A winter sun shines on Hurst as the athletes begin arriving, their faces relaxed but determined. It’s the annual national invitational tournament, and they’re here from across the country, like old west gunslingers come to match their skills against the best around. After two days, many have already been knocked from the competition, sometimes literally. Most stay around to watch, sporting bruises like small trophies.

The air smells of beer and nacho cheese. Spectator conversation is punctuated by shouts and the shrill buzz of a scoreboard clock. If you listen closely, you’ll hear the flat hum of whirlybugs in motion.

Welcome to the world of elite whirlyball.

Maybe you’ve tried the game—a combination of basketball and lacrosse played from bumper cars—at a teenager’s birthday party or corporate team building event, where silliness and incompetence reign. But you still don’t know whirlyball.

“If anyone doubts it’s a sport, come on out,” says Clint Fisher, a longtime player from Michigan and something of a historian of the pastime. “Give me five minutes out there. It’s a very competitive thing.” While pointing out that “all shapes and sizes” play, he adds that it can get physical. “That car weighs about 240 pounds, and you’re using your whole body to manipulate it.”

Stephen Swanson co-owns and operates the Hurst facility (there’s another in Plano), and is a member of the Texas traveling team. He discovered whirlyball while still at Plano East High School. Austin Carter, his one-time teammate on the Panther football team, is the current president of the National Players Association. It’s a common theme, I find, ex-school-athletes who happened across whirlyball and invested it with their competitive natures.

Lately Swanson and Carter have been raising the prominence of Texas in the sport.

“Texas has become the new place (for whirlyball),” Fisher says. Sam Kim, a prominent player from Michigan for whom this year’s tournament is named, agrees. “Texas is on the cusp, right now, of being in the top tier.”

“The Texas guys are usually the loudest,” Fisher adds.

Though the sport originated in Utah in the 1960s, and has the most centers in the Midwest, Seattle’s team is the New York Yankees, whirlyball’s evil empire. That would make James Gill its Aaron Judge, the one people point to and say: “That’s the king.” In the last 34 years, he’s helped Seattle to 29 national championships.

Looking at Gill will tell you something about what whirlyball requires, and what it doesn’t. He’s tall with long arms, middle-aged and heavy-set. When not in use, his glasses straddle the top of his head like a professor. Driving a whirlybug, your vertical leap or 40-yard dash time couldn’t be more irrelevant. Hand-eye coordination rules. Experience is also crucial.

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“Nobody’s just walked onto a court and been God’s gift to whirlyball,” says Kim.

At this level, whirlyball is definitely a guy thing. But not 100 percent. While there’s no separate female division, Christi Finken Schmidt is among the players at Hurst. An ex-soccer-athlete, she plays on A-level teams, and is the only woman in the Hall of Fame (Yes, there is one. Inductees are voted in by existing members.).

There’s no money in whirlyball. Players travel to national events on their own dime, and the locations rotate from year to year. The 3-day competition at Hurst was the 2023 invitational, taking place from January 21 to 23. Unlike at the national championships, the teams are geographically mixed. This made for a slightly less competitive scene. When it’s over, smiles break out and a group picture of all the players hits social media. That’s when the sport’s true gravity—the thing that has pulled all these people into its orbit—appears. It’s not totally about competition.

“It’s my guy’s night out,” Carter tells me when asked about his passion for playing whirlyball. It’s a sentiment I hear echoed over and over.

“I’m not even playing in this tournament,” Gill says. “But I’m here because of what we do after whirlyball. We go out to dinner, hang out. We’ll sit in the hotel until all hours of the night telling old stories.”

“I‘ve made the best friends I’ve ever had in my life in whirlyball,” says Kim. “They’re like family. We’re a big family.”

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COMTEX_425242239/2759/2023-02-24T10:24:22

Tarrant County is one of the fastest-growing counties in the United States, making it imperative for transportation systems to keep pace with the continuing swell.

That was the message of the 13^th annual Tarrant Transportation Summit hosted by District 3 Tarrant County Commissioner Gary Fickes at the Hurst Convention Center.

From new roads and additional highway lanes to expanded rail capacity more aviation infrastructure, Tarrant County officials have long embraced the challenges to become nationally recognized leaders of cutting-edge solutions to mobility challenges.

This year’s summit was focused on automation and innovation, and provided a look at planned improvements on the horizon to improve mobility through new technologies.

The Feb. 17 event brought together more than 600 people, including elected officials, municipal administrators and business leaders from the 41 cities within the county.

“There are many needs and so many projects to do and that’s why we all have to come together to get things done for the benefit of the community,” Fickes told the Fort Worth Business Press.

