9 minute read
SPORTS
ANTHONY HALL LOOKS TO CEMENT HIS ROLE THIS SEASON CEMENT HIS ROLE THIS SEASON
With lots still to prove, Anthony Hall turns to lessons of his past to guide him through obstacles in the present.
BY AARON HEISEN
Ducks outfielder Tanner Smith (31) is ready at home base for an incoming pitch from Seattle. Oregon Ducks baseball takes on the Seattle University RedHawks at PK Park in Eugene, Ore., on Feb. 28, 2021. (Ian Enger/Emerald)
The Oregon baseball team has shot out to an 11-6 record on the back of a deep roster. However, after 17 games, freshman outfielder Anthony Hall is still searching for a starting role, despite contributing as a pinch-hitter.
In 2020, Hall started 12 of the Ducks’ 14 games before the season was canceled, but this year he’s only appeared in the starting lineup seven times.
Hall is no stranger to overcoming obstacles. During his junior year at Point Loma High School, he watched from the sideline as his teammates competed on the field. Missing the entire year after hurting his arm during the USA baseball tournament the summer before. The injury required Tommy John surgery and a full year of recovery.
“Anthony would show up in a brace and act as a coach,” Point Loma High School baseball coach Jeff Solis said. “If he couldn’t demonstrate a drill he would be talking to younger players.”
For high school baseball players, a successful junior year is crucial to attracting interest from college scouts, and Hall missed out on that opportunity. Although Hall couldn’t leave his mark on the field that year, his presence as a coach and a mentor for the younger players was invaluable.
The younger players at Point Loma gained a lot from Hall’s coaching, but the time away from the field helped Hall prepare for his return the following season. When he returned for his senior season, the center-fielder did not miss a beat as he led his school to a record 24 wins.
The accolades kept coming for Hall during his senior year. Even before schools regained interest in the centerfielder, he heard his name called at the major league level during the 2018 MLB draft.
“There wasn’t a ton of hope going into the draft,” Hall’s father, Tony, said. “On the third day my phone lit up and my friend said, ‘Your kid just got drafted.’”
The Atlanta Braves drafted Hall in the 35th round. He attended multiple prospect camps in Atlanta with their fellow draft picks before deciding that he would attend college rather than go straight to the MLB. Although Anthony chose to go an alternative route, being drafted was a culmination of all his perseverance.
“He’s been through a lot and came all the way back,” Tony said. “Just the fact that he got drafted was rewarding to us all.”
Once Hall decided to attend college the offers started to pile up. He determined that college was the right path late in his senior year. Therefore, by the time high school graduation came around, Hall had not committed to a school.
“Everything changed when Coach [Wasikowski] got hired at Oregon,” said Tony. “The phone rang and he said, ‘You need to get up here.’”
Hall and his father made the trip up to Eugene the following week and on their flight back home Hall said, “Oregon checked all the boxes, and I feel like I belong here.”
Hall made an immediate impact on Oregon baseball as he hit the first home run of his college career during the team’s tournament in Hawaii just a week before the 2020 season was canceled due to COVID-19 concerns.
Hall has also become a role model for his former high school teammates who hope to play college baseball in the coming years.
“When the Ducks played UC Irvine, some of the seniors went up to watch the game to watch Anthony and congratulate him,” Coach Solis said.
His on-field achievements have inspired his teammates and helped Oregon win baseball games. But it is his growth off the field that has made his dad proud.
“I really want him to understand what he’s capable of and where he fits in,” Tony said. “I want him to figure out who he is on the baseball field and off.”
As the Oregon baseball season progresses, Hall will continue to prove why he deserves that starting spot. Even without a consistent role, his time at Oregon has helped him grow, both on the field and off of it.
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DEPAUL TO HIRE OREGON’S TONY STUBBLEFIELD AS HEAD COACH
BY CARLY EBISUYA • TWITTER @CARLYEBISUYA
Oregon men’s basketball’s lead assistant coach is leaving to become head coach.
DePaul University is hiring Tony Stubblefield as its next head coach, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on Wednesday. He replaces former head coach Dave Leitao, who was released on March 15 after six seasons with the Blue Demons.
DePaul only has two winning seasons in the past 16 years and has not reached the NCAA Tournament since 2004.
