32 Short Story Collections That Will Cure Even The Worst Reading Slump - BuzzFeed News

32 Short Story Collections That Will Cure Even The Worst Reading Slump - BuzzFeed News
Short stories I wish that I had written. This week: “The Silver Crown” by Bernard Malamud - The Altamont Enterprise
Tony Arntson 'knew from the start' coaching was the career to choose - MontanaSports
Prairie Ridge grad's animated short film ending festival run - Northwest Herald
VIDEO: GMC Sportsmanship Awards virtual ceremony - My Central Jersey

Posted: 29 Apr 2020 07:04 PM PDT

Dorothy Project, Liveright, New Directions, Strange Object, Scribner, Amistad Press, Harper Perennial, 37 Ink

I picked up this collection back in 2017 due entirely to the cover — the portrait of a wild-haired woman, the Jeff VanderMeer blurb ("This definitive collection ... is a treasure and a gift to the world."). Now it's a book I regularly recommend as an all-time favorite. Carrington was a key creator in the Surrealist movement; her art and stories imagined beautiful, monstrous, and unwieldy worlds full of strange creatures and discomfiting interactions, often representative of her own mental illness. (Carrington was unwillingly admitted into a mental institution after a psychotic break during World War II, which she describes in the equally fantastic Down Below.) If you have a high threshold for weird — and/or if you loved Her Body and Other Parties — you should give this collection a try. —Arianna Rebolini

The stories in The World Doesn't Require You all take place in the fictional town of Cross River, Maryland, built by the leaders of the country's only successful slave revolt. Each story follows different enchanting residents — a struggling musician who is also the last son of God, a PhD candidate whose dissertation unwittingly sparks chaos, a robot; as a whole, the collection weaves incisive criticism, dark humor, and magical realism in profound explorations of belief, love, justice, and violence. —A.R.

The late Argentine writer Julio Cortázar is celebrated as a groundbreaking figure in Hispanic fiction for his use of the fantastical and his rejection of conventional narrative structure. This collection, originally published in 1966, makes clear why he's so beloved. It opens with "The Southern Thruway" — a story about a traffic jam outside of Paris that ends up lasting for weeks, giving rise to ad hoc survival committees and alliances — and then jumps through space and time, from Cuban revolutionaries to Roman gladiators to a flight attendant obsessed with Greece. Each story is more compelling than the last — and if you think you know where any one is headed, you're probably wrong. —A.R.

Belly Up by Rita Bullwinkel

Belly Up is an astounding collection of short stories — stories about girls who want to be plants, or a living boy who grew up in a family of zombies, or a dying woman who sneaks out for a night swim with an ailing man. These stories exist in worlds just past reality, just slightly uncomfortable, familiar until, suddenly, they aren't. And I didn't just read these stories, each revealing at once the absolute absurdity and magnificence of being alive; I savored them. Bullwinkel's writing and world-building demand space to reflect on it, react to it, and then, if you're like me, shout about it to anyone who will listen. —A.R.

Putting together this list, I'm realizing I have something of a ~type~ when it comes to short stories — in a word, weird. This one is an entirely different flavor, no less delicious. These stories focus (in spite of the title) almost entirely on women and girls navigating all manner of relationships — a 9-year-old girl and her father's new girlfriend escaping an uncomfortable birthday party; a young woman having an affair with her married boss — and Kyle depicts their desire, cruelty, and insecurity with heartbreaking clarity. —A.R.

Though perhaps best known for his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Known World, this 1992 story collection first put Jones on the map. Set in Washington, DC, back when it was known as Chocolate City, Jones's stories feel vaguely folkloric in nature, even though they are about ordinary black folks, from a girl who is given a flock of pigeons to care for to a mother living in the house her drug-dealing son bought her. Suffused with a quiet sadness, these stories linger with you long after you're done reading. —Tomi Obaro

In a collection of short stories about all of the ways we define survival, Cook creates slightly off-kilter realities and the otherwise unremarkable characters who inhabit them — a miserly neighbor in a post-flood dystopia, 11-year-old boys who have been declared "not-needed," a young woman whose house is swarmed after a span of good luck. It's grim, violent, and darkly funny, but never so far removed from our most human urges to seem totally implausible. —A.R.

Thompson-Spires' debut collection is a fearless exploration of race, identity, and class. The stories touch on the ways spaces and circumstances are coded (in one, a young girl tries to learn to be "more black" as a way to make up for her family's upper-middle-class standing); Thompson-Spires deftly grapples with the pressures of being black in a country built around and for whiteness. It's sharp, potent, and deeply felt. —A.R.

Read "A Conversation About Bread" from Heads of the Colored People.

