part two
Column by Stan Bush
The Traveling Man
You know it’s pretty amazing how far teams in 2A Region V have to travel just to play two games against each other. I don’t know if there is any other place in the Northwest where teams even think about the type of traveling that we have to go through. OK, so maybe those on the Aleutian Islands, and up in the Arctic Circle can compete with our travels, but come on, stick with me here.
As a senior I feel like “The Old Sea Dog” of the team. I’m sure that Tyson (Ames) and Chris (Shockley) feel the same way. After all, now that we’ve been to every stop on the Region V list there is really nothing new to see. The mystique is gone, vanished. Like a foul odor in a chill ocean breeze. These trips are business trips now. We’re going in to try to take away two. Maybe that is maturity seeping through or just a realization that this is our final year and you just have to leave it on the floor.
Anyway this column isn’t suppose to be some kind coming of age “I’m all grown” story, so enough of that. It is awesome when you think of how far the school sends us to play. I don’t mean awesome in a “gnarly, tubular, rad, or bodacious” way if you will. It’s not like we’re just this little town way up here in the north end of the canal and everyone else is so close to each other. The towns are all so incredibly far away from one another. Did you know that in one trip to Klawock we have traveled farther from the nest then some people have in their entire lives? In Denver, Colorado the farthest that a team travels to play a team in their Region or District is around 20 miles. That’s a 30 minute drive – well sometimes a five hour drive if you take I-25 – but that is a completely different subject all together.
Maybe what is even more amazing is that I can be sitting in the middle of the Hydaburg library doing homework at 9:15 in the morning while half the team is still sleeping and get a lady to come out of the principal’s office and tell me that my mommy is on the phone to talk to me. So here I am still frustrated from the previous night’s loss to the Warriors reading a book when my parents can track me down to within 20 feet and tell me that my bed isn’t made, or that my editor needs the box scores. Unbelievable! I couldn’t even find myself on a map of Prince of Wales Island, miles away from a functioning pay phone and a decent restaurant and my family can find me to tell me what a pig sty my room has become! It’s crazy. And of course I’m not the only one here in the library. Now that the lady has come to tell me who’s on phone it seems like the entire team has decided to show up. Now I’m getting “The Razz.” I hate that. Jerod Moore is over at a table giving me the worst razzing. Saying something like “Didn’t make your bed did ya, Stan?” or “Nobody knows what happened, but it’s all your fault!” Man that just kills me.
But really that is what the whole team process is about. Maybe the school does it on purpose! I’d take credit for it if I could. After all, it works.
Stan Bush, our high school reporter intern, is a senior on the SHS varsity. This column will appear throughout his “senior season.”