Coupeville Sports

Don’t make the Sad Coyote cry any more. Play a sport! (Robyn Myers photo)

Psst, kid … yeah you … this is your time.

Monday marks the first day of practice for volleyball, girls soccer and boys tennis at Coupeville High School and day five for football.

Plus, there are pretty substantial rumors a number of Wolves are going to travel down to South Whidbey and run cross country this season.

Since CHS doesn’t have an active harrier program, they’ll train and travel with the Falcons, but compete under the Coupeville banner.

To everyone, in any of the different sports, who shows up tomorrow, I say congratulations.

You are expanding your horizons, giving yourself new challenges, taking full advantage of everything your school has to offer.

To those who are wavering on this (suddenly less ferociously-hot) Sunday, I say, DO IT!!!!!

Take a chance. Try something new or return to a sport you once played.

Just do it.

Early estimates have three of the four fall sports at CHS down in number of athletes from a year ago, and, if that plays out, it sucks.

Opportunity abounds right now, thanks to Coupeville’s relative smallness (we boast the sixth-smallest student body of any 1A school) and, if the numbers hold, lack of competition for a roster spot.

In the two years the Wolves have been in the Olympic League, athletic success has trended upward.

Coupeville, across the 11 varsity sports, has been well in front of Port Townsend and Chimacum, while making a sustained, serious run at Klahowya, which has the second-biggest 1A student body.

Now is not the time to take a step back.

Now is the time for the benches to be deep, for the programs to be growing.

Every athlete, top to bottom, is important at a small school.

Athletics are not more important than academics, but, when the two are combined, they provide you with a better base.

When I look back at my own high school days in Tumwater, I don’t remember the tests I aced (or the classes I skipped…), but I do vividly remember playing tennis on gas-soaked courts in the hellhole that is Aberdeen, while local fans threw rocks at us through the chain-link fence.

I sort-of remember a vinegary English teacher calling me a blasphemer after I wrote a story about Adam and Eve rolling dice with the Devil, but that time I hit a jerk-wad foreign exchange student in the chest with three consecutive shots as he cussed me out in his native tongue?

Crystal clear.

Now imagine if I had been anything more than a mere journeyman netter?

I might be telling you about the state tourneys I played in, as opposed to fondly remembering the open sewage which ran past the courts in Hoquiam and the afternoon we “liberated” the large welcome carpet from outside Charles Wright Academy.

Anyway, the point of this rambling is this — sports, whether you’re All-State or prone to running extra laps, makes for memories you simply can’t get in a classroom.

Take advantage. Don’t let the opportunities slip away.

Get off your duff and show up Monday. Play a sport.

Your very own gas-soaked courts, irksome foreign exchange students and open sewage awaits you, but only if you go seek them out.