Updates » ress can be made ahead of 2017, when Pirelli faces an even toug

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- The four-star quarterback was a three-sport star in high school, and though that versatility may have kept him out of the zip code of five-stars a few years ago, DeShone Kizer says now playing baseball and basketball was the best thing to ever happen to him.It allowed me, one, to create the athletic ability that it takes to be able to adjust on the fly when youre playing at this high level, Kizer said last week. And two, Im learning more about the quarterback position every day than I ever have.Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly echoed those thoughts, saying that a few month away from the gridiron can declutter a players mind and help him think outside the box, a trait more valued for a quarterback than perhaps any other position in team sports.It keeps you sharp in competitiveness, in team sports, competing all year-round, Kelly said. Thinking in terms of other sports, there are definitely correlations that you can bring to the game, itself, from other sports. And I just think sometimes we become a little too specialized at the position, and I enjoy seeing guys that play some other sports.So how exactly did baseball and basketball sharpen Kizers football mind? And was he actually any good on the diamond or the hardwood? The more appropriate question may be: Just how good could he have been?We couldnt hide himToledo (Ohio) Central Catholic baseball coach Jeff Mielcarek was able to resist the temptation to use Kizer on the mound, but there was no point trying to hide him in the batting order. After so much interest from college football coaches forced Kizer to shut down his pitching arm -- which Mielcarek said maxed out in the 80s -- his sophomore year, Meilcarek put him in the outfield and hit him cleanup.Kizer threw a bullpen session for an assistant during his junior year, Mielcarek said, prompting a heart-to-heart between coaches over the budding stars use.One of our [assistant] coaches came in and said, Coach, DeShone -- we need to use him, Mielcarek recalled. And I said, Seriously? And I named three schools coming in that he was going to be auditioning for to throw for football, and I said, We havent used him all this time. What are we going to do now? This is silly. So no, were not going to do that.Kizer played an integral part on Central Catholics conference championship team in 2013, hitting an RBI double in the title game. Perhaps more impressively, he returned in 2014 for his senior year, just months away from starting his college football career.That year-round commitment earned Kizer the respect of opposing prep baseball coaches, said Mielcarek, who thinks Kizer could have been drafted into the major league baseball draft had he stuck with the diamond. And though football and basketball kept Kizer from turning baseball into a 12-month activity, his attitude during his limited stay with Mielcareks squad seemingly made up for lost time.Were playing summer baseball and DeShones not playing summer baseball because hes going to football camps and hes going to this and hes going to that, and nobody ever questioned what DeShone was doing, Mielcarek said, because DeShone not only will show you that when he shows up hes going to work harder than anybody else, but DeShone will also make certain that he gets those people on his side because he just says the right thing, he does the right thing. Its amazing.When Kizer was buried at No. 3 on the Notre Dame depth chart in the 2015 spring, he contemplated a move to baseball. He put out a feeler to Irish baseball coach Mik Aoki through teammate and Irish outfielder Torii Hunter Jr. before coming to terms with his day job.I went to the batting cages a couple of times, but never really fully got it in motion, I never ended up leaving, Kizer said. It was time to lock in and play my part as a backup at the time.A 6-4 rarityLike every quarterback who dabbled in basketball, Kizer was a point guard. The 6-foot-4 Kizer maxed out height-wise early, but the anomaly of a tall freshman distributor led to analogies that bordered on hyperbole.He knows where a guy is open when the guy doesnt know hes open, said former Central Catholic basketball coach Jim Welling, now the schools admissions director. DeShone was like a miniature Magic Johnson. Now, he wasnt 6-8 like Magic was, but he had peripheral vision and the ability to find open guys, and it was really uncanny because I had never seen anything like that before.Kizers father, Derek, played basketball at Bowling Green, and Welling said he thinks DeShone couldve surpassed his father at the college level.If there was one knock on Kizer, it was a suspect jump shot that he didnt get enough time to work on.When you go from 15 football games a year and then you go to a 25-30-game basketball schedule and then you go into a 25-30 (game) baseball schedule and then you have summers where everybody wants you to do summer activities, you really dont have time for player development like DeShone really needed, Welling said. If he had gotten that, I have no reason to believe that he couldnt have been recruited by the Big Ten, ACC or Big East.Kizers Notre Dame teammates echo that sentiment, with receiver C.J. Sanders coming away impressed by the paradox of Kizers hoops game whenever they play pick-up.Hes an athletic guy for his size, thats whats most surprising, Sanders said. Hes a big guy, like (230 pounds). Being able to move like that playing basketball is crazy.As a prep sophomore, Kizer was a captain. As a senior, he was league player of the year and third-team All-Ohio thanks to a stat-sheet-stuffing line of 11 points, 5.6 rebounds and 6.8 assists per game, according to the Toledo Blade.Lines like those were all the more amazing considering he often got a late start thanks to football playoff runs that bled into winter sports.Hes a guy that had a state tournament championship game on Friday night, and Sunday evening hes practicing basketball within two days with no reps, Welling