The Blaine County Journal News-Opinion - We've Got The County Covered

High School football, volleyball and cross-country teams throughout the class B and Class C began practice earlier this month and the first competition is scheduled for this weekend. One of the great joys of my job has been covering the local teams in our area for the past several years.

I have thoroughly enjoyed covering state championship football games for the Chinook Sugarbeeters and a Big Sandy Pioneers, following them throughout the season and relaying to our readers all the excitement that went along with their journey is something that I truly love to do.

The Chinook Sugarbeeter Tennis team has captured three State Championships during my tenure and the Sugarbeeter Wrestling team has recorded four.

I’ve covered many great individual efforts in track and field from State Titles earned by Chinooks Kayla Hanson, Barry Murnion and Britney Nelson along with Big Sandy’s Kaden Beck, to our most recent champions in Harlem’s Reece Hutton and Turners Eddie Harmon.

Harlem’s Tristin Gone and L’Tia Lawrence as well as Hays/Lodge Pole’s Isaiah RunsAbove and Gilbert Snow have performed exceptionally well at State Cross Country.

The Sugarbeeter Golf team has brought home hardware from the state tournament the past five seasons, four from the boys and the girls last spring.

In Basketball, Hays/Lodge Poles run to the State Tournament last season was a blast to write about as was the Pioneers run to state in 2012. The Sugarbeeter girls basketball stretch of four District 9C titles in five years and six straight trips to the Northern C was incredible.

Chinook Volleyball has won five straight District 9C titles and advanced to the State Tournament in 2013 and 2015.

My point is this, it is my absolute pleasure to cover all the teams in our local area. I am passionate about sports and have never done something I enjoy so much for work. It matters not to me what school is doing good or bad or where some student athlete is from, good is good.

All of these teams and individuals I mentioned put in the time during the off season to achieve a high level of ability during the season and thusly were rewarded with success on the court, the mat or the field.

In my efforts to best cover our local sports teams it is my approach to give those teams and individuals that achieve success the bulk of the coverage regardless of what town they represent.

I am tasked with covering five schools, Big Sandy, Chinook, Harlem, Hays/Lodge Pole and Turner. During the fall that means four football, four volleyball and two cross country teams. In the winter it’s even more hectic with ten basketball (five boys/five girls) and four wrestling teams.

It’s fair to say that I can’t be at every game so in hopes of covering the teams to the best of my ability there are a number of things that I rely on to help make that happen.

I need the results of competition sent to me following the completion of the contest. In the past I have made every effort to track down results from outside sources, via MaxPreps, calling other schools, coaches, newspapers etc.

Having the results sent to me following the conclusion of the contest is a huge help. Some are very good at providing this information to me. Chinooks Paula Molyneaux, and Turners Jen Baird have consistently provided me with information and it shows in my ability to cover their schools teams.

To cover some schools I have had to reach out to other papers to provide photos for us to use so that I can include a picture of that team.

I’ve relied on the generosity of many individuals to help with pictures: Randy Perez has been very helpful in providing pictures of all five schools and has been a great source of pictures for the Hays/Lodge Pole Thunderbirds and

Harlem Wildcats. Tracy Schuster, Dusty Allderdice, Lisa Darlington have helped cover Big

Sandy Football and wrestling through the years. Kasie McIntosh and Tammy Edwards have helped to photograph the Chinook Sugarbeeters, Linda Hutton has been fantastic providing photos of Harlem Wildcat Football, Wrestling and Track teams while Wendy VanValkenburg has done a great job sending in pictures of the Turner games.

As we go through the years, kids graduate and those individuals won’t be able to provide pictures anymore so a need arises for another willing person ready to step in and help me cover the school.

I love to write about what happened and all the details of every game but thats not possible, so the way the weekend sports are covered in each weeks edition is based on what I have in front of me on Sunday afternoon.

It is my feeling that teams who win should get more coverage than those who don’t. They should be recognized for their success and thats the way I plan to cover the teams this year. Regardless of winning or losing each team and/or sport will have the coverage it deserves.

I have every intention of covering all of our local teams and it is important to me that every teams results be included in the paper in one form or another.

I will continue to do my best to include at least a box score for every teams game but if its not in the paper its because I didn’t receive it from the school.

I will include as many pictures as I can from those generous people who want to share photos of our local teams in action.

Space varies from week to week, so how many pictures I can use, or how long each story can be will be based on whats available and information provided to me, not on where each school is located.

I love great performances and efforts by any team or athlete, win or lose and as huge sports fan I can recognized memorable accomplishments and look forward to covering many of those over the next nine months of the 2017-18 High School Sports calendar.

If you have results of a competition or a photo of our local athletes in action email me at bcjads@mtinouch.net.