Riker’s Block

  • DCXC: 15 minutes, 37 seconds of fame

    Note: The following is an excerpt from my sophomore cross country memoir, Making My Move, and is about the DCXC Invitational Meet. With DCXC coming up in two days, I wanted to revisit last year’s unforgettable race. DCXC was a unique meet in that there were eight different races, one for each grade and gender.…

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  • Road to Super Bowl 52: Week 2

    In Week 2, we saw a lot of matchups between teams on this list (Broncos-Cowboys, Falcons-Packers), but the results were not close. The Broncos and Falcons were boosted by blowout victories at home that put them near the top of their conferences, while Dallas and Green Bay took tumbles. Judging from the first two weeks…

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  • Road to Super Bowl 52: Week 1

    Note: This article was written prior to the Week 2 NFL games. So much for an undefeated season. In the first game of the 2017 NFL season, the reigning Super Bowl champions, the New England Patriots, were shown up by the Kansas City Chiefs on the Patriots’ home turf, falling to KC by a score…

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  • Mr. DuBoyce- Our Biggest Fan

    I wrote the following column an hour after learning of the death of one of my school’s administrators, Mr. DuBoyce. In addition to being one of the friendliest faces in the school, Mr. DuBoyce was an avid supporter of the cross country team and came to many of our cross country meets. One of the…

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  • MoCo Cross Country Predictions: Boys Ballot

    Using my cross country crystal ball, I’ve predicted what will happen in Montgomery County in the months to come during cross country season. The following selections were on my 2017 Montgomery County cross country predictions on Mocorunning.com. This projection covers my picks for top twenty individual boys and top ten boys’ teams and is a…

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  • MoCo Cross Country Predictions: Girls Ballot

    Using my cross country crystal ball, I’ve predicted what will happen in Montgomery County in the months to come during cross country season. The following selections were on my 2017 Montgomery County cross country predictions on Mocorunning.com. This projection covers my picks for top ten individual girls and top ten girls’ teams and is a…

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  • We should’ve been the champions: 12 teams that never won the title they deserved

    In my ten years of watching professional sports, I’ve seen my fair share of dominant, historic teams that demolished competition and racked up championships. But for each one that won the championship, there was the great team that should’ve won or could’ve won but lost, and some of those were never able to overcome the…

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  • La La Land, Titanic, Spiderman Among Summer Movie Favorites

    In June, I made the goal to watch five new movies by the end of the summer. But as I soon found out, five wasn’t enough to satisfy my cinematic appetite. My picks were all over the place- from an R-rated science fiction movie to a documentary to a musical to a superhero flick. These…

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  • NFL Preview: 17 Burning Questions for 2017 with Christian Clark

    Note: This article is the edited transcript of a recent collaboration between me and my good friend Christian Clark, a Panthers fan from NFL Updates Express.   John Riker: Hey guys! I was recently down at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill campus for the Carolina Sports Journalism camp. It was one of the coolest…

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  • Colin Kaepernick, Baltimore Raven?

    I haven’t paid much attention to the Colin Kaepernick drama that has played out over the last year. The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback went from a near Super Bowl champion in 2013 to unemployed this off-season. Along the way, he started a firestorm unlike any we’ve ever seen by opting to kneel for the…

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