Erin Rosenkranz makes with the fancy footwork back in her Whidbey Islanders select soccer days. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
Modern-day Erin, killin’ it in the classroom. (Photo courtesy Kerry Rosenkranz)
She shoots and scores, one more time.
Former Coupeville soccer standout Erin Rosenkranz continues to win awards, but these days most of them come in the world of academics.
The CHS grad was honored Friday by Western Washington University, named as the school’s 2020 Outstanding Biochemistry Student.
The award is named for Professor Sea Bong Chang, who taught at Western from 1964-1972.
Rosenkranz, who competed in soccer and track and field for the Wolves, is working towards her Masters in Biochemistry.
During her high school days, Erin was a top-notch student and a stellar athlete, one who earned enshrinement in the Coupeville Sports Hall o’ Fame.
She is joined in the digital shrine by mom Kerry (McCormick) Rosenkranz, a top CHS cross country runner in the ’80s, and dad Scott, one of the soccer coaches who fueled a boom in the sport on Whidbey Island.
Balancing two soccer teams, as she also played for the Whidbey Islanders select squad, Erin Rosenkranz was a First-Team All-League pick during her senior season at CHS.
South Whidbey Class of 2020 grad Megan Parker shows off her mask. (Photo from Whidbey DIYers Facebook page)
Rivals on the field, friends off of it.
Students at Coupeville and South Whidbey High School are next-door neighbors, their classrooms separated by about 25 miles, but united by living on the same rock in the middle of the water.
With graduation arriving Saturday for a weary Class of 2020, the seniors at those schools, whether Wolves or Falcons, benefited from the generosity of a local group of “do it yourselfers,” and one of the school’s principals.
As everyone deals with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, both area schools required face masks for their graduation ceremonies.
That’s where the Whidbey DIYers group stepped up, getting going on a project to produce masks for grads at South Whidbey High School and South Whidbey Academy.
With the crafty ones hard at work, South Whidbey High School Principal John Patton donated to the cause.
To the delight of all, his bucks gave the Whidbey DIYers enough financial aid to go beyond their original commitment and craft masks for CHS grads as well.
The project was a success on all levels.
“Whether or not they use these masks or just keep them as a keepsake memory of this crazy year, we wanted them to be able to show off their accomplishment even if they have to wear a mask for work, etc,” the Whidbey DIYers said on their Facebook page.
The project was the work of many, with several DIYers getting shout-outs.
That included Gwendine “The Machine” Norton and husband Tom “The Bomb” Norton, both of Clinton, SWHS parents Keasha Campbell and Petrena Haines, DIYer admin Kymy Johnson, Oak Harbor’s Wendy Shingleton, Coupeville School Board member Venessa Matros, and Patton.
Graduation in the time of a pandemic for Marenna Rebischke-Smith. (Photo by Gail Rebischke-Smith)
Bouncing through Facebook I go, plucking photos left and right.
Here a grad, there a grad, everywhere a grad.
Coupeville High School’s Class of 2020 may have had a unique ceremony Saturday, thanks to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but, in the end, one thing matters – they’re done.
Off to the real world they go, diploma in hand.
Willow Vick and Aram Leyva. (Brian Vick photo)
Emma Somes and dad Ian. (Photo courtesy Somes family)
A pack of Wolf grads congregate in the woods. (Brian Vick photo)
Melia Welling and mom Charlie. (Melissa Losey photo)
While Coupeville High School opted not to hold its annual senior parade this year, Oak Harbor soldiered on, and local photo whiz kid John Fisken was on hand to snap pics.
“How am I supposed to tell one Washington state fort from another? I live in Vegas!!”
We’re going to have to call this one a loss for the road team.
For the past year, Steve Schorr, a fixture in Las Vegas for decades, has hoped we here on Whidbey Island would believe his shot-in-Sin-City “newscast” The Whidbey Buzz had any real local connection.
It doesn’t, and he doesn’t.
Well, I mean, he is buddies with Vegas transplant Scott Thompson, a builder who has been trying, and repeatedly failing, to force Oak Harbor to accept his dead-on-arrival housing project, Wright’s Crossing.
