Is it Halloween Yet?

Excuse me, it's been a rather strange night being on the receiving end of dozens of high school results and I had to check to see if there was a full moon in the sky. I also started to hum the Black Eyed Peas song "I've Got a Feeling." That's the one that has the lyrics"Tonight's Going To be A Good Night...." hoping to cheer me up.

First came the telephone call from a woman wondering why we don't publish front page stories on high school girls' field hockey? Not long after, the call from a high school teacher who told me the score of his football game. But he didn't want any names in the paper because he was afraid it might break up the "healthy team configuration" — whatever that means.

It gets better. A veteran coach, a good guy whom I have known for a long time, called and was frustrated. He went to get his copy of the scoring sheet, once the girls' basketball game had ended, and the scorers — students with about as much interest in doing the job as I have for watching a turtle race — forgot to mark down who scored points. Yup, a list of names. No record of scorers.

Then, a bunch of e-mails from people: some missing first names of players, others with strange names (I found out they were inaccurate), people calling to say games were forfeited - and there have been several. Must be nice to forfeit a game, likely because players didn't behave or attend practice. And then, there was a dandy - a partial score. Maybe, the person forgot to include it. And there was also the teacher, he's not the only one, who only calls us when his team wins. As if losing is a sin.

In fairness, we have dozens of people who know what they're doing - and you see their sincere efforts daily in the paper and on the Star's website. Coaches and teachers, players and parents, officials and even fans catching a game, who take a few minutes to recognize young athletes and promote high school sports. Kudos to them.

Here are some from tonight who are gung-ho about highlighting young people:

• Lesley Gage went out of her way to get the accurate names for both her teams at Malvern which won field hockey divisional titles.
• Al Humphrey has made it a religion bragging about his athletes in various sports, first at Mowat and now at Bethune.
• Tim Lagace, a parent, gets honours grades with football results at Notre Dame in Burlington
• Ted Thornes has been a huge bonus for Durham Region football e-mailing and calling football scores, and the list goes on and on.

Have to go. Need to try to prepare for the people who call tomorrow asking why Pope John Paul II beat Blessed Mother Teresa and how much of a political fall-out it is because Stephen Lewis knocked off Pierre Trudeau.

 

 

Comments

[Morris]

Your job would be enough to drive me whacky and to the bottle. I really don't know how you have put up with it so long, but I do know as a former student athlete how much we appreciate what you and the Toronto Star do for high schools in this world dominated by professional sports and losing teams in this city.

[T. Blake]

Beautiful. Well said and a great read which left me in tears of laughter.

[Jimmy]

Fortunately we have more coaches who care and like to give back then the others who think they`re important but are better off offering their help in washing floors.

[J. Jones]

Nice to see that you recognize some of the people doing a good job when it was very easy to just focus on the duds.

[Anonymous Parent]

Teachers and coaches like to stress the importance of getting things right. They should learn from their own preaching.

[Big John]

Can hardly wait to see what happens after Bishop Allen or Father Redmond pound Mother Teresa.

[Sammy]

Calm down people.
The use of sports vocabulary to describe victories always throws me for a loop.
It can be misunderstood by lots of people who do not follow this stuff. My suggestion is to just stick to "win" rather than "beat" or "wallop" or the best one yet "lay a whipping".

[Concerned Parent]

And people wonder if our children are being taught well.

[Lorenzo]

High school sports at its finest.