The trickle down affect of Hurricane Katrina reached as far as John Day on Friday night.

Gas prices at Jackson’s Shell have gone through the roof, (and will surely go higher before things get sorted out), so I decided to keep a few bucks in my wallet for the Labor Day weekend. As a result, I sat at home on the sofa munching a bacon sandwich slathered with Newman’s Own All Original chunky salsa listening to Lindsey Wyllie’s broadcast of the Prospectors’ first football game of the 2005 season on the radio.

Newman’s salsa has sort of bland flavor – older folks have to lay off the spicy stuff late at night, lest they get visited in dreams by things that go bump and Grant Union’s performance was nearly as bland, as La Grande hammered our boys 38-0.

Special teams were a major problem, as they usually are for a lot of teams in the first game of the season, and the Pros messed up three times on punts.

Two of them were blocked, and the Tigers managed to return one of them for a touchdown, and the other resulted in the punter having to scramble around before being tackled for a loss.

I did learn La Grande is expected to do well in the Greater Oregon League this season “The Voice of Grant County Sports” mentioned that fact several times during the broadcast, and how Grant Union, if they were still in the GOL, would be playing three teams from the league in preseason games this year.

Come to think of it, the only GOL teams Grant Union doesn’t play this year are Ontario and Mac-Hi.

Coach Monty Nash told me the Prospectors had a rough row to hoe in preseason games this year playing four Class 3A schools, Madras, Burns and Baker, in addition to La Grande, before opening the Wapiti League against Vale, and he was right!

I gathered from the radio broadcast the Tigers’ linemen basically manhandled the Prospectors on both sides of the ball and this was the difference in the game.

Offensive statistics, particularly rushing yards, are somewhat difficult to figure out as Wyllie quite often gets too excited to mention who carried the ball, but that’s all right. He gets the score correct, and unlike me, he doesn’t have to worry about getting everyone’s name spelled right.

As a former high school coach, you always look for something positive in a game even when the team gets its head handed to it.

On Friday, the Prospectors got flagged for penalties only twice which is a big plus and something to build on.

The boys have a week off before playing at Three Flags Field against Madras on Sept. 16 and I have no doubt in my mind coach Nash and his staff will have the team ready to win.

There are several new coaches, a new team, (actually a combined team of Monument/Dayville/Mitchell getting back together after a couple of seasons playing separately), new freshmen and transfer students playing on Grant County teams for the first time as the 2005 fall sports season begins.

Along with several new players, Grant Union is also sporting a new look in helmets. At first glance, it appeared as though someone had shelled out a ton of money to buy new ones.

No, indeed.

What was done is the old helmets were repainted and whoever did the painting did one heck of a job!

The helmets are a deep cherry red, about the same color as my Chrysler Sebring, and have the same finish as you’d find of the body on a car with the deep, painted-in sparkle look.

One of the players told me they look really good with the Pros’ home uniforms and I can’t wait to see them.

On the topic of helmets, the early runner for the ugliest helmets on college football has to be Wisconsin.

The Badgers used to have cool ones with a script “W” on the sides, but the new ones look really cheap.

The new U of W headgear is all white with red numbers on the sides and large, block “Ws” on the front and back. The letters appear to be half-inch red tape “stick-ons” and look like something a first-grade class would have done for an art project. They are awful!