SB Nation Atlanta: All Posts by T Kyle King

It's All About the Benjamins: Why the University of Georgia Can Succeed as a Lacrosse School

2013-05-25T02:54:56Z

Happy Memorial Day weekend! As you may know, Division I men’s lacrosse is about to crown a new NCAA champion, and our own Lax Dawgs finished in the top 20 in the MCLA following their SELC championship season. That would seem to make this an opportune time for me to renew my efforts to state the case for varsity lacrosse at the University of Georgia.

First, though, a brief recap of what has transpired since last I posted in this space would seem to be in order. The Red and Black men’s tennis team made the national semifinals, while the ladies made the quarterfinals. The women’s equestrian team finished second in the nation for the third straight season, and the Gym Dogs made it back to the Super Six. The men’s golf team is about to begin competition for an NCAA title, whereas the women’s swimming team has already won a national championship. In short, if it’s a sport about which citizens are serious in affluent Peach State suburbs, particularly in metropolitan Atlanta, the University of Georgia is good at it.

This brings us to lacrosse.

Of the 32 high schools whose boys’ lacrosse teams made this year’s Class 5A and Class 6A playoffs, 31 of them hailed from one of six Georgia counties: Cobb, Columbia, DeKalb, Fayette, Fulton, and Gwinnett. According to 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data, those six counties all are among the ten wealthiest counties in the Empire State of the South, with each having a per capita income above $27,300 annually. If, as chuckdawg often has observed, the University of Georgia excels at "country club sports," lacrosse ought to be an endeavor at which the Bulldogs may do well merely by drawing from the areas of the state in which "the Creator’s game" is on the upswing.

Incidentally, according to this report (.pdf) from the University System of Georgia, Cobb, Columbia, DeKalb, Fayette, Fulton, and Gwinnett Counties together accounted for 54.9 per cent of the in-state first-time freshmen who enrolled at the University of Georgia in the fall of 2011 (the most recent autumn for which I was able to find complete data).

That’s right. The year before last, nearly 55 out of every 100 incoming Peach State frosh entering the University of Georgia hailed from one of the six counties that together accounted for nearly 97 per cent of this year’s high school lacrosse playoff field. Since they’ve come, we can build it.

This, of course, is not news to the fine folks involved in the highly successful Bulldog club lacrosse program, who know where to look for future players, and who showed the good sense to schedule a regular-season conference game at Centennial High School, home of the 2013 GHSA Class 6A state champions. It should not be news to the powers that be in Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall, but, given how long it took for David Perno to be fired, I’m not going to assume anything is so obvious that it absolutely goes without saying, so here it is:

Georgia is good at sports that are played at a high level in the high-income areas from which the student body in Athens increasingly is drawn. Lacrosse is no exception to this rule. Therefore, the Bulldogs should field varsity lacrosse teams in the same manner, for the same reasons, and with the same expectations as our equestrian, golf, gymnastics, tennis, and swimming and diving teams.

Go ‘Dawgs!

This brings us to lacrosse.

Go ‘Dawgs!

Poll

Should the University of Georgia field men's and women's Division I varsity lacrosse teams?

Yes, for both men and women.

97 votes

Yes, but only for men.

10 votes

Yes, but only for women.

3 votes

No.

9 votes

I don't know.

1 votes

120 votes | Poll has closed

It's the End of the World as We Know It, and I Feel Fine

2013-02-22T10:00:05Z

The retirement of Kyle King from blogging is the rare feat in sports. Kyle is hanging up his keyboard on his own terms. Only a few people can call it quits while they are in their prime. More people should take a cue from Kyle King and ride off in the sunset before they embarrass themselves.

The Grit Tree (January 16, 2013)

As MaconDawg says, “Maestro, let’s have the soundtrack:”

There we go. Now, to my reason for calling you all here today:

A lot of very thoughtful people wrote many very kind things after I announced that I would be leaving Dawg Sports as a site manager a few weeks ago, and the tributes included a Crock Pot recipe, a ballad, and some nice tweets, including one from a sitting U.S. Congressman and another speculating that I might not actually exist. I was, and remain, truly touched by the outpouring of support and affection. Of all the many words that were written, though, none absolutely nailed my reasons for leaving as precisely as the passage from Corbindawg quoted above.

