Colorado has quite the door into and out of its high school sports.
It’s big, yet reasonable to operate, distinctive in its representation and within most neighborhood codes.
It works well as if it has a screen, letting in sunshine and cool air to breathe life into its events and permitting peeks of what’s inside. Yet it can be locked airtight enough to seal in a Supermax prison fashion, a source of solitude from the real world as well as an opportunity to prepare for it.
It has a gap for every in-state teenager who wishes to enter, but can close quickly despite its four-year window for competitors and career- long endeavors for coaches and administrators. Annually, it’s open for about nine months, including Saturdays, and shut in a flash for most of the summer.
Hear that creaking from 87-year-old hinges? Consider it a draft of a reminder that it’s trying to close again in less than four weeks, a warning that another school sports year will soon have come and gone. By May 20, when the last classes of girls golf and soccer cap the 2007-08 season, memories will be in the air, accompanied by the flow of hope toward the next season.
This time, Colorado will bid farewell to the athletic elite likes of footballer Jon Major of Ponderosa; basketballers Reggie Jackson of Palmer and Alyssa Fressle of Highlands Ranch; Loveland wrestler Tyler Graff; trackster Shaylee Robinette of Crowley County; and baseballer Andy Burns of Rocky Mountain. And don’t forget about the senior regulars or scrubs who account for the meat of any high school year, the ones who won’t compete in college, but had tons of fun anyway.
In addition, others who have given the majority of their adult lives to kids and their sporting events through an educational background will either call it quits, take steps back or head into other interests. Another batch leaving too soon also will leave holes to fill and credentials to match that go beyond any annals’ lists.
To note a few, Manny Wasinger, the longtime San Luis Valley face of Alamosa football, has already begun duties in the college ranks.
Peter Horvath, one of the central figures in Colorado soccer since the 1980s at Columbine — his Rebels girls were the school’s first squad to compete after the massacre nine years ago — said “it’s time” despite being on the verge of 600 combined boys and girls victories.
Leslie Moore, who has lived and breathed Denver Prep League athletics as if she gave birth to them, will head into retirement after offering much-needed stability and a spirited battle against the multitude of difficulties in today’s inner-city schools.
Others who either grew weary of the time demands, insulting wages and difficulties in dealing with another generation and its pesky parents, or those who consider themselves, well, too old, will end careers that have lasted for decades.
Is there a more interesting time? We’re on the verge of an end, a big one, as the rushed whirlwind of spring titles will cap the school year, serve as a climax for certain kids and adults, and offer goodbyes; and yet summer workouts and a staggered school schedule statewide will seem to fill the void almost immediately with a talent base retooled by a new batch of ninth-graders and maturation by those in grades 10-11, and faces fresh from college among the coaching ranks that are a year wiser.
It’s a door revolving as well as evolving, an intriguing portal for the mortal. Keep going through it.
Neil Devlin: 303-954-1714 or ndevlin@denverpost.com
