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To everything, there is an end

Posted in Everything changes, tagged , , , , on May 11, 2025| 3 Comments »

I have hit the wall, and the wall has fallen on me.

As this spring, the 13th in Coupeville Sports history, has played out, I have not been as attentive as normal to my blogging duties.

Yes, I still have written a story for every game, varsity or JV, but I haven’t been at games in person as often as usual.

I have given you the facts this spring, but not always the zing.

I missed games at the start, devoting time to instead helping my sister and her family prepare for their move from Freeland to West Virginia.

One moment it’s an idea that seems illogical and unlikely.

Then a moving date is set, but it seems far away.

Then you’re left, alone, stirring the embers in the fire pit out by the half-buried big rock in their front yard one last time, with no one around anymore to tell you that “No, Uncle David, you can’t put leftover carpet cleaning chemicals on the fire like your dad used to back in the ’80s. It’s bad for the environment.”

I should be grateful I got a somewhat unexpected seven-year run with my nephews here on Whidbey, after my sister moved back to the island from Maple Valley.

Instead, I am trying, and often failing, to adjust to reality, which is that instead of me Ubering them around, they are now 3,000+ miles away, and I have yet to leave the West Coast in my lifetime.

My birthday hit last week, and that’s 54 years of thinking Idaho is just a little too East for my liking, much less the rest of those Godforsaken states spilling across the map.

After my nephews left during spring break, not to return, I have been at more games.

But I still have skipped too many, finding excuses not to go, such as the eternal fallback of “I think I need a nap.”

And yes, I am aware that’s a sign of depression.

But sleepy time does allow me a bit of time not to deal with my other reality — that the only way Coupeville Sports has survived for nearly 13 years, and 12,000+ articles, is that I have embraced a life of abject poverty.

And it’s really not working anymore. If it ever did.

I started the blog in self-righteous anger in 2012, after the Coupeville Examiner was sold and thousands of my bylines were flushed down a (proverbial) toilet.

I’ve mellowed (a bit) since then, and the focus of my writing (mostly) got more upbeat.

But you can only smash your head against the brick wall of reality so long.

Living donation to donation is not a viable business plan. Never was. Never will be.

I am eternally grateful to all that have helped me, either financially or with kind words.

The level of support I have seen over the past 13 years is mind-boggling at times.

If you felt my appreciation, I am glad.

If you did not, I apologize for not being clear enough in my thanks.

Without your support, this blog would have died in its first year. But it endured, a lot longer than anticipated.

My current plan is to make it to May 31.

That’s the last day of high school sports in Washington for the 2024-2025 school year, with state championship action wrapping up for track and field that afternoon.

The younger two of my three nephews started school in South Whidbey after the move to the island, went to home schooling for a bit, then moved into Coupeville schools.

I thought I would get to see them go through the next couple of years right near my duplex. I was wrong.

The reality is, as limited as my bills are, I can’t pay them.

And I never will be able to consistently while trying to live from donation to donation, especially as the people who have supported me deal with their own hazy financial futures in a world dominated by scam artists.

It’s time to get out from under the wall which has crashed down on me.

Take less naps.

Accept reality.

Get a job which includes a consistent paycheck, while joining the mass exodus of resignations happening this spring on the prairie.

We make plans, and they change.

And everything, even “Coupeville Sports,” ends.

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With 12 years, I can has cookie??

Posted in Milestones, tagged , , , , on August 14, 2024| Leave a Comment »

A young David prepares for video store life under the watchful eye of his sensei. Years later one of us would turn to sports writing. Mr. Stallone, like South Whidbey School Board directors everywhere, was not amused.

Sports are all about numbers.

Facts, figures, stats — they drive our knowledge and appreciation of athletics in general, so we frequently return to them to make sense of things.

So tomorrow — August 15 — marks not only the 12th anniversary of this blog, but at an average of 365 days a year, it means I’ve been pounding away on the keys for somewhere in the vicinity of 4,380 days.

Give or take a leap year or two.

Now, my first professional sports story with a byline appeared in the Whidbey News-Times back in early 1990, so I’ve been at this gig, off and on, for more like 34+ years.

But yeah, we’re not counting that far back, or remembering all the different publications — many of which promptly crashed and burned — in which my stories have appeared over the years.

Today is just about this thing here, the blog I started in anger when my writing home at the time, the Coupeville Examiner, was sold off to Canadian robber barons.

