DON McDERMOTT MORE COLUMNS Advertisement

Notes, quotes and other stuff off the top of my head ... and other strange places...

Let's start with some good stuff first ...

As part of its 45th anniversary, Floyd's Ace Hardware is going to conduct a program to help support the Pahrump Valley High School athletics program, which is having some financial issues caused by many situations, not the least of which is the cutbacks in education funding by Nevada's wayward governor, Jim Gibbons.

To kick things off ... at 3 p.m. Sept. 5, Floyd's Ace Hardware will host a tailgate event before the Trojans' first home football game against Las Vegas Desert Oasis (kickoff is at 7 p.m.) ... Ace will provide barbecue ingredients and will sell hotdogs for $1. The athletics booster club will be involved in all of the other tailgate agenda items ... again, all the proceeds will benefit the PVHS athletics program.

Ace is also sponsoring a raffle, which has a 42-inch Phillips plasma television set as the primary prize ... Tickets will cost $1 each; they will be on sale at the PVHS athletics department office and at the hardware, as well as at the tailgate party ...

Now, for a couple of complaints, with both directed at the Clark County School District, which obviously has some early organizational problems ...

First, the JZ3 Boys Soccer tournament, scheduled this weekend at Bishop Gorman, was canceled. Reportedly, BG organizers did not report the tournament on time to the CCSD; that tournament was on the Pahrump Valley fall sports schedule in April, before the 2007-2008 school year ended. So if PVHS had it, it's a cinch Bishop Gorman had the tournament on its 2008-2009 agenda. Someone dropped the ball (pardon the pun) somewhere.

Second, Liberty's boys' soccer team was to play at Pahrump Valley Tuesday, but that Henderson-area school withdrew, giving the Trojans a victory by forfeit. It would have been cool if coach Gene Smith's team had been able to play, considering that on Thursday, the Trojans travel to Centennial to battle the potent Bulldogs.

We have also received reports that PVHS fall sports teams are being assessed fees by their Class 4-A cohorts, allegedly to make sure Trojan athletes are eligible for all-league team selection.

Sports fan, that's bogus. Athletes should be eligible because of excellence in performance, not because the school paid a fee to make them eligible. The fee for football, from what has been said, is $300, with other sports assessed lesser rates.

This is one situation the Nevada Interscholastic Activites Association should investigate. Such assessments are unsportsmanlike conduct and have no semblance of morality. If 4-A coaches associations, or whoever is assessing these fees, want to make money, go out and get corporate sponsors.

It has been said that charging such fees has been going on for a long time. So what... it's time for such abominable acts to stop.