On July 31, I covered the Idaho Falls Chukars’ game versus the Ogden Raptors. The game was mostly ordinary, except for one thing. I’ll let the note from my game story explain it:

Ogden made an odd defensive move whenever Chukars’ right fielder Brawlun Gomez came up against a left-handed pitcher Thursday. Raptors’ center fielder Deion Ulmer and left fielder Matt Jones switched positions.

Ogden manager John Shoemaker said the Los Angeles Dodgers’ organization is using its Rookie-level teams (Ogden and the AZL Dodgers) to experiment with defensive alignments. Thanks to scouting reports, the Raptors discovered that the right-handed Gomez pulls the ball to left field almost every time he faces a left-hander. Therefore, Ogden wanted Ulmer — a rangier outfielder than Jones — to play left.

Today, Aug. 7, Chris Mosch of Baseball Prospectus wrote an article on defensive shifting, and he cited the note above from my game story.

Now, full disclosure, Mosch and I are friends and former colleagues from my days with the Daily Emerald, the University of Oregon’s student newspaper. The only reason he knows about my story is because I told him after the game on July 31.

That said, Mosch hadn’t seen that tactic utilized before. Switching outfielders is a brand-new idea in baseball at this point, so Mosch saw some genuine news value from my note. He wasn’t just giving a friend a shout-out.

Here is Mosch’s story.

For the July 11 issue of the Post Register, I wrote a profile on Idaho Falls Chukars 18-year-old shortstop Marten Gasparini, who was born and raised in Italy. Here’s the link to the post on ChukarsExtra.com, and the full text for the story is below.

Marten Gasparini yearned for some home cooking.

He had just moved away from home. His parents were excellent cooks. He could barely make pasta.

College freshmen can relate to Gasparini’s pain. They can’t relate to much else.

Gasparini was in Burlington, N.C., for the start of his professional baseball career — 4,500 miles away from his native Italy.

A year earlier, Gasparini signed a contract with the Kansas City Royals, about a month after his 16th birthday. His $1.3 million signing bonus is still the European amateur record.

The shortstop has been with the Idaho Falls Chukars (a Kansas City Rookie-level affiliate) this entire season. Gasparini, 18, has struggled 23 games in, but he’s confident he’ll turn it around. He’s confident his community back home will remember him for more than the $1.3 million.

“The community is really going to appreciate my actions the moment I get to the highest level,” Gasparini told the Post Register. “At the moment, big number or not, I’m still in the minor leagues.”

Gasparini saw the 1999 baseball movie “For Love of the Game” around the age of 8. Before that, he knew hardly anything about baseball. Shortly after, Gasparini’s father bought him a baseball bat, and Gasparini discovered a club baseball team near his hometown of Alture.

Baseball isn’t a huge sport in Italy, but its relative obscurity helped attract Gasparini.

“Not from a hipster point of view, but yeah, it was something different,” Gasparini said. “As a 10-year-old, I wanted to do something new. It was a breath of fresh air.”

All of these factors led him to embrace America’s pastime.

Seven Italian-born players have played Major League Baseball, according to Baseball-Reference. One of them, Alex Liddi, currently plays for the Northwest Arkansas Naturals, Kansas City’s Double-A affiliate.

But Alex Maestri, an Italian pitcher formerly in the Chicago Cubs organization, was more responsible for Gasparini’s path.

Maestri once played for the Italian Baseball Academy. A 13-year-old Gasparini learned this and got in touch with then-Cubs scout Bill Holmberg, who is currently the Academy’s director.

“As soon as I saw him at 13, I knew we had a chance to create a superior player if we could work with him for a couple years,” Holmberg told Baseball America in 2013.

At 14, Gasparini joined the Academy, and he quickly caught the eyes of major league scouts.

Before he signed his contract with the Royals, some MLB scouts considered him the best European prospect they had ever seen, according to Baseball America. His MLB contract reflected that.

Gasparini’s $1.3 million signing bonus shattered the previous European record of $800,000, given to German outfielder Max Kepler by the Minnesota Twins.

“I did not expect anything like that coming,” Gasparini said. “People go crazy about it, but I try not to think about it. I try to take care of my family — my brother, my sister, my dad, my mom. What I earned is for them.”