said. Thats how anxious he was to get on the floor.The later, the better?Kizer may have been good enough to sign with Notre Dame, but he was only ESPN RecruitingNations 16th-ranked dual-threat quarterback in the 2014 class. Did his well-rounded background make it more difficult to master sports signature position?To go through all three sports in high school, I never really locked into one, so theres a lot of stuff that I wasnt able to learn in high school where people have preached it since theyve been 8 years old, Kizer said. So a lot of that new stuff got put on me my redshirt freshman year when I was mature enough to learn from it, and now its kind of put me at a higher learning curve now that Im in my 20s where things are a little easier to understand.Kizer is 9-4 as a college starter and, if all breaks right, could play on Sundays next fall. More than two years after Kizers signing day, 11 of the 15 QBs ranked ahead of him have switched either schools or positions.Is all this a credit to Kizers prep approach? Or does his college success just speak to his individual makeup?That mind works like a computer, Welling said of Kizer. He can retain stuff in basketball that you had to go over and over and over things and hopefully you think theyll get it in some point in time. In his case, he didnt have to do that. If you did it once, he had it.His process-ability skills are off the charts, and I think when you throw those three different sports together and youre processing like he has the ability to do, I would agree with him 100 percent that hes probably benefited from all three sports. Air Max Outlet Ireland . Jim Rutherford, President and General Manager of the Carolina Hurricanes, announced Wednesday that the team would assign Swedish forward Elias Lindholm to his nations team for the upcoming tournament. Air Max Ireland Sale . -- Anaheim Ducks captain and leading scorer Ryan Getzlaf has been scratched from Sunday nights game against the Vancouver Canucks because of an upper-body injury. http://www.airmaxireland.com/ . Carey Price didnt, but he still came out on top against one of his rivals for the No. 1 job at the Sochi Games. The Anahim Lake, B.C., native was stellar in making 39 saves in his home province and Lars Eller got credit for a bizarre short-handed winner as the Canadiens defeated the Canucks 4-1. Air Max Free Shipping . Duchene scored two goals and had an assist, helping the Colorado Avalanche beat the Carolina Hurricanes 4-2 on Friday night to match the best 10-game start in team history. Air Max Ireland . -- Hunter Smith scored the winner with just 12 seconds remaining in the third period as the Oshawa Generals edged the host Sarnia Sting 5-4 on Friday in Ontario Hockey League action. Nico Rosberg is among a number of F1 drivers who hope Pirellis wet-weather testing this year produces a better extreme tyre for 2017.Sundays Brazilian Grand Prix was red flagged twice and featured five safety car periods as race control struggled to gauge whether the wet conditions were suitable for racing. Several drivers complained of aquaplaning, with Marcus Ericsson, Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen all spinning into the barriers during the race.The conditions were some of the worse F1 has seen this season, but a number of drivers pointed to the extreme-wet tyres tendency to aquaplane.They are very easy to aquaplane with, its not like its raining a lot, Raikkonen said following his incident. Weve said that many times, but it obviously also depends on the circuit and many things.If I compare to ten/twelve year ago those tyres could cope with this kind of rain with no issues, no aquaplaning. The aquaplaning is the biggest issue, if we have a bit of standing water we get zero grip. Thats it.Romain Grosjean, who spun on his way to the grid, added: The extreme tyre is a very poor tyre and there is no grip. You have to take a huge amount of risk to go to the intermediates because they are just faster. But, yes you cannot control the car in a straight line.Part of the problem has been a lack of wet weather tyre testing since Pirelli returned to the sport as the sole tyre supplier in 2011, but this year the Italian tyre company has completed six days of dedicated wet-weather testing to develop its 2017 tyre. Rosberg, who managed to catch a big slide when he aquaplaned on the uphill run to the pit straight in Brazil, hopes the dedicated wet-weather tests will produce better tyres.Its difficult because its ccompletely unpredictable when you go through a little bit more water -- you dont know whats going to happen, he said.ddddddddddddThat makes it really challenging, but they [Pirelli] know that and they are working on it at the moment.Thats why they have been doing wet tests, to make some progress for next year. It would be good for the racing also, because then you dont need to red flag it and you can let the race go on. It will be a good thing.Red Bull boss Christian Horner also hopes progress can be made ahead of 2017, when Pirelli faces an even tougher challenge with a wider footprint that will be more susceptible to aquaplaning.You could see that the drivers were having big issues with aquaplaning on the extreme and the inter. Kimi crashed in front of us on the extreme. [Marcus] Ericsson was on the inter. So we conducted some wet testing for Pirelli at the beginning of the year to try and help, and it seems like there is still room for improvement on the extreme in extreme conditions.However, Lewis Hamilton, who won the race in Brazil without a single mistake, said the conditions were not as bad as they looked.This is Formula One and the rain conditions are the trickiest conditions. If everyone just went round and didnt make mistakes it would be too easy and then everyone could do it. We are going at some serious speeds and there is a lot of water to disperse by the tyres and the tyre just struggles; the faster we go, the harder it is for the tyres. This wasnt a particularly difficult race in terms of being wet, theres been much much worse races in terms of aquaplaning. ' ' '