Riverhead, Catapult, Graywolf, Vintage, Lenny, 2040 Books, Small Beer Press, FSG

A woman creates a sentient child out of hair trimmings. A rebellious high school senior living in the US is sent back home to Nigeria to live with relatives, where family secrets are unearthed. A woman with the ability to take people's grief away grapples with the limits of her powers in a futuristic alternate universe devastated by climate change and war. The stories in this excellent 2017 collection are a mix of different genres — fantasy, realism, science fiction. What unites them is Arimah's confident, innovative storytelling. Each story packs an emotional wallop. —T.O.

Arndt's debut short story collection is provocative and haunting, forcing readers to reckon with their assumptions around gender and identity, masculinity and femininity, conformity, and queerness. Her narrators — each speaking in a frustrated but often hypnotic first person — travel through worlds that demand they subscribe to a system of categorization that simply doesn't work for them; each story shows the internal and external manifestations of this conflict. There's the parasite infecting a couple whose relationship is falling apart, the crystal cave one narrator refuses to leave, the beast that shows up nightly in the bedroom of another. It's about the awkward absurdity of bodies, and Arndt is masterful in describing it with metaphor and ambiguity. —A.R.

Set predominantly in '90s Brooklyn and the Bronx, A Lucky Man recognizes the stories to be told in banal disappointments — a failed marriage, a sick mother, an unrequited crush. Brinkley is a marvelous writer. The jaw of a man without his dentures looks like "a rotten piece of fruit." There's a solemn beauty to his writing, a clear sympathy for his characters, all of whom are vividly rendered. —T.O.

Tobias Wolff, along with writers like Raymond Carver, ZZ Packer, and Andre Dubus, is partly responsible for the 21st-century renaissance of the short story (though he'd probably disagree with a word so strong as 'renaissance'). The Night in Question is his third collection, one of many remarkable works of his; Wolff is also a killer memoirist. What I love about Tobias Wolff is his intimate portraits of family life set against terrifying and complex macro backdrops, from wars to great sweeps of generational change. He's got a deceptively simple style that, combined with his incredible talent at character development over just a few small pages, has often brought me to tears. I'll be revisiting his work in lockdown; these are stories that make you believe in a life fully lived. —Shannon Keating

Zhang's debut story collection is at once explicit and poignant, vulgar, and refined — equal parts pain and beauty. Each story centers a young, first-generation Chinese American woman narrator, each with a distinct voice but overlapping in experience (most show up in each other's stories) and linked by the loyalty, guilt, and love that comes with knowing how much, and how continuously, one's parents have sacrificed. The weight of these conflicting emotions pulls on Zhang's narrators and her writing, often in accelerating run-on sentences — but the headiness is balanced by Zhang's incorporation of the (often grotesque) physical realities of being a human being. It'll make you laugh, it'll make you cry, it'll make you gag, but you'll love all of it. —A.R.

Chau's exhilarating debut probes the lives of second-generation Chinese American women, especially focused on dating and sex — their disruptive hookups, tiring long-term relationships, their search for something meaningful. Throughout, Chau writes sexuality in a way both vivid and new (see: "Pants and skirts were shrugged, scooted down, buttonholes were stretched into O's like gasping mouths, then relieved of their charges"), and her stories are honest and arresting. All Roads Lead to Blood will ring true to anyone who feels like they're lingering on the path toward figuring themselves out. —A.R.

Pinsker's debut short story collection is speculative and strange, exploring such wide-ranging scenarios as a young man receiving a prosthetic arm with its own sense of identity, a family welcoming an AI replicate of their late Bubbe into their home, and an 18th-century seaport town trying to survive a visit by a pair of sirens — all while connecting them in a book that feels cohesive. The stories are insightful, funny, and imaginative, diving into the ways humans might invite technology into their relationships. —A.R.

Samantha Hunt's stories are about metamorphosis — physical, psychological, fantastical, life-changing. There's the FBI agent who ruins his own mission by falling in love with a military robot; the woman who can't stop cheating on her husband every time she shifts into a deer; the wife who, after months of no sex, starts to wonder if her husband is even real. Hunt writes about women's relationships to their bodies and their realities, their trust in themselves, and she does so with such sharp writing, and within such beguiling worlds, that The Dark Dark becomes impossible to put down. —A.R.

Vintage, Riverhead, A Public Space, Coffee House Press, FSG

This collection wasn't on my radar until I saw (and became obsessed with) the 2018 movie Burning and found out it was based on "Barn Burning" — a short story in a Murakami book I'd somehow never read. Luckily I fixed that problem. The 17 stories in The Elephant Vanishes are imaginative, eerie, provocative, and sardonic; they follow a woman who hasn't slept in 17 days, another who's courted by a monster in her backyard, a couple who decide to rob a McDonald's, to name a few. It's everything we love about Murakami, in bite-size pieces. —A.R.

Lorrie Moore, whose (also excellent) early work inspired a generation of young writers to abuse the second person, is a veritable master of the short story. Her third collection, Birds of America, is arguably her best, but you wouldn't go wrong if you were to pick up her full collected stories, published in 2008. What's so compelling about Moore's work — besides her sometimes lyrical, sometimes straightforward, but always gorgeous prose — is that she manages to make you laugh and make you completely, existentially devastated in the span of a single paragraph. Her stories are, to borrow a name of one of her collections, Like Life: miserable, hilarious, morally ambiguous, lovely, mundane, profound. —S.K.

