Win for your school. Win for your teammates. Win for yourself. (David Svien photos)
The last time a Coupeville High School baseball team won a league title. PS — How many of those phone numbers do we think are still good?
Make them fear the Wolves. Make them Bow Down to Cow Town.
Today is about today, but it’s also about yesterday and tomorrow.
When the Coupeville High School baseball team takes its home field this afternoon to face Port Townsend (4 PM), the Wolves have a rare opportunity.
Coupeville enters the day at 6-0 in the 1A Olympic League, 9-8 overall and ranked #9 in the most recent state poll.
The RedHawks, who have had to play their entire season on the road thanks to problems with their home field, are 0-6, 0-13.
Go out there, put the hammer down, and the Wolves will bring their school its first baseball league title since 1991.
25 years is a long time.
Fashion changes. Music changes. Hairstyles change.
The entire world, from how we watch movies to the fact you’re reading this on a computer, phone or some other newfangled device never thought of in ’91 is proof of that.
The oldest players on this Coupeville squad weren’t even a twinkle in their parents eyes the last time something like this happened on the prairie.
And when it does (and I said WHEN and not if), these Wolves, from CJ Smith to Jake Hoagland, from Cole Payne to Clay Reilly, and all of their teammates and coaches, will freeze a moment in time.
Forever.
I know, when you’re 15, 16, 17, 18, everything is about today and not down the road, and little I say now is likely to sink in. I get it.
These Wolf players will celebrate in the moment, as Coupeville’s girls basketball and girls and boys tennis teams have done over the past two years when they won titles. It will be big for them.
But it will be bigger later. I promise.
A decade down the road, 25 years down the road, when you’re pushing 30 and coming back for your 10-year reunion or when you’re crawling into your early 40’s, it will mean so much more.
When you return to the CHS gym and look up on the wall and show your own children the banner, you have no clue right now how much that is going to matter.
Time will change all of you.
Some will achieve great things, some may fall hard. Hopefully more of the former, less of the latter.
But you win today, and this moment will truly live for all time.
On the gym wall, and in your own hearts and minds.
And yes, I get the argument that sports are not everything, that how you do in the classroom right now will likely affect your life more than whether you get a bunt down or throw out a runner at home.
They are semi-valid arguments, and I understand why some people won’t want you to spend the rest of your life marinating in your “glory days.”
And I would tell you to tell those people to blow it out their rears.
You have worked hard, as individuals, as a team, to get to this moment. It should be treasured.
It is not the final destination, certainly, and there are many prizes ahead waiting to be vied for, and won.
But today can be, should be, a moment you will have forever.
Play with confidence, embrace the spotlight, carry yourself with pride. Execute, execute, execute. Win the day and step into history.
What you are about to achieve is something relatively few teams in Coupeville have, in baseball or any sport.
Live out the words of The Sandlot (another thing from before you were all born…).
“Remember kid, there’s heroes and there’s legends. Heroes get remembered but legends never die.”
Walk on that field this afternoon heroes. Walk off legends.
