In The News.
By Rick Wright
Copyright © 2007 Albuquerque Journal; Journal Staff Writer
Women's basketball pioneer Nancy Lieberman's favorite pizza is cheese, New York style.
Olympic swimmer Jenny Thompson's best advice is, "Make sure you have fun."
And though you may never have heard of Geoff Aaron, to Sam Fastle, he's a hero.
Those are some of the impressions gathered by Albuquerque seventh-graders who, in a project led by physical education teacher Karen Jeffery, contacted their favorite athletes to see what responses they'd get.
The task was an extension of an earlier project conducted by Jeffery when she taught at Hayes Middle School.
In that instance, her students initiated a correspondence with Russian Olympic pairs figure skaters Maxim Marinin and Tatiana Totmianina. The students and skaters eventually became pen pals, and some of the Hayes students will meet the 2006 Olympic gold medalists in person at tonight's presentation of Champions on Ice at Santa Ana Star Center.
The students who worked on the second project with Jeffery, who now teaches at Southwest Secondary Learning Center, haven't bonded with any of their sports figures the way the Hayes students did with Marinin and Totmianina. Still, says 13-year-old Austin Duran, his efforts to contact French soccer star Thierry Henry were "a lot of fun. I thought it was pretty cool."
Duran got no personal response from Henry but received a player card and a program from his professional team, England's Arsenal FC.
Other students and their chosen sports celebrities:
Caleb Luce, 12: John Elway.
Amy Weatherby, 12: U.S. gymnast Nastia Liukin.
Sarah Johnson, 12: Lieberman.
Chris St. Germain, 13: Denver Broncos strong safety John Lynch.
Maya Robinson, 12: Professional bowler Walter Ray Williams Jr.
Taylor McCue, 12: 1968 Olympic figure-skating gold medalist Peggy Fleming.
Fastle, 12: Aaron, a champion motorcyclist.
"He's doing a type of motorcycling called trials, that not many people know much about," Fastle said. "I do the same sport."
Cody Cockerham, 13: Former Utah Jazz point guard John Stockton.
Cockerham said he's "not particularly" a Jazz fan but admires Stockton all the same.
"It was pretty cool seeing some of the things he could do, some of the things he could pull off in a game," Cockerham said. "Really amazing."
Jennifer Langdon, 13: Thompson, a four-time Olympic swimmer who won 12 Olympic medals.
Connor Denman, 13: English soccer star Steven Gerrard.
Chris Welch, 13: Portuguese soccer star Ronaldo Cristiano.
In the project, the La Luz students asked for photos and autographs but also submitted a list of questions for their sports celebrity. Jeffrey said about 30 percent of her students got a response, and less than half of those got their list of questions answered.
Many who didn't get a response, Jeffery said, were disappointed.
"I told them, 'Some of you are going to get responses and some of you aren't,' '' she said, "but I thought it was a fun assignment and a good life's lesson."
There were some pleasant surprises, too. McCue, who contacted Fleming, not only got her questions answered but received a greeting card from the figure-skating icon.
Robinson, who contacted Williams, learned that the six-time PBA Player of the Year never picked up a bowling ball until he was 11.
"That's much later than I would have expected for a professional bowler," she said.
Coincidentally but fittingly, some of the students will join their Hayes Middle School predecessors at tonight's Champions on Ice show. Through Jeffery and a UNM education professor, they've been corresponding with U.S. Olympic ice dancer Melissa Gregory and her husband and partner, Russian skater Denis Petukhov.
Posted May 29, 2007