As the fifth-fastest growing county in the United States, Tarrant County’s challenges extend beyond moving people from one point to another. There is also the matter of moving cargo efficiently to reduce backlogs in the supply chain.

While automation is already playing a key role in supporting supply chain operations, plans for a sophisticated “Smart Port” at AllianceTexas were introduced. The port would serve as an “integrated intermodal container yard” and would operate in conjunction with BNSF Railroad, according to Russell Laughlin, executive vice president of strategic development and innovation for Hillwood.

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Features of the Smart Port would include a 15-mile “smart” corridor that would incorporate technology to coordinate the arrival of trucks and trains for more efficient transfer of cargo containers. The smart corridor would allow the removal of truck traffic from existing highways, which would reduce highway congestion and air emissions by eliminating the time trucks idle in line waiting to pick up cargo.

Other cutting-edge technology innovations already in use or planned for logistics operations include autonomous vehicles for unloading cargo from trains, visual recognition systems for advance identification of cargo and automated “next-generation” traffic signals, according to Michael Morris, director of transportation for the North Central Texas Council of Governments.

The plan also includes development of a “Texas Connected Freight Corridor” that would integrate with the Alliance Smart Port and support the supply chain nationwide.

“We are located in the shadow of the Port of Long Beach (California.) and the Port of Houston so this is the perfect opportunity for the DFW area,” Morris said.

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While Smart Port development is a multimillion-dollar proposition and several years away from reality, Laughlin said the plan would be a game-changer.

“We have the chance to be out-front and have the most advanced inland port in the country in the next few years,” Laughlin said.

Another major traffic-related announcement at the summit involved plans for more lanes to help reduce congestion in the Loop 820/Texas 183 Corridor. A new eastbound lane and a westbound general purpose lane will be added to Loop 820 between Interstate 35W and the Loop 820/State Highway 183 interchange.

Also, new eastbound and westbound TEXPress managed lanes will be added to State Highway 183 between the interchange and FM 157 in Euless.

The expansion was part of the signed agreement with the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) for the North Texas Express project, said Robert Hinkle, director of corporate affairs for NTE Mobility Partners, which developed the North Tarrant Express and Interstate 35W reconstruction with managed toll lanes.

The expansion is expected to cost up to $350 million and will be finished by 2030, under the terms of the agreement with the state. The first managed lanes opened in 2014 in the highly congested 183/121 corridor. Funding will come from toll revenue.

The additional lanes should help reduce the cost of using the toll lanes, Hinkle said.

While this project is able to move forward due to prior commitments, TxDOT can no longer participate in public-private partnerships like the North Tarrant Express because public opposition to tolls resulted in a ban by the Texas Legislature, keynote speaker Robert Poole stated.

Poole, director of transportation policy and Searle Freedom Transportation Fellow at the Florida-based Reason Foundation, is an advocate for public-private partnerships and toll-revenue financing.

Texas pioneered public-private partnerships for new highway construction and expansion through public-private partnership agreements.

“Public-private partnerships are a better model for how we select, build and maintain highway projects in the U.S.,” said Poole, who has been an advisor to the Federal Highway Administration and many leading state and national transportation agencies.

Traditional forms of highway funding, typically relying on user fees and fuel tax revenue, have led to chronic congestion, especially in fast-growing states like Texas, said Poole, who is author of the book, Rethinking America’s Highways: A 21^st Century Vision for Better Infrastructure.

A better approach is to treat highways as a utility, he said, with customers paying for what they use. Projects are financed with customer revenues and ongoing maintenance is built into the financing.

Nationwide, more than 60 public-private partnership projects involving express toll lanes, sometimes known as “choice lanes” are in operation. Proven advantages, Poole said, include reducing traffic congestion and vehicle emissions, and a solution for express bus service.

While other states are moving ahead with these types of projects, TxDOT has plans to add tax-funded high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes in Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio, Poole said.

HOV lanes tend to be “too full or too empty” and haven’t lived up to expectations, he said.

The Texas Legislature should reconsider the benefits of resuming public-private partnerships, which have been highly successful in Texas, including Tarrant County, and have an added benefit of freeing up $6.5 billion for TxDOT to spend on projects in smaller cities and rural areas.

In a presentation on progress and investment at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, John Ackerman, executive vice president of global strategy and development, reported that $2.3 billion will be spent on airport infrastructure improvements through 2032 and another $2.7 billion will be spent on terminal expansion.

Over the past eight years, the airport has undertaken 882 infrastructure projects through an investment of $3.8 billion. The initiative resulted in the creation of 32,000 jobs.

During most of the pandemic, DFW was the busiest airport in the world and now ranks second in the world for number of passengers. In 2022, the airport welcomed 72.2 million passengers, Ackerman said.

