Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Memories’ Category

Brain damage … not just for kids anymore!!

Posted in Memories, Ranting and Raving on November 29, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I always did have an eye for fashion…

When people hear I spend a lot of time covering high school and middle school sports and don’t really get paid for it, they get an odd look in their eyes.

It’s a look that says, “Did you hit yourself on the head, son?” A look that says “Back away slowly, he might start drooling on himself … or us.”

Then I tell them about that magical dream where the booster club rewards my efforts with a house made entirely of freshly-baked brownies (the swimming pool out back is filled with coconut cream pie filling), and they really start backing up. Just not as slowly as before.

If they stuck around, I’d tell them my life has been a series of questionable choices. And it all started with the box full of plaid pants at an elementary school in Kelso, Washington.

These pants were handed out to young rapscallions such as myself, when they would do something which made it impossible to continue wearing their own clothes for the rest of the school day. Such as, oh I don’t know, starting a mud ball war at recess.

Which was preferable to the alternative of a bark chip battle, which left 42 kids lying sprawled on the Beacon Hill Elementary playground looking like they had just been involved in a World War II beach attack and caused at least one teacher to quit after having a nervous breakdown.

I coughed up bits of bark for three weeks and when the weather changes, it feels like two or three of the little buggers are still embedded in the back of my knee.

It’s not that I was stupid. I knew how gravity worked and I could read the warning labels just as well as the next kid. I just spent much of my childhood ignoring that buzzing in the back of your brain, the one that tells you to stop being an idiot because you’re about to light yourself on fire with the home-made flame thrower you and Ray Jacoby just built from your dad’s pump canister of carpet cleaning chemicals.

To which I would respond by singing that old Dusty Springfield classic, “You Don’t Own Me” and then wondering why I had just lost my hearing and was now sprawled on my back ten feet from where I had been a moment ago. And why was the ant pile (and half the lawn) now on fire?

So I got detention (and a nice cold) after refusing to stop playing basketball and come in from the playground during a driving rain storm.

I tempted fate (and lost) by grabbing my sister’s TV remote, changing the channel and running away while she was trying to watch a marathon of videos by The Cure. My only mistake — slowing down to look behind me, only to see my sister charging down the hallway like a raptor, fingernails already popped and mere moments from raking down my tender back like the wrath of God.

I stood up on a riding lawn mower once and nailed my head on a low-hanging branch, knocking myself off the moving mower. Since I also managed to later do the same thing on a motorcycle, it probably wasn’t an accident.

Why did I do it all? Probably because I’ve always been living on borrowed time.

I barely made it out of kindergarten, you see.

Washington Elementary was an old, imposing two-story structure which was mercifully shut down a year later, but not before one staggeringly inept new teacher tried, unsuccessfully, to kill off her entire class.

Apparently unaware that five-year-olds have no sense of direction, she sent us off to find our own way to the gym for picture day.

There were 23 of us at the start, straggling through long, dark hallways in a hopeless bid of finding our destination. The weak went first, in a hail of snot and tears. Then the pants-wetters fell, the mommies-boys, the daddy’s little princesses and the one kid who kept yelling “It’s pudding time!!”

Tragically, it wasn’t.

In the end, there was just two of us and we swore a blood oath that if we ever got out of this place, we’d live our life to the fullest and ignore all the rules. I last saw Sally Mae as she fell down an open elevator shaft (it was a dangerous school!) screaming, “Avenge me!”

They found me days later in the basement bathroom, living off of scavenged tator tots, more animal than boy. It took three of them, and several cartons of pudding, to lure me out of the stall.

And yes, I had to wear the plaid pants home.

Read Full Post »

And then Georgie Smith called me an idiot!!

Posted in Memories, Where are they now?, Whidbey's Best on November 29, 2012| 2 Comments »

Bonacci. Cross. Stuurmans. McFadyen. Stars of a different time.

It was a different time.

The ’80s, maybe more than just about any decade, had a unique look to them, whether it was clothes, hair or style. It was a time when Duran Duran and Wham! ruled the airwaves, hair just got bigger and bigger and two out of every three Coupeville High School male athletes rocked ‘staches.

It was also a time when the Wolves were big players in almost every sport they participated in. And yes, you can say it was because they were in a B league, while the modern-day CHS squads play in a 1A/2A conference, but I don’t totally agree.

The Northwest League was tough. Concrete. Darrington. Lopez. They weren’t pushovers.

But the Wolves were tougher.

Aparicio. Messner. Grasser. Ford. Zustiak. Cross. Biskovich. Bamberger. And enough Engles and Shermans to fill an entire town. They believed they were going to win every night and they often did. It’s a mentality the current generation, which is populated by many of their own children, needs to firmly embrace.

