Competing for space: Send us your stories of ?amazing athletes, artists and the academically inclined

Published 5:16 pm Thursday, December 10, 2015

This week, we feature the winter sports update for Mount Si and Cedarcrest High Schools.

In the past couple of weeks, we contacted and visited the various coaches and athletes and asked them to give a forecast for the season ahead, a fairly big task considering how busy both coaches and student-athletes are.

We know how people love their sports, though, so it’s entirely worth it.

I always get inspired when I talk to students who excel at something, whether it’s athletics, arts, or academics. I was, in my best years, barely an athlete at all, but these young men and women are almost universally clear on their goals and motivated — universally motivated — to reach them. Rarely are they flustered by talking with a reporter, posing for a photo, or better yet, not posing for a photo, which I selfishly appreciate because it makes my job easier.

These young men and women are going after their dreams, and in environments that make it awfully hard to sustain dreams — most competitions have winners, losers and little in between. Whole communities identify themselves with their sports teams, which really puts on the pressure. Rivalries and empires alike can be built on a single win, or a single bad call, just ask any Seahawks fan.

So, bravo to all of them, the athletes, the musicians, the chefs, performers, scientists, videographers, botanists, mathematicians, roboticists — competing in an event this weekend at Mount Si High School — and every other student who has found a niche to call his or her own.

We’d like to salute all of them, every time they win, or place, or just show up. Why don’t we? Well, we have to know about it first.

I suspect people often don’t send their news, including game reports, to the paper because they think we already know about it. Maybe, maybe not. We know when games are scheduled, but we can’t be at every competition, so we don’t know the result.

Feel free to send that information to editor@valleyrecord.com. If we already knew about it, you’ll still have my thanks.