Passionate Students, Passionate Support

High School athletics are a funny thing. In high school, I was more involved with band and the occasional theater production than I was with sports. Plus, golf was my sport and it's not as geared toward spectators as basket- ball, football or volleyball at the high school level.

In towns like Waitsburg, Dayton and Prescott, high school sports are important because we don't have quite as much going on every night like we would in a bigger city like Walla Walla. Don't get me wrong, we have a lot to do. There are tons of community events and lots of great groups bending over backwards to get everyone involved and keep us all entertained. But we are limited in a lot of ways. We can't see a movie every night or go bowling in town.

So we attend sporting events.

When I first started at the Times, I didn't think there was any chance I would be interested in the high school sporting events I attended but slowly I started to get invested in how the teams were doing. I started to rec- ognize most of the players and even anticipate their moves, which helped pho- tograph them doing exciting things and making big plays.

The best part of covering high school sports was that I didn't have to worry about anything going on behind the scenes. I could just show up at a game, take some fun pictures and get excited about the sports our local teams participated in.

I'll never forget the mo- ment I caught myself invest- ed in football. I let my notebook drop to my side and the camera was hanging from my neck and I actually emitted a cheer of excitement as the Bulldogs picked up a narrow first down. It was actually surprising to me, a person who generally isn't that interested in sports, to care about how a high school team was performing.

And that's what we should be doing as a community: caring. We should be attending local games - even if we can only make it or afford it every once in a while - and supporting these students who work hard at something they enjoy. We should at the very least sup- port young people finding a passion and acting on it.

I especially have to tip my hat to the parents who are able to attend their students' games and will even drive well out of town to support their athletes. I also admire the parent coaches, booster club members and snack moms. That support will help students grow.

Student athletes learn about teamwork and invest- ing in something that makes them happy. They learn how to stay active and healthy, and what they need to do to avoid injury or how to take care of themselves after a sprained ankle or an ACL tear. These are the lessons we need to encourage outside the classroom.

As the basketball season comes to a close and I have Tuesday nights free again, we can look forward to the next season of athletics and hopefully continue to encourage our local teams to keep up their hard work. It's not all about winning - it's about the game. I know I'm looking forward to spending some quality time enjoy- ing the sun while covering spring sports. Hopefully you will too.

Without all of the excite- ment of sports in the coming weeks I know our sports section will be at least a little bit lighter, along with my schedule. I think we can all take that time to recoup and prepare to offer all of our support in the spring.

And once the offseason hits in full-force I'll be start- ing a Scrabble league, if anyone is interested.