Salzman signs up

Log roller and boom runner JR Salzman will be home in time to compete in this summer's ESPN Great Outdoor Games V in Madison, Wis., July 8-11, after spending months in basic training as an Army National Guard in Fort Benning, Ga.

Salzman, who was a three-time silver medalist at the 2003 Games, enlisted in the National Guard last fall.

"He's actually wanted to join a couple of years prior to this but, being a mom, I put him off anticipating the war coming," said Salzman's mother, Bonnie. "You know, I'm kind of afraid. He's our only son. But I couldn't be more proud of him."

Salzman joined in September and will complete basic training in May, when he will return to Hayward, Wis., to train for the Games and teach log rolling clinics to about 100 children.

Bonnie Salzman said that the experience has been a life-changing one for her son.

"He likes somebody to say to him that he can't do it. That's his motivation," she said. "I've noticed a big change in his letters. He's probably grown up about 10 years in the last three months."

JR's six-year commitment got off to a strong start:

"I said, 'If you want to be a star, be a star on the water, log-rolling. You want to kind of blend in,'" Bonnie Salzman said. "He called me up three weeks later and said, 'Well, I'm a platoon leader.'"

Shana Martin stars in national awareness campaign

Salzman's fellow log roller Shana Martin - a University of Wisconsin-Madison grad - is also serving her community. Martin, whose mother, Deborah, suffers from Huntington's Disease, can be spotted in a print advertising campaign for Huntington's Disease Society of America. The ads have appeared in Newsweek, Sports Illustrated and Time Magazines.

Deborah Martin was diagnosed with the degenerative brain disease when Shana was very young. The ad campaign is just the latest in Shana's work for the HDSA: she served as a leader in the Huntington's Disease Society of America's National Youth Alliance and has served as a speaker and moderator at the HDSA's national conference.

Wahsburn retires winning Ticket

It's going to be a tough year for longtime fans of the Great Outdoor Games Retriever Trials. Coolwater's Winning Ticket, who won the 2002 gold medal and picked up a silver in 2003, has retired.

Ticket's owner and handler, Alexandra Washburn, announced recently that the 13-year-old black lab would no longer compete. In some ways, it means the end of an era at the Games, where Ticket and fellow retiree Super Sue, handled by Jerry Day of College Park, Ga., had already earned superstar status.

There is some good news: both Day and Washburn will return to the Games in 2004 for the retrievers' competition. Washburn's new dog, Ripper, qualified through the December Super Retriever Series competition in New Orleans, La., with a third-place finish, while Super Sue's daughter, Nike, posted a first-place finish with Day as her handler.