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Mesa’s college try a work in progress BY GARY NELSON Tribune Contributor
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COMMUNITY ......... 15 Rescuing animals in need of help.
BUSINESS ............... 19 Lumber shortage driving up home prices.
SPORTS .................. 23 Comforting mourning Desert Ridge player. COMMUNITY ............................... 15 BUSINESS ..................................... 19 OPINION ....................................... 22 SPORTS ........................................ 23 GET OUT ........................................ 25 PUZZLES ...................................... 26 CLASSIFIED ................................. 26 Zone 1
Sunday, February 7, 2021
I
n the winter of 2011, as Mesa was just crawling out from under the wreckage of the Great Recession, the city decided it wanted to be something it had never been before: A college town. That’s not to say Mesa had no place for kids
to go after high school. It already had a robust community college, the burgeoning Polytechnic campus of Arizona State University and A.T. Still University, which specializes in health-care �ields. But what it lacked was the kind of small liberal-arts college you’ll �ind within a stone’s throw of almost anyone living in the Midwest or East. Often dating to the 19th century or even earlier, those kinds of schools never took
root in Arizona as the state leapt from the Wild West to the Space Age in the blink of history’s eye. Scott Smith noticed the gap, oddly enough, when he was blowing whistles as a highschool basketball ref. Smith, Mesa’s mayor 2008-14, said it irked him that high-school refs in Arizona had few
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Cactus League starting on time – with far fewer fans BY JIM WALSH Tribune Contributor
T
he Cactus League will come back to Mesa and the rest of Arizona within weeks – but fans will �ind it hardly recognizable. Don’t expect the usual capacity crowd of more than 15,000 loyal Chicago Cubs fans at Mesa’s Sloan Park or kids clamoring for autographs as players take a leisurely stroll across the parking lot between the practice �ields and Tempe Diablo Stadium. These, and many other familiar scenes from Cactus League seasons past, will not be possible this year as of�icials try to strike a delicate balance between the return of spring training and preventing another disastrous spike in COVID-19. With safety paramount on everyone’s minds, fans can expect to see seating limited at Cactus League Stadiums to about 25 percent of capacity, “pods" of small groups of
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A lone groundskeeper rounding second base was the only person at work one day last week at Sloan Park in Mesa but he likely will be getting some help as the Feb. 27 start of spring baseball gets closer. (Jim Walsh/Tribune Contributor)
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