While I was mulling over my future in the blogosphere, I kept thinking about Muhammad Ali. It is in the nature of sports metaphorically to compress life’s trajectory into so short a span that the rise, prime, and fall through which we all pass in our respective courses appear glaringly evident in the careers of great athletes, whose arcs are writ large with the burning traces of ascent, apex, and descent. So it was with Ali, who could have hung it up after avenging his 1971 loss to Joe Frazier, or after Kinshasa, or after Manila, or after beating Leon Spinks in their rematch. Instead, though, we were left with the images of his losses to Larry Holmes and Trevor Berbick, and “The Greatest” walked away not at the pinnacle, or anywhere near it, but at his nadir. It was a needlessly sad end to a glorious career.

I, obviously, am far from being the Muhammad Ali of sports blogging, but the lessons to be drawn from the lives of sports superstars are instructive for the rest of us average folks in much more mundane matters; indeed, this resonance is a large part of the appeal of athletics. 2012 was a great year for the Georgia Bulldogs, for Dawg Sports, and for me, as highlighted by my three “UNITE” appearances, and I am acutely conscious of the only direction available to anyone when standing atop a mountain, much as Henry II was aware of what it took “to be a king, alive[,] and fifty all at once” in The Lion in Winter.

I apologize if I sound self-important in saying so; I am attempting not to liken myself to great men, but to pay heed to their example in my own small sphere. While I can’t claim that Herschel Walker has any idea who I am, I nevertheless have poured a great deal of my time, my energy, my passion, and myself into this enterprise since I published my first posting here on February 22, 2006, exactly seven years ago today, so it is with great pride that I confess that I have become convinced of my own obsolescence.

That sounds like a bad thing, but it isn’t. In many ways, the goal of all our lives is to render ourselves, if not useless, at least dispensable. As a lawyer, my objective is either to help my clients plan for the future or to aid in restoring them as nearly as possible to their condition prior to a legal action that was brought or threatened; either way, my goal is to have them leave my office for the final time in a better settled condition than when they entered for the first time. Likewise, my intention as a Christian is to spread the Gospel to others, then to nurture them in that walk until they are able to stand on their own in their relationship with God. Within the walls of my own household, my purpose as a parent is to raise my children in such a way that they will reach adulthood as fully functional independent human beings who are prepared to face the world.

In each instance, the point is to render service in such a way as to make myself no longer mission critical, and we think little of those who succeed in other ways yet fail in this crucial task. What would we think of Christianity today if, after Jesus of Nazareth no longer walked with them, the Disciples had lost their faith and scattered? What would we think of the Founding Fathers if, after winning the Revolutionary War, they had failed in forging a government adequate to sustain the union and allowed the weak independent states to be picked off one by one by foreign powers? Would we remember them at all?

There is a scene in the movie “Broadcast News” in which Holly Hunter’s boss sarcastically says to her, “It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you’re the smartest person in the room.” “No,” she replies sincerely. “It’s awful.” I had the opposite sensation the first time I signed onto Dawg Sports and saw well-written posting after well-written posting published at the site and placed on the front page by someone other than me; had someone then said to me, “It must be lousy to know that the weblog for which you used to be the only author now can get along just fine without you writing a word,” my response would have been: “No, it’s wonderful.” As I said on my last podcast, it has been liberating to know that the community has grown to the point of being able to survive without me. I leave here proud of my service as a member of the team that made Dawg Sports what it is and will continue to be.

Too many other people have contributed to that achievement for me to thank them all here, but a few of the more noteworthy participants in this process deserve special mention. My thanks go out to Paul Westerdawg, for inviting me into the blogosphere; to Peter Bean, for bringing me over to SB Nation; and to Joel Hollingsworth, for his friendship and support as my league manager and immediate supervisor for much of my time with the network. My most heartfelt gratitude and appreciation go out to chuckdawg, DavetheDawg, hailtogeorgia, Ludakit, MaconDawg, Mr. Sanchez, NCT, podunkdawg, RedCrake, Spears, The Quincy Carter of Accountants, and vineyarddawg for their dedication, their hard work, their good humor, their support, and their camaraderie and friendship. Of all the things that I will miss most about sports blogging, the relationships we as a staff have built with one another will be what I cherish the most. I am grateful to them all for making it possible for me to make my exit with complete confidence that what we have created will continue to flourish. Finally, my thanks go out to my family, for their patience and support throughout the time I have spent in this endeavor, and to the Dawg Sports community, as all of you made this fun and worthwhile for me. I am indebted to all of you, more than you will ever know.

