Apology In Order

We begin the New Year with an apology. In last week's Sports Year In Review, we neglected to mention two important highlights that should have been listed as top stories 8 and 9 for the 2010 Sports Year.

The first is the Dayton High School football team making it to the playoffs after an inspiring season that showed much promise for 2011 and an equally exciting mini-qualifying round in which the Bulldogs came out on top.

The team was bumped in the first playoff round by the ever-strong franchise by the same name from Colfax, which narrowly beat the undefeated WP Cardinals in early December.

Although still losing many games during the season, the Dayton Bulldogs have shown a lot of improvement under new head coach Dean Bickelhaupt.

He and his staff should get credit for keeping their team's spirits high until the very end, while the boys themselves deserve a pat on the back for "getting going when the going got tough." We wish the team the best for the 2011 season.

The other team that deserved to be mentioned in the 2010 lineup was the WP Tigers baseball team, which also made it to state and finished fourth in the league under leadership of head coach Angie Potts.

The otherwise exciting and successful season ended with a loser-out loss against DeSales, but the girls and their coaches made an impressive performance during the spring. Here, too, we wish the team all the best for the upcoming season.

These omissions were not intentional. They were simply an oversight on our part, and we hope our prominent mention in this editorial will restore the historical record to what it should be.

In all, the 2010 sports year was a great one for students, coaches, parents, school staff and fans in Waitsburg, Dayton and Prescott. Other Top Stories Our inclusion of the volleyball coaches' suspension as the number 2 story for the year was not designed to detract from the many benefits and successes of WP's sports combine. We hope that our continued coverage of its games and achievements underscores our long-term commitment to bringing well-deserved attention to all the efforts from staff and volunteers that make a combine live up to its potential.

Nor did we intend for our recent coverage of the coaches' suspension to leave the impression that we merely question the district's handling of its disciplinary action against them.

As mentioned in earlier coverage of the affair, the coaches have acknowledged they could have handled them team discipline differently as well.

In our opinion, they did not exhaust all disciplinary options and even then should have avoided the unorthodox approach to the team challenge they faced.

At the same time, it remains our opinion that the district also went too far too fast in its discipline of the coaches. There is no question that a disciplinary decision was appropriate to send a message to the coaches that their steps beyond their initial discipline were uncalled for.

But the charges, the severity of the discipline and the way the process was handled missed the mark.

We hope the upcoming hearing on the suspension before the Waitsburg School Board creates an opportunity now or in the near future to carefully review appropriate team discipline, to generate new and more specific guidelines for coaches who face various situations and risk crossing the line of what the district(s) consider tolerable, and to take a good look at the complaint procedures and how they can be followed more effectively to avoid questions of fairness.

We hope a story highlighting the parties' reconciliation and the districts' improved coping mechanisms will top the Year In Review list for 2011.

For an update on the time and date of the school board's public hearing, please check www.waitsburgtimes.com.