Fort Hays State Weekly Football Press Conference
October 28, 2014
Head Coach Chris Brown
Linebacker Brock Long
Offensive Lineman Luke Edney
Defensive Lineman Jesse Trent
Month: October 2014
Chrysler recalls over 566,000 trucks, SUVs
DETROIT (AP) — Chrysler is recalling more than 566,000 SUVs and trucks because malfunctioning fuel heaters can cause fires, or a software glitch can disable the electronic stability control.
The largest of two recalls announced Wednesday covers almost 382,000 Ram 2500 and 3500 pickups and Ram 4500 and 5500 chassis cabs from 2010 through 2014.
In trucks with 6.7-Liter Cummins diesel engines, corrosion on a fuel heater terminal could cause overheating, fuel leaks and fires. Chrysler is not aware of any fires or injuries. Dealers will install upgraded terminals and fuel heater housings could be replaced.
The second recall covers more than 184,000 Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango SUVs from 2014. A debris cover over a circuit board can disrupt communications and disable the stability control. Software will be upgraded.
Kan. man hospitalized after Toyota t-bones pickup
GARDEN CITY- A Kansas man was injured in an accident just after 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday in Finney County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2009 Toyota Corolla driven by Mu Noe, 50, Garden City, was westbound on Kansas Ave at VFW Road in Garden City.
The vehicle failed to yield at the stop sign and t-boned a 2008 Ford pickup driven by Juan M. Martinez, 71, Garden City, that was southbound on VFW road.
A passenger in the Toyota Klu Kaw, 33 Garden City, was transported to St. Catherine’s Hospital, treated and released.
Martinez and Noe were not injured.
The KHP reported all were properly restrained at the time of the accident.
Retrial of Kan. man convicted in wife’s murder put on hold
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — The retrial of a Lawrence man convicted of killing his wife in 2004 is stalled while he seeks a new prosecutor.
Martin Miller plans to ask the Kansas Supreme Court to disqualify the Douglas County District Attorney’s office from prosecuting him during this second trial.
Miller was convicted in 2005 of first-degree murder in the July 2004 death of 46-year-old Mary Miller at the couple’s home. The Kansas Supreme Court overturned the conviction in February, citing incorrect jury instructions.
6NewsLawrence reports that a Douglas County judge on Tuesday allowed Miller’s attorneys request to delay the county case while attorneys ask the Kansas Supreme Court to disqualify the District Attorney’s office, alleging misconduct.
The District Attorney’s office opposed the effort, saying the disqualification was not warranted in this case.
HPD activity log, Oct. 28
The Hays Police Department conducted 15 traffic stops and received seven animal calls on Tuesday, Oct. 28, according to the HPD activity log.
Driving While Suspended/Revoked, 1300 Ash, 7:33 a.m.
Suspicious Activity, 200 block East 21st, 8:46 a.m.
Motor vehicle accident, 1500 block US 183 Alt Hwy, 9:45 a.m.
Found/Lost Property, 5th and Fort, 10:55 a.m.
Animal At Large, 1400 block Tallgrass, 11:38 a.m.
Theft, 2700 Canal, 5:00 p.m.
Civil Dispute, 100 block West 12th, 12:15 p.m.
Civil Dispute, 1000 block West 28th, 12:43 p.m.
Theft, 4300 block Vine, 1:45 p.m.
Motor vehicle accident, 200 block East 15th, 2:10 p.m.
Welfare Check, 200 block East 27th, 3:24 p.m.
Motor vehicle accident, 1700 block Vine, 4:21 p.m.
Theft, 3400 block Vine, 4:23 p.m.
Motor vehicle accident,100 block East 43rd, 4:38 p.m.
Dangerous Animal, 1500 block US 183 Alt Hwy, 4:58 p.m.
Motor vehicle accident, 5:18 p.m.
Civil Transport, 1300 block Kansas Highway 264, Larned, 10:38 p.m.
Suspicious Activity, 500 block West 27th, 11:08 p.m.
Lost Animals, 400 block West 13th, 9:36 p.m.
Smoke machine causes fire alarm to trip at Hays library
A smoke machine caused a minor stir at the Hays Public Library on Tuesday evening, as the mist activated a fire alarm. The machine was being used as part of Halloween festivities for the library’s children’s party.
The Hays Fire Department responded to the scene, but there was no further incident.