More than one person has asked where I plan to go from here. Honestly, there’s only so far I have thought that question through, but the short version is this: I’m going to go to a game, and cheer for the ‘Dawgs without any responsibility in the matter apart from being a devoted fan; I’m going to go home, and spend time with my children while my laptop remains in its carrying case; I’m going to go to work, and concentrate on my professional life without being interrupted by breaking news in the middle of the workday; I’m going to go to church, and take part in worship without reflecting on the week’s posting schedule; I’m going to go on a date with my wife, and not worry about checking the live scoring on that evening’s Georgia sporting event; I’m going to go to the couch, and lie down to relax with a good book; I may not go anywhere at all, inasmuch as I’m putting a great deal of effort into learning just to be. I hope that makes sense; I’m sorry if it doesn’t.

What I hope is clear from the above examples is that, ultimately, this really is not about sports blogging at all; it is about my need, at this stage of my life, to recharge, to reassess, to renew. Toward that end, in order that my last word might truly serve as my last word, I have opted to close the comments on this posting from the outset, lest I be thought rude by not replying to any responses that might be left. My e-mail address appears on my user profile, and anyone who is so inclined may contact me by that means, but I wanted to be able to post this farewell and walk away for a while, in order to allow the transition to occur without the awkwardness and distraction of my continued presence. At some point, after everything has gotten settled for all of us, I plan to return as just another member of the community, though I’m not sure when. For a while, and for the first time in too long a while, and maybe for the first time ever, I intend to take life as it comes and float where the current carries me.

In his farewell address to the White House staff, Richard Nixon acknowledged one of the few failings of the otherwise robust and refined English language when he said: “You are here to say goodbye to us, and we don’t have a good word for it in English. The best is au revoir. We’ll see you again.” Our paths will cross at a later date, but, in the meantime, take care, be good to yourselves, be good to each other, and, ever and always, go ‘Dawgs.

Instantaneous Ill-Informed Roundball Wrapup: Arkansas Razorbacks 62, Georgia Bulldogs 60

2013-02-22T02:37:05Z

We are nearing the end of my last week as a site manager here at Dawg Sports, and, as a result, I have elected to trot out for the final time in my tenure a few old standards, some of which have fallen by the wayside over the years. On Monday, I brought you Kyle Gets Contrary; on Tuesday, Slow News Day Tuesday; on Wednesday, the Weekly Weblogger Challenge (for which the winner will be announced at the end of this posting); and, tonight, the Instantaneous Ill-Informed Roundball Wrapup, which initially appeared here in January 2010.

Unfortunately, my stewardship of this feature will not have a happy ending, though Mark Fox’s charges certainly gave it their best shot with a 42-34 second-half effort. The Arkansas Razorbacks leapt out to a 4-0 lead against the Georgia Bulldogs in the first two minutes and change, then proceeded to shut down the Hoop Hounds with aggressive defense. How aggressive? The Red and Black had nine points at the ten-minute mark, and three of those came on free throws. In the final ten minutes before intermission, a Sherrard Brantley trey represented the only Bulldog bucket that wasn’t made from the charity stripe.

Georgia failed even to make one-quarter of its shots from the field in the opening 20 minutes (4 of 17) and managed only a 20 per cent success rate from beyond the arc (1 of 5). Were it not for the Razorbacks’ eleven fouls (and the Bulldogs’ resulting nine made free throws), the Red and Black’s ten-point deficit at the break would have been even worse.

Brantley picked up where he left off to start the second half, knocking one down from way downtown to put the Athenians at a football-like 28-21 disadvantage. Rickey Scott answered with a three-pointer of his own, but a Nemanja Djurisic layup and a Vincent Williams trey pulled the Hoop Dogs within five. That margin remained the same with fifteen minutes to play, but Anthlon Bell drained a pair of three-pointers to stake Arkansas to a 39-30 lead.

