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SPORTS
FEB. 27, 2013
WWW.DAILYTOREADOR.COM
Bryce Lamb leaping over expectations By ELLEN CHAPPELL STAFF WRITER
The Texas Tech track and field team sits at No. 4 in national standings and up to No. 8 in the USTFCCCA rankings after the 2013 Big 12 Championships in Ames, Iowa. Several strong performances came out of the championship, including one by senior All-American Bryce Lamb, who competes this season in the long jump and triple jump. Lamb started out the 2013 indoor season watching his teammates compete from the sidelines. Lamb started this year late because of a strained hamstring early in the season. He made his season debut at the Tyson Invitational on Feb. 2 while the rest started in January at the Texas Tech Open. “It just pushed things back — not too far, but it’s a work in progress.” Lamb said. Though he experienced the injury during the previous season in which he finished third at the NCAA Indoor Championships, Lamb is competing strong again after his injury from this season. “I’m feeling fine, it’s not anything that I haven’t kind of been into,” Lamb said about his injury. “Like last year, I had started, I did our second home meet and then I didn’t compete again until nationals. It’s not some-
thing I’m not used to going through something like this last year, it helps me not panic. There’s always that anticipation and that antsy-ness you just want to get out there.” Lamb has been running and jumping since he was a child. He said he has been at it for a while, first running track when he was five and then jumping when he was eight. According to the Big 12 website, during his freshman year he had already made a habit of exceeding the coaches’ expectations when he took a jump of 8.14 meters, setting the Big 12 Indoor meet record and the school record in the long jump. With his elongated experience, he hopes to take it all the way to bring home another win at a national level in his senior year. “I’m honestly just looking to jump into the top five in the nation in both events and just get out there and make a splash,” Lamb said. “I know I’m highly capable of it. I’m just looking out there to jump up there and let everybody know I’m still out there.” Lamb said he devotes all of his time and energy to running and jumping. Being a senior, Lamb does not have much of a distraction with busy schoolwork anymore. Lamb said he has just two classes before he earns his bachelor’s in accounting. With the late start and the big
PHOTO BY BRAD TOLLEFSON/The Daily Toreador
TEXAS TECH'S BRYCE Lamb lands in the sand pit during his personal record setting triple jump during the Red Raider Open on Feb. 2 at the Terry and Linda Fuller Track and Field Complex. Lamb's jump of 54'-4" gave him the title for the meet.
break in last season, Lamb is performing like he never left. Lamb is ranked third in USTFCCCA triple jump and first in the Big 12 rankings, and is working his way to be higher ranked in the long jump as he stands at seventh in the Big 12 and is unranked in the
USTFCCCA. “Right now I’m standing at the bottom, at my first time doing it this year, I kind of fouled out and didn’t get a mark,” Lamb said, “but it was good work and I saw some things that were good about it and bad. I’m just looking on them and
get ready for nationals.” Lamb said he gives his undivided attention to jumping, and laughed when thinking about if he did not have track in his life. “Oh, I’d probably be fat,” he said. “But honestly, if I wasn’t running track I’d probably be
somewhere playing football.” Lamb will compete in the national championships beginning March 8 and continuing on to March 9 to have a chance to get his years of effort to pay off yet again. ➤➤echappell@dailytoreador.com
Dennis Rodman worms his way into North Korea PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — Former NBA star Dennis Rodman brought his basketball skills and flamboyant style — tattoos, nose studs and all — to the country with possibly the world’s strictest dress code: North Korea. Arriving in Pyongyang, the American athlete and showman known as “The Worm” became an unlikely ambassador for sports diplomacy at a time of heightened tensions between the U.S. and North Korea. Or maybe not so unlikely: Young leader Kim Jong Un
is said to have been a fan of the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s, when Rodman won three championships with the club. Rodman is joining three members of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team and a VICE correspondent for a news show on North Korea that will air on HBO later this year, VICE producers told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview before they landed. “It’s my first time, I think it’s most of these guys’ first time here, so hopefully everything’s going to be OK , and hoping the kids have a good time for
the game,” Rodman told reporters after arriving in North Korea on Tuesday. Rodman and VICE’s producers said the Americans hope to engage in a little “basketball diplomacy” by running a basketball camp for children and playing with North Korea’s top basketball stars. “Is sending the Harlem Globetrotters and Dennis Rodman to the DPRK strange? In a word, yes,” said Shane Smith, the VICE founder who is host of the upcoming series, referring to North Korea by the initials of its formal name,
the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “But finding common ground on the basketball court is a beautiful thing.” The notoriously unpredictable and irrepressible Rodman might seem an odd fit for regimented North Korea, where men’s fashion rarely ventures beyond military khaki and where growing facial hair is forbidden. Shown a photo of a snarling Rodman, piercings dangling from his lower lip and two massive tattoos emblazoned on his chest, one North Korean in
Pyongyang recoiled and said: “He looks like a monster!” But Rodman is also a Hall of Fame basketball player and one of the best defenders and rebounders to ever play the game. During a storied, often controversial career, he won five NBA championships — a feat appreciated even in North Korea. Rodman, now 51, was low-key and soft-spoken in cobalt blue sweatpants and a Polo Ralph Lauren cap. There was a bit of flash: white-rimmed sunglasses and studs in his nose and lower
lip. But he told AP he was there to teach basketball and talk to people, not to stir up trouble. Showier were three Harlem Globetrotters dressed in fire-engine red. Rookie Moose Weekes flashed the crowd a huge smile as he made his way off the Air Koryo plane. “We use the basketball as a tool to build cultural ties, build bridges among countries,” said Buckets Blakes, a Globetrotters veteran. “We’re all about happiness and joy and making people smile.”