And hey, at one point in the mid-’80s, the Wolves had 60 players turn out for football. That’s right — 60, when they were a B school.

Looking back at newspaper clippings from the mid to late ’80s, the time just before my family moved to Whidbey Island in ’89, I noticed a lot of things.

Dea (Sibon) Bowen, CHS class of ’84 and my former co-worker at Videoville/Miriam’s Espresso, had really amazing hair.

In a sea of ‘staches, Wolf star Chad Gale looked a lot like Oates from Hall and Oates.

While there were more football players (Coupeville had a high of 38 early in the season this year) there were a LOT less cheerleaders. Sylvia Arnold’s squad rolled out 27 girls this fall, while many of the years in the ’80s, pictures show 4-6 cheerleaders, tops.

A tradition was being started, however, as the beaming face of Tami Stuurmans can be seen in most of those pictures, and now look-alike daughter Sydney Aparicio is one of the current Wolf cheer stalwarts.

No newspaper at the time seemed to know how to spell Aleshia McFadyen’s first name (I saw four different versions) or Sherry Bonacci’s last name (two N’s or two C’s?). And was it Jennie Cross or Jenny Cross?!?

In 1987, the Coupeville Booster Club gave Ron Bagby $180 to get a new pole vault pole for CHS. Since the Wolves no longer compete in the event, where’s the pole these days — Bagby’s garage?

And while we’re on Bagby, back when the longtime football coach wore short shorts and rocked his own ‘stache, I knew he was a star at Forks High School and then at the University of Puget Sound, where he led the nation in punt returns as a sophomore.

I did NOT know he came really close to being drafted by the United States Football League, the NFL rival that gave us Doug Flutie, Herschel Walker and Donald Trump. Take away a leg injury and instead of having a Wolf legend, we might have watched him returning punts on TV.

And speaking of questions, who exactly are Dick Bogardus and Eddie “Grandpa” Pope, and are the CHS Athlete of the Year awards still named in their honor?

While we’re thinking about that, we’ll close with this response from Georgie Smith, who played several sports in the ’80s and went on to be a successful newspaper writer and now farmer. When I inquired if I could do a story on her, she had the following to say, in between bouts of hysterical laughter.

“Well, if there was one thing I sucked at David, it was high school sports. So if you want to do a story about how in a small town EVERYBODY gets to play on the basketball team (even if you can’t dribble to save your life) or the volleyball team (even if you were scared shitless every time somebody spiked the ball at you) that would be me.

“I can tell you the story about the ONE TIME I tried to steal the ball in basketball and it was so ridiculous that when the play was over I looked over to see my coach with his head between his knees laughing til he cried. So if so, sure.”

But, I am nothing if not persistent, and she agreed (probably to get me to shut up) to write a first-person account of her days in a Wolf uniform sometime in January. Mark your calendars, Coupeville, cause it’s gonna be epic!

Read Full Post »

Where have all the ‘staches gone?!?!

Posted in Boys Basketball, Memories, Ranting and Raving, Where are they now? on November 28, 2012| Leave a Comment »

   I count four, maybe five ‘staches in this photo, with the Aparicio brothers prominently rockin’ the fuzzy lip.

I have come to mourn a loss. The loss of the high school ‘stache.

Let me take a step back here and explain. I’m not talking about my own ‘stache (I didn’t grow a beard until my days as Sports Editor at the Whidbey News-Times, when I was trying to look semi-distinguished (ha!) and hide the fact that at 21 I was barely older than the athletes I was covering.)

No, I’m talking about the glorious assortment of “Dazed and Confused” ‘staches I saw on Coupeville High School athletes (and a young football coach sportin’ short shorts by the name of Ron Bagby) when I recently went through Sherry Roberts’ Big Bag ‘o Newspaper Clippings.

I’m working on features on both Sherry and husband Jon, both of whom are former CHS Athlete of the Years and the former Ms. Bonacci let me go through her impressive collection of memories from her high school athletic exploits. Or, as Jon calls it, the “Sherry Loves Sherry” box.

And, oh lord, along with the ’80s hair (which I expected) there was also a bevy of ‘staches. In one boys’ basketball photo, at least four of the players were rockin’ the ‘stache.

During this same time period depicted in the photos, it was mentioned that FOUR Wolf teams had gone to state that year, and another two had missed by a single game. At a time in 2012 when CHS has hit a bit of a dry spell when it comes to sending teams of any sport to state, that is freakin’ unbelievable.

And it means only thing. The ‘stache has to come back.

I am calling on every member of the Wolf boys’ basketball team to accept the ‘stache challenge. I’m not talking about merely taking part in No Shave November. I’m talking bout bringing back the Full Bagby!

I just saw a Coupeville Middle School basketball game where one of the 7th graders from King’s was sporting a beard, so don’t tell me you don’t have the face for it. You just need to step up and embrace your manhood.

