Variety rules as Cornhusker State Games open
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BY CORY MATTESON / Lincoln Journal Star
Before hundreds of the estimated 11,000 Cornhusker State Games athletes marched onto Seacrest Field to celebrate the opening ceremonies, they had to gather alphabetically by event.
And so, about an hour before the marching began, an impromptu conversation took place between a 13-year-old boxer wearing a championship belt as big as his torso and the longtime organizer of the State Games chess tournament.
Kyle Gorsuch came to Lincoln from Dix as part of a path of rampage in the ring that will hopefully have him London-bound come 2012 for the summer Olympics.
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Related Link(s):
* About 11,700 athletes have signed up for the 2008 Cornhusker State Games.
* The games start this weekend at more than 70 venues and continue through July 27.
* For a complete schedule and more details, go to: www.cornhuskerstategames.com.
“Can I shake your hand now?” Mike Nolan asked him.
Eventually, the members of the groups talked amongst themselves, with the two present chess players pontificating whether chess legend Aron Nimzowitsch actually yelled “Why must I lose to this idiot?” after losing a chess match; meanwhile, some of the boxers discussed spit buckets.
But before the factions went their separate ways, some common ground was found between the two very different disciplines.
“There’s counter moves and people setting them up for things,” Jerry Gorsuch, Kyle’s dad, said, talking about boxing.
“Stalin called it the ‘gymnastics of the mind,” Nolan added, regarding chess.
The two events begin today on opposite ends of the hall at Southeast Community College.
Perhaps, Jerry Gorsuch and Nolan said, participants from each could run down the hall and take a stab at the other. Chess boxing, in which four-minute rounds of chess are broken up by two-minute rounds of beating each other senseless, is sort of big in Europe, and on YouTube.
Before Nolan and the rest of the CSG participants took the field, he proposed another contest he would one day like to see — a hybrid of chess and roller derby.
Cornhusker State Games organizers, the gauntlet has been thrown.
Reach reporter Cory Matteson at 473-2655 or cmatteson@journalstar.com.
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