Stories from Saturday, January 6, 2007

SPENCER -- There's very little a defense can do when nearly every shot put up draws nothing but twine. Both Cascade and Van Buren County found that to be true on Friday night as the District 9-A opponents took turns shooting the lights out. When the smoke cleared from a fiery effort on both sides, the host Eagles went home with a 69-66 win...

When two young ladies decided to deliver Christmas gifts to the 237 residents of Bedford County's nursing homes and asked for help, they had no idea what the response from the public would be. The word "overwhelming" may fit. The pair ended up giving out some 1,900 presents, about seven or eight gifts per patient...

A woman who was working with a bogus resident alien card at the Sanford plant here pleaded guilty of identity theft Thursday when she was sentenced to a 4 1/2 year prison term. Shelbyville Police arrested Sara Chavez-Aguilar, 33, of Smith Street after Orange, Calif., Police called about a complaint from Angelica Ortega who was billed by the Internal Revenue Service for taxes owed by Chavez...

MOTLOW COLLEGE -- More than 60,000 Tennesseans have dropped out of college since the 1990s within just 30 credit hours of earning their associate's or bachelor's degrees. "For some reason, life happened," said David Gregory, vice-chancellor of Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR), during a legislative briefing Friday at Motlow State Community College...

The new sign erected Thursday on U.S. 231 (Murfreesboro Highway) reads "Future home of Bedford Medical Center," but passers by shouldn't read too much into the name, said Bedford County Medical Center CEO William Macri on Friday. The omission of the word "county" is not a name change, just a matter of achieving a bold, visible layout for the sign...

MANCHESTER -- If quickness and tough defense are two components to winning, Shelbyville Central has a great chance to defend their District 8-AAA championship. The Golden Eagles (10-5, 4-0) showed both those attributes in a 64-36 district win over host Coffee County (0-13) Friday night...

MANCHESTER -- It's almost a guarantee night in and night out when Shelbyville Central takes the floor their opponent is going to bring their 'A' game. The games are usually hard fought and very physical. With the success of the Eaglette program over the years, every opponent cherishes the thought of adding an upset win to their resume...

Webb got a combined 38 points from Hunter Foutch, Luke Baum and Jordan Burchett to soundly defeat visiting Community 60-45 Friday night at the Barton Athletic Center in Bell Buckle. The Feet (4-6) and the Vikings opened the game up slowly on offense as neither team put a lot of points on the board and the quarter ended in a 7-6 advantage for the visitors...

The Community Viqueens rolled into Bell Buckle as one of the hottest teams in the area and left with their ninth straight win by defeating Webb 51-10 on Friday night. Jessica Thompson, Heather Small and Courtney Vassar paced the Viqueens to a 22-0 start and turned the game over to their younger teammates from there to finish it out...

SPENCER -- It's never fun to watch referees take over a high school ballgame, but that's what happened in Van Buren County's 71-57 District 9-A win over Cascade. The zebras' whistles might need to be replaced after this one as a total of 61 fouls were called and eight girls fouled out. With the game out of hand, two more whistles blew with less than a second to go in the game...

Melvin Newcomb of Chapel Hill, a retired employee of Heil Quaker Corp., died Thursday in Columbia. He was 68. Services will be 2 p.m. Sunday at Lawrence Funeral Home in Chapel Hill with the Rev. Jack Douglas officiating. Burial will follow at Swanson Cemetery.

A very disturbing news item was reported Thursday that should have been more widely published. It appears that National Guard troops manning an observation post near the Mexico border in Arizona were forced to run away from a group of armed individuals who opened fire on our boys and then fled back south...