Pickens County progress. (Jasper, Ga.) 1899-current, June 23, 2022, Image 13
LIST AND SELL WITH NEIGHBORS! USports — & More This Week in Sports History Page 7B Joel Neighbors Jane Neighbors 770.894.7970 770.893.7653 rmci Jnita. . ountry 1 Talking Rock Realty REALTORS j □ & 0MLS t=J NEMLS GEORGIAMLS TALKINGROCKREALTY.COM • 678.454 New playground equipment installed at Roper Park Field lights, track replacement up next for SPLOST projects By Angela Reinhardt Staff Writer areinhardt@pickensprogress.com New playground equip ment has been installed at Roper Park as part of a larger park overhaul being funded through the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST). The equipment is re placing old equipment that was dry rotting in some areas, according to Pickens Parks & Recreation Direc tor Brian Jones, and didn’t match other newer equip ment at the playground. “The equipment is in place now, we’re just wait ing on mulch to come and it’ll be ready to go,” he said. Jones said the equip ment and installation price tag was just over $24,500, but that Southeast Outdoor Solutions offered a gener ous discount of $12,044. Cost to the county ended up at $12,516. “The company has al ways been good to us,” Jones said. Other larger portions of the SPLOST funded park renovations coming down the pike are new LED lighting on the ball fields and replacing the walking/running track. Lighting will come first. “We don’t want to get the track replaced then have to rip parts of it back up to get the lighting in,” Jones said. The county has already accepted a winning bidder for the lighting project, North Cobb Electrical for approximately $1 million. Jones and others with the county were set to meet with the company on Tues day, June 21 to discuss the project timeline. Swim team heads to district championship Photo/Angela Reinhardt LET’S PLAY — Playground equipment is ready for use in the Roper Park playground, at the intersection of Camp and Refuge roads. The project is still awaiting mulch. Local youth football players endure heat for summer camp Several members of Pickens County Youth Football participated in All-In Football Camp, a Christian based football camp that develops players on and off the field. Boys from three different youth teams endured the heat with other players from different coun ties. Our boys came home with awards during skills evaluations, nominations for highest awards during camp and even accepted the highest awards. The boys were also offered a chance to play for Dawson County, but that offer was quickly denied. The Pickens County Swim Team will travel to Calhoun this Saturday to compete at the GRPA District 5 B/C Championships. Other teams that will be there are Gilmer, Cal houn, Ringgold and Fort Oglethorpe. The Pickens team has been practicing at the county pool this season four days most weeks. Members have already competed at other meets this season in Cherokee, Cartersville and the Geor gia Games. Above, Ryan Henderson dives in for the Pickens squad. — O'NieiLL OUTDOORS BY O'NJdlLL WILLIAMS What Is Lake Turnover? Deep water lakes all over the South ‘turnover’ after Summer arrives and it is es sential for a healthy environ- THE PHS DRAGONETTES PRESEN turn amir 1ST - 6TH caj^rt gbude ms ment in lakes that experience stratification. The mix of the warm and cool layers of water ensures that oxygen is replenished regularly, and the fishing does not decline. It just makes it more dif ficult. You must be an expe rienced angler. If a lake turnover does not occur in a stratified lake, this could lead to dead zones - where oxygen is at an extremely low level. This happens in ponds of various sizes as the flow of water through the lake is hardly noticeable. In ponds, all the fish are shallow in the vegetation be cause there is no oxygen in the deepest spots because of the lack of water flow and turnover. Some fishermen abandon their favorite hobby tem porarily when lake turnover See Turnover on Page 3B Racing Across America 2022 NASCAR Cup Season and NextGen Review 27-28 JUNE 9:00 AM -12 Noon GAMP PRICE $50 siblihb Discoin $25 for additional campers Register at Nettesbasketball.com For more info - Nettesbasketball.com or email: coachbrandonthomas(S)gmail.com By Alex Korowotny Racing Sports Correspondent This week is a rare off- week and the 2022 NASCAR Cup season is about halfway over, so this weekend, we are going to review how the overall quality of the races have been and how good the NextGen car is. In terms of the races so far, it’s been very solid Most of the races this season have been entertaining, ranging from decently entertaining to super entertaining. The best races have been at Auto Club, Charlotte, Las Vegas, and COTA, and you’ll notice that most of them have been at intermediate tracks. That’s one thing that makes the season stand out more is because back in the Gen 6 era, intermediate races would for the most part be unevent ful and be the most boring kind of track on the NASCAR circuit. This season, it is in fact the complete opposite be cause now the intermediate races have mostly been great and have been the most enter taining kind of track this sea son. Its not just Charlotte, Las Vegas, and Auto Club that have been great, other inter mediate races like Kansas, Atlanta, Darlington were re ally entertaining and enjoy able as well (except Texas which was pretty bad, but See Racing on Page 3B Sports Fanatic By Tommy Gartrell Columnist Transformers With their fourth NBA Championship in eight years, the Golden State Warriors join elite company as a basketball dynasty. In fact, this team probably would have five titles by now if not for Draymond Green’s dubious game 5 suspen sion during the 2016 Fi nals. Does this accomplish ment (four titles) put Steph Curry among the great players in history? That topic garners much debate, but Curry is indeed among the players who transformed basketball. His shooting ability from long range coupled with his modest stature of six feet, two inches make him un likely any players from the past. The other prolific three point shooters like Ray Allen (6’5”), Reggie Miller (6’7”), Paul Pierce (6’7”), or Larry Bird (6’9”) possessed more high and therefore looked unmistakably like basketball players. Per haps, Pete Maravich’s (6’5”) game would rival those other great shoot ers. Injury shortened his career, he never won a title and “the Pistol” played before the three- point field goal. If you saw Curry in a restaurant or airport, would you identify him as a professional athlete let alone the most accom plished three point shooter in NBA history? He totally transformed the game to include more outside offense. The list of men who truly transformed basket ball is not as long as you might think in my opin ion and Curry belongs there. The number of gener ational big men contains legendary names like Shaquille O’Neal, Patrick Ewing, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Moses Malone, Tim Duncan, and Dirk Nowitzki. However, Wilt Chamber- lain set the standard for before most of the others were bom. With the com bination of 31,419 points and 23,924 rebounds, he was the original inside game. Michael Jordan is un paralleled for his grace, determination, leaping ability and the slam dunk. Had he not stopped and started so many times in his career, most of the NBA records would belong to him, es pecially the points crown. We may never see anything like “Air Jordan” again. A fellow named Julius Erving was the first high flying dunk master though and others followed but not like Jor dan. LeBron James gets closer to the scoring lead with every bucket and needs only a tad over 1,300 more points to sur pass Kareem. His freak ish physical size of height, strength, speed, and vision make him a legend. Continued on Page 3B