Coupeville Sports

Well, that escalated quickly.

Feelings are frayed right now on both sides of the Hayley Newman story, which is understandable. She has great support and some loud detractors.

I cover Coupeville sports. I don’t normally wander off into South Whidbey sports. What I do know about the Newmans is that they have a long family tradition of athletic excellence and have always been at the forefront of Falcon sports.

I chose to post my article about Hayley quitting the South Whidbey High School girls’ basketball team because, with her being the #3 scorer in the Cascade Conference and it looking like the Wolves and Falcons would face off in the playoffs, it was news to my readers.

I still feel that way, especially as we count down the hours to that game (Wednesday 7 PM in Langley).

The two squads split their regular season games. Tonight is a loser-out district playoff battle royale for the very soul of the Island.

Or something like that. I tend to blow things out of proportion.

As the story took off (it now has more than 1,000 page views and is the #3 most-read story on my site, out of 592 articles), the comment section also began to kick in.

At first, I was pleasantly surprised. The comments were eloquent essays from both sides of the argument.

Whether the writers thought Hayley was courageous for making a stand (a position I back) or pissed that she had deserted her team at a crucial point of the season, they made their points and kept the personal mud-slinging to a minimum.

Oh, how naive I am…

While the crayons didn’t come out as quickly as they did when I irritated Sultan (20 seconds) or ATM (12 minutes), they did eventually show up.

The First Amendment, it’s a hell of a drug…

But, there is a point which we’re not going past. If you drop allegations of people in the community having affairs or make references to teen girls sucking things other than lollipops, I am going to have to delete or edit your comments.

It’s really easy to sit behind the computer and rant and rave. I do it all the time.

But remember, these are real people, people in your communities, that you are smearing.

I hope that people give Hayley the benefit of the doubt. I hope that people can see both sides of the issue. I kind of hope I don’t have pop bottles thrown at my head tonight when I show up at the SWHS gym to cover the playoff game…

Most of all, I hope people remember one thing. Whether South, Central or North, we ARE Whidbey. We are NOT Sultan.

Stay classy, Whidbey.