Now, 11,403 articles later, it’s still going, but morphed a bit from the earlier days.

I still piss people off from time to time (especially during school budget season) but spend less hours actively trying to chafe folks. Or at least that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

I’ve even accepted some money from the Canadian robber barons for allowing them to reprint some of my articles.

So, personal growth, maybe?

Now, not every word I’ve written over the past 12 years has been brilliant, but I have written them all myself.

No AI, no shortcuts. Just my fingers hitting the keys, often at 2 AM while I cuss out my computer.

Good thing no one lives in the other side of the duplex…

Is there a grand plan to this? Do I have any idea how long this will all roll on, and where it will go?

Not really.

When I look back at the last 12 years, I am proud of what I have been able to use Coupeville Sports to help accomplish.

The Wall of Fame in the CHS gym. The revamped record boards in the same building. The 101- and 50-year anniversaries we pulled off for Wolf boys’ and girls’ basketball, respectively.

Sports are about numbers, but they are also about building memories.

The moment when Coupeville hoops guru Bob Barker stepped back into the gym, wearing the same outfit he rocked in the ’70s, and grown men older than myself lost their minds and reverted to being 15-year-olds again, that happened because of this blog.

There have been other, smaller, yet still deeply personal moments when I have felt like my words have made an impact on the lives of those I write about.

If I help inspire that quiet middle schooler to keep playing, it’s worth it.

There are other times when I wonder if this blog, which puts a spotlight on young athletes in a way which doesn’t happen in other towns, makes it harder for them.

You want to honor their accomplishments, to give them a sense of pride, but you don’t want to overly inflate their heads or ramp up the pressure on them in their developing years.

The Wolf athletes of the late ’90s and early 2000’s, who played when I was busy with video store life and not hyper-focusing on their games, were among the best the town has ever seen.

Maybe a little anonymity helped.

It’s a tricky balancing act, and there are days where I feel like I do pretty well, and days where I probably make life tougher than it needs to be.

Does it benefit teenagers to be able to often read about their accomplishments even as they ride the bus home, bumping across the back roads via bus and ferry?

Short answer — I don’t know. And I guess we’ll see.

I try and take in all the comments, good and bad, and find a balance.

Coupeville Sports, love it or hate it, is fairly unique, especially in a world where old school media coverage continues to erode.

Newspapers continue to decimate their staffs, and there are very few other places in the state with bloggers dedicated to providing regular sports coverage.

One of the few, Rhett Workman, called it quits this week after 13 years of writing the Snoqualmie Valley Sports Journal amid building frustration with being able to get results and info from area schools.

We haven’t had too many issues with that here in Coupeville, with the great majority of Wolf coaches and admins being great to work with.

Also, being on an island, there’s less room for them to run away from me in the first place, so there’s that.

For now, I plow on, heading to day 4,381, doing my own thing, surviving thanks to the grace of those who donate to support my ranting.

Should I go poke South Whidbey school officials as they prepare to pass an emergency resolution after an allegedly incompetent drilling crew punctured a pipe and unleashed 150,000+ gallons of water, flooding school grounds like Noah was in town for a visit?

Or should I go spend my time documenting the history of Coupeville cross country runners at the state meet instead?

Choices. Choices.

They say the traditional gifts for a 12th anniversary are linen and silk, but I’m a simple guy, so I’ll dream of DVDs and cookies miraculously appearing at the duplex.

Manifest what you want, or some such nonsense like that.

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Your donations fuel my typing fingers

Posted in Ranting and Raving, tagged , , , , , on August 9, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Your donations? My typing fingers? A match that equals that moment when a feisty banana meets a box of cinnamon-flavored awesomeness.

As business plans go, it’s a humdinger.

I call it the “smash your head against a wall over and over again and wonder why you’re no closer to that indoor/outdoor swimming pool with a waterfall in the middle” than I was when I adopted said plan.

When I started writing this blog, publishing my first story Aug. 15, 2012, I was mad and sad — ticked that the previously independent Coupeville Examiner had been sold to the Dark Overlords of Black Press up in Canada.

Over time, Coupeville Sports morphed into something else.

Together (with me doing most of the work and you, the reader, providing key financial support), we’ve accomplished a lot.

There’s a Wall of Fame in the Coupeville High School gym now, documenting decades of accomplishments in a public way that current athletes can see and use as inspiration.

