Looking forward to the Winter Sports Season
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Winter sports have arrived and student athletes from Chinook, Harlem, Hays/Lodge Pole and Turner have been hard at it in the gym, practicing and preparing for the upcoming season. The Blaine County Journal takes great pride in covering our eight boys and girls basketball basketball teams like no other publication. For the past 10 seasons we have included at the very least a brief recap to multiple pictures and full length stories for each team. For the past four seasons we have provided results and a story for all four of our wrestling teams and we look forward to doing so again this year.
Through the years we have had great pleasure in following all four of or boys basketball teams including state tournament seasons for the Chinook Sugarbeeter, Harlem Wildcats and Hays/Lodge Pole Thunderbirds, as well as some fantastic Turner Tornado district tournament contests. The Chinook Sugarbeeter and Harlem Wildcat girls have both played on the big stage as well. Along with the Hays/Lodge Pole and Turner girls all four local teams have had fantastic district and divisional tournament games that were a blast to cover.
Wrestling has seen the most dramatic change through the years with the creation of two super divisions versus the north, east, south and west and of course the addition of girls wrestling as its own individual field. Girls wrestling has grown exponentially in just a short period of time. With this growth comes a better system for girls wrestling in general and is getting closer and closer to being on par with the boys division. Some schools will even field a larger girls team than boys. The Lady Cat wrestling team has won a number of team trophies and both the Harlem and Chinook girls teams have seen individuals win All-State Honors. We will provide complete results for varsity boys and girls competitions.
This season we will again have the pleasure of covering all these teams in action and we would like to share our views on allocating space. Boys and girls basketball and wrestling each get a page. We would love to include box scores for basketball but with printing deadlines and some teams getting back late Saturday it’s just not feasible. Three pages, four teams covered per page is what’s available. Basketball coverage is where it can be the trickiest because those four teams each play two games a week for the most part.
Top of the page goes to the team with the best week on the court. Any contest involving two play county teams will always get top billing. Accordingly, the remainder of the page and the inclusion of pictures trickles down top to bottom. With one sports reporter, it is impossible to be at 16 potential basketball games and sometimes two wrestling meets in the same week. We have been very grateful to the local coaches for sending in their books after each contest, ensuring that each is covered in some way. Thankfully NFHS has made it possible to watch every contest and we will include every game that is competitive.
The Blaine County Journal looks forward to another fantastic season of winter high school sports. The season is the longest of all three of the school year. Fans and supporters with travel horrible roads in large numbers to watch our youth play. We are small in numbers but very few larger schools can match what Blaine County does when it comes to the community supporting these student athletes.