Also during the pandemic, the airport broadened its route network to 265 destinations and kept its pledge of no job layoffs, he said.

Perot Field, formerly Alliance Airport, was ranked 20^th in 2021 (the latest ranking announced) although many of it competitors are all “major traffic hubs”, according to Christian Childs, president of Alliance Aviation Companies.

In 2018, the airport handled slightly under 1 billion pounds of cargo. Although 2022 data isn’t yet official, the airport’s numbers indicate that cargo weight exceeded 2.5 billion pounds.

“During the pandemic, our cargo load went through the roof,” Childs said.

Caroline Mays, director of planning and modal programs for TxDOT, presented data on how all forms of transportation, including seaports, public transit, freight rail, and aviation fit together and have an enormous impact on economic output, jobs and population growth as well as moving goods and people from point-to-point.

Tarrant County Administrator G.K. Maenius and Lauren Prieur, interim director of transportation and public works for the city of Fort Worth, discussed how funds from county and city bond programs are being used to build or upgrade roads, bridges and traffic signal controls to improve traffic flow and safety.

Funds from federal Infrastructure legislation are also being leveraged through many regional transportation projects.

"We wanted to eliminate some of the cost that citizens were incurring on bills that were not being paid by Medicare or private insurance companies," Craft said.

HURST, Texas — A North Texas town has found a unique way to help out its residents when they need to take a trip to the hospital.

The city of Hurst has an ambulance subscription service. The service started in 2004 with about 300 members and is now up to about 1,000, according to Hurst Fire Department Assistant Fire Chief Brent Craft.

"We wanted to eliminate some of the cost that citizens were incurring on bills that were not being paid by Medicare or private insurance companies," Craft said. "Whatever is left over that the insurance company doesn't pay, we will write off."

And even if a citizen doesn't have health care insurance, the program covers emergency medical services delivered prior to hospital arrival. It costs $60 to join annually and enrollment for 2023 is happening now through the end of 2022.

Craft said when the city implemented this service back in 2004, it was mainly because citizens were bringing up the rising costs of health care, in general.

"We decided to try and help those families with those costs," Craft said.

Hurst firefighters check on some of the equipment inside one of the department's ambulances.

One of the Hurst citizens who takes advantage of this service is Jodi Mauldin. She has lived in Hurst for about 32 years. She recently had to go to the hospital because she was having heart problems and ended up having a stint put in.

She wasn't signed up for the service at the time and said she paid $1,000 for her ambulance ride.

Then she decided to sign up for the service. When she had to go to the hospital a second time a few years later, now being a member? She paid nothing.

"It's just a good feeling to know, 'Hey, I'm covered,'" Mauldin said. "I don't have to pay any money out of this. It's all taken care of."

Mauldin said it makes her proud of Hurst to know this service exists.

"It's outstanding," Mauldin said. "I think it's an awesome deal for anybody."

Craft said the ambulance program is revenue neutral, meaning the city ends each year about even.

"We don't typically make any money," Craft said. "Therefore it makes it easier for them as well."

Here is how the program works:

To learn more about Hurst's ambulance subscription service, you can click here.

LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) - After 67 years of supporting the farmers of West Texas, the Hurst family has sold their business.

Joe Hurst’s father started the business back in 1955 with two other partners. Since then the Hurst family has been a key part of the agriculture community.

“It’s been quite a while,” Hurst said. “But we really enjoyed it and we have lots of relationships that we’ve built over the years.

During that time the Hurst family’s business provided everything needed to sow a seed and harvest a boll, but Hurst says he was helping grow more than crops.

“A lot of these guys we go to church with them,” Hurst said. “Our kids go to school with them. They’re our friends and these communities that are around we’ve tried to support them in every way we can.”

After decades of serving the agriculture community, Hurst says it’s time to turn the page.

“There’s a time for everything,” Hurst said. “Enthusiastic, there’s a time for sales there’s a time for change. There’s a time for everything. We just have confidence that this is the time for us to move on.”

South Plains Implements bought Hurst Farm Supply at the beginning of November.

“We understand what it means to be a part of these communities,” part owner of South Plains Implement Scotty Johnson said. “We’re proud of that, and we just want to continue that.

With millions of acres harvested across Texas and many of those here in the South Plains, new owner Scotty Johnson says he knows he has to support the farmers doing the work.

“Agriculture is huge for the economy around West Texas and we’re just proud to be a part of it,” Johnson said.

As for Joe, he’s happy knowing he’ll leave behind more than just a supply store.

“Everybody talks about a legacy,” Hurst said. “Well, a legacy is not a building. A legacy’s not how many stores you have. A legacy is what you’ve left in the hearts of the people that you’ve served all these years.”

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