Montana to Montlake for hoop star?
Kayla Lambert insists she's not the first good female basketball player to pop up on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeastern Montana.
Rather, she's just the first to get a chance to show her stuff on a bigger stage.
"I hope that other gifted Native American athletes will be given a chance," Lambert, a 5-foot-9 guard whose top college choices are reportedly Washington and Montana, told USA Today. "I'm proud of where I come from, the (Dakota) Sioux tribe and the state of Montana. I hope this inspires others on reservations to take the attitude, 'Go for it.' "
With most of her senior season remaining — girls in Montana play their high-school hoops in the fall — Lambert has gone for it and gotten it. To wit:
• With 21 points as part of a triple double last Friday, she became the all-time scoring leader — boy or girl — in Montana hoops history.
• She owns the two highest-scoring games — 66 and 65 — in state history.
• She averaged 42.2 points as a sophomore, 37.1 as a junior.
"She is definitely a high Division I talent," Mike Flynn, editor of the Blue Star Report, said during the Nike camp. "Colleges are aware of her and will like her speed and selfless play."
Recruiters aren't the only ones calling.
"Kids come to our house all the time just to see her," Lambert's mother, Desiree, told the Indianapolis Star. "They need that person they can identify with. We can watch and see the black people and the Hispanics (have heroes), and we don't have a Native American whatsoever that our kids can identify with. Identity is very important.
"What Kayla has done, just in the state of Montana, is great. She gets letters in the mail from all over the country, thanking her for representing Native Americans so well."
Undoubtedly, some of those letters are from Montlake.
Unsportsmanlike conduct
Some Canadian Football League owners are irked that Commissioner Michael Lysko postponed last week's games without consulting them, and Lysko says they shouldn't be crying in their red ink.
"In light of all that's happened (with the terrorist attacks), I think it's important to consider the bigger picture here, which is there are a lot more important things (than football)," Lysko told AP. "This after-the-act nonsense does not put us in the best light."
Calgary Stampeders owner Sig Gutsche wasn't appeased.
"Money is simply not an issue," Gutsche told The Team radio network. "The only one who is making this an issue is a rogue commissioner, who quite frankly is cloaking the corporate treachery in and behind a veil of an international disaster. That's the real appalling thing here."
More appalling than 6,000 dead?
Nagdom's Eddie the Eagle
Zippy Chippy, the New York race horse who has lost 89 straight Thoroughbred races, isn't the planet's biggest loser. Quixall Crossett, his British counterpart, lost his 100th straight race July 23 and will get one last chance to break his hex Oct. 17.
He's a 101-time loser, if you toss in the fact he's gelded.
— Dwight Perry, The Seattle Times