For the inaugural title of their new book publishing imprint, literary magazine A Public Space released Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, a collection of the late Bette Howland's autobiographical short stories spanning the entirety of her career. Howland's writing — notably lauded by Saul Bellow — is rich with wry observations and humility, drawing from her experiences as a self-identified outsider: a divorcé and single mother whose family disapproved of her; a writer and artist fighting poverty, self-doubt, and mental illness in working-class Chicago. —A.R.

Lot by Bryan Washington

Washington's debut short story collection is an ode to Houston and a vibrant portrait of the myriad people who call it home. The stories circle around a young boy figuring out his sexual identity while holding down a job at his family restaurant; around him, a city of creators, survivors, and hustlers vibrates with life. Washington's effervescent prose draws the reader into the fold — his use of first person, especially plural first, can read like a generous inclusion — as his characters explore family, community, new freedoms, and love.

It's hard to talk about short stories without bringing up Flannery O'Connor — one of the truly great American short-story writers of the 20th century. Her works are dark and disturbing commentaries on ethics in Middle America as she weaves grotesqueries out of the traditional "moral at the end" short stories that are typical of the genre. The Complete Stories, for which O'Connor posthumously won the National Book Award, is a great intro to some of O'Connor's most famous stories and lesser-known works, too. —Jillian Karande

Karen Tei Yamashita contends with the Western canon in this astute, pitch-perfect, and wryly funny short story collection. Yamashita recasts Jane Austen characters as Japanese Americans navigating themes familiar to anyone who has read Austen and her contemporaries — social tension, familial obligation, clumsy personal growth, all of the mundanities that add up to meaning — through the lens of Japanese immigrant and Japanese American experiences. It's a genuine pleasure to read. —A.R.

Hilarious and exquisitely written, this story collection released in 1997 immediately established Packer as one of her generation's premier writers of short fiction. And it's easy to understand why. From dueling Brownies troops in the first story to the darkly funny title story about a black student attending a predominantly white college, her stories plumb both the absurdity and the isolation inherent in belonging to the shrinking black middle class. —T.O.

Girls suffer through growing pains in this fantastic debut collection published in 2010. A biracial preteen spends the summer with her white grandmother and cousin, learning more about the frosty relationship between her grandmother and her mother. A college student deals with an unexpected pregnancy. The main appeal of these stories lies in the pleasure of Evans' writing. Her prose is both wickedly funny and subtly devastating. —T.O.

Riverhead, Dzanc, Mariner, One World, Picador, Penguin, Graywolf

Five-Carat Soul covers a lot of ground, all of it unpredictable, exhilarating, and, often, hilarious. The short stories bounce from one unlikely protagonist to the next — from the antique toy dealer chasing a legendary train set owned by Robert E. Lee, to a captive lion making sense of the hierarchy of the zoo, to the one and only Abraham Lincoln — and each story, despite the foreignness of its characters' circumstances, expertly weaves in timeless themes. I love these stories individually, but all together they make for a wild and utterly delightful ride. —A.R.

Bhuvaneswar is a *force* in her provocative debut, which centers on women of color who resist easy categorization — a therapist who is drawn to but disgusted by her young patient, a scholar desperate to justify her affair with her terminally ill best friend's husband, a woman remembering the girlfriend she abandoned when she accepted her arranged marriage. Bhuvaneswar fully inhabits them, breathing life into their dissonant, beautiful, complete selves. —A.R.

Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Reading Friday Black is like being shaken awake. These stories exist in a sort of hyperreality — ordinary characters living in the not-so-unbelievable, Black Mirror–esque future of a culture that doesn't hesitate to commodify cruelty or monetize revolution. (See: "Zimmer Land," the story about an amusement park that allows guests to play-act their most violent urges.) Adjei-Brenyah skewers the ways we brush past racism and injustice, making the absurdity of the rhetoric around both impossible to ignore. —A.R.

Set against the background of Denver, these stories follow indigenous women in relation to their home. In some cases the land holds histories these women long to escape; in others, it changes so rapidly as to disorient those who call it home. Fajardo-Anstine's prose blossoms on the page; her scenes and characters develop so vividly that they're likely to leave an impression lasting long after you stop reading. —A.R.

Berlin's first posthumous collection, A Manual for Cleaning Women, got a lot of (deserving) praise, but I'm partial to the followup. Here we see Berlin's world — her time spent in Texas, Chile, and Mexico — filtered through evocative fiction. Her characters are utterly captivating — the moneymaking kids, the retired ambassador, the musicians, the actors, the addicts — and her scenery envelops you. But it's the early stories, those that follow the meandering adventures of kids just trying to fill their days, that are most vibrant. —A.R.

