Archer County Advocate (Holliday, Tex.), Vol. 4, No. 48, Ed. 1 Thursday, March 8, 2007 Page: 14 of 20
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14 Thursday, March 8, 2007
Capitol
t
r M ATO P.
KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON
March Madness Comes to Texas
Football has long been the
essential sport for Texans. It has
even been said that there are only
two sports in Texas - football and
spring football. Though football
remains as popular today as ever,
our state has also developed into
a basketball hotbed. Some of the
best basketball in America is
played in the Lone Star State,
and this month Texans will ex-
perience March Madness.
* Each March, 65 men’s and
64 women’s college basketball
teams from across the nation
compete in three-week tourna-
ments to crown national cham-
pions. These captivating tourna-
ments are coined March Mad-
ness because of their unpredict-
able nature. This year’s tourna-
ments are sure to have a distinct
Texas flavor.
One of the biggest stories
of this season has been Texas
Tech coach Bob Knight’s ascen-
sion to the all-time winningest
men’s coach. Coach Knight sur-
passed former North Carolina
coach Dean Smith with his
880th career victory on January
1, and since then has added to
his record victory total.
University of Texas
women’s coach Jody Conradt,
who ranks No. 2 all-time among
women’s coaches in victories, is
closing in on her 900th career
win. She ended the regular sea-
son with 899 career victories,
and with one more win she will
become just the second collegiate
coach to ever reach the 900-win
plateau.
Texas A&M has also
achieved an unprecedented level
of success this season. For the
first time, both the University of
Texas and Texas A&M are vy-
ing for the Big 12 championship.
Under the leadership of
coaches Billy Gillispie and
Gary Blair, the A&M men’s and
women’s basketball teams have
each earned their highest
rankings in school history.
Coach Gillespie and the men’s
team earned a ranking as high
as No. 6 in the nation this sea-
son, while Coach Blair and the
Lady Aggies have climbed as
high as No. 10. Texas A&M has
a long and proud football tradi-
tion, and the Aggies are now
making a mark in Big 12 bas-
ketball.
Other notable storylines
this March will include the Uni-
versity of Texas men’s basketball
team and its star freshman Kevin
Durant, who has appeared on the
cover of Sports Illustrated and is
considered a candidate for na-
tional player of the year. Mean-
while, the Baylor women’s bas-
ketball team is nationally ranked
and in pursuit of its second na-
tional championship in three
years. In 2005, Coach Kim
Mulkey led the Lady Bears all
the way to the national title, a
victory that remains the only na-
tional basketball championship
- men’s or women’s - in the his-
tory of the Big 12 conference.
And she made history as the first
woman to win a national cham-
pionship as both a player and as
a coach.
In Texas, March Madness
is not limited to college basket-
ball. High school boys and girls
basketball teams will compete
this month for University Inter-
scholastic League state champi-
onships. Over back-to-back
weekends, the final four high
school teams of all classifications
flock to Austin to compete for
state titles. These teams, which
represent small Class A schools
with enrollments of less than 200
students to Class 5 A schools with
enrollments over 2,000 students,
enjoy tremendous support from
their communities, who make
state tournament weekends some
of our capital’s busiest times of
the year.
The winningest high
school basketball coaches in the
nation are also Texans. Former
Fort Worth Dunbar coach Rob-
ert Hughes, who retired in 2005,
holds the boys all-time record
with 1,333 victories, while
Granbury coach Leta Andrews,
who became the all-time
winningest girls Coach last sea-
son, ended this season with
1,257 career victories.
In the NBA, the Dallas
Mavericks, San Antonio Spurs
and Houston Rockets are three
of the top teams this season.
After reaching their first NBA
finals last season, the Mavericks
are pursuing their first-ever
championship behind Dirk
Nowitski, who is a leading can-
didate for NBA Most Valuable
Player. They are sure to face
tough competition from the
Spurs, who have won three NBA
championships (1999, 2003,
2005), and the Rockets, who
have won two (1994 and 1995).
As our state’s basketball
teams continue to excel at all lev-
els, Texans will look,forward to
the bloom of spring not only for
warm weather but also for the
annual arrival of March Mad-
ness.
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Archer County Advocate
"7
Financial Focus
f
Grady R. Schenk, Jr.
gjm
Use “Ladder” to Climb above
Interest Rate Worries
Interest rates are con-
stantly changing. But how do ris-
ing or falling interest rates af-
fect your . investment
strategies?There’s no simple an-
swer, of course. If you own
stocks, higher interest rates
could be a cause for concern,
because when interest rates rise,
it becomes more expensive for
companies to borrow to expand
their operations. As a result,
these businesses may feel a
squeeze on their profitability -
and their stock prices. And yet,
some businesses are much more
affected by rising interest rates
than others, so, as an investor,
you can’t really base your actions
on a blanket statement such as:
“Higher interest rates are bad for
all stocks.”The situation is a
little different if you own fixed-
income vehicles, such as bonds.
When interest rates rise, the
value of your bonds will fall.
That’s because no one will want
to pay you the full price for your
bonds when he or she can buy
new ones issued with a higher
interest rate. To sell yours, you’d
have to offer them at a “discount”
to their face value. On the other
hand, if interest rates fall, the
value of your existing bonds will
rise, so if you were to sell them,
you could get a premium price.
Of course, if you’re like many
people, you don’t buy bonds just
to sell them. You want to hold
them until maturity, when you
can expect to get your principal
back, assuming it’s a quality
bond and the issuer doesn’t de-
fault. And, along the way, you’ve
gotten regular interest payments,
which you can use to supplement
your cash flow or to reinvest.
However, even if you do plan on
holding bonds or certificates of
deposit (CDs) until maturity, you
might want to pay some atten-
tion to what’s happening with
interest rates. After all, if you
depend on bonds or CDs for
some of your income, and rates
are down when these invest-
ments mature, you could face a
difficult choice: Should you pur-
chase new fixed-income vehicles
at current rates, or should you
“park” your money somewhere
and hope for rates to rise again
soon? Fortunately, you can find
a better solution than either of
these options. How? By building
a “ladder” of fixed-income in-
vestments. To build a ladder, you
purchase a variety of fixed-in-
come vehicles [any combination
of corporate bonds, U.S. govern-
ment-sponsored enterprise
(GSE) and/or Treasury securi-
ties, municipal bonds or certifi-
cates of deposit] with a wide
range of maturities - short-, in-
termediate- and long-term. Once
you have established a bond lad-
der, you are prepared for both
rising and falling interest rates.
When rates are rising, the pro-
ceeds from your maturing bonds
can be used to invest in new ones
at higher levels. When market
rates are falling, you’ll continue
to benefit from the higher rates
offered by your longer-term
bonds.In addition to helping you
productively reinvest your ma-
turing bond proceeds in all in-
terest rate environments, a well-
structured bond ladder may, over
time, help you increase the in-
come you earn on your fixed-in-
come portfolio. And, at the very
least, by regularly reinvesting
part of your portfolio in all mar-
ket conditions, you may be able
to smooth out your retums.See
your financial advisor for help
in putting together a fixed-in-
come ladder that can help you
meet your needs.
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Stevens, Charlotte. Archer County Advocate (Holliday, Tex.), Vol. 4, No. 48, Ed. 1 Thursday, March 8, 2007, newspaper, March 8, 2007; Holliday, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth829091/m1/14/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Archer Public Library.