised in Sunderland and played sports at Frontier. Ed was drafted by the Reds but chose to enroll at UMass and play shortstop for coach Dick Bergquist.

As the weather turns and the spring flowers bloom, you may be thinking of picking up a new outdoor activity and I hope golf is at the top of that list. While long considered a sport for the elites in country clubs, recent research by the National Golf Foundation has reported some encouraging new trends. The number of golf trials has hit record or near-record levels in recent years, with 3 million or more on-course beginners starting every year since 2020.

As the 2025 wild turkey hunting season heads into the final stretch, I’m scratching my head wondering, “How did it get by us so fast?” Seems like only yesterday that we were talking about the excitement of another opening day, and now we’re just a few days away from the final week, and already counting the days until opening day of the 2026 season!

Sport is a powerful platform for driving social change. We have witnessed athletes stepping beyond the lines of the field to use their voices and influence to bring awareness to issues that truly matter. From calls for racial justice to advocacy for gender equality, the sports world has served as a podium for broader sociocultural conversations.

Good morning!Any inclination Vladimir Putin might have of brokering a peace deal with Ukraine would likely be helped by his need to show off the Russian hockey team at next year’s Olympics. The Russians have been excluded from international hockey competition since the invasion more than two years ago.

Bill Bradley, the great Knicks player and Rhodes Scholar, went up for a jump shot at the end of the game. As usual, it was good and put the Knicks up by eight points with almost no time on the clock. Rather than the usual cheer, Bradley heard some boos coming from the fans. Confused, after the game Bradley asked the trainer why some fans had booed him. The trainer told him that the spread on the game was projected at six points and that winning by eight had cost fans money.

Good morning!On the 250th anniversary of the shot heard round the world, the UMass Minutemen skirmished under new field commander Joe Harasymiak at McGuirk Alumni Stadium.

Good morning!When Deerfield Academy headmaster Frank L. Boyden was in his 80s, a photographer spotted him picking up a crumpled piece of paper that had been dropped on the sidewalk. The iconic photo symbolized the nature of the man who’d transformed a small school with 15 students in 1902 into one of the country’s top prep schools.

Old school coaching tells us to leave emotion out of sport.We’ve heard it all before – Toughen up! We need you! Get it together! Stop crying!

Good morning!The Marty and Martha Maroons of the world would have you believe that the 9,493-seat William D. Mullins Center was built for men’s basketball. Understandable, considering John Calipari’s team was 24-7 and ranked No.14 by the AP the year the building opened its doors. 

With the 2025 wild turkey hunting season right ahead of us, Massachusetts hunters are thinking full speed ahead, as Opening Day is set to kick off one half-hour after sunrise on April 28! That has turkey hunters beyond excited to get back into the springtime woods to match wits again with the greatest game bird of all time.

Good morning!The UMass softball team shocked Boston College this week, 5-4, on the strength of senior catcher Lydia Castro’s go-ahead home run in the top of the seventh inning at Chestnut Hill. 

I rarely listen to podcasts, but “The Omnibus Project,” by musician John Roderick and “Jeopardy” host Ken Jennings caught my ear months ago. Besides the fact that a typical installment lasts about as long as one of my workouts on an exercise bicycle and weight machines, Roderick and Jennings are pretty funny, and they dig into some wonderfully obscure subjects. They found themselves in particularly obscure territory recently, when they chatted about pedestrianism, which, as you’ve correctly supposed, is a fancy word for walking.

There was a time when 18-year-old boys and girls joined a college athletic team and left four years later as 22-year-old men and women, confident, trained, and effective team members. Coaches had time to focus on long-term development, looking at the big picture rather than short-term gains. Coaches helped individuals identify their strengths and weaknesses, set goals, and worked to help them improve, enabling them to reach their potential. The successful coach had a basic philosophical understanding of the place of sport in the student’s life. Good coaches understood that their athletes were also students and that achievement in the classroom was paramount to success.

Coaching is a critical component in shaping teams, developing talent, and leading athletes to success. While women’s basketball has experienced remarkable growth and recognition in recent years, one of the driving forces behind this evolution has been the level of leadership among coaches. These women not only excel in developing their teams’ technical skills, but also serve as mentors and powerful role models for the next generation of athletes.

Good morning!Interstate driving isn’t what it used to be. There was a time when the next Dunkin’ Donuts past Richmond wasn’t until Jacksonville, when Jesus and country music dominated the airwaves and brake lights were the first warning of trouble ahead.

Good morning!At first glance it appeared that UMass had done right by Noah Lee — giving him $10,000 for his feat after Odds On Promotions refused to cough up the loot — but then came the rest of the story.

Good morning!They’ll be flying through the air with snow on their skis at Harris Hill in Brattleboro this weekend. The forecast calls for the proverbial kitchen sink, and to better inform you how it will affect the ski jumping your humble servant called the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association in Park City, Utah. 

It’s NGWSD season!National Girls and Women in Sport Day is celebrated annually to honor the achievements of women and girls in sports, raise awareness about the importance of gender equality in athletics, and encourage more participation in sports at all levels.

It’s Saturday morning and you’ve just come down on the side of your ankle while playing in the neighborhood basketball game. The pain is immediate as you limp to the sideline. “Get some ice,” someone yells. You lie down, put your leg up on a chair and wait for the ice. Upon arrival you wrap the ice tightly around the ankle. You have just satisfied the age-old rule of RICE, the recommended treatment for acute injuries for 46 years. RICE stands for rest, ice, compression, and elevation, all factors designed to reduce blood flow as well as inflammation. RICE was first proposed by Harvard physician Gabe Mirkin in his 1978 text “The Sports Medicine Book.”

Good morning!In 2016 the late Garry Brown published a collection of his favorite columns — Garry Brown’s Greatest Hits — that appeared in the Springfield Republican. The book is a compendium of local and regional information about bygone days, from Eddie Shore’s Springfield Indians to Nun’s Day at Fenway Park.