Keret's stories range from dark to downright silly — there's the child in the title story who misunderstands the intentions of a man standing on the roof of a tall building, the strangers who meet up daily after work to share a joint on the beach, the increasingly absurd email exchange between a man desperate to bring his mother to an escape room that is unfortunately closed, and the owner of said escape room with a pretty big secret to hide. Each is beautifully wrought and rife with meaning — and slightly maddening in its ambiguity. —A.R.

If even the prospect of short stories seems overwhelming, I recommend one of my most comforting reads — a book that is perfect if you want nothing more than to be swiftly and briefly transported to a more magical reality. The Book of Imaginary Beings is an encyclopedia of 116 "strange creatures conceived through time and space by the human imagination," both general (e.g., dragons) and specific (e.g., the Cheshire Cat). Forget about sitting down with it for a large chunk of time — it's better when you dip in and out. —A.R.

There's a reason this book was everywhere — it's really very good. Machado's sharp, eerie, and often hilarious stories experiment with format in a way that feels genuinely new, dropping in theatrical asides to the reader, or structuring a narrative around Law and Order episode titles. Their darkness is playful until it's not, and that tipping point happens whenever the reader realizes the surrealist nightmares Machado has built around her female protagonists — worlds in which women's bodies are infected by the trauma they've witnessed, or made vulnerable by an epidemic of becoming ethereal — aren't quite so fantastical at their cores. If you haven't read it yet, now's the perfect time. —A.R.

Short stories I wish that I had written. This week: “The Silver Crown” by Bernard Malamud - The Altamont Enterprise

Posted: 16 Apr 2020 12:00 AM PDT

Author's note: For years, I have been telling my English classes that someday I wanted to edit an annotated anthology titled "Short Stories I Wish I Had Written." I do not have any publishers beating down my door to get such a volume into print, but since we are all stuck in our homes these days, this seemed a good time to share some of my appreciation of these stories with Enterprise readers. For the next few weeks I will offer brief appraisals of these works, some of which are available on line but all of which can be found in various popular anthologies.

****

Bernard Malamud is best known for his short stories and novels such as "The Assistant," which deal with middle-class Jewish people trying to maintain both their identity and their faith in the increasingly secular modern era, many set in New York and written in the long shadow of the Holocaust. His novels "The Fixer" and "The Natural" became best-sellers.

I first encountered his short story "The Silver Crown" many years ago when I was teaching college English at New York University's Bronx campus — which has since been sold to Bronx Community College. The school was in a neighborhood almost exactly like the one in "The Silver Crown," even including a tiny synagogue on 183rd Street frequented mostly by elderly men, many of them undoubtedly survivors of the Holocaust.

This fact gave the story an extraordinary immediacy to both me and my students and lent its fantastical elements that indefinable quality known as "verisimilitude."

Set in the mid-1950s, the plot centers on a young Jewish high school biology teacher named Albert Gans, a solitary bachelor who has had a couple of rather emotionless one-night stands with women on the faculty of the school.

As the story begins, he is trying to deal with the grave illness of his father, with whom he has never been on very good terms and about whom he has deep feelings of guilt. Doctors are at a loss to treat or even diagnose the old man's illness, though one has suggested cancer. "Of the heart," the old man suggests — summing up in three words his relationship with his son.

Albert has little connection with his Jewish heritage and as a man of science he has no belief in religion or mysticism. He is thus at a loss as to how he should deal with his father's illness. And when a woman with whom Albert once slept suggests to him that he seek out a faith healer he at first rejects it outright.

Anyone who has ever strolled the streets of New York will have been approached by people handing out leaflets for all sorts of things: "Gentlemen's Clubs," esoteric religions, psychics, going-out-of-business sales — and spiritual healers. It is thus only a coincidence — or is it? — that within a day Albert encounters on the street a strange, seemingly autistic woman who hands him a leaflet advertising a certain Rabbi Lifschitz who purports to heal illness through the crafting and invocation of silver crowns.

Albert at first dismisses the whole concept, but as his father grows weaker and Albert's guilt increases he decides to visit the rabbi and find out precisely what these "silver crowns" are all about.

Then begins an eerie series of encounters with the old man in his simple, even impoverished flat, dimly lit and lined with musty books and featuring stained window shades that resemble "faded maps of ancient lands." The rabbi presents the appearance of an aged scholar and at odd moments appears to have the power of ESP.

He is the father of Rifkele, the autistic woman Albert met on the street, and although her behavior is that of a small, petulant child, the rabbi tells Albert that in her own way, God has made Rifkele perfect. The rabbi's Eastern European-accented conversation is filled with wise sayings indicating a deep religious faith — and he tells Albert that for a certain sum he can make a silver crown like those that guard the Torah scrolls in synagogues.

However, these have the power to heal the desperately sick — the caveat being that the donor must have love. The rabbi produces scrap-books filled with handwritten testimonials from scores of people praising the rabbi's crowns for their miraculous healing effects on loved ones.

