Petrel Posted January 10, 2013 Author Share Posted January 10, 2013 October 2013 October seemed like it was going to be an uneventful month. We were lucky in that none of the people on our war room list had committed to any college. We had a few players who had moved up on our indicators - Arianna Capers in Ohio seemed to be positively cheerful when she talked to us on the phone but there was nothing indicating that she was making us a serious pick. Even better was that fact that on ESPN Hoopgurlz out of the 20 people we were calling, 15 players listed us as a "favorite school" when they could list the schools that were making a push for them. I didn't know if we'd get any of these girls but it was a good thing not to be turned down immediately by a prospect like those first two horrible years. I could not forget that my lifetime regular season record was 21-40, or the fact that we were one of the schools that didn't pay a $3000 stipend to players. We still had that against us. Unfortunately, we still had major problems finding power forward candidates that we thought would be good fits at USD. Coach Augustine would be going off to England, to the town of Billerikay in the southwest to see a prospect by the name of Esmee Morey. I didn't like foreign players - especially when we had no pipeline established - but we were desperate. Coach Augustine took off the first of the month. On October 2, I got a call from Alexis Shoulders. We had offered her an on-campus visit and she decided to take one of her five official visits with us. She could have done an unofficial visit if she wanted to, but money and travel was tight for her parents. Furthermore, it gave us something to crow about - "Miss Basketball South Dakota makes an official visit to the University of South Dakota." We expected her to show up for the evening of the 12th. But of course, the real world would have to intrude.... (* * *) On October 3, 2013 at 1:45 pm Central Time, the University of South Dakota's internet system went out. Very soon after that, my cell phone went out. It was odd. The electricity browned out for a few seconds, with the lights flickering, and then everything was back on again. Except for the internet and cell phones. Those stayed off. And in most of the United States, they would stay off for seven days. http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/1421/notconnected.png People got used to looking at this. This period of forced internet outage was given a name - "The Off-Line Week". Decades later, it would still be called The Off-Line Week. What had happened to the internet was something that scientists had predicted, but which no one saw coming. Solar flares. It had happened before. On September 1, 1859 the Carrington Flare hit and took down telegraph lines. A sloar flare is a giant ball of gas from the sun that makes some pretty sunspots for astronomers to look at. It takes about eight minutes for a solar flare to be "seen" from earth (if you wanted to look directly at the sun) but it takes about one to three days for the magnetic fields these flares generate to hit earth. In this case, the flare actually started on October 1 and by October 3rd the field zapped us. NASA had been predicting a 2013 solar flare. No one really cared. There had been some measures taken to fortify the power grid - which held up pretty well in many places - but satellites and GPS systems were scrambled. A few transformers blew out in South Dakota, but the system was able to redirect power. Normally, things would go back to normal, but this was a period of heightened solar flare activity. Some people had their PCs fried. Other people had their cars fried as the spike in voltage was something new cars weren't prepared for, some vehicles coming to a dead stop right in the middle of traffic, causing 15 deaths across the country and all sorts of traffic snafus. But the solar flares damaged critical systems along the internet backbone, and it took a week to fully repair everything. So how did people deal? * The rule was that the more your business/workplace was integrated into the internet, the more you suffered. Many companies had their billing and scheduling systems on some kind of network. True, 2013 wasn't much removed from the days when everything was done on paper (the early 1990s) but people hadn't used paper for years. Then, of course, these companies would have to catch up on lost time once the Off-Line Week ended. * If you were in banking, you were screwed. If you were a banking customer - you were definitely screwed. I had $53 dollars in my pocket when the Off-Line Week hit. Guess what my chances were of getting money out of an ATM? Zero. My information was still available - it's not like my bank has my money in an envelope somewhere with the name "Mark Hawkins" on it - but good luck getting my hands on it. Many banks had dial-up modems. They could make transactions depending on how many points along the way had good connections. You could call your bank on a land line, and try to get your money that way. But without significant verification that you were who you said you were, the bank wasn't going to hand out money (if it had it to hand out). There was a mini-run on the banks but the banks made it firm that they were only going to hand out money under well-defined circumstances. In my case, I was fed at USD. The South Dakota football team had a training table, and I could get my meals there being a member of athletic staff. But I had to make $53 dollars last for 10 days. Some people had it even worse that I did. * I was out of touch with my mother in Kentucky for at least a couple of days until I could find a land-line and make a call. We verified that we were all right. The government finally stepped in and announced on the radio and TV (which had a spike in listeners/viewers) not to use landline communications for all but emergency calls. President Obama made an address on TV and said that NASA predicted that the increased solar flare activity would disappear and things would normalize. The trick was not to panic. * Price-gouging hit big in some towns, with staples and gas doubling or worse. Apparently, the proprietors thought that the internet would be off-line forever and that the economy would collapse. They paid for it with a business downturn once the internet went back up. * Some cars got fried. Vehicles which didn't have computerized electrical systems experienced an upturn in business after the Off-Line week; insurers suddenly had to pay for a lot of claims. * All and all, the economy took a hit - the average business suffered a 3 percent loss in revenue from the Off-Line week. Companies on the margin went out of business. It hurt Obama's efforts