For those of you minding the numbers, and I know many of you are, there are 37 days remaining in the 2010-11 high school sports year.
I counted.
Everyone has their reasons. They want it to be over. Keeping track of the days helps to make them last. It has been a l-o-n-g school year. The spring weather is unreasonable. It’s time to move on. Can’t wait until the postseason. Next year, it will be my turn. Bring on the summer. And so on . . .
One of the great aspects of prep sports is that they are not unlike your annuals. Once planted, they are a seemingly endless garden of growth and colorful beauty that come around every year virtually regardless of condition and have been going strong, blooming in Colorado for 90 years.
We’re about to go through another batch.
The participants, the teenagers — the ones who train, compete and live with the outcome — come and go, however memorable. Four years may provide a lifetime of flashbacks, but it’s also only as long as a presidential term, and we know how that can go. Ultimately, it’s gone before you know it.
But for the supervisors, the adults, they usually stay longer if they can put up with the crazy hours and insulting compensation. At least, most of the good ones do, although it doesn’t mean their time stands any more still, even if it goes over multiple generations.
Their ends come too.
Ask Jeff Sweet. He’s calling it a career at Gateway after 30 years. It’s earlier than for most adults as he’s all done at 51, but the miracle that is PERA obviously has its benefits.
Arguably the most important coach in the history of the Aurora school, Sweet, who doubled as head man of football and boys basketball for seven years, was known as a motivator and disciplinarian. His hoops teams were 321-162, a pain in the you know what to play and maintained respect for what he believes is a misunderstood school.
“It has always gotten a bad rap,” he said of Gateway. “But it’s a great school. If these kids get leadership, they will follow.”
Ask Janelle Peters, who will wrap up decades of service, much in administration, notably at Arapahoe in Centennial and Highlands Ranch. Among her accomplishments as athletic director was stabilizing the coaching staff, helping the Falcons to become serious players virtually across the board, including in newer sports. A good AD can be difficult to find.
Fact is, Falcons football coach Darrel Gorham said, Peters was vital to turning what is still perceived in multiple circles as a man’s-only job into a balanced measure of leadership.
Ask Jim Chapman at Liberty in Colorado Springs, due to wrap up 36 years in education and athletics, including a state championship in boys basketball in 1999, a career that began in isolated Rangely.
Ask Bart Stevens at nearby Rock Canyon, where he’ll soon step down after lending a stoic face and personality to a newer school after earlier stints at Fort Lewis College, Rampart, Burlington, Farmington, N.M., and Douglas County in Castle Rock.
“It’s an interesting dichotomy,” Douglas County district athletic director Derek Chaney said in pointing to the mix of turnover and stability that runs rampant throughout today’s high school sports.
The pace remains frenetic, the problems are many and sometimes you wonder how all of it occurs.
Just don’t forget to take a few moments to appreciate it.
Neil H. Devlin: 303-954-1714 or ndevlin@denverpost.com
