CHS hoops players are lifted up by the crowd after the 1969-1970 Wolves clinched a trip to state, the first in school history. (Photo courtesy Jeff Stone)
Our greatest generation of athletes are being shafted.
The further I dig into the history of Coupeville High School sports, it becomes increasingly obvious the 1970s were a golden age in Cow Town.
From Jeff Stone to Corey Cross to Bill Jarrell to Ray Cook and many, many more, the athletes of that decade carried teams to state, set records and won league titles.
But when you walk into the CHS gym, you would have no clue, because, when you look above the entrance way at the two rows of banners celebrating league titles and teams which placed at state, the first banner is from … 1990.
That’s right.
It’s as if no Wolf team in school history ever won anything until Ron Bagby’s football squad went undefeated in the fall of ’90.
That’s a lie, and a shameful one.
Why is it that way? There may be a thousand reasons, but we don’t have the time to debate who failed, or when they failed. Doesn’t matter.
Because, now, in 2016, we should be focused on something more positive.
We, the people, can fix this error. We can restore our forgotten legacy of sports excellence in the most public way possible.
It’s been 40+ years for those athletes of the ’70s, so they are now in their fifties or sixties.
The coaches of teams which won league titles in that decade, some of whom are still with us, are even older.
This is a situation which needs to be corrected NOW.
And it can be, if we work together.
Here is what I propose:
I ask the Whidbey News-Times to bend their rules slightly and allow me one day of access to their archives, which would offer the quickest and most concise way to determine what league titles Coupeville won in the ’70s.
This information is not on the internet, and pulling it together, piece by piece, as people unearth scrapbooks and moth-eaten score-books, will take forever.
I understand the refusal to let the general public go through the archives anymore, as the papers are old and, as they say, “they are our history.”
Emphasis on OUR history. Theirs, mine, yours. Ours, as a community.
I will wear the white gloves, if necessary. I will not bring food or drink in the room.
I wrote a whole bunch of articles which are in those archives. I understand the historical value (well, maybe not of my stories…) and will not act like an idiot.
If the News-Times overlooks my past poking of them and joins me in this COMMUNITY effort, once I know how many banners we would be talking about, I will sit down with school administrators and find out what the cost would be to have them made and hung.
At that point, I would propose that we, the people, come together and chip in whatever money is needed to do so.
Once we have a dollar amount, it would be as simple as setting up a GoFundMe page, and I feel secure that the members of Wolf Nation, near and far, would make it a done deal.
Later this year, probably right before graduation, CHS will be raising new title banners — boys’ tennis and girls’ basketball have won league championships in 2015-2016, and the school year is far from done.
When they do so, I would like to see them pay tribute to the past, as well, and raise banners to the teams of the past.
If we, as a community, work together, we can make it possible and make it so the school has little to do but say yes.
When next year’s freshmen walk into the gym for the first time and look up, they should see a long and lasting legacy of excellence reflected on those walls.
And when their grandfathers walk into that gym and look up, they should know their teenage glory days are not forgotten.
As Wolf fans, we owe them that much.
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