Royals rout Giants to force Game 7 in Series
By BEN WALKER
AP Baseball Writer
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A couple hundred fans stood behind the Royals dugout for more than a half-hour after the final out, screaming and waving white rally towels.
Bring on Game 7!
Yordano Ventura, a 23-year-old rookie pitching with a heavy heart and the initials of late St. Louis outfielder Oscar Taveras on his cap, allowed three hits over seven stifling innings. Kansas City’s batters broke open the game with a seven-run second and battered the San Francisco Giants 10-0 Tuesday night to tie the World Series at three games apiece.
“This is what we all prepared for. This is why we play the game,” Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer said.
As bouncers rolled by infielders and bloops dropped in front of outfielders, the raucous roar at Kauffman Stadium swelled with every hit in the second and then got louder the rest of the night. Lorenzo Cain looped a two-run single — one of eight Royals to get hits in the seven-run burst — and Hosmer chopped a two-run double over shortstop.
“Guys stepped up in a big way tonight,” Cain said.
Jeremy Guthrie starts Wednesday night for Kansas City and Tim Hudson for San Francisco in a rematch of Game 3, won by Kansas City 3-2. Hudson, 39, will become the oldest Game 7 starter in Series history.
“We’re confident,” the Royals’ Billy Butler said. “Jeremy, every time out, gives us a chance to win.”
Lurking is Madison Bumgarner, ready to pitch in relief after suffocating the Royals on a total of one run in winning Games 1 and 5. Giants manager Bruce Bochy elected not to start him on two days’ rest.
“This guy is human. I mean, you can’t push him that much,” Bochy said. “He’ll be available if we need him, but to start him, I think that’s asking a lot.”
Kansas City can be comfortable in this bit of history: Home teams have won nine straight Game 7s in the Series since Pittsburgh’s victory at Baltimore in 1979, including the Royals’ 11-0 rout of St. Louis in 1985. And the Giants have lost all four of their World Series finales pushed to the limit.
“I had a very, very strong feeling that whoever won Game 6 was going to win Game 7,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. “We have to wait until tomorrow to see if my theory’s correct.”
Teams with the home-field advantage have won 23 of the last 28 titles, including five in a row. This Series has followed the exact pattern of the only other all-wild card matchup in 2002, when the Giants won the opener, fell behind 2-1, took a 3-2 lead and lost the last two games at Anaheim.
“I can’t wait to get out there tomorrow and have some fun,” Hudson said.
There was a moment of silence before the game in honor of Taveras, the 22-year-old killed in an automobile accident Sunday in the Dominican Republic. Ventura wrote “RIP O.T #18” in silver marker on the left side of his cap and brought a Dominican flag to his postgame interview.
“From the minute that I found out about Oscar, I said this game was going to be dedicated to him,” Ventura said through a translator. “I prepared myself mentally and physically for this game, and I’m very proud to be a Dominican, and that’s why I brought the flag.”
He escaped his only trouble in the third, when he walked the bases loaded with one out and got Buster Posey to ground a 97 mph fastball into a double play. Ventura threw fastballs on 81 of 100 pitches, reaching up to 100 mph. Yost was able to rest the hard-throwing back of his bullpen: Kelvin Herrera and Wade Davis enter Game 7 with two days off and closer Greg Holland with four.
Kansas City out-hit the Giants 15-6 in another blowout in the first Series in which five games were decided by five runs or more. All nine Royals had hits by the third, matching the mark set by Arizona against the Yankees in Game 6 in 2001.
Cain drove in three runs and was among six Royals with two hits each. Mike Moustakas homered in the seventh against Hunter Strickland, ending a 36-inning homerless streak in the Series, the longest since 1945.
Peavy was charged with five runs and six hits in 1 1-3 innings, leaving with a career Series record of 0-2 with a 9.58 ERA in three starts. His record at Kauffman Stadium is 1-7 with a 7.28 ERA.
“It’s hugely disappointing. It’s as disappointing as it can get,” he said.
San Francisco had scored 15 straight runs entering the night, but the Royals rocked Peavy and Yusmeiro Petit in the 32-minute bottom of the second.
Moustakas grounded an RBI double over the first-base bag, past Brandon Belt and down the right-field line. Alcides Escobar hit a one-out bouncer to Belt. With Peavy yelling “Home!” Belt checked Salvador Perez at third and then tried to out-race Escobar to first base rather than throw to second baseman Joe Panik, who already was at the base. Escobar slid past Belt’s failed tag attempt and into first to reach on the infield hit.
