Enter at Your Own Risk: Fires and Phantoms is the second installment in editor Dr. Alex Scully’s horror anthology series to be published by local indy press Firbolg Publishing. The stories assembled here are far from perfect (what anthology is?), but if you’re a fan of gothic horror, Fire and Phantoms does enough things right to justify picking up a copy on your next visit to the bookstore.
Verland: The Transformation, the debut novel by Eugene author B.E. Scully, is a welcome return to a time when vampire stories were actually about vampires. And when I say vampires, I don’t mean brooding sex symbols, I mean the vampires of old: superhuman, disquieting predators with an overpowering thirst for human blood.
When the two teams squared off at Jeld-Wen Field in Portland yesterday with the 6A Division Championship on the line, it soon became clear that the outcome of the game would be decided in a bruising defensive grudge match rather than the wild, high-scoring shootout most fans in attendance would have expected to see.
When a team wins 80.6% of its sets, leads the country in offense, throttles its opponents to such a degree that sportswriters wear out thesauruses in a fruitless search for new ways to say “dominating,” and plays at such a high level that extraordinary performances are the rule and not the exception, “yay” is as good a way to put it as any.
The University of Northern Colorado’s volleyball team was recently crowned champion of the Big Sky Conference, but last night at Matthew Knight Arena they were little more than a speed bump as the 5th-seed Ducks cruised to a 3-0 victory in the first round of the 2012 NCAA Tournament. Aside from being their 19th sweep of the season, the game also marked the first time that Oregon has enjoyed home court advantage in the postseason in nearly three decades.
Only two local teams remain in this year’s OSAA playoff brackets, and on Friday both notched convincing victories to advance to the next round.
On paper, the No. 6 Oregon volleyball squad’s 3-0 defeat of 7th-ranked UCLA at Matthew Knight Arena was not their finest hour. The neck-and-neck set scores from the game – 26-24, 25-23, and 25-21 – look rather lackluster when compared to the double-digit margins of victory the Ducks posted in several of their other wins this season, and their performance in the game was marred by multiple errors.
The Irish are on a roll, having outscored their last four opponents by an average of 44.5 points. Behind a solid I-formation set by Sheldon, Roseburg’s defense couldn’t slow them down.
The unranked Cal Golden Bears entered Matt Knight Arena upset-minded and stunned the No. 2 Ducks with a 3-0 sweep at home.
Sheldon finished its regular season with a blowout win over Grants Pass heading into the postseason undefeated.