| Hardly the retiring type: Salem's Gosselin still can be found where the action is
SALEM, N.H. - The wide array of school photos which have taken over the table in Bill and Irene Gosselin's Salem home tell the story of this busy, but happy retirement.
It's been better than a half a century since Gosselin played his last down of football for Arizona State. It has been nearly as long since he last held a clipboard in a high school football coaching career that saw him crisscross the Merrimack Valley with three different teams (Lawrence, Woodbury in Salem, N.H., and Methuen), and it has also been 14 years since Gosselin last spent the bulk of his waking hours in the Methuen's AD's office.
But the fall is still all about sidelines and whistles for the Gosselins. Whether it be a middle school field hockey game in Windham one day or a freshman football game at Central Catholic the next, when you had seven athletic children who correspondingly add another 22 grandchildren into the mix, it goes with the territory.
TV-RADIO NOTEBOOK: NFL is very fortunate how schedule plays out
In the spirit of this holiday season, let us resolve to take NFL commissioner Roger Goodell at his word regarding the eight-game NFL Network schedule that began Thursday night with the Colts-Falcons. That means we will stipulate to Goodell's assurances that the NFL did not rig the schedule to ensure the league-owned network would have attractive matchups and, more importantly, games it could employ to apply maximum pressure on cable carriers that don't carry the service, such as Time Warner, Charter and Cablevision. And so, given that assumption, we are left to conclude that the NFL this season is not conniving, merely fortunate. Next Thursday, NFL Network will air Packers-Cowboys, a potential preview of the NFC title game. The game will air on over-the-air TV in the teams' home cities but not in some of their most important secondary markets � among them Waco, Austin and San Antonio, all serviced by Time Warner Cable, and Madison, Wis., a Charter Cable market.
Gogoi now rushes into award for cricketers
Two days ago, as Team India defeated Pakistan in the first one-day international cricket match at the Nehru Stadium here, the first thing that Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi did was to declare a cash award of Rs 1 lakh to each of the Indian team members. What is surprising is that the Assam Government is yet to disburse cash awards that Gogoi had announced for each of the 148 players from Assam who had won medals in the 33rd National Games held here in February. Assam had won 38 gold, 53 silver and 27 bronze medals in the National Games and became the overall third best team, Gogoi had announced Rs 3 lakh, Rs 2 lakh and Rs 1 lakh each for the gold, silver and bronze medallists, respectively, in individual events. For team events, the awards announced were Rs 5 lakh, Rs 3 lakh and Rs 2 lakh.
Groban Gets Oprah Bounce, Jordin Sparks Doesn't Fly
The Grinch might be stealing Christmas from music retailers, but thanks to Josh Groban and Oprah, there's still some singing in Whoville. For the sales week kicked off by Super Tuesday—the release date before Thanksgiving when record labels typically schedule their big guns—the figures were abnormally bad, with only one Top 10 bow and a seven-week-old album topping the charts. Still, that album, Groban's Noël, can thank last week's performance on The Oprah Winfrey Show for driving it past Alicia Keys and into the number one spot. Noël crowned the Billboard 200 by selling 405,000 copies for the week ended Sunday, according to SoundScan numbers released today. The holiday disc, featuring Groban's take on "Silent Night," "O Come All Ye Faithful" and other wintery classics, originally debuted in the 10 spot in mid-October.
'Female Yao'
Wei Wei, the sizable center of the Guangzhou women's basketball team, caused quite a stir at the 6th Chinese City Games. Her performance earned her a reputation as a "female Yao Ming". Although her team failed to top the podium last week after losing to defending champion Nanjing 80-72, plenty of observers took notice of the towering talent. The 18-year-old Wei is 2.07m tall, three centimetres taller than Zheng Haixia, the enormous centre who helped the national women's basketball team win the silver medal in the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games. "Other than Wei Wei, we haven't found any other potential stars," said Gong Luming, former head coach of the Chinese women's national basketball team. Standing at 2.07 metres, Wei Wei will be a scene in the WNBA if she realises her dream of playing in the world's top women's basketball league.
Canadian Olympic athletes to be paid for medal wins
Canadian athletes that reach the podium at any future Olympic Games will be financially compensated up to $20,000 per medal, officials said Monday. The new Athlete Excellence Fund was announced in Ottawa by the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC). Canadian athletes will receive $20,000 per gold medal won at any Olympic Games, said the COC. Silver winners will be compensated $15,000 per medal and bronze winners will earn $10,000. "We've had a program of subsidizing athletes in the past but we've never recognized the medal wins with specific dollars," COC president Michael Chambers told CTV Newsnet on Monday. He said countries like the U.S., Australia, England, France and Spain already give their athletes money if they win at the Olympics.
Madison left in the dark for big game
You've fumed at the NFL Network. You've vented about Charter. So now what, Green Bay Packers fan? If you're a Madison cable subscriber, you're not going to be able to watch Thursday night's game -- quite possibly your team's biggest game of the regular season -- from your living room. But you've exhausted your rage on the involved parties, so what's left to do besides go out and find a place to watch the game? Maybe while you're doing that, you can think of people in the Green Bay, Appleton and Milwaukee areas that aren't going to be so inconvenienced. That's because NFL broadcasting rules give those markets the right to show the game on over-the-air television stations. WFRV/Ch. 5 bought the rights in the Green Bay/Fox Valley market; WISN/Ch. 12 was the highest bidder in Milwaukee.
Wood is first-team All-American
• Penn State's Kiersten Wood, a senior from Warwick, was named to the NCAA Division I All-America first team in field hockey last week.
Wood, a midfielder, had six goals and five assists for 17 points for the Nittany Lions (16-8).
Penn State (16-8) beat No. 3 Maryland and No. 2 Wake Forest before falling to No. 1 North Carolina 3-0 in the NCAA title game last Sunday in College Park, Md.
Wood was one of four Lancaster County players named to the All-America team, which is voted on by the National Field Hockey Coaches Association.
Temple's Alli Lokey, a senior from Elizabethtown, was a second-team selection. Lokey, a midfielder, led the Owls with 18 goals and 10 assists for 46 points.
Iowa's Meghan Beamesderfer and Michigan's Paige Laytos, both sophomores from Warwick, were named to the third team.
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