If a few girl hoopsters want to jump in and join the challenge, well … yeah.

And spring athletes, be you baseball players, track runners or soccer players, get those hairs sproutin’!

We’re going back to a time when Coupeville High School was a lot hairier and went to state on a regular basis in every sport — and we’re getting there one ‘stache at a time.

Read Full Post »

The chosen ones have returned!!

Posted in Memories, Middle School, Ranting and Raving, Where are they now?, Whidbey's Best on November 13, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Left to right, Aiden, Maggie, Jon and Jodi Crimmins.

“A bear going after pic-a-nic baskets in my park? No sir!!”

Forever a legend.

I have a splitting headache today.

The why and how is not important. I mean, it’s possible I ate something I knew was 99.3% likely to give me a migraine, but that would be stupid and when was the last time I was called stupid and … fine, I guess it’s possible … probable … oh, shut up.

But in the midst of the little men with their jackhammers assaulting my frontal lobe, a ray of sunshine shot through the pouring rain outside and brightened the world. It was the realization that all was well in the world of Wolf sports once again.

After daring to tempt the fates themselves by living, working and sending their children to schools on South Whidbey, revered former Coupeville High School athletes Jon and Jodi (Christensen) Crimmins have finally accepted reality and returned to the fertile soils of their youth.

The legend decreed that the spawn of a Crimmins/Christensen union, born of a man who once was a laid-back tennis ace and a woman who was an elbow-flingin’ basketball wild child, must only wear the black and red. The blue of a Langley uniform may be fine for some, but not for the chosen ones.

And now, with park ranger dad and school teacher mom having accepted fate and moved down the Island, their kids (Aiden and Maggie) can once again walk the same hallways where their parents-to-be once lounged, casting googly-eyes at each other in between classes.

Aiden is playing basketball for the Coupeville Middle School 8th grade team, and Maggie, after a brief dalliance with the dark side in which she wore the volleyball uniform of a South Ender (ag-o-neeeee for Wolf diehards!!) can now lay claim to her mom’s legend. And what a legend it is.

There was never a nicer person off the court, or more of a hellion on the court than young Jodi Christensen. One walking, talking, gum-popping black ‘n blue bruise, she threw herself with wild abandon after loose balls, crashing into bleachers, wiping out any teammate who dared to get between her and a rebound (poor Marlys West is probably still flinching) and thoroughly freaking out her opponents, who wondered where that nice girl with the pleasant smile had gone.

Other Wolves have scored more than Jodi. Other Wolves have had more natural talent. But no one has ever played the game as hard as the angel with hellfire coming out of her elbows.

If Maggie is 3% of the hard-charging force of nature her mom was, Coupeville coaches and fans are set. The good times (and possibly heads) will roll.

Party on, Wolf Nation. Party on.

Read Full Post »

So, um … I’m gonna need you to go ahead and celebrate the whole week!!

Posted in Boys Tennis, Girls Basketball, Memories, Ranting and Raving, Whidbey's Best on October 1, 2012| 1 Comment »

Jodi and Jon Crimmins, aka The Awesome Twosome.

They are Coupeville’s own Brad and Angelina, just more athletic.

And while they may live down on the South End of Whidbey Island these days, allowing their daughter Maggie to play middle school volleyball for Langley (it’s just not right, I say), Jon and Jodi Crimmins remain Wolves at heart.

He was a tennis ace in his younger days (I have the vintage Whidbey News-Times photos to prove it) and she, back when she went by the pre-marriage alias of Jodi Christensen, was the hardest-working basketball player I have ever witnessed take the floor at CHS.

She frequently bounced off the floor, elbowed her own teammates (accidentally, she claimed) in the face while in pursuit of elusive rebounds and earned the respect and admiration of even the crustiest coach.

Off the floor, Jodi worked at Miriam’s Espresso for a stint in her younger days and earned the title of Nicest Person in the Entire Universe. Jon, while just a hair behind his high school sweetheart, still turned out pretty nice himself.

Now Jodi is a teacher and Jon is a forest ranger and they have two kids (the aforementioned Maggie, who needs to switch to the red and black by her high school days, and Aiden). And they remain eternally awesome.

I bring this up because this Friday marks the 16th wedding anniversary of Jon and Jodi, and because, since it’s my blog, I can write about whatever I feel like.

And what I feel like this morning is saying, good on you, Crimmins clan. You guys are the best and I hope your anniversary day — ah heck, your anniversary week — is as splendid as the people involved.

Now, we do need to talk about this whole moving closer to Coupeville thing.

Maggie Crimmins, Falcon? Doesn’t sound right.

Maggie Crimmins, second-generation Wolf, laying down the Elbow o’ Death like her mom once did?

That’s history. That’s destiny.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »