Fall season's notable, quotable

On Sept. 10, 2001, I asked Hubbard volleyball player Katy Jo Mroski about the Eagles' 122-game Trumbull Athletic Conference winning streak.
She said all the right things -- complimenting the program and her coach, Chuck Montgomery.
Then she said this: "We won't lose as long as I'm here."
I'm sure she took some heat for the comment, but she gets kudos (which is Latin for "American candy bar") from me for backing it up. The Eagles closed out this season with a win over LaBrae 15-3, 15-5 for their 150th straight TAC victory. It was Mroski's final league game.
Notes and votes
Here are my other random thoughts on the fall sports season.
Best cross country shirt: Struthers' "We've got a bad case of the runs." Cross country shirts usually have more clich & eacute;s than an interview with a football coach, but that was pretty good.
Best atmosphere: Massillon Washington at Warren Harding in Week 9. It was a much better atmosphere than the last time the teams played. (At least that's what people tell me. I was in fifth grade in 1989.) The Tigers had a chance, but Harding rallied to win. (Imagine that -- Massillon lost a big game.)
Worst dressed fan: At the state cross country meet, I saw a middle-aged man wearing a full length Tigger costume, complete with hood and tail. I'm not a good enough writer to adequately explain how stupid he looked.
Players I most enjoyed interviewing: Maplewood cross country runner Paul Moser, Fitch volleyball player Katie McDermott, Boardman quarterback Tom Zetts, Warren Harding quarterback Mike Phillips and West Branch runner Lisa Davies.
Best quotes
Finally, here are the five fall quotes I loved the most.
Salem volleyball coach Don Conser has two of them. The first came after the Quakers beat Poland in the regional semifinal to advance to play Hubbard in the final. I asked Conser if this was the best Hubbard team he's seen.
"Well, Hubbard was good without the foreign exchange student and they're better with the foreign exchange student," Conser said, talking about the Eagles' controversial foreign exchange student Monika Rajkovicova. "That's all I'll say about that because my mother told me if I didn't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all."
The second Conser quote came after Salem lost to Hubbard two days later.
"The thing I enjoyed the most was the smirk left their faces and they realized they were in trouble," he said. "I watched Hubbard play three or four times this year and [there were] smirks all over their faces like, nobody can touch us. They found out that somebody came close."
I'm sure Hubbard fans didn't appreciate the comments, but it made for darn good newspaper stories.
After Maplewood won the Division III cross country regional at Boardman, I asked Moser why he had shaved his head when the rest of his teammates had bleached their hair.
"It's about being a 'Maplewood Goon,' " he said. "I wanted to be a goon all four years and so I shaved my head. These pretty boys bleached their hair."
The night before the official playoff pairings came out, the Ohio High School Athletic Association mistakenly placed Poland in the ninth spot in their region, which would have left the Bulldogs out of the playoffs. OHSAA corrected the mistake, but it made for a long night for Poland coach Paul Hulea.
"I was physically shaking, & quot; Hulea said. "I usually keep in control, but I was shaking. I had to walk around, take a deep breath and come back. I was like in shock, really."
The last quote wasn't from a story. I had a reader call me midway through the season to complain that most coaches are only in it for the money.
I agree. In fact, if you calculated the average hourly rate for most coaches, I bet it's almost double that of a sweat shop worker overseas.
And I doubt things will change anytime soon. Some people are just greedy.
XJoe Scalzo is a sportswriter for The Vindicator. Write him at scalzo@vindy.com.