“It’s a play you can definitely learn from,” Belt said. “Unfortunately, it happened in the World Series.”
Nori Aoki chased Peavy after 42 pitches with an RBI single, Cain’s blooped double off Petit made it 4-0 and Hosmer chopped a ball that hopped over drawn-in shortstop Brandon Crawford for a double that made it 6-0. The rout was on.
“We’re going to make history. The only way to make history is to win,” Jarrod Dyson said.
HOME COOKING
Home teams are 23-3 in Games 6 and 7 combined since 1982. The last eight home teams that won Game 6 to even the Series also went on to win Game 7, and no road team has lost Game 6 and rebounded to win the title since the 1975 Cincinnati Reds at Boston’s Fenway Park.
USD 489 enrollment numbers strong but funding changes ‘discouraging’
By KARI BLURTON
Hays Post
At Monday’s Board of Education meeting, Superintendent Dean Katt said while the latest unaudited enrollment numbers for Hays USD 489 are good, legislative funding changes leave the district more than $75,000 short of the working budget.
Katt said changes made in worker compensation insurance has already made up for more than $60,000 of the loss in funds, but said the state funding formula is troubling.
“Overall, I am not discouraged with the total headcount numbers, but I am discouraged with the formula and what we ended up with full-time equivalent per students per funding,” Katt said.
The latest unaudited enrollment figures list a total of 3,067 students receiving services from USD 489, up from the 3,010 students served in USD 489 last year.
However, the state funding formula counts just 2,863.6 students as full-time-equivalent (FTE) students. The FTE is a funding formula the state uses when determining how much funds-per pupil go to the district.
State funding changes made in April’s school funding compromise left USD 489 with a total loss of 43 full-time equivalents resulting in a loss of $14,400 for the general fund.
Katt said the loss of 32 of the 43 FTE numbers came from the Legislature’s funding changes regarding new facilities weighing.
“That is something we really fought to try to get them to change the wording back to where we would qualify with Hays Middle School to get new facilities weighting,” Katt said, regarding the new addition at HMS that had been budgeted to receive the weighting funds.
Additionally, Katt said legislative changes to the Local Option Budget added to an increase of state aid, but changed which students could be counted as FTE, such as students enrolled in the virtual high school. That change resulted in a funding reduction of $61,968.
The unaudited enrollment numbers also list an increase in classes sizes from grade levels K through 4 and grades 6 through 9.
Women take the lead in November’s Entrepreneur Direct Lecture Series
FHSU University Relations
Elizabeth Demas, founder and owner of the Kansas City Avon Stores, Alicia Herald, creator of myEDmatch, and Brittain Kovac, with Startup Village, Leap.it and Hostel KC, will be the featured presenters at Fort Hays State University’s Entrepreneur Direct speaker series on Nov. 18.
The event, scheduled for 10:30 to 11:45 a.m. in the Memorial Union’s Fort Hays Ballroom, is free to the public.
Demas has been an Avon representative since October 2003. In the first six months, she reached more than $10,000 in sales, built a team of more than 30 representatives and landed on the front cover of Avon’s then magazine for representatives, Avon Dreams. Demas sells above Avon’s top sales level and owns two licensed Avon Beauty Centers in the Kansas City metro area, one in Overland Park and one in Kansas City’s Zona Rosa.
The Overland Park store holds the distinction of selling more Avon products than any other location in the nation. Her team now has nearly 100 members from several states.
Demas received the 2008 Existing Business of the Year award from the Johnson County Small Business Development Center and the 2010 national award of Woman of Enterprise from Avon Corporate. She has been highlighted in Beauty Magazine, twice in The Kansas City Star and featured on KMBC Channel 9. Herald, a former teacher, national recruiter, education executive and school board member, experienced first-hand the challenges for both teachers and schools when it came to K-12 educator recruitment, selection and hiring. Every year, 20 percent of teachers leave their classrooms, either switching schools or leaving the profession altogether. This multibillion-dollar-a-year problem has an impact on the lives of millions of kids.
Using concepts familiar to industries such as online dating, myEDmatch helps schools find and recruit best-fit talent and provides teachers with job opportunities and resources to help them thrive. Herald earned her undergraduate degree, a master’s degree and an M.B.A. She is vice chair of the KIPP Endeavor School Board and recently was appointed to the Missouri State Commission on Charter Schools.
