The fall sports season came to a conclusion last weekend in Columbia.
It has been a blur to say the least but I have been able to cover a lot of really cool things these past few months, with a lot of help from Ross Martin, Drew Aggus, Derek Bigus, Bre Cheadle, Will Wright and Todd Nugent.
Cody Thorn
These past few weeks have provided plenty of chances to not only cover the area athletes but also learn Interstate 70 like the back of my hand.
I was talking with a Park Hill School District employee the other day and he told me how crazy it is to follow our social media feed when it comes to games.
We have been at the state cross country finals, made it for the state swimming and diving championships, went to the boys state soccer championship — a first in my more than 20 years of writing — a state semifinal football game in St. Louis and ended up at Faurot Field at Mizzou to watch a football championship game.
It was tough seeing both of the Platte County teams that made the state title games, soccer and football, come up short in the quest for the trophy that says first place. The soccer game was one of the best soccer games I have ever covered. Ian Lang was a beast in goal and kept turning away shot after shot.
The football game was tough due to the fact it was losing to Webb City. There are very few high schools I don’t like, but I’d place that town up there. Growing up five miles apart and having a natural rivalry with kids over the years, grew that feeling. It was much like the old Missouri vs. Kansas feelings that might exist but not the same now as time has passed. I have a great deal of respect for Webb City football coach John Roderique that dates back to when I wrote in Neosho. The two teams were set to play a state playoff game and that morning of the showdown one of the Neosho players’ mom died. She had been battling cancer so it wasn’t a shock. But, not long after that news started circulating, I heard Roderique had called the administration there asking if they would want to push the game back a day or two to allow for the player time to grieve.
The player decided to suit up and play that game, but I won’t forget the selflessness he showed. It wasn’t his team or his player.
So, I guess there is a little bit of solace in losing to a man the caliber and quality of Roderique, who now has 12 titles in 23 years as a head coach.
We do our best to cover everything we can within reason. I think a lot of the reason why I do this job is because I remember what it is like to see my name in the paper years ago.
I got to talking to this Park Hill employee and the conversation went into journalism and how thing are covered. There is another paper in Platte City and another in Weston, but there are some schools we cover that wouldn’t get much ink. There are websites like PrepsKC.com that covers games from the three big high schools and sometimes the St. Joseph News-Press will catch a North Platte or West Platte game.
I like the fact we do our best to provide coverage of not only all the sports you could want, but also city councils, school boards and county events.
It takes a lot of effort and work to get those papers out each week but I feel like we do a pretty good job of it. You won’t see a lot of national news here but there are outlets for that.
I think one of the neater parts of this job is building the relationships and seeing the success that I have over the past few weeks covering hundreds of our county’s high schoolers.
Now, we will turn our attention to winter sports for a bit. Feel free to follow along on social media or even better, subscribe for $30 a year. That is less than a cup a coffee a month and I promise you will enjoy how much local content we provide.
ALARMING NUMBERS
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention noted the suicide rate for kids between the ages of 10-14 nearly tripled in the last decade (2007-2017), while the suicide rate for older teens increased by 76 percent in the same time span. The leading causes for death for the 10 to 24 year old age range are suicide and homicide. Suicide was the second leading cause of death for the age group of 10-14, 15-19 and 20-24.
The sad number is the spike in numbers in the federal data from 2013-17 showed a 7 percent increase annually, a jump from the 3 percent seen from 2007 to 2013.
Teen suicide is something that I have written about in the past, as Platte County and Park Hill each had students last school year that died by suicide, while drugs played a factor in the death of another high school student.
The CDC showed suicide rates for those 15-19 went from 6.7 per 100,000 in 2007 to 11.8 per 100,000 in 2017. Suicide was the 10th most common cause of death of all Americans in 2017.
Alex Crosby, the chief medical officer of the CDC, told CBS News that it’s almost impossible to nail down a single factor for the increase.
There are often a variety of factors that play into each suicide and even then, more often than not, there is some speculation on why someone actually did that. I remember in the case of a St. Joseph Lafayette basketball player who died when I worked up there, he died on Mother’s Day. I heard more than a few people speculate that he chose that day since it was the first Mother’s Day since his mom died only months before.
AP 1
The Trump administration recently proposed a rule that would let faith-based foster care and adoption agencies to keep getting taxpayer funds even if they exclude LGBT families and others from their services based on religious beliefs, the Associated Press reported. The story quoted Family Research Council president Tony Perkins saying “Thanks to President Trump, charities will be free to care for needy children and operate according to their religious beliefs and the reality that children do best in a home with a married mom and dad.”
The push back from the other side is that would limit the number of people qualified to adopt the more than 120,000 children in foster care in the USA. Interesting to see how that plays out.
AP 2
Speaking of the Associated Press, they did with the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research that showed 7 in 10 Americans are tired of daylight savings time. Currently Hawaii and Arizona are the only states where they don’t observe the act passed as the Uniform Time Act in 1966.
As a night owl, I would say I can see the plusses and negatives to the current setup.