Good morning!
South Deerfield’s Brian Carney was a Navy SEAL when he read “Roberts Ridge” by Malcolm MacPherson. The book details Northampton native Britt Slabinski’s mission to rescue petty officer Neil Roberts from a snow-covered Afghanistan mountaintop in 2002.
“Roberts had fallen out of the helicopter as it was about to land,” said Carney. “It had been hit by an enemy grenade attack and crash landed in the valley. Slabinski’s SEAL team stormed back up the mountain and recovered his body. Al-Qaeda bodies were everywhere. He had a rifle and pistol and didn’t have a single round left. I read that book before I even went on my first deployment.”
Like others, Carney has learned about global terrorism from books and movies. He joined the Navy in 2000, three months after he graduated from Frontier Regional. “I joined SEAL Teams to do the stuff that SEALS do, and when 9/11 happened, it didn’t change that path,” he said. “I’ve talked to a lot of guys who joined up after Vietnam and they never saw combat. I was in 13 years and it encompassed my entire career. I saw a lot of Iraq and Afghanistan, the European and African theater.”
The stuff that SEAL teams do of course is to kill the bad guys like Osama bin Laden, and therein lies the rub.
“The movies are realistic, but with one big difference,” said Carney. “We can go on deployments for six months and there’s hot points and hot times, but if people think there’s a battle every day, that’s not the reality. The movie Zero Dark Thirty was realistic because it showed all that effort for all those years for a quick end result.”
The 37-year-old Carney was a special operations chief when he left the SEALS in 2013. “I wanted to find something in the civilian world, and it just scared the hell out of me to think I’d have an office job,” he recalled. “I noticed these military-themed obstacle courses being set up by civilians, and decided to start the world’s only Navy SEAL obstacle race.”
A week from today on Armed Forces Day, Carney and his SEAL team buddies will return to the scene of their inaugural event — the Bonefrog Challenge at the Berkshire East Mountain Resort in Charlemont.
“I didn’t want to call it the Navy SEAL challenge,” Carney said. “I remembered my friend’s tattoo of a frog on a bone. He said it was to pay homage to the Frogmen before us, and so I called my race the Bonefrog Challenge.”
The gates will open at 7 a.m., the national anthem is at 8 a.m. and the elite wave will go out at 8:15. “This race is home to us,” said Carney. “Navy SEALS will be at the finish line handing out the medals. We use the whole mountain, including the lower retention pond and another on top of the mountain. What’s unique is the chairlift, spectators can ride up and down and watch the event.”
This year’s Bonefrog Challenge will have 1,500 participants and about 1,000 spectators. Admission to watch costs $10 when purchased online and $15 the day of the race. The fees to participate are $95 (3.1-miles), $135 (six miles) and $150 (nine miles). Runners will be confronted with between 30 and 50 obstacles they must either crawl, swim, climb, or fall from, and will get credit for anything they can’t do if they drop and do an allotted number of military calisthenics. “We’ll have an observer at every obstacle,” said Carney.
The most daunting, he added, is the Black Ops Monkey Bars. “It’s at the end of the race, 28 feet in the air and not many get past it without falling into the safety net.”
For more info go to bonefrogchallenge.gom and click on New England event.
It’s hard to fathom how the Churchill Downs stewards could’ve missed seeing Maximum Security veer out turning for home in last week’s Kentucky Derby. Stewards have a birds-eye view of the track and use binoculars to detect even the smallest infractions.
My guess is they crossed their fingers and hoped none of the jockeys would file an objection, because Maximum Security was easily the best horse in the race. He was never headed and won by almost three lengths.
The stewards never posted an inquiry sign, but jockey objections by Flavien Prat (Country House) and Jon Court (Long Range Toddy) caused the ensuing squabble.
Maximum Security did veer out, but dropping him from first to 17th was like accusing George Brett of having too much pine tar on his bat. Common sense was rent asunder to the extent that online wagering site twinspires.com gave refunds of up to $10 to bettors who wagered on Maximum Security.
My daughter April asked me to put $5 on Maximum Security and four other horses. After the DQ she texted, “How much did I win now?”
“Zilch,” I replied.
“No,” she responded, “I picked him too because that’s where we are — a country house in Vermont.”
Her husband Corey had taken her north for her birthday dinner at Parker Pie in West Glover, Vt. I double-checked and she’d had $5 on the No. 20 and won $331.
“Yay!!!!” she responded. “I feel bad for the other guy, but not that bad.”
The “other guy” was trainer Jason Servis, who shipped Maximum Security to Monmouth Park and probably couldn’t get out of Louisville fast enough. On Thursday, the Asbury Park Press reported that a bouquet of roses arrived at Servis’s barn on the backstretch.
The note from an unidentified fan said, “Great race, it seems as though somebody forgot to give you roses.”
SQUIBBERS: Fifty-six years ago tonight, Sandy Koufax threw the second of his four no-hitters, beating San Francisco, 8-0, before 55,000 at Chavez Ravine. Harvey Kuenn (pronounced Keene) made the final out, a grounder back to Koufax. In “Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy” Jane Leavy wrote that first baseman Ron Fairly was grateful Koufax lobbed the ball underhand. “Years earlier, Koufax had fired a ball at point-blank range. ‘Threw it between my legs and chipped my cup,’ Fairly would remember. ‘It almost killed me.’” … The Red Sox are emailing former season ticket holders, trying to lure them into buying half-season ticket plans. The team is averaging 2,000 fans fewer than last year, and left field grandstand seats to last night’s game against Seattle were selling for under $20 on StubHub. … NHL director of ops Colin Campbell calls Dallas goalie Ben Bishop “a repeat performer on the embellishment list.” … Appearing on Sirius-XM’s Stellick & Simmer, Campbell was asked about Brad Marchand’s rabbit punch to the back of Columbus defenseman Scott Harrington’s head. “Maybe we should have suspended him last year for the licking,” quipped Campbell. … Injured Yankees third baseman Miguel Andujar might get Wally Pipped by Gio Urshela, who’s batting .354 (24-for-66) with four errors in 63 chances. … The UMass basketball team is 24 games under .500 (53-77) since the $30 million Champions Center for UMass Basketball opened. Do you suppose they could do a switcheroo and call it the Champions Center for UMass Hockey? … Deafened by the noisy PA system at San Diego’s Petco Park, Mets broadcaster Howie Rose used a line uttered by Brooklyn Dodgers broadcaster Red Barber: “Can you turn that up? I don’t think they can hear it in Jackson Heights!” …. Tough times for former Merrimack coach Mark Dennehy, whose Binghamton Devils finished with the second fewest points (63) and second lowest fan turnout (3,471) in the 31-team American Hockey League. … According to NESN, Red Sox infielder Michael Chavis lists his favorite animal as the quokka, called “the happiest animal on earth.” The quokka resides in Australia and resembles a woodchuck. … “Mad Dog” Chris Russo on why Maximum Security veered out turning for home: “Whether it was a giant puddle or crowd noise, we’ll never know. This is not Mr. Ed.”
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley. He can be reached by email at sports@recorder.com.