After Bell extended the home team’s advantage to eleven points, Georgia scored eleven straight in a three-minute span, tying it up at 41 with four consecutive free throws. The game then became a back-and-forth battle, as B.J. Young and Djurisic traded layups, Donte` Williams answered a Coty Clarke jump shot with a dunk, and Kikko Haydar and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope swapped three-pointers to make it a 48-48 ballgame with six and a half minutes remaining.

A Haydar foul shot and a Clarke layup put Arkansas up by three, but a trio of Caldwell-Pope free throws snarled the score once more, this time at 51, and a Marshawn Powell layup was countered with a Tim Dixon dunk to give both teams 53 points as the clock ticked under three minutes. Caldwell-Pope buried the trey that gave the Bulldogs their first lead of the game, but Powell hit a three of his own with just under two minutes left.

Two free throws by Mardracus Wade were offset by two more by Caldwell-Pope to make it 58-58 with a minute to go. Powell bulled his way inside to make the tiebreaking layup, then Caldwell-Pope got the ball to fall on a toilet-bowl roll to knot the contest once more with scarcely 30 seconds showing on the scoreboard. Young scored the final points of the contest on the layup that gave the Razorbacks a 62-60 lead, and, after getting the ball back with five seconds to play, the Red and Black could not get the final shot to drop before the buzzer sounded, so Georgia came up just short following a valiant second-half effort on the road.

Rather than dwell on this latest squandered opportunity, I choose instead to move on to the pleasant part of the evening. I appreciated the fine entries submitted by Bernie, Cherokee’s Grip, IceeDawg, and NCT, but the honors went to Tyler Dawgden, who not only used all five terms from the last Weekly Weblogger Challenge, but also all five terms from the first Weekly Weblogger Challenge, as well. Add to that an NCT-approved purposeful omission of an Oxford comma and a sly titular reference to the point of origin of the Weekly Weblogger Challenge (and one of the common bonds Tyler and I share), and it became clear who had earned the trophy in a richly deserving field. Congratulations, old friend, and thanks, old friends.

Go ‘Dawgs!

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Georgia Bulldogs at Arkansas Razorbacks Basketball Game Night Open Comment Thread

2013-02-21T23:30:08Z

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: Georgia is doomed. The Hoop Dogs collapsed against Alabama, got hosed against Ole Miss, are among the last eight teams out of the NIT, and may even be one of the last eight teams into the CBI. Nevertheless, the Georgia Bulldogs are our team, and we here at Dawg Sports are true to our school, so we will root for Mark Fox and his charges until the bitter end. Accordingly, we would ask you to join us in the comments below for tonight’s game against the Arkansas Razorbacks in Fayetteville. (No, not the one in Georgia.)

The game will be televised on ESPN2 (with Rece Davis and Bobby Knight at courtside), and you may track the stats here. Also, please remember that the Weekly Weblogger Challenge remains open for entries through 9:00 p.m. Athens Standard Time tonight, and that the winner will be announced in the Instantaneous Ill-Informed Roundball Wrapup later this evening.

Go ‘Dawgs!

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Go ‘Dawgs!

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Georgia Bulldogs Baseball Needs and Deserves a Better Head Coach Than David Perno, Right Now

2013-02-21T18:00:12Z

All right, I’m done. I mean, yeah, I’m almost literally done, but I mean I’m done with David Perno after last night’s loss by the Diamond Dogs. Hey, I’m in my last 24 hours as a sports blogger, so I have to take advantage of my final opportunity to call for the firing of a coach, just for old time’s sake, right?

In my defense, though, it isn’t as though I haven’t given Coach Perno his chances. After the 2007 season, I insisted that it was Omaha or bust in 2008, but, when he got Georgia to the College World Series finals the following year, I took up for him. I had mixed emotions when Coach Perno hired himself to be the Bulldogs’ pitching coach, and that ambivalence carried over to the 2011 Corvallis Regional. By 2012, I was stating the case for replacing Coach Perno and criticizing Greg McGarity for failing to listen to my advice.

