Coupeville Sports

   Oliana Stange, back when she was still wearing the right colors. (John Fisken photos)

Playing with the Coupeville band.

Oliana Stange has a great sense of humor.

That’s important, because I know she’ll know I’m joking (mostly) with that headline.

Miss Stange, who celebrates a birthday today, is one of the kindest, most talented, most gonna-change-the-freakin-world young women I know.

Course, since she’ll be a freshman this fall at South Whidbey High School and not Coupeville, as we once all assumed, she’s also a dirty, dirty traitor!

I kid, I kid.

A family move pulled Oliana and younger brother Fletcher down to the far end of the Island, but just because she’ll be wearing the wrong colors when she makes her high school tennis debut, I can’t forsake her.

She may be a Falcon now and not a Wolf, as she once was, but she will always, forever and ever, be extremely well-liked on the prairie.

There is whip-smart and then there is Oliana, who goes about a billion miles past that.

She’s the kind of intelligent that makes Stephen Hawking sit up and say “Dang!”

But Stange is much more than book smart.

She is a strong writer (her work has run here on Coupeville Sports) who deeply cares about the world around her, and wants to be one of the ones who makes things better.

She’s also a hard-working athlete, and, back in the day, popped up on CMS basketball and track squads.

Now she’ll follow dad Ken (the longtime CHS tennis coach) into the family business, just on fancier South-end courts.

I wish her the best, always, because Oliana is pure sunshine and brilliance.

Happy birthday, you traitor, you!

He said with a smile.