Missing

I was thinking the other day that there are a lot of things that haven't happened because of the pandemic. This shutdown is not good for any of us especially small businesses. I'm hopeful that things will change for the better and soon.

There are a lot of things that I truly missed doing or seeing this year. A week-long trip to Arizona to see family and watch a baseball game or two is one of those things. But I can always do that next year I guess.

How about the Seattle Mariners opening day game? That would have been fun to watch from home. I guess we still might be able see baseball again in July. At least no one will need to worry about how cold those early season night games would be and how many layers would need to be worn.

I wanted the opportunity to watch the Lind Ritzville middle school baseball team play this spring. There are a bunch of good kids that are very good athletes and watching them play ball was something I was really looking forward to seeing.

Then there is high school baseball. There were several seniors that got their first varsity action as 8th graders. I was really looking forward to seeing them play this year. It is quite unusual to have the opportunity to play 5 years of a high school sport and unfortunately that didn't happen. I know that what these young athletes did as 8th graders saved the season for the high school that year. We should never forget that.

It isn't any easier for the softball team and tennis teams to not be able to play. Athletes work hard over the years going to camps and working out to make each season special and once the senior season hits there are high hopes that it will be the best season ever. Once the word came down that the season was going to be completely shuttered had to be hard to take.

There are a few returning track team members that had break out seasons last year. After a very late winter turned to spring the team members worked hard to improve and there were some of these athletes that had what it takes to have success at the state level. I certainly missed the two or three track meets that were cancelled this year at the local track. These meets are so much fun to be a part of and we'll never be able to make those up.

I had the opportunity to talk with new golf coach Bryce Court on President's Day and he was really upbeat. He told me that he had been recruiting kids to play golf. Now he wasn't trying to rob athletes from the other sports to win a state championship or be competitive at weekly golf meets. What he was doing was finding kids that hadn't been a part of any team since maybe little league or pee wee sports. He wanted to get kids to be involved in a high school sport and to maybe get enough interest in playing a sport for the rest of their lives. I have the utmost respect for what he was trying to accomplish and I'm sure it will continue next year. It is not easy for coaches to do this in every sport but a life sport like golf needs people like Coach Court to get young people interested in playing more than a Tiger Woods would be able to do today.

There are so many positive things that can happen with this type of coaching leadership and I congratulate him and hope he can have success in his recruiting next year.

I caught myself watching the NASCAR race on Sunday and it was about time to get back to the speed and excitement less fans. I think the NBA should also get going and soon without fans. I can imagine that there would be far less technical fouls called since part of the psyche is to play to the crowd and without a crowd maybe they would just play the game. My thoughts anyway.

This weekend was going to be my 50 year class reunion from good old RHS. But that won't be happening unfortunately. So we will have to wait until next year.

Yes, I'm missing a lot.