Last year, circumstances compelled me to author postgame baseball recaps whose headlines read “Bullpen Meltdown and Offensive Anemia Doom Diamond Dogs for Bajillionth Dadgum Time” and “Diamond Dogs Suffer Setback So Shameful, It Would Require Them to Commit Ritual Suicide to Restore the Lost Honor of Their Ancestors If They Were Japanese.” Predictably, that season ended badly. Following an offseason in which Coach Perno rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic and Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall delayed upgrades to Foley Field, where are the Diamond Dogs? Well, lo and behold, they’re right where we thought they would be.

Georgia began the season on the road in Statesboro, where the Red and Black were held scoreless in the final six innings yet held on for a one-run victory in a game in which the Athenians committed a pair of errors and stranded nine baserunners. The following day, the Classic City Canines scored one earned run, drew one walk, and struck out eight times in a one-run loss that saw the Bulldogs held to one run in the final seven stanzas. The series with Georgia Southern concluded on Sunday with an 11-2 embarrassment in which Georgia was outhit, 14-7, fanned eight times, and drew no bases on balls. Those trends continued on Wednesday night, when the Diamond Dogs managed four hits, one walk, one run, and seven strikeouts against Kennesaw State.

For those of you scoring at home, Georgia is 1-3 following a three-game losing streak during which the Red and Black have managed a combined five runs to cement their stature as no better than the fourth-best college baseball team in the state. To put it mildly, this does not bode well for the Classic City Canines, who have upcoming three-game series against Arkansas, Florida, Georgia Tech, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Vanderbilt, all of whom currently are ranked in the top 20.

We knew going in that, if the Diamond Dogs did anything in 2013, they would have to do it by the skin of their teeth. It ought to be clear after this sorry start that such an upswing simply ain’t going to happen. Since game one of the 2008 College World Series finals, Coach Perno’s clubs have gone 119-124 overall and 50-67 in SEC play. Enough is enough. David Perno needs to be fired, now.

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Poll

Should David Perno be fired?

Yes, effective immediately.

66 votes

Yes, effective as of the end of the season.

30 votes

No.

6 votes

I am reserving judgment until the end of the season.

19 votes

Is it G-Day yet?

22 votes

None of the above. (I have explained my answer in the comments.)

0 votes

143 votes | Poll has closed

Programming Note: Dawg Sports Radio Appearance Set for 8:45 a.m. AST

2013-02-21T13:19:34Z

Programming Note: Dawg Sports Radio Appearance Set for 8:45 a.m. AST

At 8:45 a.m. Athens Standard Time today---like, in half an hour---I am scheduled to appear on 92.1 The Ticket with Josh Bertaccini to discuss tonight's Georgia-Arkansas basketball game. Listen in, if you would.

Go 'Dawgs!

"It's Almost Time to Shuffle Off to Buffalo": Of Things Said, Unsaid, and Left for Others to Say

2013-02-21T04:45:02Z

Astounded and kind of humbled that @dawgsports tonight linked to a very very old post I wrote. Maybe I should get back to blogging?
— Jim Ludlam (@thebstardsback) February 20, 2013

Getting wistful about T.Kyle King leaving @dawgsports. Introduced a lot of us to the concept of blogging.
— Tyler Dawgden (@TylerDawgden) February 20, 2013

wistful = pissed RT @tylerdawgden: Getting wistful about T.Kyle King leaving @dawgsports. Introduced a lot of us to the concept of blogging.
— Bernie (@BernieDawg) February 20, 2013

I strongly suspect that the way I feel now is, on a smaller scale, not unlike what I will feel a few years hence, as my children prepare to go away to college. It is, in essence, this: There’s stuff I’ve been trying to say for a while, but I don’t know if I’ve been saying it well enough to be understood, or if what I’ve said has been believed, or if maybe I’ve said so much that the really important stuff got lost, so, right here, right now, with what little time I have left, I really need to deal with the big picture, to go back to the beginning and summarize, to highlight the fine details in the context of the larger themes, to get down to the heart of the fundamental questions, without getting distracted or bogged down in the stupid silly irrelevant ephemeral crap of the moment that won’t amount to a thing 20 years from now. To do all that, in the short span I have left, what do I say?

Do I explain again why we are who we are, and why that matters? If memory serves (and it well may not), it was Jefferson who said that, in matters of principle, we were to stand like a rock, while, in matters of fashion, we were to swim with the current, but how do we tell the difference, and at what point do enough concessions to the tenor of the times amount to an abnegation of principle? To what degree must we accept that changes we espouse are unlikely to occur, or that values we deem absolutely essential are simply doomed?

