Sports – Dustin Monke

Dickinson State enters the esports game

Tucked away in the back corner of the Dickinson State University Student Center basement, adjacent the cafeteria, is a room like many others on campus.

Seven desks, each with large computers and monitors, complete with webcams, line the room’s interior walls. Next to each desk sits large, comfortable-looking upholstered leather chairs. To the unknowing eye, the room appears to be nothing more than an upscale computer lab.

However, in the fall, the small room painted in DSU blue, white and gray colors will be the core of what the university hopes becomes its next extracurricular activity, and potentially even its next varsity sport.

The lab is home to DSU’s fledgeling esports program.

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Opportunity of a lifetime: DSU CB Jay Liggins hoping for shot at the NFL

Jay Liggins was 11 years old when he left Memphis, Tenn. He remembers it was a Thursday.

Just four days earlier, his mother had made an abrupt decision to move he and his 10 siblings across the country to escape inner-city violence and find a hometown more suitable for raising a large family.

Of all places, they ended up in Bismarck, N.D., a city one-tenth the size of Memphis in a state none of them had ever been to and knew little about.

“It was such a random decision,” Liggins said.

Yet it was one that became incredibly fateful to Liggins’ future, despite numerous challenges he would end up facing along the way.

Later this month, the former Dickinson State University standout cornerback will likely get an opportunity to be the first Blue Hawk signed by a National Football League team.

“It’s an opportunity of a lifetime,” Liggins said. “It’s something I wanted to do, and the fact that it’s in front of me, I had to grab it.”

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After playing days end, Dufault discovers new track as Lakers coaching associate

NOTE: This story is scheduled to appear in the March issue of the Heart River Voice, of which I am a contributing sports feature writer.

After Austin Dufault scored an interview to be a coaching associate for the Los Angeles Lakers, it took him about 10 minutes to realize the job opportunity was with one of the most storied franchises in professional sports, not its minor-league affiliate.

The confusion, laughable now, was created by the job history of the people who connected Dufault and Lakers head video coordinator Will Scott. Not to mention the National Basketball Association team shares a nickname with the G-League’s South Bay Lakers.

“For about the first 10 or 15 minutes I was on the phone, I just assumed he (Scott) was with the South Bay Lakers,” Dufault said. “We were talking for a while and he kept saying, ‘Luke likes things this way.’ … I’m like, ‘Wait, are you talking about the Los Angeles Lakers?’”

Dufault, a Killdeer High School graduate, didn’t hesitate when Scott eventually asked him to join Lakers head coach Luke Walton’s staff as a coaching associate. He handles video preparation and some scouting duties alongside two other coaching associates.

“It’s a paid internship,” Dufault said, describing his position. “We work all of our practices and all of our home games. We’re on the court helping guys out with pre-game workouts. They throw me in drills a lot. I’m used as a defender a lot when guys are working out.”

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New UND Logo a Missed Opportunity

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The University of North Dakota has a new athletic logo.

It’s plain. It’s simple. It’s uninspired. It’s, dare I say, everything the old Fighting Sioux logo wasn’t.

Yes, it’s serviceable, kinda sleek and very modern. But it’s just not all that great, especially considering the amount of money spent on the change.

UND spent more than $200,000 to change its athletic nickname from Fighting Sioux to Fighting Hawks, an already-unpopular move that elicited a collective shoulder shrug amongst the majority of supporters and alumni who would have preferred something as unique as the Sioux.

Then, the university dropped around $50,000 to New York-based SME Branding to design the logo. (That’s just a bit under the median household income in North Dakota, by the way.)

So forgive people who wanted something jaw-dropping and inspired that looked like it cost $50,000. Forgive them for wanting a logo that actually helped them embrace the blasé nickname forced upon the university and its supporters. Forgive the 71 percent of people who, in an unscientific Grand Forks Herald poll of nearly 6,700, said they “don’t like it at all.”

Some on social media even comically compared UND’s new logo to some weird mashup of the U.S. Postal Service emblem and the retired Burlington Northern Sante Fe logo. Others took to Photoshop and put “Just Say” in front of the logo because instead of the logo, critiquing that it looks more like a “NO” than “ND”.

Many people weren’t going to be happy no matter what logo UND trotted out. The Fighting Sioux logo and nickname removal will resonate for years. Some will never get over it. Others, including me, see missed opportunity in the Fighting Hawks nickname and logo. What drove it home for me was when a student-designed Fighting Hawks logo appeared on my Facebook page Friday.

UND student Blaine Durward of Trenton deserves a tip of the hat for designing his own Fighting Hawks logo that not only incorporated elements of North Dakota, Grand Forks and Native American heritage, but simply looked cool both on apparel and standing alone.

Durward even went so far as to show what UND football and basketball uniforms would like look with the his logo elements incorporated, as well as how it could be used on the Alerus Center football field and the Betty Engelstad Sioux Center basketball court.

His typography was solid, the colors were on point and the fact that he found a way to incorporate a negative space outlining the state of North Dakota into the Hawks’ beak and torso was brilliant. The only knock on Durward’s Hawk is that it was a bit on the cartoonish side. Still, it was a hundred times more powerful than the logo UND chose.

According to an article in UND’s Dakota Student newspaper, Durward didn’t even submit the design because he wasn’t part of a design firm — one of the stipulations UND placed on those who wanted to submit logo designs. Just think of the positive outpouring the university would have received if Durward would have been allowed to compete and actually won.

While the logo UND chose isn’t great, its decision isn’t the end of the world either. All of us — alumni, supporters and fair-weather fans alike — will deal with it.

Because at the end of the day, it is only a logo. It just isn’t a very good one.

Holtz motivates energy conference in leadup to Trump

BISMARCK — Lou Holtz joked Thursday that the last time he was in North Dakota, oil was $100 a barrel and he wasn’t homeless.

The former college football coach and ESPN commentator, who lost a Florida home in a fire last summer, encouraged energy industry leaders and workers to take the recent oil downturn in stride during a speech preceding Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s appearance at the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference.

“Quitting is a permanent solution to a temporary problem,” he said. “Until you fly on solar energy, oil is going to continue to be very, very important.”

Holtz, a former board member for Watford City-based Nuverra Environmental Solutions, only lightly touched on energy in his speech and went through standard motivational material that has made him a sought-after speaker nationwide.

Holtz peppered multiple jokes throughout his 40-minute speech. His few moments speaking about oil were tied into his motivational theme, and for a moment, Holtz even got political.

“We all have injustices done,” he said. “It would bother the daylights out of me in this oil business, where our government subsidizes all kinds of fancy things and puts all kinds of restrictions on me. But you can’t be bitter about it.”

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