And when Albert indicates he has doubts about the process, the rabbi replies, "We doubt God and God doubts us. Of these kind doubts I am not afraid," assuring Albert that, if he loves his father, the crown will work. But Albert never gives the rabbi — or himself — that assurance.

Despite his skepticism, over the course of a couple of days, Albert is drawn into the rabbi's mystical world but insists on seeing one of the crowns before he puts down close to a thousand dollars, which is the price of the silver from which the crown will be made.

The rabbi at first insists that he never shows the crown since the purchaser's faith should be sufficient. But he then reluctantly agrees to show one to Albert and does so in a stunningly beautiful and eerie sequence that appears to leave no doubt that the rabbi is a saintly man with access to supernatural powers. And Albert purchases the crown.

Yet almost at once his and the reader's doubts begin to creep in. Why does the rabbi have two prices for crowns — one for $986 — and a smaller one for $401, either of which must be paid for in cash? Why do the rabbi and Rifkele appear on the street coming from religious services dressed in new and expensive-looking clothing? Why does the rabbi no longer attend services at the small side-street synagogue but go instead to a wealthy synagogue on the Mosholu Parkway, which is described as a "palace?"

Malamud never answers these questions, but cleverly deals out equal amounts of evidence indicating that the rabbi is precisely the saintly intermediary he claims to be — or a smooth-talking con-man. But the crux of the story is the rabbi's insistence that, for the crown to work its miracle, Albert must love his father.

The final episode begins when Albert wakes up with the conviction that he has been the victim of a swindle and heads off to angrily confront the rabbi, leading to a shocking conclusion. Like life itself, the story offers no certainties but, with its affirmation of the power of love and in its exploration of the tantalizing, mysterious topic of religious faith, it leaves the reader with much to ponder — and a story to savor again and again.

Tony Arntson 'knew from the start' coaching was the career to choose - MontanaSports

Posted: 30 Apr 2020 06:13 PM PDT

(Editor's note: Nine coaches were selected to the latest Montana Coaches Association Hall of Fame class, with an official induction ceremony scheduled for Thursday, July 30 in Great Falls. MTN Sports caught up with the inductees and will publish a series of stories highlighting each mentor. Links to their stories can be found at the end of this story.)

HELENA — Tony Arntson is still a relatively new face around the University of Providence athletics offices, but the longtime coach already knows he's right where he needs to be.

"I think it's going to be, as we go through this thing, it's going to definitely be one of the highlights of my career," he said.

Arntson was named head coach of the Argo track and field and cross country programs in June 2019, nearly a year ago, but, due to measures beyond his control, he's still a rookie as far as the entire job description is concerned.

"It is really a new gig because I haven't got to coach a track season yet," Arntson said, referring to the coronavirus canceling the NAIA's spring sports season. "We got kind of a makeshift little indoor season, we didn't have many runners, but our throwers got a little indoor season in."

"Your heart's out for those senior kids, we only had a couple, but your heart's just out for those senior kids that don't get to compete their last season," he continued. "I know two out of our three seniors are heading off to grad schools, so they're not going to hang around for that fifth year, so my heart's out for them, for sure."

For three decades, Arntson has cared about his athletes' best interests, be it pursuing a college scholarship, chasing personal goals or simply enjoying one final season with friends and teammates.

Those relationships stem from the bonds he made during his playing days at Great Falls CMR, where "Coach Arntson" was born.

"I knew right from the start that coaching was going to be something I wanted to do, and I did it all," he said. "I basically started as a freshman coaching little kids in basketball and did that mostly through high school, and then came back and started at CMR in '89 and '90. I was blessed to be able to coach my brother and Dave Dickenson and that class, a lot of great kids in that one. No doubt in my mind where it was going to head right from the start, for sure."

But Arntson had the itch to become a head coach, and his former mentor, Jack Johnson, certainly wasn't leaving CMR anytime soon. Arntson's cousin, Jeff Arntson, happened to live in Hot Springs at the time and called about an opportunity in nearby Charlo.

"I'd never been exposed to 8-Man football in my life, so I drove up there, checked it out, and I loved the town. It had a great football history back in the 1970s but had been down for a long time," said Arntson. "It was a great opportunity, I thought, to get a start and get some head coaching experience. So I drug my wife out of California, we got married that summer and drove to Charlo the next day and started the career up there and I loved it. It was the greatest experience ever.

"It'd be one of the things, when I give a speech at the (Montana Coaches Association Hall of Fame) induction, is to thank those Class C coaches. They treated me so well and there were so many great ones around the state, and their love and their passion for just the game, that genuine passion for it really, really set in with me. And I loved it. I coached basketball, track, coached all year. I took care of the fields in the summer. It was just a great experience."

Three short years later, Arntson couldn't help but apply when two Class AA jobs — Butte High and Helena High — became available. Butte went a different direction, hiring Rick Carriger, and Arntson waited for what seemed like an eternity for an interview with the Bengals.