We’ve held 101- and 50-year anniversaries for the CHS boys’ and girls’ basketball programs, respectively, bringing back numerous former Wolves for one more night in the spotlight.

We saved the athletic trainer position at the school, after it was foolishly slashed as part of budget cuts — funding one of the most important employees any district can employ.

For six days shy of 12 years, we have joined together to provide Cow Town with a unique service.

I have yet to find another blogger in Washington state doing what I am doing, at least at the depth I am doing it.

I write almost every single day, even during the slow months of the summer.

At one point I published for 303 consecutive days, then got busy working for my sister on her property in Freeland, and let an afternoon slip by. The landlord’s cat will never let me hear the end of that one…

Coupeville Sports covers high school athletics, varsity and JV. It covers middle school and elementary school and community activities and events, as well.

It goes well beyond sports at times, which pleases some folks and pisses off others.

Good thing it’s a free blog then, and each person can choose whether to read it or not.

And that “no pay wall” philosophy has been there every step of the way and will remain ever so, from day one to whatever day turns out to be the last.

That’s 11,396 articles and counting.

As we near the start of another school year, I am faced again with the eternal quandary.

Even with my very limited bills, can I make it through nine more months?

That “business plan” I mentioned earlier certainly makes it trickier.

The ads you see on the blog were sold for the life of the site, so some folks have gotten a month or two out of them, and some have gotten 12 years.

If nothing else, it means when a random South Whidbey School Board member or two try to harass my advertisers and call for a boycott, they’ve already lost before they’ve begun — the money is long gone, just like those board members spines.

And anyway, like the “no pay wall,” I’m not reneging on the “you don’t have to renew your ads if you don’t feel like it” part of the “business plan.”

The first advertisers had no clue if the blog would last two articles (like my long-forgotten rival South Whidbey Sports) or 11,396 articles — they took a huge chance on me and should be rewarded for their willingness to possibly light their money on fire back in 2012.

At this point, 12 years in, if you were going to advertise, you likely already have.

Someone out there may surprise me, and if so, awesome. If not, well it’s all part of the “plan.”

I’ll get by (or I won’t) thanks to readers who choose to donate to the cause.

If you’re interested in going that route, there’s PayPal:

https://paypal.me/DavidSvien?country.x=US&locale.x=en_US

There’s Venmo, where you can find me at David-Svien.

There’s snail mail at 165 Sherman, Coupeville, WA, 98239.

Or there’s in person, Mafia handshake style.

From those who have donated publicly to those who have donated privately, I thank you.

Who knew this thing would make it to Year 12, and possibly beyond?

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The milestones, they keep comin’

Posted in Milestones, tagged , , , , on August 15, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Through highs, lows, and a t-shirt — 11 years later the blog is still going.

Somehow, it keeps rolling along.

I’ve tried to quit a few times, gone through stretches where I was angry at the world, and other stretches where I was singing kumbaya.

And here we are at the crack o’ dawn on Aug. 15, 2023, a full 11 years since Coupeville Sports first appeared on the internet.

This is story #10,355, while story #1, published Aug. 15, 2012, was titled “Hark! Fall sports approach!!!”

Four exclamation points in the headline, no photo on the story, and names were not yet in bold.

Little did I know at the time that the Wolf freshmen just beginning their first high school practices would turn out to form one of the most-successful classes in the history of this blog.

The CHS Class of 2016, with Makana Stone, Lathom Kelley, Sylvia Hurlburt, Wiley Hesselgrave, and many more, can stand with any, and came of age as Coupeville Sports “matured.”

What began as an angry response to the Coupeville Examiner being sold to the Evil Empire (and hundreds of my bylined stories vanishing) over time became something more positive.

Most days.

I am proud that Coupeville Sports played a major role in the creation of the Wall of Fame in the CHS gym and sparked the 101-year anniversary for CHS boys’ basketball, which brought countless hoops legends back to their hometown.

Beloved coach Bob Barker stepping through the door, clad in the clothes he wore while guiding the Wolves to the program’s biggest success in the early ’70s, is my “Elvis is in the building” moment.

But I’ve also stumbled more than once.

One which bothers me to this day was when CHS soccer coach Gary Manker unexpectedly passed away.

I rushed to get the news out, and, in doing so, stepped on the feelings of his family, taking away their chance to deal with the loss in private.

