Stories from Thursday, February 19, 2004

LINCOLN -- A year ago, McCook finished in the Class B top 10 and had two state champions. A year ago, Chase County's Jay Wood repeated as a state champion and had a shot at the Class C team title. This year, the two schools and Southern Valley have few representatives and you can throw out the team score at the Nebraska State Wrestling Championships, which started Thursday morning at Lincoln...

Combined Medicine Valley, Maywood squads make an impact LINCOLN -- Less than a year ago, there were questions whether or not Maywood would have a wrestling program. Their coach, Clint Hosick, was called up to military service in Iraq, and his team was left without a head coach...

LINCOLN -- Most wrestling fans consider the Class B-2 district to be the toughest in the state. If that's so, then the Class D-4 district tournament is a close second. So when the Cambridge Trojans qualified seven for the Nebraska State Wrestling Championships -- which started Thursday morning at Lincoln -- and the Wauneta-PalisadeBroncos got six, it was quite a feat...

No, not that finger Greetings to all. So the New York Yankees traded for Alex Rodriguez, the 2003 American League MVP. Please, excuse me for a minute while I chop off my middle finger and send it to Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. It's not that I don't like Alex Rodriguez, because I do. It's that he's a great player going to the greatest franchise in sports. I just happen to despise the Yankees and Steinbrenner...

By DAWN CRIBBS Associate Editor Memorial Auditorium was filled nearly to capacity Friday afternoon as more than 800 people, including U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson and most of his staff, attended the funeral of Scott Hoffman, staff assistant to Nelson. Hoffman, 33, drowned in an accident Sunday at Barnett Park in McCook while taking his three dogs for a run...

Sept. 11, 1910-Jan. 5, 2004

The top issue for the Nebraska Legislature may not be budget deficits in the future -- it may be water, State Sen. Tom Baker said this morning during his weekly conference call. Baker said concerns have been raised that a plan to run water from Lake McConaughy to purge waterways could leave Nebraska's largest man-made lake dry by 2005...

CLINTONVILLE, Wis. -- The left-hand turn off Highway 83 onto 6&34, at the viaduct on East Sixth in McCook, is one of the most complicated for a trucking firm carrying 131-foot-long wind blades from Houston, Texas, to Adams, Minn. "That's one of our most difficult corners," Al Johnson of Badger Transportation, Clintonville, Wis, said Monday. ...

When you drive by the Valmont plant facing U.S. Highway 83 in south McCook, you immediately sense that it's a large and busy place. But, while struck by the plant's size, you may not realize that the McCook Valmont plant, "Is the largest, most technologically advanced and mechanized irrigation plant in the world."...

**Dear Editor, Studies have shown that the involvement of pets in our lives can reduce our blood pressure, cholesterol, and stress, thereby reducing our risk of heart disease. Those of us with animal companions tend to be more active, and their presence can help ward off loneliness and depression, In addition to providing us with these medical benefits, our companion animals can alert us to the presence of fire, intruders, or other dangers...

**Dear Editor, What a beautiful picture of the real America and its people the Daytona 500 auto race TV presentation was. President Bush mingling with the crowd, enjoying the respect (very evident) of the presidential office of our great nation. What a change from the daily drumbeat idiotic TV scriptwriter presentation of our America...

To put it succinctly, last week really sucked. It was seven days filled with dread, horror, dashed hopes, unbelief and numbing grief. I pray that myself, my family, my friends, and my community never have to go through another ordeal like the one we just experienced...