Kovac, after college, went on to spend seven years in experiential marketing before landing a position as the assistant manager at Google Fiber Space, where she was introduced to the Kansas City startup community. She is a co-leader at the Kansas City Startup Village, a community of startups operating out of homes in the first Google Fiberhood in the world, where she runs event programming, PR, community relations and ambassadorship.
Kovac also works for a startup, Leap.it, a collaborative, visual search engine taking on Google to give users a new way to search and discover. She is also the Chief Nomad at her startup, Hostel KC, which has as its tagline, “the place where sleep has a purpose.” Hostel KC aims to build a purpose-driven community of travelers that, for every 300 paid beds, builds a home for a family in need in the Caribbean. Hostel KC was launched on Sept. 1, 2014.
Entrepreneur Direct is a speaker series that features a successful entrepreneur in an informal setting accessible to students, faculty, staff and the public. The program is intended to connect students with successful entrepreneurs who have stories and advice to share. A faculty-student panel asks questions about entrepreneurship and encourages questions and interaction with the audience.
BOOK REVIEW: ‘Q & A’ by Vikas Swarup
“Q & A” by Vikas Swarup
Vikas Swarup’s spectacular debut novel opens in a jail cell in Mumbai, India, where Ram Mohammad Thomas is being held after correctly answering all 12 questions on India’s biggest quiz show, Who Will Win a Billion? It is hard to believe that a poor orphan who has never read a newspaper or gone to school could win such a contest. But through a series of exhilarating tales Ram explains to his lawyer how episodes in his life gave him the answer to each question.
Swarup takes the interesting plot device of aligning each chapter with one of the questions on Who Will Win a Billion? — India’s answer to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? I love the idea that small details in our lives will someday matter greatly, and Swarup is creative in his application of that thought.
However, some of the chapters become repetitive or melodramatic. There is little suspense, since we know that Ram answers the questions correctly and if he had cheated, there would be no real story to tell. I felt that the film was superior to the book because the suspense holds throughout the film, and I felt the love story was told in a more compelling way in the film.
In the end, this is one of only a handful of times that I’ll recommend people to watch the movie rather than read the book.
If you’d like to discuss the book with us, or watch the film version, join us at Read2Reel, Tuesday, Nov. 18, at 5:30 p.m. See you there!
Marleah Augustine is Adult Department Librarian at the Hays Public Library.
GOP ‘Clean Sweep’ bus tour hits NW Kan. this week
A group of Kansas Republican candidates and their surrogates will be traveling the state this week as part of the Kansas Republican Party’s Clean Sweep Bus Tour, which includes a stop in Hays.
Scheduled to participate in all four days of the tour are Sen. Pat Roberts, Gov. Sam Brownback, Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer, Attorney General Derek Schmidt, Secretary of State Kris Kobach, Treasurer Ron Estes and Insurance Commissioner candidate Ken Selzer.
Scheduled to attend events in their congressional districts are Reps. Tim Huelskamp, Lynn Jenkins, Kevin Yoder and Mike Pompeo.
Scheduled to attend for portions of the trip are Sen. Bob Dole; New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, chairman of the Republican Governor’s Association; and state party chair Kelly Arnold.
The caravan will be in northwest Kansas on Thursday, with stops scheduled in Hays and Russell.
The Hays event is scheduled from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. at Thirsty’s Brew Pub, 2704 Vine. In Russell, the group will be at Meridy’s, 1220 S. Fossil, from noon to 1:30 p.m.
Dole and Christie will join the group on Friday in eastern Kansas.
Images from Royals’ blowout win in World Series
The Royals forces Game 7 with a 10-0 win against the Giants on Tuesday from the K.
Check out images from the game, courtesy the Kansas City Royals.
Amendment allowing raffles on next week’s ballot
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A proposed constitutional amendment on next week’s Kansas ballot would allow nonprofit, religious, veterans and other organizations to hold raffles as fundraisers.
The Lawrence Journal-World reports organizations conducting raffles would not be allowed to sell tickets through electronic gaming or vending machines, under the proposed amendment. They also wouldn’t be allowed to contract with professional lottery or raffle companies to operate the raffles.
The Legislature passed a bill in 2013 that would allow charitable groups to offer raffles. But Gov. Sam Brownback vetoed the measure, saying it would violate the Kansas Constitution.
Brownback said in his veto message he would support allowing limited types of charitable raffles and encouraged the Legislature to consider a constitutional amendment.