October 2019 – Pima Post

31Oct

By Pima Post Editorial TeamNo Comments

News

Tucson looks to help residents thrive

Photo and story by JOE GIDDENS The “Thrive in the 05” initiative was formed last fall to revitalize the Oracle corridor, an area from the Pima Community College Downtown Campus going north to Miracle Mile and bounded by I-10 to the west. It’s an area that is steeped in indigenous history with some of the Pascua Yaqui’s Tribe’s earliest residences. The area saw a boom with the advent of the automobile’s arrival in the American West as the northern gateway to Tucson. The route followed Miracle Mile; then turned on Oracle Road; then turned onto Drachman Street and went Downtown before exiting the area on South Sixth Avenue. The completion of Interstate 10 in 1961 left residents facing a number of challenges with their customers routed elsewhere. Presently, this area of Tucson has roughl...

24Oct

By Pima Post Editorial TeamNo Comments

Stomping Grounds

Hop into east side’s Hop Street Lounge

By JOSHUA SHAVER From the outside, Hop Street Lounge looks like a smaller bar. But once I walked in, I saw a really big, clean bar. Impressive. There’s a lot of room for people to lounge around, socialize and feel comfortable while drinking a variety of alcoholic beverages. Hop Street opened about six months ago. It has seen an influx of people that are there to play various games and drink craft beers. The very clean bar and new equipment give off a comfortable vibe. I loved the setting and the lighting of the bar, which gives off a smooth and chill environment. The eight TVs that Hop Street features is a bonus for people who want to drink and watch sports. The owner of the bar, Damien Jenkins, talked about opening his first bar. “It was an exciting risk that has paid off du...

Call it a comeback: Marks rebounds from knee injury

24Oct

By Pima Post Editorial TeamNo Comments

Sports

Call it a comeback: Marks rebounds from knee injury

Story and photos By COREY McMULLEN To say you blew out your knee is one thing. For Aztec women’s soccer player Reilly Marks, a blown-out knee doesn’t even begin to describe what happened to her knee during a preseason practice in July 2018 at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. NMSU was where Marks was playing on a scholarship. She said it was a rainy day, and the field was very wet. Marks has been playing soccer since she was 3 years old. She’s the middle child with an older sister and one younger brother. Born and raised in Tucson, Marks is very family oriented. When not working on schoolwork or kicking game-winning goals, Marks loves to spend much of her free time with her family. “My brother’s a senior at Cienega (High School), and he plays football there,” she s...

Pima Aztec Women’s Basketball Season Preview

24Oct

By Pima Post Editorial TeamNo Comments

Sports

Pima Aztec Women’s Basketball Season Preview

Story and photo by KYLE KERSEY Last year, the Pima Community College Women’s Basketball team finished strong, achieving victory in the fifth-place game of the NJCAA Division II tournament. The win came after a tough loss to Kansas City (Kansas) Community College in the quarterfinals, the team that would eventually win the championship. Entering his 13th season with the Aztecs, Todd Holthaus has been the coach of Pima’s Women’s Basketball team since 2007. His teams have enjoyed a large amount of success, finishing as high as the runner-up in the NJCAA Division II tournament in 2011. His teams have finished with at least 20 wins over the past four seasons. Working alongside him is a mix of four assistant coaches, including newcomer and Tucson native Nalani Hernandez, as well as returning...

Nash helps lead Pima Volleyball on the court.

24Oct

By Pima Post Editorial TeamNo Comments

Sports

Nash helps lead Pima Volleyball on the court.

By ANGEL CANEZ Aztec Volleyball is being led by Madi Nash, a 19-year-old sophomore star outside hitter from Tucson’s Sahuaro High School. Nash has a lifelong love for the sport of volleyball. She comes from a family of volleyball players: Her older sister Morgan Nash plays D-2 volleyball for Missouri Southern State University in Joplin, Missouri, and her twin, Abi, plays D-1 volleyball for Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. Nash leads the team leader in kills (volleyball version on scoring a point) and is ranked 60th in the nation in kills per set at 2.7. Nash gave a lot of credit for her improvement this year to Carla Garrett, Pima’s strength and conditioning coach. “I think my physicality has improved a lot, and I feel like I started jumping a lot higher than I did l...

