WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2018
Serving Polk County’s St. Croix Valley since 1897
VOL. 120 NO. 27 www.osceolasun.com $1.00
SPORTS: Osceola wrestlers win four more duals. PAGE 10
Osceola represented among 10,000 Super Bowl volunteers BY SUZANNE LINDGREN EDITOR@OSCEOLASUN.COM
Festivities have launched for Super Bowl LII in Minneapolis. At least half a dozen people with Osceola connections are volunteering with Crew 52 this week, welcoming visitors to the Twin Cities and ensuring they get where they need to go. Event organizers chose an apt theme — the Minnesota cold — and supplied volunteers with coats, scarves and mittens embroidered with “bold” on one hand and “north” on the other. Broadway performer Idina Menzel kicked off Super Bowl Live last Friday at Nicollet Mall, singing “Let it Go” from the Disney musical “Frozen.” Erstwhile Osceola
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One-time Osceola resident Martha Basham with fellow Crew 52 volunteer Alyssa Kennedy.
Nix state treasurer position? Question goes to voters. BY SUZANNE LINDGREN EDITOR@OSCEOLASUN.COM
Wisconsin residents will have the chance to vote this spring on whether to eliminate the state treasurer position. The referendum question will be included on the April 3 ballot, asking voters whether to change the state constitution and add new language eliminating the office. The question also includes language designating the lieutenant governor as the treasurer’s replacement on the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands. If voters approve the measure, the constitution would be amended and the state treasurer’s office eliminated at the end of the year. According to an Associated Press report from
resident Martha Basham was there to help host. “We want to make sure we welcome guests, show them where they need to go, answer questions and help them find events they might want to go to,” explained Basham, who will work another Super Bowl Live shift this Friday and on Super Bowl Sunday. Basham — whose husband, Nick Basham, grew up in Osceola — now lives in Maplewood and works for City National Bank in downtown Minneapolis. She said she heard an advertisement calling for Crew 52 volunteers and thought it sounded like “a once in a lifetime opportunity to be part of history and something fun.” The volunteers are more than friendly faces. Basham reported that
her training touched on security, staying aware of risks involved with large crowds and how to support the homeless who would be displaced from the Skyway and streets in cold weather. “It was, ‘How can we be ambassadors and also the eyes of the city?’” she said. When longtime Osceola resident Denise Steffen-Fox set out last February to volunteer at Super Bowl LII, she’d hoped the Packers would be there. And after an almost yearlong process of applying, interviewing and training, she’s staying the course even though Wisconsin’s team didn’t make the cut. “How often do you have Super Bowl this close to you? And I like meeting SEE VOLUNTEERS, PAGE 20
Osceola grad clicks as photographer, sports journalist BY SUZANNE LINDGREN EDITOR@OSCEOLASUN.COM
An Osceola graduate who covered Chieftain wrestling, baseball and other events for the Sun is doing similar work at a more advanced level as she earns her college degree. Now a sophomore at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Emily Smith leads a 50-student photography team for the school newspaper, the Daily Trojan, and covers college athletics for Yahoo Sports. After serving as the Daily Trojan’s assistant photo editor last semester, Smith was named editor of photography at
SEE TREASURER, PAGE 6
SEE SMITH, PAGE 6
OUTDOOR RECREATION
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Emily Smith with Brutus Buckeye at the Cotton Bowl, where the University of Southern California played Ohio State.
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