The money helped ease his transition to the United States, despite Gasparini’s inability to cook much more than pasta and chicken (“Not pasta with chicken, though. [Italians] don’t do that,” he said). The Academy helped Gasparini learn English, and he was fluent by the age of 16.

“The excitement to be here as a professional baseball player overcame the fear of being in a new country,” Gasparini said.

The 6-foot, 165-pound Gasparini hit .191/.225/.250 (batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage) in 68 at-bats with Burlington last year, but his slash line skyrocketed to .455/.500/.727 in 11 at-bats with the Chukars last summer.

Gasparini, ranked Kansas City’s 20th best prospect by FanGraphs.com before the season, has hit .233/.295/.349 with Idaho Falls this season (through Thursday).

But Gasparini’s slow start doesn’t concern his organization.

Royals’ senior coordinator for player development John Wathan is impressed with Gasparini’s speed and defensive tools (strong arm, good instincts), despite 12 fielding errors this season.

“He’ll be a good player one day,” Wathan said.

Idaho Falls hitting coach Andre David is encouraged by Gasparini’s development, namely with hitting fastballs and breaking balls. However, David said Gasparini needs to lay off tough pitches more often (Gasparini has 35 strikeouts, tied for the most in the Pioneer League) and get less down on himself after a bad performance.

The soft-spoken Gasparini said he’s more comfortable two seasons into his professional career. His accent is hardly noticeable, especially when he utilizes his vast English vocabulary. And the baseball struggles don’t worry him. He’s 18, and like David, he believes he’s developing.

Gasparini still misses his parents’ home cooking, though.

“I kinda got spoiled in Italy,” Gasparini said. “But that’s such a minor thing. It says a lot about how comfortable I am here in the United States.”

On Sunday, July 5, I finished creating player profiles on ChukarsExtra.com for every Idaho Falls Chukar* on the active roster.

Here’s a link to the main page.

Those profiles included biographies, up-to-date season statistics, positions and photos for every Idaho Falls player (the ones without photos joined the club after opening day, when those head shots were taken).

ChukarsExtra.com was reconfigured in June, right before the Chukars’ season started. On July 5, the site had 250 page views, by far the most in one day since the site relaunched. As I write this at 11:30 p.m. on July 11, the site has 570 total page views.

Of those 250 views on July 5, 226 came from the main player profile page and the individual pages for each player (203 views came from two player pages, Brian Bayliss and Stephen Milligan’s).

My post on the Chukars Extra Facebook page only reached 25 people, but 172 or the 250 page views came through Facebook, likely from a family member of Bayliss and/or Milligan.

*The Chukars are a minor league baseball team affiliated with the Kansas City Royals. They are a short-season Single-A team, or Rookie-level, in the Pioneer League.

Last month, I attended a USA Football Heads Up clinic held in Rigby, a town just north of Idaho Falls. The clinic aimed at educating local coaches about proper football tackling techniques and other strategies to increase the sport’s safety.

But people have criticized the Heads Up program for sugarcoating the inherently dangerous nature of football.

My story addresses the goals of the clinic and the difficult mission to make a dangerous sport safer.

Here’s the link. The first section of the story is below:

RIGBY — Concussions ended Scott Criner’s football career.

Saturday, Criner helped teach coaches how to prevent that same fate.

Criner is the head football coach at Rocky Mountain High School, and he’s Idaho’s lone USA Football Master Trainer. He helped organize Saturday’s USA Football’s Heads Up Football Player Safety Clinic at Rigby High School.

The clinic’s lead speaker was Terry Summerfield, the head football coach at Barlow High School in Gresham, Ore., and a USA Football West Coast Regional Master Trainer. He lectured more than 20 local coaches about football player safety, from hydration to proper tackling techniques to concussion awareness.

Summerfield’s guidance included a crucial point.

“We know we can’t completely take the head out of the game,” Summerfield told the coaches.

Saturday’s clinic was a small part of the Heads Up Football program, which is attempting to tackle a complicated question: How do you make an inherently dangerous sport safer?

“Let’s do everything we can to reduce and try to eliminate the helmet from making contact,” Summerfield said in an interview. “We can’t completely, but let’s take it away from the initial contact. … That’s about teaching. It’s about education.”

