The Michigan Regional Sports Network Blog
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Heart attack, bypass won't keep C/A coach Domerese from The Crim
Heart attack, quadruple bypass won't keep Kenn Domerese from taking part in 34th straight Crim 10-mile road race
Published: Tuesday, August 24, 2010, 10:08 AM
View full sizeKenn Domerese coaches his runners during Carman-Ainsworth's cross country practice Monday.
Having undergone a quadruple bypass on July 23 following a heart attack, the accomplishment of running all 33 Crim 10-mile races suddenly seemed insignificant to the boys’ track and cross country coach at Carman-Ainsworth High School.
“I was in a semi-private room,” he said. “When reality really strikes is when they give the guy in the bed next to you his last rites and ask me and my wife if I want to be kept on life support. A lot of your perspective gets changed in a hurry.”
Domerese, 60, had been the picture of health. He ran at least five miles a day for 21 straight months, plus biked 10 miles a day. Then he began noticing soreness in his left arm, a pain he dismissed at first, but which grew progressively worse over a five-day period.
“On the fifth day, I was running with a couple other people, doing a five-mile run,” he said. “It hurt a little more than the day before. I just felt like garbage.”
Around two miles, he told the group to go on without him and he slowly covered the final three miles alone.
To be safe, Domerese went to a doctor on July 21 and had a heart exam the next day. The tests revealed frightening news — he had 97-percent blockage in his coronary arteries and would need heart surgery the following day. He was told that at some point in the previous few days, he’d experienced a heart attack.
“You couldn’t surprise me more if you told me I was pregnant,” he said. “I never thought I’d have a heart problem.”
He was told that being active may have saved his life.
Kenn Domerese
Once he was confident he had survived the scare of his life, Domerese allowed himself to think about missing the Crim for the first time. He had overcome numerous other physical issues to continue showing up for the Crim every year.
“Basically, every day I get up and run,” Domerese said. “You just don’t even know how tough that is when you’ve done that your wholfe life and you’re not able to jump up and go.
“I’ve had about 10 different surgeries. Both Achilles, I had an ACL tear one time and the other ones have just been clean-ups on my knees. I just scheduled a bunch of those for the first week in January, so I’m ready to go at the Crim. I got to schedule that stuff. This one, I didn’t get to schedule; I didn’t have a choice on this one.”
Domerese is one of 22 men who have run every Crim. As soon as news of his heart attack got out, several members of that exclusive fraternity got in touch with Domerese and offered ways to get him through this year’s race.
“The Crim guys wanted to push me in a wheelchair,” he said. “I wouldn’t be thrilled to push a wheelchair on the Bradley hills. Thirteen of the guys signed up to push me. I can’t tell you how humbling that is. That’s just cool. As a coach, after I thought about it a few days, I wouldn’t do that. You either cover it somehow or you don’t cover it somehow.”
Domerese gets choked up whenever he talks about the outpouring of support he received from his fellow runners and former athletes.
Domerese is walking three or four miles a day, which is less activity than he’s used to, but which puts him well ahead of most patients who have just undergone a quadruple bypass. He had hoped to walk three or four miles on Crim day, then head back downtown to watch the finish, but said he likely to walk only one mile to be on the safe side.
“I could probably do (10 miles), and the doctors said basically I can do whatever I want,” Domerese said. “The cost physically is probably not worth me doing it. Obviously, everybody knows how much I want to do it.”Monday, August 9, 2010
Countdown to The Showdown on MRSN
COUNTDOWN TO THE SHOWDOWN ON MRSN
Big Day Prep Showdown is a showcase & kickoff event for Michigan High School Football. The following five years have been a huge success and we are extremely proud of the event. This season we are proud to have MRSN as a broadcast partner for the event. You can listen to all games live at www.mrsn.us.
Big Day Prep Showdown VI features three full days (August 26th, 27th & 28th, 2010), seven games, the best high school football programs in Michigan and the top athletes and recruits in Michigan and the nation!
BDPS VI MATCHUPS ON MRSN (W/ 2009 RECORDS)
| Thursday, August 26th | ||
| Away | Time | Home |
 Manchester (10-2) | 5:15 PM |  Clinton (9-2) |
 Sterling Heights Stevenson (13-1) | 8:00 PM |  Howell (8-3) |
|
Friday, August 27th | ||
| Away | Time | Home |
 Melvindale (10-1) | 5:00 PM |  Southgate Anderson (8-4) |
 White Lake Lakeland (4-5) | 8:00 PM |  Northville (6-4) |
|
Saturday, August 28th | ||
| Away | Time | Home |
 Patrick Henry (Ohio) | 2:00 PM |  St. Charles (10-2) |
 Chelsea (8-3) | 5:00 PM |  Ann Arbor Huron (5-4) |
 Ann Arbor Pioneer (8-3) | 8:00 PM |  Detroit Cass Tech (6-4) |
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Fall Schedule TBA Soon
MRSN will be announcing new broadcasters in the coming weeks as the network prepares for its fall schedule. The schedule will include two high school football games per week, the inaugural season of University of Michigan-Flint football and American Collegiate Hockey Association action.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
The Legacy of Manute Bol
Manute Bol's Legacy Lives On in Africa
6/19/2010 6:02 PM ET By Kevin Blackistone
ILLOVO, South Africa -- Shortly after pulling off his inaugural event as director of the NBA's first office in Africa on Saturday -- having a dozen kids from Johannesburg interact with a few pro athletes including NBA star Steve Nash and English Premiership player Anton Ferdinand -- Amadou Gallo Fall, a Senegalese who apprenticed at basketball in the states, got a sobering email. It reminded him of the lineage of which he was a part and the legacy he was to uphold.It announced the death of Manute Bol. He was 47.