"I don't know that they were real excited about hiring a 26-year-old head coach," he chuckled. "I think I was a very late interview, but I finally did get one. I came down and I interviewed, and I actually took the head coaching job without a teaching position. It didn't make my wife very happy, but things came around."

Though he was eager at the opportunity, Arntson certainly had his hands full, taking over a program that hadn't won a state championship since 1932 and had appeared in the title game only once since — a 39-13 defeat at the hands of Kalispell Flathead in the 1958 Class AA chipper.

"It was definitely a program that needed to be built from scratch. … I tell everybody all the time that out of all the great things that happened for 23 years after the first year, that first year, I remember that thing like it was yesterday. I can remember almost every minute of every day," said Arntson. "We had great athletes, unbelievable athletes: Danny Sprinkle and Chad Brandon and Tim Agee, I mean big names in that class, but those kids bought in. We won our last game of the season, but we were in every game."

The Bengals won many more under Arntson's watch, advancing to the Class AA semifinals 11 times and finishing runner-up on four occasions, the first in 1998 and the last in 2017.

Though he's known mostly for his gridiron successes, Arntson was also an impressive leader for track and field athletes, a love he first earned under legendary Charlo coach Bret Thompson.

"He'd been a head coach for quite a while and was a very good mentor of mine and became a good friend of mine," Arntson said of Thompson, a fellow MCA Hall of Fame member.

"When I came (to Helena High), Bill Gilbert, who, you know, he's a legend of course, and he's a Hall of Famer, and Doug LeBrun, I mean, when I took the sprint assistant job in 1994, every coach on that staff had been coaching longer than I'd been alive. And that's the honest to God truth," laughed Arntson. "Terry Beaver and Pat Connors. I mean, there was track legends there at Helena High, so, man, I was circled by a lot of good guys."

Arntson said his association with track and field originally began as a spring workout for football players, noting that 80-90 percent of the gridders joined the Bengals' track team. It didn't take long for him to fall in love with the spring sport.

"I was blessed with some, whoa, unbelievably talented kids throughout the years and especially the last eight or nine years there. It was unbelievable," he said. "We watched the 400 state record get broke two years in a row, and that record went all the way back to 1976 before Connor Matthews broke it (in 2016), and then Zander Mozer broke it the next year. Just to watch the caliber of athletes throughout the year, I really fell in love with track."

There are too many memories to recall, both from football — like Helena hosting the state championship game in 1998, just a few years after he took over the program — to track and field — where 14-year-old freshman Trey Tintinger set a national high jump record by clearing 7 feet, 1.5 inches.

But topping the list was the opportunity to coach both sons, Troy and Ryan, in both sports.

"It's definitely that. That's a highlight just to have that opportunity. I was blessed with a great wife and two great kids that I was so honored to be able to be around them and watch them, not just compete in sports, but turn out to be great young men and kids that I'm so proud of," said Arntson. "To be able to coach them is unbelievable."

Arntson often thinks about those days, there is some downtime after all with no spring track season, but he admits there are days he misses the Friday nights under the lights and the chess matches with some of the best coaches Montana has offered.

"Coaching against Jack Johnson (CMR) and Dale Pohle (Great Falls High), Gary Ekegren (Missoula Big Sky) and (Paul) Klaboe (Billings West) and (Ron) Lebsock (Billings Skyview) and Jon McElroy at Butte High, I mean legends of Class AA football. And I was blessed to be able to, it made for a lot of hard Friday nights, trust me," he laughed. "There was some tough evenings and some very somber Saturday mornings, but, man, to be around those guys, and to be treated like they treated me was unbelievable.

"Coach Lebsock always sticks out in my mind from Skyview. That guy, I just have so much respect for him. He was such a high-class guy all the time, and he just always treated me so well. But all those guys, it was just a great honor and I just couldn't have ever asked for anything more. It was definitely a blessing and one heck of a career, for sure."

Montana Coaches Association 2020 Hall of Fame class: Fred Volkman, Cut Bank wrestling; Bill Lepley, Shepherd girls basketball; John Sillitti, Manhattan cross country and track, Steve Weston, Hamilton football and softball, Jim Carroll, Conrad track and field.

Prairie Ridge grad's animated short film ending festival run - Northwest Herald

Posted: 30 Apr 2020 03:51 AM PDT

What creativity Olivia Jensen did not already possess through genetics, she likely picked up through osmosis.

Stephen Jensen, her father, is a graphic designer/photographer and former rock musician who designed guitars for the late Dimebag Darrell Abbott, of Pantera, as well as many other well-known rockers.

Sylvia Jensen, her mother, is a fashion designer who became a stylist for rock groups with whom Stephen worked, eventually leading to their business Wornstar Clothing Company in Crystal Lake. In nine-plus years, Wornstar has become highly popular with rock bands and professional wrestlers, as well as the fans of both groups.