Skyline High School baseball player Cole Mecham lost his father, Arden, two years ago. He hasn’t cut his hair since.

Here is my story on the impact of Arden’s death on Cole, and why he hasn’t cut his hair since.

Cole posted this tweet the day my story was published:

Update (7/9/15): As of July 9, the post for this story on the PR Preps Facebook page had reached 22,512 people, with 4,515 post clicks, 494 link clicks 743 total Likes (from the post and shares), 38 total shares and 37 total comments.

Here’s an excerpt:

On Saturday, Feb. 16, 2013, Cole went snowboarding with friends at Grand Targhee Resort in Alta, Wyo. Arden, a dispatcher for the oil transportation company Maxxon Energy, was days into a business trip in Watford City, N.D.

Cole, a Skyline freshman at the time, opened his phone on the ride back to Idaho Falls that afternoon. It wasn’t working. Later, he’d find out his mother, Darcy Mecham, suspended the phone.

Cole’s house was full of neighbors, friends and family when he arrived. Everyone had serious looks on their faces. Darcy Mecham and her mother, Laree Lundberg, asked Cole and his four siblings to sit on the couch. Laree told them.

Arden was dead.

Cole burst into tears, screaming, “No, no, no.”

That morning in North Dakota, Arden was driving westbound on Highway 23 in Lundberg’s Honda Accord (his car was in a shop). Reed Logan of National Oilwell Varco was driving a truck eastbound.

As Arden’s and Logan’s vehicles approached the crest of a hill, Logan’s rear tires slipped on the icy highway. The truck swerved into Arden’s lane at about 55 miles per hour, striking the front right side of the Accord, according to the crash report obtained by the Post Register. Arden’s vehicle spun into a ditch.

Arden died there at approximately 9:23 a.m. He was 37.

Earlier this year, Challis and Mackay high schools formed a baseball team with players from both schools. It is the first baseball team in the history of either school, both in the lowest classification (1A) of Idaho high school sports.

I initially reported on the formation of this team, and my story in the Post Register can be found here.

I also did a brief recap of the team’s first game, in which it was no-hit. That story can be read here.

And finally, I did a feature on how the team was performing with almost a full season under its belt. That story can be found here.

Here’s an excerpt of that final story:

Co-ops are fairly common in Idaho high school sports. Over the past five years, there has been an average of 26.2 co-ops per season in Idaho, according to data provided by the Idaho High School Activities Association. One of the four District 6 co-ops from 2009-14 was Challis-Mackay wrestling (2009-10 and 2011-12 seasons).

But these teams have come and gone. Many co-ops are heavily populated by one school, so when the smaller school graduates players, its representation in that sport often disappears. The Challis-Mackay wrestling team, for instance, graduated Mackay seniors, and Kevin Mora transferred from Mackay to Challis for his senior season in 2013. Now there’s only a Challis wrestling team.

The IHSAA only authorizes co-ops for two seasons, so if both co-op schools maintain players for more than one season, they would need to renew the team after the second year. Most co-ops fail to reach this point.

[Coach Ryan] Millick said his team has enough players for at least three more years.

Challis-Mackay currently has 14 boys from Challis and three from Mackay (Challis’ Josh D’Orazio is out for the season with a torn meniscus). Two players from Challis — Eric Rose and Tyler Hughes — had never played baseball before this year. Most hadn’t played the game since elementary or middle school in Babe Ruth leagues.

“This is my first time playing baseball since like eight years ago,” Mackay senior Naylan Whitworth said. “It’s fun to get into a sport I haven’t played in a while.”

Last month, I explored high school club rugby in eastern Idaho. The sport is fresh in the state, but especially in eastern Idaho, so I reported on the new teams and the growth of the sport in this area.

Here’s the story that appeared in the Post Register, with an excerpt below.

The Idaho Falls Girls are one of six high school girls team in Idaho, and they’re one of four teams that formed this year. The other three are Rocky Mountain, Eagle and Rigby, all boys teams.

Chet Blasucci, a defensive line coach for the Rigby football team, started the Royals Rugby Club. Like [Carly] Smith, Blasucci played rugby in college (at Utah), but his reasons for starting the club largely revolved around off-field issues.

