SILVER DOLLARS AND WOODEN NICKEL: For Carson City, a ‘Seals’ of approval

The Nevada Appeal’s Silver Dollars & Wooden Nickels feature recognizes achievements from the capital region and, when warranted, points out other acts that missed the mark.

SILVER DOLLAR: Carson City’s Molly Seals earned the ‘golden ticket’ to make the trip to Hollywood on “American Idol” and now we’ll wait to see if Seals, a country singing star in the making, is one of the 24 finalists to become the next ‘American Idol.’ That’s something she already knows, but can’t tell us as shown by the series debut on Wednesday in which the 24 finalists were ‘introduced’ in silhouettes.

No matter what happens, Seals has made Carson City proud by just earning a trip to Kansas City.

SILVER DOLLAR: To California Chrome, co-owned by Steve Coburn of Topaz Lake, who has been nominated to receive the Eclipse Award as the Horse of the Year. California Chrome is also in the running to be named as the 3-Year-Old of the Year. The awards will be announced on Jan. 17.

SILVER DOLLAR: To the University of Nevada men’s and women’s basketball teams for their sweep of UNLV on Wednesday. Nevada’s women beat UNLV 71-62 at Lawlor Events Center and Marqueze Coleman’s game-winning shot gave the Wolf Pack men a 64-62 win over the Rebels in Las Vegas against a team who had beaten then-No. 3 ranked Arizona. Bring on Arizona! Actually, with the football team winning the Fremont Cannon and the men’s basketball team now having a three-game winning streak against UNLV, to say the Wolf Pack have bragging rights over their rival would be an understatement.

WOODEN NICKEL: An obvious choice, but to all the Republicans in the incoming Assembly, who are making themselves — but more importantly — making the state of Nevada look bad. The Legislative session hasn’t begun, yet, but one needs a scorecard to keep up with all the bickering. Republicans would do well to heed the advice of John Wooden: “You can disagree without being disagreeable.”