Naturally, Olivia gravitated toward arts and finding her own creative side early in life by drawing, telling stories and, perhaps, paying closer attention than some children to Disney and Pixar animated movies.

"I've been an artist my entire life," said Jensen, 24, a 2014 Prairie Ridge graduate. "I was always doing art and illustrations. When I got to high school, I started doing theater and film projects with my friends and I realized all of those things I was passionate about. I discovered my love for animation. It was just the most beautiful way to tell stories, but also in a visually beautiful way."

Jensen graduated from DePaul in 2019, and her 3 1/2-minute animated film "Waiting by the Phone" is nearing the end of its run at the National Film Festival for Talented Youth and at the Detroit International Festival of Animation.

Jensen wrote and produced the film as one of the requirements for her Bachelor of Arts degree in animation from DePaul. She then spent time after graduation refining it so it could be seen at festivals.

"I wanted to take it farther," she said. "I wanted to take it to festivals and inspire other people. I didn't want to graduate and have that be that. I kept working on it, perfected it, got it to a place where I liked it and sent it to other places."

Other than three voice actors who helped her, the production is mostly Jensen's. She wrote and animated the film, which deals with loss and grief. The film keeps showing a young woman, Dani, in her apartment alone listening to a message left on her phone from her younger sister Emily.

The message keeps playing and Emily's voice keeps saying the same message and viewers eventually realize this was the last message Dani heard before her sister died. She had gone out for an evening with friends and never returned.

Dani walks past the piano Emily used to play and presses a tape player that has a recording of her sister playing. Dani makes two cups of tea like she used to, but she is the only person there. As this goes on, viewers feel the hurt and despair Dani is experiencing over the loss of her sister.

Eventually, Dani's co-worker Kellie calls and says she noticed Dani was sad, offers condolences over losing her sister and invites her out to talk. Dani accepts viewers feel like this is going to be a vital step toward overcoming her grief.

"I love stories that are raw and emotional," Jensen said. "They have to deal with real human emotion, which is pretty uncommon in animation. When people think of animated films, they think of children's media or something that's funny. I wanted to do something a little heavier, but show it in a graceful, beautiful, visual way. I wanted to open up a conversation about grief and loss."

Stephen Jensen said all four of their children enjoyed creative arts and entertainment. Olivia is the second-oldest, with one older brother (Nick), a younger brother (Brandon) and a younger sister (Amelia).

"I guess it's a product of the environment," Stephen Jensen said. "Since we worked from home, I hope they got some of that work ethic we have. Working at home is not the easiest thing when you have a family. It's a lot of discipline..

"In grade school, (Olivia) was a really good creative writer and storyteller, which I think is still probably her strongest suit. The writing was as fulfilling to her as visual art. In high school, I noticed she really started developing her own visual style."

Olivia Jensen is a full-time technical artist for Stern Pinball, where she does work with animation, motion graphics and story boards. She also will continue with film-making and illustration on her own time.

"I'm hoping people see it and it can open up conversations about what it's about and also help other women in animation," she said. "I try to involve as many female creators as I can in projects because I think it's important while I'm working to make opportunities for other people. I hope I'm opening doors for other female creators as well."

Stephen and Sylvia recently realized during some conversations with Olivia that they all had taken similar paths in high school and college.

"I wish I could take credit for it, but I really can't," Stephen Jensen said. "She's kind of pushed on that all by herself. I couldn't be more excited about it. When she was going to DePaul, and I'd see some of the finished stuff she would do, she was kind of following what I did when I was growing up, but in her own different direction and without me prodding her."

VIDEO: GMC Sportsmanship Awards virtual ceremony - My Central Jersey

Posted: 30 Apr 2020 10:00 PM PDT

The coronavirus pandemic canceled the 19th Annual Dan Hayston Memorial Greater Middlesex Conference Sportsmanship Awards luncheon, but did not prevent the league from honoring its recipients through a virtual ceremony.

In lieu of the annual luncheon, which was to be held at the Pines Manor in Edison, league officials and athletics directors worked in concert with local media members to construct a video awards presentation to pay tribute to 65 student-athlete honorees.

The video, which can be found beneath this short story, features, among others, Speaker of the New Jersey General Assembly Craig J. Coughlin, who delivers a wonderful keynote address for the Sportsmanship Award recipients, and Senator Patrick J. Diegnan Jr., who concludes the virtual awards ceremony with inspirational closing remarks.

The production includes a virtual honor roll call with photographs of each of the award winners, who hail from the league's 34 high schools, and acknowledgment of the four conference members who won GMC Division Sportsmanship Awards.

The honorees will receive a hard copy of the Sportsmanship Awards program, as well as their official trophies at a later date as COVID-19 social distancing restrictions are relaxed.

Our thoughts and prayers remain with those COVID-19 has impacted and with all who are on the front lines battling the insidious coronavirus.