"It's very sad," Fall told me Saturday evening. "What this office is doing right now ... comes from the same spirit [Manute emoted]. I'm not just talking about charity, but empowering young people."
Indeed, long before the NBA set up Fall's Mandela Square office as part of commissioner David Stern's social responsibility initiative, Bol, mostly alone, was using his spare time away from his day job -- blocking shots and shooting three-pointers as a 7-feet-7-inch NBA center -- trying to save the young people in his native war-torn Sudan. He was a Dinka tribesman, a people in southern Sudan that in the early 1980s suffered displacement and massacre not unlike what the people of Darfur have gone through the past several years.
Bol was known to demonstrate outside the Sudanese embassy in Washington to publicize what Christian southern Sudanese thought northern Muslim Sudan was doing to them.
In the midst of what turned into a 10-year NBA career, in 1991 Bol began making regular visits to southern Sudanese refugee camps. His large extended family, some of whom briefly ran a restaurant in his name I recall visiting on Washington's now trendy U Street in the mid '90s, included leaders in the Sudanese People's Liberation Army that was rebelling against the North.
"I know its cliché to say he just didn't talk the talk, but he didn't."
Amadou Gallo Fall, Director of NBA Africa Three years later, the NBA officially followed Bol to Africa when Stern joined Dikembe Mutombo, from the Congo, Alonzo Mourning and Patrick Ewing, and several other players, officials and coaches, in South Africa to conduct youth clinics and meet the newly freed Nelson Mandela.
Nineteen years after Bol started regularly bringing the NBA's credentials to Africa, the NBA late last month opened the office to which Fall was given the keys as a vice president.
"The thing that stuck out to me about Manute was he was the real deal who gave back," said Fall, who as a player for the University of the District of Columbia as the '80s turned into the '90s was often mistaken for one of Bol's brothers. "I know its cliché to say he just didn't talk the talk, but he didn't."
Bol supported the rebel movement by giving it an estimated $3.5 million. He lobbied members of Congress for U.S. intervention against what he thought were northern Sudan extremists. In 1996, a cease-fire was achieved.
Bol never recovered after falling ill last month helping build a school in Sudan and staying longer than anticipated when asked to make election appearances in hope his reputation would counter voting corruption.
"He was here for Basketball Without Borders just a couple of years ago," Fall recalled of Bol participating in the NBA and international basketball governing body's global basketball program that uses sport to create social change. "His contributions have a lot to do with where we are today in terms of the commitment to launch this massive initiative on the continent."
The NBA's plan as Fall is carrying it out isn't to mine Africa for basketball talent, even though there were at least 25 NBA players in the league this year born in Africa. Instead, it is for now to use the game's largesse to help bring much needed help to many people on the continent who need it. He has a five-year plan that includes opening more offices in Africa, building indoor and outdoor courts throughout South Africa, and using the sport to bolster education and teach positive life skills.
The dozen kids who played a little soccer and shot a few baskets with Nash, Ferdinand, Milwaukee Bucks forward Luc Mbah a Moute from Cameroon and former South African soccer star Lucas Radebe were the kind of kids Bol always wanted to help. They were survivors of one of the most impoverished townships, the black ghetto Alexandra, as can be found in South Africa. They were supported by the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund.They got their t-shirts autographed. They got encouraging words of support.
"We teach music and life skills," said Jacob Mhlapong, who directs the Alexandra Field Band Foundation of which the kids were apart. "We would like to do more but have limited funds. So this was a free opportunity for kids to have fun and meet some sports stars."
Time was when the basketball marvel Nash, who I came to know during six years we were both in Dallas, would've been ashamed for it to be known that he was born in South Africa. After all, he was a guy who spoke from time to time about the need for everyone to get along and most memorably spoke out in words and fashion against the Bush administration's run-up to war against Iraq.
But there was Nash on Saturday in his birth country for the first time since his father spirited the family out of South Africa in 1975 when Nash was just one. Nash's father didn't want his son reared under apartheid.
"For the World Cup to come to Africa, to come to South Africa, is fantastic," Nash told me. "It shows a commitment from soccer to Africa, and I think it's about time we all support the continent."
Nash then headed to back to O R Tambo International Airport after spending several days in the country of his birth. He didn't know before leaving that the visionary for what he'd just involved himself in had died.
But no one with the NBA, or in Africa, will ever forget what Manute Bol did for both. A Mandela statue stands tall in the square beneath Fall's office window. How appropriate it would be if the world's biggest basketball league championed its own selfless humanitarian with some sort of honor for posterity.
East wins All Star Tilt 20-16
Jason Fracessa led a frantic last minute drive aided by two major penalties to lead the East to a come from behind 20-16 victory over the West in the 30th annual East-West High School All Star Game in Spartan Stadium in East Lansing. Spartan to be Jeremy Langford scored the winning touchdown with 14 seconds left. The East scored all their points in the second half after spotting the West a 16-0 lead and having only 7 yards of total offense.
MRSN broadcasted the game live and the game can be listened to and download to your computer at http://en.1000mikes.com/download/153416/3664046.mp3
MRSN broadcasted the game live and the game can be listened to and download to your computer at http://en.1000mikes.com/download/153416/3664046.mp3
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