In his 11 seasons with Oregon, Stubblefield helped build the program under Dana Altman. The Ducks made an NCAA Tournament appearance seven times under his tenure, including a trip to the Final Four in 2017.
Known for his prominent recruiting skills, Stubblefield helped recruit several five-star players over the years such as Payton Pritchard, Bol Bol, Troy Brown Jr. and more.
Before his role at Oregon, he spent four years serving as a recruiting coordinator for the University of Cincinnati from 2006 to 2010. Before that, he also spent six years as assistant coach at New Mexico State, with one year as interim head coach for Lou Henson.
This is the first coaching change under Altman’s staff in seven years.
IN DEFENSE OF ‘RIVERDALE’
Despite becoming the laughingstock of teen TV, “Riverdale” has a lot to offer.
BY JENNAH PENDLETON • TWITTER @JENNAHPEN
“Riverdale” by vagueonthehow is licensed under CC BY 2.0
“Riverdale” is the CW’s modern reimagining of the Archie comic franchise, and it is nothing short of a spectacle. Throughout its five seasons, the show targeted at teens has indelicately stumbled its way through a staggering number of plotlines involving serial killers, gangs, cults, gay conversion camps, incest, mobs, student-teacher “romances” and much, much more.
Despite premiering to positive critical review, the show has not only declined in popularity, but it has become decidedly infamous for its nonsensical dialogue and plot. By now, it has become a laughing stock, and a quick Google search of “Riverdale cringe” will prove it. But those who see these out-of-context clips and think the show is bad are not in on the joke: “Riverdale” is peak camp.
To some, it may be blasphemous to consider a CW Network TV show targeted at teenagers as camp. Many would say that “Riverdale” isn’t camp at all, that it just failed to achieve its highly aspirational goal of revealing the dark underbelly of the wholesome American culture that the original Archie comics portrayed.
While I am no expert on camp, “Riverdale” does demonstrate some of the key aspects of camp as described in Susan Sontag’s near-definitive essay on the topic, “Notes on Camp.” When viewed this way, “Riverdale” is no longer seen as a failure, but as successful in its goal to relish in its own excesses and to have fun along the way.
Over the course of its five seasons, it has become the object of ridicule among the very audience it targets. Clips from the show demonstrating its cringe-inducing dialogue (see: Jughead’s “I’m a weirdo” speech or Archie’s remark about “the epic highs and lows of high school football”) have gone viral, inspiring endless tweets and TikToks bashing the show’s writing.
Now, it cannot be argued that these scenes are “good” in the sense that they challenge us or reflect on the human condition in the way that high art does, but this isn’t the goal of camp. “The whole point of camp is to dethrone the serious,” Sontag wrote. “Camp is playful, anti-serious.” The scenes are exceedingly effective in what they were written to do: to bask in the absurdity of a world in which teenagers that look like full-grown adults can simultaneously be worried about unmasking the local prolific serial killer and taking their SATs.
Camp is also committed to lush and unusual aesthetics. “Camp taste turns its back on the goodbad axis of ordinary aesthetic judgement,” Sontag wrote. “Camp doesn’t reverse things. It doesn’t argue that the good is bad, or the bad is good. What it does is to offer for art and for life a different — or supplementary — set of standards.”
Almost no other teen television show has focused so highly on aesthetics (with the exception of “Twin Peaks,” the David Lynch show that undoubtedly highly influenced “Riverdale”), a key feature of camp. If “Riverdale” excels in any way to a viewer who does not appreciate the conventions of teen television, it is in its visuals. Through costuming, set design and cinematography, “Riverdale” manages to achieve a modern, but preternatural look: a landscape in which time itself is ambiguous. In “Riverdale,” the cars, restaurants, uniforms and gangs are straight out of the ‘50s, while the neon lighting is decidedly ‘80s and the plotlines are modern but influenced by the neonoir film genre. This devotion to aesthetics is a key element of camp.
This argument is not to say because “Riverdale” is camp, “Riverdale” is good. But I do hope to highlight how the show’s more absurd traits can be evaluated under an alternate framework. “Riverdale’s” outrageous reflection of American life is not only deliciously fun, but feels liberating in the era in which all television attempts to be “prestige TV.” “Riverdale” haters can have their gritty, slow-burning dramas, but I will sit down every week to watch a colorful catastrophe of the hottest people I’ve ever seen saying the dumbest things I’ve ever heard, and I will love it every single time.
