Capt. James Bales is an Air Force officer, an orthopedic surgeon, a star triathlete and is training to compete in the 2012 Olympics. Makes you feel like a doughy dullard, doesn’t it? But wait, there’s more: The Air Force brass named Bales of Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., as the service’s top male athlete of 2010. And while the rest of us were dealing with frigid temperatures, the doc was in San Diego last month to accept the award at the annual Air Force Sports Directors Conference. Now Bales, on staff at the Air Force Academy, is training for the…
Author Scott Fontaine
The New York National Guard’s newest soldier is bringing a bit of gold to the Army. Olympic gold medalist Justin Olsen enlisted during a ceremony Jan. 9 – and then flew to Europe to resume the World Cup bobsled season. Olsen, a private first class, will train as a human resources specialist. He also plans to apply for the Army World Class Athlete Program, which allows soldiers to juggle their military commitment with training and competitions. “I hope to be selected and, as a soldier-athlete, I hope that I can give back as much to the program as they are…
Vacation has always been a different strokes/different folks kind of deal. Some visit family; others stay at home. Some, like my colleague Mike Hoffman, spend a week sipping wine and eating cheese in Napa. One airman, though, heads to South Beach to work for his favorite NBA team. Staff Sgt. Parron Outing, assigned to the Air Force Network Integration Center, has been one of the team’s gophers since he was 12. As an attendant, he sets up the locker rooms and court before practices and games, fills ice bags, handles luggage and a bunch of other odd jobs. Not such…
Do you really — really — love service-academy football? Do you have cable or a dish? Well, hey, this is your weekend. CBS College Sports is touting the network’s Armed Forces Salute week, which will feature a triple header of mil-football goodness. For some reason CBS College Sports decided not to wait for two of the service academies to square off against each other, but we’ll let it slide. I guess VMI versus Army is close enough. Here is the full set of games: VMI plays Army at 12 p.m. EDT. Duke plays at Navy at 3:30 p.m. And Utah…
One Air Force officer is hoping hours in the gym each day could mean a trip to the NFL Combine — and the revival of a dream to play pro ball. Aaron Kirchoff, a 2009 graduate of the Academy, is a second lieutenant with the 50th Comptroller Squadron at Schriever Air Force Base, Colo. He said the idea of playing in the NFL after school “wasn’t even a question. You weren’t even asked if you were training for the combine.” But watching a couple of a former teammate surviving the cut in the NFL made Kirchoff think big. Chad Hall,…
Our friends at the Defense Media Activity brought our attention to Capt. Antoine Hood, the Air Force Academy graduate and one-time NBA player, who is still hoping to catch on with a pro team. Hood is now a reservist assigned to Hurlburt Field, Fla., where the Miami Heat held practice last month. Hood got to shoot hoops with the most promising team since Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird played three-on-three against a couple of fourth-graders. Hood signed with the Denver Nuggets after graduating from the Academy and played in three games during the 2006-07 season. He returned to…
