Darrell Moody: Drive One helps CHS athletics

Once again, the community and Capital City Ford has stepped up to help Carson High's athletic programs.

Capital City Ford held its fifth Drive One 4 Ur School fundraiser last Saturday to support the girls' basketball and cross-country teams.

"We did very, very well," said Tim Milligan, general manager of Capital City Ford. "This is the fifth time we've done this, and we've been able to meet our goal every time.

"We were done by 2 p.m. We had people lining up at 8 to drive. We weren't even totally set up yet. We use this as a fundraiser not a sales event. We've been a big supporter of schools and the community. Anything to help the schools, we're always open to discussion."

Milligan said he has a staff of 20 people who volunteer their time for the event.

Milligan said that there was a couple who were down at the dealership and interested in buying a truck. He said they came down to Carson, took a test drive and went back to the dealership to purchase the truck.

Milligan added a different wrinkle this time. The fundraiser tries to get 300 test drives during the course of the event, and $20 per test drive is donated to the school. This year a new wrinkle was added to the event, which brought in another $2,000 bringing the total for the two athletic programs to $8,000.

Milligan brought along a new Ford Focus, and $10 was donated back to the high school for every test drive. He set up a course with pylons in the parking lot.

"It has a lot of interesting technological gadgets," Milligan said.

One of the gadgets, according to Milligan, is the ability for the driver to have text messages read back to him/her. He said it's designed to stop drivers from texting with one hand and driving with one hand. Milligan said that the technology only works depending on what type of cell phone you own.

Milligan said the program has gotten so popular that he's hearing from schools in the Reno area.

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I was glad to see the NIAA changed last week's regional cross-country meet to Friday instead of Thursday.

One of the reasons it was done, according to Carson coach Pete Sinnott, was so that kids didn't have to be taken out of school for the day. Running on a holiday enabled the NIAA to start the event earlier which means it can get done before darkness sets in.

It also means that the event also will get more media coverage because it won't be going head-to-head with football, which is historically played on Thursday in the last week of October.

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The Western Athletic Conference - which already lost Boise State - and will soon lose Hawaii and Nevada has been very aggressive in enhancing its membership according to commissioner Karl Benson.

Five schools - University of Denver, Seattle University, University of Texas at Arlington, University of Texas at San Antonio and Texas State University - have been added to the conference. The schools will join University of Idaho, Louisiana Tech University, New Mexico State University, San Jose State University and Utah State University to form a 10-team league.

Benson said the WAC will focus on securing two more member schools for football only starting with the 2013-14 school year.

Short of old WAC schools like Rice or UTEP coming back, I think that the WAC might be looking at Cal-Poly San Luis Obispo and UC Davis. The Aggies are in the Big West for all their other sports, so the WAC would be an easy fit. Ditto for Cal-Poly.

Call me Pollyanna, but I think conferences should start having contracts for its member schools, and the exit fee should be so steep that schools will think twice before fleeing for greener pastures.