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The last second shot that caused a whole lot of Cheering, and more

By Chuck Hunt - Editor | Mar 3, 2024

Well, it is close to time to have another Cheers and Jeers column since there has not been one for a while, and there certainly is at least one big Cheer that deserves to be given out, so here we go.

I am pretty sure you can guess what that one big thing that gets our first Cheer is. Yes, you guessed right. The Miracle Shot.

So a giant Cheer goes out to Blue Earth Area Buccaneer basketball player Max Loge for making a three-quarter court, game winning, buzzer beating basket. And then getting recognized by ESPN as it being the No. 1 play of the day.

Deservedly so. After all, some plays of the day are college or pro basketball winning last second basketball shots that are only half court. This was high school and it was way longer than half court.

The whole thing was pretty awesome, and there were several things that made it so, not just the ball swishing through the net.

It was incredible that it was in overtime and there was only a little over a second to go. That the other player missed not one, but two free-throws, so that a miracle three-pointer would win the game by one point. That the ball bounced just right to Max, and that he was already facing the right way to shoot it.

Then there is the fact a radio station guy, who was not even there to cover the Bucs’ game but the one after it, videoed the end of the game and caught the big shot. And that someone shared it with ESPN.

If you read Kevin Mertens’s story about the Miracle Shot, you will see that several people, including Max, thought that something big was going to happen.

And it sure did. So a really big Cheer (or should it be a Buccaneer “Arrghh”?) goes out to Max Loge.

There are some other high school students we need to Cheer as well.

A Double Cheer goes out to Blue Earth Area Triple A students Addison Armstrong and Joe Frundt. Triple A stands for Arts, Athletics and Academics, and these two super busy students deserve that honor. Both of them went on to receive Subsection Triple A recognition and Joe also received Section Triple A honors.

Another Double Cheer (or should I say Triple Cheer) to the Triple A students at United South Central, Elizabeth Meyer and Hayden Chandler.

Congrats to all four students. It is always a very well deserved honor by some very active students.

There are more students who deserve a Cheer or two (or more). For instance, BEA’s Business Professionals of America group (BPA) recently had 47 students qualify to advance to the state competition. That is an incredible number of students at a school the size of BEA. So we are sending out 47 Cheers, one to each of them, and wishing them good luck at state.

Speaking of state, a Cheer goes out to BEA gymnast Addison Armstrong and BEA wrestlers Cooper Peterson and Kade Gaydon, as well as USC wrestler Byron Getchell, for making it to the “Big Dance” (state tournament) in their respective sports.

It is never an easy task to make it to any state event, so well done.

Three big Cheers go out to the Blue Earth Chamber of Commerce community award recipients – Business of the Year to the Faribault County Register, Rising Star to TJD Repair and Service and Community Service to Mike McNerney. All were well deserved, if I do say so myself. (And it might be the first time it looks like I Cheered myself, as a member of the FCR staff. But this was an honor for the whole staff.)

Another Cheer to the Wells Volunteer of the Year award recipient, Lacey Hassing. Again, a well-deserved honor.

You have probably noticed that I have been doing a lot of Cheering and no Jeering. So here are a couple of Jeers just for those who enjoy a Jeer now and then.

A Jeer to our U.S. Congress, where our elected officials seem to be more interested in playing politics than governing.

Again, I think both sides of the aisle need to take some of the blame in the fact that they are getting very little done on some very major issues.

A Jeer goes out to Mother Nature, who seems to be just playing with us. When it is 70 one day and freezing cold and snowing the next, and back up to 70 within a week’s time, you know something is out of whack.

That is it for this round of Cheers and Jeers. May you have way more things to Cheer about in your life, and be able to keep the Jeering to a bare minimum.