Two of the players Blasucci coached on the gridiron got in legal trouble in the offseason.

“Let’s just say they needed a place to go, something to do,” Blasucci said. “Being bored isn’t always a bad thing, but it’s not always a good thing.”

By starting a rugby team, Blasucci could kill two birds with one rugby ball. He could coach a sport he loves while limiting the opportunities certain football players had to get into trouble.

The Rigby High School administration has supported the Royals, as well, even though rugby is not governed by the Idaho High School Activities Association. The entire Royals roster is made of of Rigby students, and the school allows the Royals to use its fields for practices and game.

Jumper Jason Kirby, top, practices with members of the Rigby Royals Rugby Club on their lineouts Wednesday at the Rigby Indoor Sports complex. (Pat Sutphin / psutphin@postregister.com)
“We’re just happy to get kids involved in whatever they want,” Rigby athletic director Bob Moon said.

The Idaho State football team had its first winning season in over a decade last year. Head coach Mike Kramer told me a big reason for the turnaround was due to an increased focus on academics. The results were tangible (e.g. a recovery of lost scholarships) and immeasurable (e.g. smart players –> smart plays –> wins), and I found that improved APR correlated with victories on the field.

Here’s the link to my story, with an excerpt below:

Idaho State went 6-39 (4-28 in conference) from 2007 to 2010, Zamberlin’s four years as head coach. The ineptitude reached its peak in 2008, when the Bengals needed an overtime win over Sacramento State in the season’s final game to avoid finishing 0-12. That season, Idaho State finished last in the FCS in total defense (480 yards per game) and second to last in scoring defense (41 points per game).

The Bengals lacked depth during Zamberlin’s tenure, due in part to a poor Academic Progress Rate (APR).

In 2010-11, Idaho State’s four-year APR was 881, and its average APR over the previous two seasons was below 900. Beginning in 2012-13, NCAA teams were required to have a minimum four-year APR of 900, or a two-year average of 930. If teams don’t meet those requirements, they’re penalized.

The NCAA took away about three and a half of Idaho State’s scholarships per year until the Bengals reached the minimum APR threshold, according to athletic director Jeff Tingey.

“A senior would graduate and we wouldn’t fill anyone in,” Tingey said in a phone interview.

Tingey, Kramer and company focused on improving the football team’s APR, and avoiding penalties wasn’t the only reason. Idaho State believed the on-field product would improve if intelligent players inhabited its roster.

Improved academics would, of course, give Idaho State the scholarships it lost, and a team full of academically eligible players would increase consistency. But Kramer believes intelligence is as important to on-field performance as physical attributes.

When Kramer recruits quarterbacks, he immediately looks at their academic transcripts. If their grade point average is below 3.8, he often passes.

“If your grade point isn’t exceptional and your brain doesn’t work fast enough then you can’t play the (quarterback) position,” Kramer said. “It’s not a javelin throwing contest.”

Junior college quarterback Michael Sanders announced on Twitter Feb. 12 that he would commit to Idaho State. That day, I followed him on Twitter, and he followed back. I sent him a direct message, asking if I could interview him. He said yes, and we talked the next morning.

My Q&A, published in the Post Register on Feb. 14, was exclusive. Here’s the link.

This week, I wrote a feature on Skyline High School freshman wrestler Kade Lincoln. He has dominated the 98-pound weight class so far in his high school career and looks like a star in the making.

The fact that Lincoln has become so successful while his father has battled esophageal cancer and its aftermath makes his story even more incredible. My interviews with Lincoln and his father were devastating, but they seem to be handling it as well as anyone in their situation could.

Here’s the link. Here’s the first section:

Kade Lincoln tries to clear his mind when he steps on the wrestling mat. Background noise is muted. Off-mat distractions evaporate.

Sometimes, life muddles things for the Skyline High School freshman. When it doesn’t, he becomes nearly unbeatable.

Kade has gone 22-0 in his young Skyline career, which includes a title in the 98-pound weight class at this month’s prestigious Rollie Lane Invitational. He’s become a star wrestler while his father, Mark, has battled the aftermath of esophageal cancer.

“Wrestling really helped me go through that phase,” Kade said. “I could stay focused with wrestling and not just worry about my dad.”