Saturday in October

Former Minnesota State men's hockey trainer Jason Bushie, who now works with the men's hockey team at Colorado College, just characterized today as a Hound of the Baskervilles kind of day.  And, given the 70 degree temperature and 70% humidity, he just might be right.

Truly a great day in Mankato that started off with the inaugural running of the Mankato Marathon.  Today's festivities, which included a KidsK, a 10K and a half marathon, featured more than 2,000 entrants in the marathon. For those of us in MSU Athletics, we proudly join women's cross country/track and field coach Jen Blue in celebrating her first-place finish in the women's division of the marathon.  Blue, who was running in her fourth marathon, turned in a personal-best time of 3:06 in finishing 21st overall. Her husband, MSU men's hockey coach Darren Blue, is believed to have provided many great training tips for Jen.

And just to recap yesterday, in addition to the MSU men's hockey team getting its first win of the season with a 5-4 victory over #19 Colorado College, the MSU women's hockey team also picked up a big win with a 4-2 victory over #6 North Dakota at All Seasons Arena.  UND, which features Olympians Monique and Jocelyne Lamoureux, was coming off of a two-game sweep of Minnesota. Also Friday, the #14 Maverick women's volleyball team captured a 3-1 NSIC win over Upper Iowa at Taylor Center.  So, yeah, a pretty good night for Maverick Athletics. 

Gary Mielke

And thought I might pass this along.  I was doing some baseball research this morning and came across a site that's mission is to do in-depth biographies of every player who has played at least one game in the major leagues.  A Herculean-task no doubt as www.baseball-almanac.com lists the number of people who have achieved this feat at 16,219.  The site is a work in progress, and the long story short here is that of the 1,454 bios that have been completed, two are of former Maverick baseball players.  Gary Mielke's bio appears here.  And Jerry Terrell's bio is available here.   They're still working on bios for Bob Will and Todd Revenig.

It's great to be a Maverick.