Schorr and Thompson met in Vegas, bonded over show dogs, and, lo and behold, The Buzz hit our airwaves just in time to try and slip some positive PR Mr. T’s way, in between a hail of rehashed press releases and anti-homeless digs dropped in to appeal to a small, crusty band of water carriers.
But the danger of making a web series about a place which sits 1,200 miles from your Sin City home is how many chances there are to stumble over things you have no real knowledge about.
Take today’s broadcast, and begin at the 2:47 mark.
The official transcript from The Buzz (produced exactly as they posted it on their website, so it doesn’t 100% match with what is on video) reads:
There is a new effort underway to save and refurbish one of the most historic lighthouses in Washington State. A group called the Keepers of Admiralty Head Lighthouse had announced their effort to help restore and preserve the Lighthouse that is part of historic Fort Whitman, the old Coastal Artillery Fort from WWII.
The Keeper was first started by a group of Whidbey Island residents back in 1995 as a non- profit to promote the Lighthouse awareness and its importance to the historic nature of Whidbey Island.
Each year some 55,000 people visit the Lighthouse at Fort Whitman.
The current restoration project for the Lighthouse is the first one since the 1970s. Those interesting in supporting the effort, and the Historic Lighthouse can send an email to Keepers of AHLH@gmail.com
Now, if you’re wearing a fluffy robe, sipping mai-tai’s poolside in the 102-degree hellhole that is Vegas right now, cooling down after being bathed by the sizzlin’ lights of the digital studio, probably sounds like you aced it.
Oh lord, where to begin?
MAYBE WITH THE FACT THERE IS NO LIGHTHOUSE AT FORT WHITMAN.
I’ve lived on Whidbey for 31 years, and had never even heard of the fort. So off to the internet with me!
Where we discover said fort, or what remains of it, is located on Goat Island, over in Skagit County, closer to La Conner than any of us living here on Whidbey, in Island County.
It also is far more likely to have five visitors a year than 55,000…
Now, it’s true, the Admiralty Head Lighthouse itself, which is located at Fort Casey, just a stone’s throw from Coupeville Sports world headquarters, here on Whidbey Island, is undergoing a major renovation.
If you visit the Keepers of Admiralty Head Lighthouse Facebook page, the top post is about the work on our lighthouse.
That post also includes a photo of a field trip to Goat Island, where the keepers visited Fort Whitman.
If you’re 1,200 miles away, trolling Facebook for “local Whidbey” news nuggets you can pluck and then pretend you’re reporting on, it would be easy — if you’re skimming while mai-tai’ing, say — to get mixed up and think one thing is connected to the other.
Mr. Schorr hates it when I point out 98.2% of the Buzz is regurgitated press releases, hastily-rewritten Facebook posts, and baseless rumors spewed by homeless-hatin’ nutballs.
And then he offers us up such a juicy display of exactly that.
Now, there may be some who will say I’m being too hard on Mr. Schorr, whacking the big city slickster like a piñata, waitin’ for the candy to pop out of his well-tailored suit.
Possibly.
I didn’t go to college.
I went to the hard knocks school of journalism, getting a job in the Whidbey News-Times press room at 18, hustling to earn freelances stories, before working my way into the newsroom, where I sat next to Mary Kay Doody, the ultimate bulldog investigative reporter.
This was a woman who never let a double-speak politician slide away from her, a titanic terror who crawled through the woods on her hands and knees to report first-hand the day the feds shot it out with the Neo-Nazi’s in Freeland.
Mary Kay would look at The Buzz, with gives us less transparency than Al-Jazeera, and she would seethe.
When Schorr slips in positive PR for Thompson, and never acknowledges their real-world connections, she would pace.
When the Buzz, claiming to be a “non-profit,” responds to a request for its federal ID number by sending out a number not registered with the IRS, then threatens to call the police on the person requesting the number, Mary Kay would lower her head and come out a’swingin.
She’s not here to do that anymore, but I am.
When I swing the piñata stick, Mr. Schorr, I do it for her.
