Coupeville Sports

  One of the few times Shelli Trumbull (second from left) has been caught on the other side of the camera. (Kyla Garden photo) **All pics below courtesy of The Master herself.**

500 articles in five months … how do you do it?

Well, a lack of sleep and a burning desire to give the Canadian Corporate Overlords up in Moosejaw a wedgie certainly help. But there is more to it than that, much more.

From the moment we launched August 16, 2012 (Do I get a 5-month birthday cake tomorrow? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?), my job has been made so much easier by the many, many, many people who have donated photos to me.

Their bright, shiny pics draw the eye in and make it more likely that readers will read some (maybe not all) of my 1,673,907 words (rough estimate…).

The names are endless, but, off the top of my head, Robert Bishop, Sherry Roberts, Aimee Bishop, Wendy McCormick, Barb Cope, Jodi Crimmins, Kali Barrio, John Fisken, Janine Bundy and it goes on from there.

But no one, and I mean no one, has meant as much to the rise of coupevillesports.com as “David’s photographer,” the one, the only, the constantly harassed and yet eternally easy-going, the brilliant (and yet humble) Shelli Trumbull.

Humble Trumbull? That almost rhymes…

But yes, anyway! It would be easy to forget that she has a real job (Cascade Insurance — their ad is right there on the side of the page, call ’em today!), so faithfully does she perform her photographic duties.

A Coupeville High School grad who gives back a billion times to her alma mater by documenting the children of another generation as they play out their sporting careers (I do think she might be stalking this Aaron Trumbull kid, however), she is a gem.

Is she getting misty-eyed yet or do I need to keep pouring it on? Don’t want her to have to shoot through teary eyes!

So we’ll wrap this up by saying, from me and everyone who reads this site, Shelli Trumbull puts the awe in awesome … and you stopped reading four paragraphs back and are just staring at her photos above, which remind you spring is on its way.

Understandable.

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Lori Stolee, balancing family and work. (John Fisken photo)

She has an incredibly hard job, if you think about it.

Coupeville High School Athletic Director Lori Stolee has to balance the wants and needs of coaches, athletes, parents, teachers, random people wandering by, even the occasional snarky blogger. And, she has to do it with a smile, even if, at times, she probably feels like smacking one or two of us with a confiscated Vuvuzela horn.

Mainly the snarky blogger, when his writings drive parents to her office to complain about something she has no control over…

It’s a can’t win job, as her predecessors can attest.

No matter how well she pulls things together and keeps them running, there will always be someone who thinks they know how she should be doing the job.

When you’re the focal point, as she is with Wolf athletics, you never get enough credit for the successes, but you always hear about the “failures.”

Well, today, one person at least is going to stop and simply say, “Good job.”

Thank you for putting up with my sometimes(?) inane questions, and for being subtle about it when deflecting the ones you can’t or won’t answer.

Thank you for being at nearly every Wolf sporting event, putting a smiling public face front and center.

Thank you for hiring quality coaches like Tony Maggio, Anthony Smith and David and Amy King.

Thank you, Mrs. Stolee, for being you.

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They call me Mr. Graves!!

The Man (left), back in the days of the ‘stache.

Well sweet son of a goat-lickin’ whore, what am I supposed to do now?

Since I launched this web site, I have taken great delight in being snarky about the Whidbey Island newspapers as they languish in captivity, held prisoner by Canadian Corporate Overlords who sit in Moosejaw eatin’ gold-plated truffles and merrily erasing three years of my bylines and not givin’ a crap.

And today?

Today I still feel the same way. Mostly.

I am still not Vincent Nattress and I still want my bylines back. I still believe I am doing a better job covering Central Whidbey sports than all three papers combined.

I am faster. My coverage goes deeper. I not only drink your milkshake — your glass was drained empty four months back.

I am still irrationally, sanctimoniously ticked that the Examiner, the last independent, truly local paper, was sold to a media Godzilla to just be another cog in a 250-paper portfolio.

But today, the Canadian Corporate Overlords went and hired Keven R. Graves, one of my mentors, to return to Whidbey and run the News-Times, Examiner and Record as Publisher.

This is a giant of a man. A man who shot me in the head with rubber bands in the News-Times newsroom until I couldn’t feel my forehead. A man who pulled my not-going-to-college butt through the frequent fires I lit as I explored professional journalism as a slack-jawed yokel.

The man who founded the Examiner and let me write a weekly video column for 15 years.

The man, who, with former News-Times editor Fred Obee and photographer/EMT/rumored swimsuit model Geoff Newton, forms a part of the holy trio of men who represent what a newspaperman is supposed to be.

