Special to the Standard-Examiner

The Ogden Valley Ski Team opened its 2011-12 race season on Dec. 15-18, sending its Junior Olympic athletes (ages 13 and older) to Park City Mountain Resort for the Eric Hays Memorial Open Series Race. Ogden Valley was well represented with over a dozen racers competing in two slalom and two giant slalom events.

Ogden Valley athletes Tommy Franquelin, Jana Robinson, Joey Thomason, and Michael Townsend broke through the top 40 out of a field of over 130 racers from all over the Intermountain region.

OGDEN -- Weber State University athletics director Jerry Bovee announced this week that Joel Bass has been named assistant athletic director for support services/head athletics trainer.

Bass has been with the Weber State athletic department for the past 20 years.

"Joel has been a big part of our athletic department and has served us well as the head athletics trainer for many years," Bovee said. "Creating this position of an assistant athletic director for support services will allow us to have athletic training, strength & conditioning, and equipment under the umbrella of support services on an administrative level."

This season marks the 21st season for Bass as the head athletics trainer at Weber State. He is a certified member of the National Athletic Trainers Association and a licensed athletic trainer in Utah. He has been an active force in the better treatment of high school, collegiate and professional athletes.

Ogden City pushed some popular hiking trails out of the way in order to build the water tanks near Strong's Canyon in South Ogden, but the map at the 36th Street trailhead offers no indication of who rerouted them.

Dave Stuart, a volunteer on the trails, posted the answer at the 36th and 29th Street trailheads after it was published in the newspaper. It was an obituary for Gilbert "Gib" Wallace, a man who shaped many of the trails in Ogden.

Wallace retired early from a career as a civil engineer with the Bureau of Reclamation, during which he worked on both Pineview and Causey dams. When the city of Ogden asked him to improve a trail near Mount Ogden Park, he threw his enthusiasm into full-time volunteer work.

LOGAN -- Folks in Logan say Utah State's running back squad might be one of the best kept secrets in college football.

"We've got a lot of great players," said Utah State running backs coach Ilaisa Tuaki, who joked that having several proven backs makes his job easy.