The Soapbox

100 percent will do:

When did it become de rigueur for sports figures to suggest they give their game 110 percent? Or wait until their joints are 110 percent healthy? Perhaps we’re being too logically hard line here, Derrick Rose, but you should be happy playing on a 100-percent healthy knee. We’d even accept you operating on 85 percent power these days.

Many winners:

State Sen. Melinda Bush soundly defeated Lake County Board member Pat Carey in the Lake County Farm Bureau’s 15th annual Race of Hunger, but there were lots of winners. Bush and Carey raced through an Antioch store and n five minutes grabbed $2,608 in food, which goes to two local pantries.

Not the way to negotiate:

Palatine Township Elementary District 15’s bus contract talks have gotten ugly online. The union posted the school board’s initial proposal of no raises over four years. The board posted seven “myths and facts” and said the union is not willing to negotiate. Transparency is valuable in public business, but one-sided barbs aren’t the way to go.

Spreading the joy:

How fabulous is it that Rolling Meadows and Huntley high schools are first-timers at the girls state basketball championships? Powerhouse schools like Montini that consistently have contending teams are to be admired, but it’s fun to see the joy spread around.

Kudos to second-timers, too:

The Vernon Hills Cougars also are downstate this weekend for their second straight year and on Friday proceeded to pull off an upset against that powerhouse (see above).

Better than Indy?

That’s the question basketball fans will ask themselves next week when they venture to the Sears Centre Arena for the 2013 Big Ten Women’s Basketball Tournament. Indianapolis has hosted the event for many years, but now it’s our turn. Let’s hope the suburbs and Chicago shine and the event tops the expected 6,000 attendance mark.

‘All politics is local’:

Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill may have said that once, but you wouldn’t think it after Tuesday’s abysmal turnout in the primary election. No Chicago-area county saw more than 15 percent of voters cast a ballot; turnout was as low as 2.9 percent in Kane and 3.9 percent in DuPage. Can we do better on April 9?

Lunchtime service:

Hats off to Aurora University students and employees who spent their lunch hours cutting and tying pieces of fleece into blankets that are given to kids who are seriously ill, traumatized or coping with difficult situations. As one organizer put it, “It’s really great for the students to see a charity project that extends for a good period of time.”

And more:

And let’s not forget Fremont Intermediate School students, whose Jump Rope for Heart event in early February got the Mundelein school ranked in the top 10 nationally for their American Heart Association fundraising efforts. About 35,000 schools participated, and Fremont students raised $20,514. As a bonus, of course, the kids learn to care for their own health, too.

Not so, Frosty:

Looking for a good thing about all that snow that landed here in late February? How about all of this melting by mid-March?