to jump start the economy. * On the other hand, it caused a boom in infrastructure improvements - Obama announced an infrastructure goal of moving most of America's internet and telephone support apparatus underground, where it would be hopefully safe from future solar flare activity. (Not much could be done about automobiles, though.) * There was an upturn in births during the month of July in 2014. It seems that without the internet, some people found something to do during their enforced internet blackout..... (* * *) We seemed to survive the Off-Line week. The NCAA adjusted its recruiting schedule, adding one more week to the NLI signing day in November and authorizing school athletic departments to pay bills for food or whatever from players who couldn't get money from home. (The abuses would be discovered later.) Coach Augustine had been trapped in England on a recruiting call! What did she do? As it turned out, we managed to fax the reservations she had to a landline at her hotel in Basildon. Esmee Morey's family managed to secure her a bus pass, and we had also faxed her airline ticket conformations. (This was one case where NCAA compliance and record-keeping paid off.) Despite the fact that she could not buy snacks with her cash card and despite the rerouting of her flight back on a nine-hour layover to avoid solar flare activity, she managed to return to South Dakota none the worse for wear. I picked up her in Sioux City. "I'm tough," she said. Alexis Shoulders did not cancel her visit to USD, spending the weekend of October 11-13th with us. Unfortunately, I don't think our team did much selling the program to her - all anyone wanted to talk about was the Off-Line Week. (* * *) I had two more visits planned for October. One was to Chloe Crowther, a point guard in Indiana and the next was to Addilyn Muller, a center from Missouri. Chloe Crowther lived in Dubois, Indiana, a very white town in southern Indiana. She attended Northeast Dubois High School and her mother worked at a gas station. They lived in a trailer and the town was so much like southeastern Kentucky that it was almost creepy. But I felt it gave me an advantage because it was just the kind of town that I grew up in. Despite the fact that Chloe Crowther had an offer from Indiana State the Crowthers seemed very excited about my visit. They offered me what little refreshments they could and Ms. Crowther was very worried that the place wasn't clean enough. However, they had been through this process before with Indiana State, and they definitely knew what kinds of questions they wanted to ask. * "What do you think Chloe's position will be?" (Answer: Point guard. We have a senior point guard, Abigail Merkle, graduating at the end of the year.) * "Where will Chloe be living?" (Answer: USD doesn't have special athletic dorms. The dorms here at USD are currently undergoing renovations. If Chloe can find other athletes to live with, she can move off-campus during her sophomore year. Our dorms are like any other dorm - small but comfortable.) * "What is your policy on red shirting?" (Answer: I don't like it. I wouldn't want to have to stay an extra year in college if I didn't have to, but I'm willing to redshirt for medical necessity.) Given the above questions, you'd think that Ms. Crowther was the "go-to" person - but Chloe was no wallflower, enthusiastically nodding her head and indicating with her body language that these were exactly the questions she wanted asked. I got a thorough grilling. I stayed at the Crowther home for almost two hours. I knew that Xavier University was interested in her and asked how interested they were in her. "They've made calls," Chloe said, "but I've not been visited by anybody." That was a good sign. I knew that Indiana State had offered a scholarship. But IUPUI in Indiana was a Summit League school - if Chloe decided to go to USD, it's not like she'd not see home again in the next four years. (* * *) Our contact with Addilyn Muller was in Greenfield, Missouri. Greenfield was a very small town right in the middle of nowhere. Addilyn attended the aptly-named Greenfield High School. http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/9877/11383321211090933137104.jpg I ended up having the visit at the high school itself. Addilyn's mother was not there. She was taking care of Addilyn's four other siblings. Coach Augustine told me that her impression was that Addilyn's mother was a wreck. The kids were all under public assistance and her mother was usually drunk. This led to me, Addilyn and her girls basketball coach talking in his office. I hate such talks because a coach's office at a high school is generally a tiny place and all three of us are crammed in there. It was a very awkward visit because I felt the coach was asking all the wrong questions. He seemed to be more interested in Addilyn's role on the Coyotes rather than what USD could do for Addilyn. What parents (and high school coaches sometimes) don't know is that the chances of Addilyn making it to the WNBA could be slim to nonexistent. I felt Muller's education was what should have been emphasized. Kansas State had offered a scholarship. The coach felt that Muller could start at USD; the coach was pushing Muller to USD and seemed to be on my side! I liked Mueller. She didn't seem to have that massive level of entitlement that some athletes had but she was not shy. I wondered, however, what kind of counsel her high school coach would be given her. He was seeking some kind of glory though her and I knew that if Kansas State or Arkansas Little-Rock pushed her chances for a starting position that South Dakota would be left high and dry. (* * *) Somehow, we got through the Off-Line month without killing each other. (Although Adalyn Matz suffered withdrawal from not being able to text.) October was ending. Both the end of the early signing period and the end of the off-season were coming soon. Before anyone knew it, we'd get ready to play. (* * *) Around the world: Food riots break out in Kyrgyzstan: http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/925/kyrgyzstanrioting531502.jpg Kyrgyzstan was a very unstable country to begin with and the country is racked by violence when the price of rice and flour almost septupled. Expats began to look for a way out of the land-locked country and the powers that supply food - China, Russia, and Turkey - all look to extend their influence there. (* * *) Writer's notes: Next time: The two week period before the start of the season, along with the closed exhibition games - but who will South Dakota play behind closed doors? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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