Metro Sports Report

Stephanie Jenks will run for Cal Bears

Stephanie Jenks could have accepted a college scholarship from just about any of the elite track and cross country programs in the country, but she decided to pick a school where she can help the team improve and get a great education.

Jenks, a senior at Linn-Mar High School, said Thursday that she's accepted a full athletic scholarship from the University of California at Berkeley to become a distance runner for the Golden Bears.

She called Shayla Houlihan, the distance coach at Cal, with the good news Thursday afternoon after going for a run after school.

"I'm excited. My heart is racing!," Jenks said while attending the district cross country meet at Seminole Valley Park in Cedar Rapids, about 30 minutes after calling Houlihan.

Gorman makes 'presidential' run to title

Reagan Gorman lived up to her first name Thursday and made a presidential run at the Class 4A district country meet at Seminole Valley Park.

Gorman, a talented freshman at Cedar Rapids Washington, was partially named after Ronald Reagan because her parents are fans of the former president.

"Yup. That's exactly it," she said.

Gorman's first name is pronounced Ree-gan, not Ray-gan like the president, but her parents confirmed it's a true story. Joe Gorman, her father, said he's "Celtic Irish" and that Reagan (or Regan) is a good Celtic Irish name, so naming her Reagan was partly because of Pres. Reagan and partly because of his ancestry.

Gorman's mother, Mitsue, is originally from Japan, and the Gormans have given all of their children good Irish names.

Prairie runs away with district title

For awhile Thursday afternoon, it looked like the Cedar Rapids Prairie boys cross country team was holding an intrasquad scrimmage at Seminole Valley Park with all those orange checkerboard jerseys at the front of the pack.

It pretty much ended that way, too.

Tysen VanDraska led a 1-2-3 finish by the Prairie Hawks as they ran away with top honors at the Class 4A district meet.

"That was the goal," said VanDraska, who covered the 5K layout in a swift 15 minutes, 39.34 seconds. "We came out and executed it as best we could. And it worked out."

MSR offers Rec Calendar for events, tryouts

The Metro Sports Report is happy to announce that we have added a Recreation Calendar to the MSR website for groups, organizations and individuals that would like to publicly list their events and tryouts.

We will post a short story about each event or tryout in our "Today's Lineup" section on the home page. In addition, we will include each event or tryout on a permanent list that can be found by clicking on the "Rec Calendar" tab at the top of the main home page.

We are charging $25 per entry, which we think is a reasonable and fair price for this service. In most cases, an organization or individual will see a significant return on their $25 investment in terms of additional registrations.

The Recreation Calendar is available for all youth and adult programs. However, it is not intended for organizations such as the YMCA or Cedar Rapids Recreation Department.

Over the years, I have been approached as president of the Metro Sports Report by people who wanted us to post stories about their tryouts for youth sports teams or to write a notice about one of their tournaments. We really did not have a mechanism for handling that material, but now we do. The $25 fee will cover our time and effort.