Must I insist that it is our duty to tilt at windmills, to affirm that the past not only isn’t dead, it isn’t even past? Such a course seems inevitably to lead, ever and always, to disappointment, producing only bloodlettings that never will leave us. Is that the fate I want to ensure endures? On the other hand, though foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, rational consistency is the mark of integrity, and we could use a little of that, even---especially---in changing times.

That word is the crux of the matter, though, isn’t it? Time. The three archetypal American novels, William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, respectively end with the words “place,” “past,” and “Time,” the last one capitalized, to emphasize its importance. It’s all about that, it always has been all about that, and maybe that’s why Larry Munson was forever focusing on the clock, on its movement, vel non, on its refusal to do what we needed it to do, working invariably against our interests, up there on the Sanford Stadium scoreboard, which, my word, may just as well have been Quentin Compson’s watch up there, for all the favors it did us, and Larry tried to tell us, was always warning us that there was no time, there was just no time, and now there almost literally is no time left, and, if I haven’t said it by now, I’m just going to have to live with the knowledge that I’m never going to get it said, that, if it is said, it will not be said by me, and it may not get said at all, and it may not need to be said, it may be a part of a place and a past whose Time has elapsed.

The thing of it is, at some point in the course of every human endeavor, we’re all Curt Henderson looking out the airplane window and smiling wistfully at the sight of a white Ford Thunderbird cruising down the contracting ribbon of highway, and, when it’s time to take that scholarship from the local Moose Lodge, we’re all past the point of wondering whether we’ve said all that needed saying. Oh, no, I’ve said too much; I’ve said enough.

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The Return of the Weekly Weblogger Challenge

2013-02-20T14:00:09Z

As you are aware by now, this is my last week as a site manager here at Dawg Sports, so I am reviving for the final time a few formerly standard features from days gone by, including Kyle Gets Contrary on Monday and Slow News Day Tuesday on Tuesday (duh!). We now turn to an oldie but a goodie, the Weekly Weblogger Challenge, which initially appeared at Dawg Sports in February 2006 after debuting at my old weblog, Kyle on Football, two weeks earlier.

Because 2006 was the Pleistocene Epoch in blog years, a word of explanation is in order. First, though, here’s a tweet related to Georgia Bulldogs bass fishing:

#GetAfterTheirBass RT @dawgsports: It's college bass fishing season at Lake Lanier! #GoDawgs fb.me/1W5jPtJFz twitter.com/BassinDawg/sta…
— GATA Dawgs (@BassinDawg) February 19, 2013

Now, to the matter at hand. As a student at the University of Georgia, I was an active member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society, which meets in Phi Kappa Hall on North Campus every Thursday night for creative writings, debate, and oratory. Occasionally, a fellow Phi Kappan, Pete Allen, and I would add to the adventure of speaking extemporaneously by giving one another lists of five more or less random nouns, which each of us was to work into his speech on a given topic.

The rule was that you couldn’t just stand up and list the five nouns; you had to integrate them into your speech in a coherent way. I introduced this concept into the college sports blogosphere in 2006, when what is now an exploding industry was a ragtag collection of closely-knit hobbyists, and it got a nice response for the brief time that it lasted.

My challenge to my fellow sports bloggers, both here and elsewhere, and to those loyal readers who wish to participate, is to author and publish a weblog posting, fanpost, or fanshot incorporating the following five concepts in a cohesive manner, either here at Dawg Sports or at another site, and post the link to it in the comments below. You have 36 hours within which to do so; the competition will close at 9:00 p.m. Athens Standard Time Thursday night, roughly at the same time tomorrow night’s basketball game ends, and I will announce the winner in my final Instantaneous Ill-Informed Roundball Wrapup. The winner will receive the eternal gratitude of a retiring sports blogger, for whatever that happens to be worth.

Here, for the final time, I bring you . . .

The Weekly Weblogger Challenge

George Washington

The Battle of Toulon in the War of the Austrian Succession

Charlotte York MacDougal Goldenblatt

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Joseph Henry Lumpkin

My thanks go out in advance to all who participate.

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