As someone who spent one summer attending back-to-back-to-back funerals for his dad, grandmother, and great aunt, I should have been more considerate.

While I have been blessed to be able to use photos from countless camera clicking members of Wolf Nation, Coupeville Sports is essentially a one-man operation.

I write it, I edit it, I choose what to run, and what not to run.

Sometimes I’m right, and sometimes I’m wrong. Every day is a new chance to soar, or to screw it all up.

There are more photos these days, and less exclamation points, than in the early moments of the blog, though the background layout largely remains the same in 2023 as it was in 2012.

That’s because I think my theme, while probably a bit outdated — WordPress retired it years ago, but I’m nothing if not stubborn — is fairly clean.

It offers an easy-to-read look with no pop-up ads cluttering things, which I detest.

And, 11 years and 10,355 articles later, it’s as free to read today as it was in its infancy.

Web sites which have pay walls can bite my pale white rump.

Of course, not charging a fee is a big part of why I don’t have an indoor/outdoor swimming pool with a waterfall in the middle connecting the two halves.

But I get by, thanks to the goodwill of the community.

If you want to support me typing on the shores of Penn Cove at 2:00 AM on a computer powered by a hamster running on a treadmill, there are several ways.

 

You can use PayPal:

https://paypal.me/DavidSvien?country.x=US&locale.x=en_US

 

You can Venmo me under @David-Svien at:

https://account.venmo.com/

 

You can snail mail me at 165 Sherman, Coupeville, WA, 98239 or cram money (or blueberries) into my hands, mobster-style, at a Wolf game.

Hopefully the blueberries are still inside a plastic container, and not just a hot mess of sticky sort-of jam…

Or you can just keep reading for free, for as long as this thing keeps going.

You do you, and I’ll keep pounding away on the keyboard. It’s (mostly) worked so far.

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Achievement unlocked

Posted in Milestones, tagged , , , , on August 15, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Just another day at Coupeville Sports world headquarters. (David Svien photo)

Double digits.

Today — Aug. 15, 2022 — marks the 10th birthday of Coupeville Sports, a blog born in anger that transformed over time into something else.

Most days, at least.

Along the way, I’ve been kicked out of my local press box at least once (I deserved it), been banned from attending games at another school (later rescinded) and tried to quit several times.

My most recent aborted departure was derailed when a worldwide pandemic surfaced, pulling me back in to write … just as prep sports went away for a year plus.

Through big wins and tough losses, a couple of track and field state championship titles for Danny Conlisk, and a lot of self-righteous blathering on a varied series of topics, I’ve churned out 9,391 articles and counting.

It would be more, but, that whole “no live sports for a year-plus” thing did sort of put a crimp in things.

There are those who love what I do, and those who hear my name and make a face like they’re sucking on one lemon while trying to jam another three up their tush.

Thankfully, there’s enough of the former that I continue to dodge the odds and survive financially thanks to the kindness of donations.

There’s never been a paywall on the blog, something which remains as true on day #3,653 as it did back on day #1.

They said it wouldn’t work, and yet, most of “them” are long gone, and I’m still chugging along, with the occasional hiccup.

Ultimately, Coupeville Sports is all about the words — though I am eternally grateful to all those who have let me, a non-photographer, use their pics.

From John Fisken and Shelli Trumbull to Morgan White and Jackie Saia and everyone else who has said “yes” to sharing their images with my readers, thank you. It wouldn’t be the same without you.

But, while the blog itself is the core, it has also allowed me to accomplish some things in the real world which stand out.

My two biggest achievements in the last decade were being able to, with the help of many others, celebrate the 101st anniversary of CHS boys basketball, and the creation of the Wall of Fame in the high school gym.

So, where do we go from here?

Well, prep sports return this week, with high school football set to start practice Wednesday, and all other fall teams kicking off new seasons next Monday. The first game is Sept. 2.

My pursuit of 10,000 stories is ongoing, my quest to find every last point scored in a CHS varsity basketball game endures, and I still think the school’s stadium should be named in honor of longtime Wolf coach Ron Bagby.

If nothing else, I’m likely to annoy some folks — a couple of days ago I was called sexist for using the term “man benches” — and, hopefully, find the right balance to keep Coupeville Sports relevant.

We shall see. Keep your lemons at the ready.

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