A special message for the honorees from MyCentralJersey.com sports writer Greg Tufaro, along with a complete list of this year's GMC Sportsmanship Award recipients can be found beneath the video.

TUFARO'S SPECIAL MESSAGE FOR HONOREES

The adage with which you are all familiar – it's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game – originated more than a century ago from the pen of legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice, whose famous poem, Alumnus Football, contains the following stanza:

For when the One Great Scorer comes

To mark against your name,

He writes not that you won or lost

But how you played the game

Grantland Rice's words are a metaphor for how we are judged in life – the One Great Scorer, of course, referring to God – but they also epitomize the very reason you are here today, for we are not acknowledging any team championships or individual titles, but celebrating something far greater that is rarely recognized.

I write hundreds of stories during the course of an academic year. Few of them, unfortunately, chronicle your acts of sportsmanship, because readers, quite frankly, are more concerned with your athletic prowess than your ladylike or gentlemanly conduct on the playing field.

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Sometimes those acts are subtle, like a softball catcher picking a bat off the ground and handing it to an opposing hitter upon her return to the batter's box after sprinting down the first-base line on a foul ball. Or like a crestfallen wrestler who just suffered a career-ending loss in the region consolation final, hugging an opponent who simultaneously punched his own ticket to Atlantic City. Or like a basketball player extending a hand to pull an opponent off the court who just took a charge that was so hard it left an imprint of the baseline on his back.

You've all heard of the Cy Young award, The Stanley Cup, The Lombardi Trophy, The Heisman Trophy and The Ryder Cup.

But how many of you are familiar with The Bob Frederick award? The Art Rooney award? The Roberto Clemente award? The Kim Perrot award? The Lady Byng trophy?

All five of the aforementioned are presented, respectively, by the NCAA, the NFL, Major League Baseball, the WNBA and the NHL for sportsmanship.

Your lack of familiarity with those awards compared to the others reflects the amount of attention athletes receive for winning individual and team honors in comparison to how they played the game.

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Even the great Grantland Rice spent more time documenting on-field heroics in the early 20th century than he did penning poetic verse about player conduct. So you see, while the world around us has changed dramatically over the last 100 years, the one constant in athletics is that acts of sportsmanship have forever been under-publicized.

Despite the added pressure of being held to a higher standard as a student-athlete, you have conducted yourself with grace. You have set an example for your teammates and your opponents. You are a credit to your athletic programs and your schools. You are a reflection of your parents, coaches, teachers and administrators who have molded you to respect the game, its rules and its players. You are role models for youngsters, and for that, I thank you. I wish you the best in your future endeavors and hope that your legacy resonates with the conference's underclassmen.

I leave you with these words, a twist on that renowned stanza from the great Grantland Rice:

For when the local sports writer came

To speak of your good name

He cared not on this day whether you won or lost

Just how you played the game

GMC SPORTSMANSHIP AWARD HONOREES

Calvary Christian: Alyssa Paulson, Alex Merckx. Carteret: Brenda Guzman, Michael Gurzynski. Colonia: Tiffany Rolon Lucas, Marc Nykolyn. Dunellen: Erin Barnett, John Ciannello. East Brunswick: Alyna Negron, Jonathan Benowitz. East Brunswick Tech: Kelly Jamison, Brendan Bukowski. Edison: Kacey Colletto, Malachi White. Edison Academy: Joseph Finnegan. Highland Park: Linda Wang, Owen Montero-Reyes. John F. Kennedy: Jennifer Jara, Lucas Teeple. J.P. Stevens: Shreya Patel, Brian McAdams. Metuchen: Arielle Benderly, Elijah Ervin. Middlesex: Juliana Kravantka, Jared Craig. Monroe: Samantha Carella, Robert Hunter. Mother Seton: Alyssa Janowski. New Brunswick: Zalma Herrera, Oscar Pacheco. North Brunswick: Zaniyah Boykins, Justin Fisher. Old Bridge: Lauren Farkas, Samuel Kamara. Perth Amboy: Jacqueline Zuniga, Raphael Hernandez. Perth Amboy Tech Brittany Trigueros Ordonez, Oscar Correa. Piscataway: Dana Ogilvie, Steven Hernandez. Piscataway Tech: Tamia Lane, Ariel Delgado. Saint Joseph: Eric Freda. Saint Thomas Aquinas: Eleni Alvarez, Sean O'Leary. Sayreville: Janeva Holland, Dylan Clerigo. South Amboy: Selina Maisonett, Bryan Pena. South Brunswick: Jillian Ryan, Akhil Edekar. South Plainfield: Jordan Lovett, Joseph Walker. South River: Khayla Smith, Steven Rodriguez. Spotswood: Jaclyn Gialanella, John Welsh. Timothy Christian: Sarah Collier, Liam Page. Wardlaw-Hartridge: Brianna Chambers, A.J. Massaro. Woodbridge: Brielle Skibar, Marcos Piastre. Woodbridge Academy: Sarah Paladino, Darshan Patel.

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