One busy 'Bear'

NEW ULM -- Sleepy Eye's Loren 'Bear' Havemeier has been a busy young man the past few weeks.

Take, for instance, what he has been doing recently.

First, he played on the Sleepy Eye Indian state baseball championship team.

He also played hockey in the Twin Cities preparing for his venture into Junior Hockey with Tri-City, based in Kearny, Neb.

Also in that same time span, he played for the Outstate team in the 2000 Minnesota High School Football All-Star Game.

There he had a good game, according to his high school football coach Dean Deibele.

"He caught four passes for around 40 yards. He caught a seven-yard touchdown pass (while being defended by Dominque Sims, who signed a D-I football scholarship with Minnesota) on a slant pattern."

Deibele said that 'Bear' was also used as a punt returner and brought back a punt for 35 yards, "but it was called back on a clipping penalty. He had some big third-down catches for first downs; two of his catches came on third-down situations that kept drives going. I think that (his coaches) were very impressed with him. They tried to get him the ball deep on numerous occasions.

"When he was split out (at wide receiver) he had Sims on him. He had quite the challenge in front of him and did very well."

"It was an awesome experience to get out on the field and play football again," said Havemeier. "With all the talented football players there it was a great experience. And it will be something that I will always remember."

Havemeier said that it "wasn't tough going from baseball to hockey to football in that short of time. I have always done it, but then (in high school) I had a couple of weeks in between. But it has just kind of grown on me now. I just take it day by day."

He said that his touchdown pass was on a quick slant and against a good cornerback (in Sims).

"He took the inside on me but I kind of faked him to the outside. He bit on it and that gave me enough time to accept the ball. I took a pretty big hit, though."

Havemeier said that he was one of the two smallest players on the field. "But I think that if I would have had one more touchdown, I may have been a candidate for the MVP award; I had a pretty good punt return also."

He said that he was the fastest player on the field for either team.

"We ran 40-yard dashes the first few days of practice and I did a 4.5 with the helmet on, and the next fastest was 4.6. The coaches were pretty impressed by that. The speed kept me on the field for special teams and they tried to get me the ball as much as possible on offense."

He said that in the agility drills he also did well. "They make you go down the line and go five yards to the left, touch, then go 10 yards to the left and then come back to the middle hash (mark) where you started from. An outstanding time is 4.2 and I did it in 4.03."

He said that getting back on the football field or one last time "felt good, and winning the last (football) game of my career was nice."

Havemeier said that when his state tournament baseball game was rained out (on Thursday) he played a hockey game that same night. "I ended up going home then and coming back up for the Friday (baseball) game. I came home again for one day and then left for football practice for the All-Star game for a week. I played (football) on Saturday, came home after the game and then left Monday night for a hockey game. I have another hockey game today (Tuesday) and then we have an (amateur) baseball game on Wednesday (tonight)."

Havemeier said that he will have a week off over the July 4th holiday. "That is kind of nice. Hopefully I can rest a little bit."

But as one Sleepy Eye resident said, "Everyday I see 'Bear' out running at 6 a.m., I am sure that I will still see him out running even with his days off."

GOLD GETTING TOGETHER: If you were over in Sleepy Eye to watch Legion Gold play Sleepy Eye Monday night, you came away feeling very good about this team.

Gold split a doubleheader with Fridley late last week and then left for Sioux Falls where they went 1-2 against some teams that they felt that they should have beaten.

Monday night, they took out some frustration on what will be a very good Sleepy Eye team with a 12-3 win. And it could have been worse.

Despite scoring 12 runs and banging out 19 hits, New Ulm still stranded 15 runners on base. I really feel that when Gold gets healthy pitching in Drew Waibel and Ryan Walters and you combine them with Ryan Wellmann, Craig Spelbrink, Andy Stolt and Scott O'Brien, this team will be a very good one.

Column by Jim Bastian, Journal sports writer