How can I be snarky to him?

Frankly, it was easier, much easier, to chafe Kasia Pierzga all these years, first at the Examiner, then in the months since I threw a hissy fit and took my words to a new location.

Kasia is a true professional and she put up with way too much whining, bitching, and assorted David-being-an-idiot antics over the years. And it’s not that I don’t respect her, because I do, and I wish her well in her new job.

But Kev, Kevvy, the Kevster, Mr. Graves, was and is, one of my idols.

As an 18-year old freelancer who somehow became a 21-year old sports editor of a twice-weekly paper — back when that paper still mattered (ooh, rib shot!) — Keven was larger-than-life to me. Easy to approach, a fountain of info and a man deeply committed to the belief that newspapers were more than just ink and paper, he presented, without trying too hard, an image of the writer I wanted to be.

Of course, along the way, I learned to be a royal pain in the ass to editors, the guy who chafed editorial but they put up with because I never, ever missed a deadline. I left the News-Times and came back and then left again.

I have never trod the straight journalism path that Keven and Kasia have. I have opted more for the Hunter S. Thompson route, minus most of the notoriety, drugs and alcohol and all the money.

It is what is.

But I like what I’m doing right now, publishing at 2 AM and writing features about the kids who never see their names in the Canadian-funded papers and never again having an argument over whether I can use the word stud.

Underneath it all, I still firmly believe I am at war with the Canucks and their filthy money. They need to give us our papers back and return to Manitoba or Saskatchewan or wherever their home is (I did not do well at geography…) and I intend to keep kicking their fannies.

But, with all my snarkiness, it has never been personal (though I’m sure some people read it that way) against Kasia, or Jim Waller (my high school journalism teacher, for crying out loud! I don’t have a bad word to say about the man!) or the other people who write for the Whidbey papers.

It’s a fine line, I realize. One I crash over every day.

And now The Man returns and how can I be snarky to one of my idols?

Oh, I’ll find a way, I’m sure. He wouldn’t expect anything less.

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Look what happens when you believe.

In 2010, Coupeville was on top of the sports world. It can get there again.

That summer, a group of young men (guys like Brian Norris, Korbin Korzan, Ben Etzell and Jake Tumblin) went toe-to-toe with the best in Washington state in their sport and flat-out kicked ass.

The Central Whidbey Little League Junior All-Stars won a state title and it’s remarkable what they did.

They never backed down.

They never made excuses that they were from an area much smaller than many of the teams they faced.

They never apologized for being very, very talented.

They never quit.

They never stopped believing.

And, in the end, they now have memories they will never, ever forget.

It’s a lesson with deep meaning for all current and future Coupeville athletes. You can be the best and you don’t have to feel bad about being the best.

We live in a very different time than when I started covering high school sports on Whidbey Island back in 1989.

You can make a lot of excuses for why Wolf athletics is not what it once was. And, in the end, that’s what they all are — excuses.

It’s true that CHS plays in an unfair league, where it is the smallest school by far. So what? Smaller schools beat big schools every day in every sport, in every state.

It’s true that kids have so many entertainment options now that few simply go out and play ball year-round like they did in the ’70s and ’80s. I say take their damn phones away and lock ’em outside again.

It’s also true we have coddled a generation by telling them they are all equal, they all deserve a pat on the head for simply trying (even if they just hit the bottom of the rim and had the ball bounce off their head), that none of them should aspire to be too much better than the kid next to them.

Bull crap! That’s not what they teach ’em at ATM and King’s.

There are a lot of nice kids in Coupeville, but, you can be nice and still play like a beast.

Be proud of your talent. Believe in yourself. Kick ATM in the over-priced nads.

Off the basketball court, Jodi Christensen and Jennie Cross were, and still are, two of the nicest people you will ever meet. On the court, they came at the opposition like rabid dogs. When they went for a rebound, they flat-out committed, dropping teammates with their Elbows O’ Death.

Or look at Kyle and Tyler King, as driven and focused a pair of athletes as this town has ever seen. They ran relentlessly, in the snow, in the rain, in the wind. They had talent, they developed it, they firmly believed they were going to win … and now they’re on full-ride scholarships at major Division 1 schools and their parents say a giant “thank you” every time they check their bank balance.

Maybe we can’t go back to the ’70s and ’80s, get high school guys to grow ‘staches, get refs to let folks brawl again and play Darrington and Concrete and La Conner on a regular basis. But Coupeville can be just as good as it once was.

We can be the King brothers. We can be Jennie Cross. We can be a state champion baseball squad.

We are Coupeville and we can make that mean something.

If we believe.

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