Columnist Ron Kantowski: Stars align for local youths after Easter Bowl

Tuesday, May 3, 2005 | 9:37 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

Considering she is just 14, Asia Muhammad probably has never heard of the late pop star Andy Gibb. But last week she did a little shadow dancing after winning the girls 16 doubles at the prestigious Easter Bowl amateur tennis tournament at the Riviera Resort and Racket Club in Palm Springs.

Actually, she did more shadow swimming and shadow weight lifting than dancing. One of Muhammad's prizes for winning the Easter Bowl was an invitation to "shadow" the U.S. Federation Cup team during its match against Belgium in Florida.

"Venus and Serena (Williams) wanted me to go swimming with them and Lindsay Davenport wanted me to lift weights with her," Muhammad said. "It was a tough decision."

In addition to hanging out with the American superstars, Muhammad and doubles partner Brittany Augustine also were filmed for a segment in the Williams' sisters reality TV show, had their pictures taken for trading cards and went to dinner at Donald Trump's place.

"His house was so nice and the food was really good and we also saw where he got married. It was beautiful," Muhammad said.

She also got to hit balls with the U.S. players and Fed Cup coach Zina Garrison, which was almost as intriguing as seeing The Donald's crazy hairstyle up close.

"I got to return (Venus') serve. It was really different because you have to react so much faster. I got to see how fast her serve really was," Muhammad said.

Muhammad, the daughter of former USC basketball standout Ronald Muhammad (who was known as Ron Holmes when he played for Stan Morrison) and his wife Faye, a former women's basketball player at Long Beach State, is the star pupil of the Team Agassi program that was formed four years ago to introduce Las Vegas' inner-city youth to tennis.

Kids in the program who maintain a "B" average receive free training, equipment, travel expenses and coaching from Tim Blenikron, an Australian who won an NCAA doubles title at UNLV.

I keep waiting for one of these new minor bowl games to reap instant publicity by bringing back the Salad Bowl -- and none seem willing to do it.

The new bowl game in San Diego, which will match a team from the Mountain West against an at-large team, will be known as the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl.

And so the Salad Bowl continues to collect dust on the shelf with the BlueBonnet, Gotham, Camellia, Garden State and all those other bowls that didn't quite catch on.

Believe it or not, there were five Salad Bowls played at Montgomery Stadium in Phoenix. Nevada-Reno played in the inaugural one in 1948, beating North Texas 13-6. No one can confirm whether Wolf Pack fans celebrated the winning touchdown by hurling croutons onto the field.

UNLV's Jamaal Brimmer wasn't the only player of note to be snubbed by the scouts during last week's NFL draft. Tennessee's Michael Munoz, who opened some truck-sized holes against UNLV in last year's season opener, also went undrafted.

But unlike Brimmer, Munoz has had plenty to say about the lack of respect.

Actually it's his father, NFL hall-of-famer Anthony Munoz, who is doing most of the talking.

"All the close friends I have in the game. Owners, GMs, head coaches, assistants. How hard would it have been (for one of them) to pick up the phone in February or March and say, 'Anthony, Michael might not be drafted,' " the elder Munoz told the Cincinnati Enquirer.

If somebody had, Michael Munoz might not have spent virtually every waking moment since then working on becoming more draft worthy. And his parents, like those close to Brimmer, would have been spared the agony of watching the draft on TV and the barrage of "what happened?" questions afterward.

You may have read last week that former and quite disgraced UNLV basketball coach Rollie Massimino is returning to coaching at Northwood University, a start-up NAIA Division II program in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Apparently, it didn't take any special money under the table, as it did here, to get Massive Ego to take the job -- maybe just the promise of some free golf. According to a report, he has been playing 50 holes per day since retiring from coaching in 1996.

"I don't envision that this is going to be a big-time kind of thing," Massimino, 70, told the Palm Beach Post. "I'm not going to go crazy and work 14 hours a day like I used to."

That must have been at Villanova or Cleveland State. Before he took the money and ran from here, Massimino was 36-21 in two seasons with only an NIT drubbing against USC to show for it.

Future baseball hall-of-famer Tony Gwynn wasn't too happy about having to sit out a one-game suspension against UNLV Friday night after criticizing the Mountain West for waiving its makeup policy that shortened a six-game series between the Aztecs and Air Force to four games.

"You want to know why this conference gets no respect in baseball? It's because of stuff like this," Gwynn responded.

No, Tony, the reason the Mountain West gets no respect in baseball is because teams like yours are such big underachievers.

SDSU fell to 18-27 after dropping two of three games to the Rebels.

The teams and the title sponsor (Reebok) are now set for the return of the NBA Summer League to Cox Pavilion.

Or as I like to call it "Catching Tommorow's CBA Stars Today."

The field for the 2005 Reebok Vegas Summer League has been expanded from six teams last year to 16 as the Celtics, Bulls, Cavaliers, Mavericks, Nuggets, Pistons, Warriors, Clippers, Nets, Hornets, Knicks, Magic, Suns, Trail Blazers, Kings and Wizards will be represented.

This year's RVSL will be held July 6-15. Tickets will soon be available by calling 739-FANS.

John Walter Brungart, who next to the Stanford trombone player who got run over in the end zone on that famous Cal lateral play had to be the most famous marching band member in NCAA history, has died at age 89.

Brungart was the first Ohio State band member to dot the "I" in the famous "Script Ohio" field formation that debuted on Oct. 10, 1936 against Indiana. For those scoring at home, Brungart played the cornet.

It's too bad UNLV doesn't have a cool tradition like that, but then there aren't any letters to dot in "UNLV." And if the band gets any smaller than it was last year, there might not be enough players in the woodwind section for form a "V."

Well, it's not exactly Buck Naked, but when I did a Google search for Las Vegan Tyler Houston's major league baseball statistics the first thing that popped up was 32-24-32. Those would be the statistics of Tyler Houston, the adult movie starlet.

Honestly, I didn't know there was an adult movie starlet named Tyler Houston before that. I swear on a stack of Sporting Newses.

But now that I do, using the word "obscene" to describe the other Tyler Houston's verbal sparring in the press with former Phillies manager Larry Bowa a couple of summers ago seemed to be overstating things a tad.

archive