Upcoming EyeonCleveland Stories
by JOHN KEREZY, EyeonCleveland.com founder
Cuyahoga Community College is in finals week, but I’m hoping and planning to publish several stories on this site in the month of May.
Last year, OHSAA Division IV player of the year shortstop Nolan Yoder helped lead Hiland High School to a state championship. Nolan graduated in 2023, and this year his younger brother Brady – also playing shortstop – and other seniors on the Hiland Hawks are hoping for a return to the Div. IV state tournament. Eyeoncleveland.com will be presenting features on Brady and his senior teammates this month.
I’m a proud product of James F. Rhodes High School in Cleveland, and this year is the 50th anniversary of my class graduation. We will be celebrating it with a dinner cruise on Lady Caroline on Labor Day weekend. An upcoming story will contain some of the details and profile a few of my terrific classmates.
Team USA’s Ice Dancing duo Eva Pate of Strongsville and Logan Bye have been occasional past subjects of eyeoncleveland.com stories. They finished 5th at the 2024 U.S. National Championships The two will be married soon, but first they will be skating at the Cleveland Skating Club’s 86th annual Ice Show on May 10-11. Here’s a link to the ticket details:
Ice Show Tickets: http://tiny.cc/2024IceShowTickets
This month marks the 89th anniversary of one of the most remarkable athletic feats ever. It became known as the “Greatest 45 Minutes of Sports,” when Ohio State’s JESSE OWENS broke three world records and tied a fourth in that time span at the Big Ten Track & Field Championships in Ann Arbor, Mich. We’ll revisit that later in May. It’s easy to lose sight of just how amazing of an athlete Jesse Owens was. He finished first in FOUR different track and field events in the 1935 and 1936 NCAA national championships. That’s a mark which will never be repeated.
NEXT: LET’S LOOK BACK A BIT. Before Star Wars (May the Fourth…) and before the Cinco de Mayo holiday became popular, American astronaut ALAN SHEPHERD lifted an entire nation on one small but transformational step. Shepherd crammed into a 6-by-9 foot space capsule named Freedom 7. A team at the Cape Canaveral Complex (Fla.) and at Goddard (Md.) Space Flight Center prepared to launch Shepherd into space atop a modified Redstone rocket booster.
The date: May 5, 1961 — less than a month after the USSR had blasted cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into an orbit around the earth.
Shepherd’s 15 minute, 28 second sub-orbital flight proved the United States could send astronauts into space and return them to earth. Only 20 days later, on May 25, President John Kennedy set out a national goal of “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely” before the decade of the ‘60s was over.
It was an audacious undertaking. The nation would need to develop new technologies, and master techniques never before tried. Shepherd had described his journey as “just the first baby step, aiming for bigger and better things.” And it took the ingenuity, hard work, and dedication of hundreds of thousands of workers from the U.S. and other nations to accomplish this goal
Just 98 months after Freedom 7’s flight, another American space mission – Apollo 11 – landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon. More than a thousand benefits to humankind have stemmed from NASA’s space exploration, everything from GPS maps to protective helmets and cardiac treatments. Many of these developments are due to the success of that first manned flight that Shepherd took in May, 1961.
Finally, a big CONGRATULATIONS to Cuyahoga Community College’s spring athletic teams. The college’s softball team completed its regular season with a 28-9 mark, and will continue play at the NJCAA Region XII tournament against Grand Rapids Community College on May 9.
The men’s baseball team sits at 31-15 after winning the Ohio Community College Athletic Conference tournament on Thursday. They defeated Bryant & Strattan 15-7 in the championship game, with KYLE KOEHLER leading the way by notching 6 runs batted in. Koehler is the No. 1 hitter among all of NJCAA Division II batters with a .507 average. Way to go Kyle. The Triceratops will also compete in the Region XII tournament next week, but their opponent is yet to be determined. See the link to the NJCAA’s top hitters here: https://www.njcaa.org/sports/bsb/2023-24/div2/leaders
Finally, thanks for keeping your eye on eyeoncleveland.com
SOME SOURCES
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/shepards-shot-158662633
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-04-28-mn-1463-story.html
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