24Oct

By Pima Post Editorial TeamNo Comments

Arts & Entertainment

The game is afoot at Pima

by ANGEL CANEZ Pima Community College Center for the Arts is putting on a production of “Baskerville,” which is based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1902 classic Sherlock Holmes novel “The Hounds of the Baskervilles,” along with touches of comedy in their audience-interactive murder-mystery tale. “Sherlock is a timeless story,” director Chris Will said. “So it’s always fun to tell a Sherlock Holmes story, and it was going to challenge the students because they have to play multiple characters. “It’s a real challenge for them to switch really quick back and forth from one character to another,” Will added. “Sometimes the actors are having the same conversion with themselves as a different character. It’s a really challenging and fun experience.” The role of Dr. Watson will take a slightly...

Pima College increases security measures

24Oct

By Pima Post Editorial TeamNo Comments

News

Pima College increases security measures

Photo and story by JOE GIDDENS Security at Pima Community College is an ongoing concern but several initiatives are in place. Text Alerts Mass alerts from Pima Police go out by email and text alerts. About 70,000 people in Tucson get the emails, but 7,000 to 9,000 get the text alerts because people must volunteer their numbers for the alert system, according to Pima Police officer Michelle Nieuwenhuis. Pima Police wants to increase the number of people receiving text alerts, because people are more inclined to check texts than they are email. Plus, there won’t be the issue of messages accidentally ending up in the spam filter. Students’ information will be entered into Omnilert, which is Pima’s text alert vendor and people will then have the ability to opt out if they don’t want to...

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: We are all Toby Keith

24Oct

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Opinion

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: We are all Toby Keith

By JOE GIDDENS We are all Toby Keith. Words that I never imagined I would string together. However, you can see the U.S.’s Middle East policies for both 2019 and 2001 are personified in the singer-songwriter who’s in the closing stretch of his “That’s Country Bro!” tour. To go back to May 2017, Keith put on a concert in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh. I’m assuming the set list didn’t include performing his post-9/11 hit “Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue (The Angry American),” before the country of origin of 15 of the 19 hijackers. “(My dad) would be so angry right now to know that we’ve gotten so soft,” Keith said in an interview about that song with country-music website The Boot a month before the performance. “You have to be stronger and know right from wrong, instead of right ...

Women in Industry Summit convenes Downtown

24Oct

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News

Women in Industry Summit convenes Downtown

Photo and story by JOE GIDDENS Christina Koch and Jessica Meir made history Oct. 18 with the first all-female space walk to replace a power controller on the International Space Station. Some 254 miles below at the Downtown Campus, Pima Community College hosted its first Women in Industry Summit. The goal of the event was to promote women in STEM fields and in fields that have been historically male-dominated. The event was organized by Pima program adviser Anthony Hinckley. He had several female students inform him of difficulties they’ve faced and their concerns about entering into these types of fields. “It all kind of boiled down to ‘Am I going to be OK in a male-dominated industry?’ ” The students’ issues were not so much about breaking into these fields. Instead, they were a...

Cowboys have a Super Bowl appearance in their future

24Oct

By Pima Post Editorial TeamNo Comments

Opinion

Cowboys have a Super Bowl appearance in their future

By JOSHUA SHAVER The Dallas Cowboys are 4-3 this year, and their schedule only gets tougher from here on out. The team will face the Philadelphia Eagles again, the New England Patriots on the road and the Chicago Bears on the road. The Cowboys schedule is as tough as it comes. With that being said, the Cowboys will make the Super Bowl, and here’s why: The Cowboys have been the best team on offense in the league so far this season. Offensively, the Cowboys - through seven games - rank third in passing yards and first in total offense. The Cowboys are averaging 27 points a game, so they are pretty elite compared to the league average offensively. Quarterback Dak Prescott is ranked first in QBR, which is the best stat for rating quarterback performances. Prescott is third in p...