All of community's athletes are as important as others

I am writing this letter in response to the April 1 letter from Gordon Allured. I should first explain that I am a supporter of athletics. I am very passionate about opportunities for our children in everything from PTO basketball to Boundary County Youth Rec Sports and on up to middle school and high school sports. I am the parent of past high school athletes. I want to be clear that I am not against athletics in Boundary County. I do, however, disagree with almost everything in Coach Allured’s letter.

I have tried in vain to figure out his reference to political correctness and to determine where we have ? a gym. Our athletes are using the high school, the middle school and Valley View gyms. I am responsible for the scheduling of things other than high school sports at Valley View. Mr. Reynolds provides me with the schedule for his high school athletics and then I schedule accordingly. Our PTO runs a basketball program that never starts until after the high school basketball season is over. We do have adults using our gym as well as a couple of church youth groups. We have pickle ball, indoor soccer, ultimate Frisbee and some AAU basketball practices. We even have lacrosse practice at Valley View. These groups shouldn’t interfere with high school basketball. These things are scheduled after basketball practice is over in the evening, on Wednesdays, Saturdays and even Sundays. These groups pay to use our facility. I feel that this builds great community relationships.

We all live in this small town together and no one group is more important than another. I find it very upsetting that a coach implies that his athletes are more important than other athletes in this district. Varsity boys are not more important than 8th grade girls or vice-versa. These children are all important. I find it hard to believe that the gym was scheduled for the boys and the 8th grade girls “bumped” them. Perhaps the 8th grade girls had the gym and the varsity boys wanted another practice and couldn’t have it?   

I can’t speak for the middle school or the high school but I am not allowed to schedule summer activities of any kind in the Valley View gym. Maintenance to the floors is done in the summer. I would assume that is the same thing at the other schools. I am sure the middle school secretary doesn’t have the authority to stop a coach from using the gym. The decision would have been a district one due to summer maintenance.

Coach Allured seems to think that the solution to the problem is building more facilities. That would be amazing. I personally would love to see more facilities and not just gymnasiums. It would be wonderful to have something like the Kindercenter in CDA. A building just for kindergarten. Everything centered around kindergarten and a great start before first grade. I realize that is not a possibility any more than a new gymnasium. We all want wonderful things for our school district, but how can we build new facilities when the budget cuts from the state are so huge that we may lose teachers. I love athletics and I always want to see extracurricular activities available in this district. We have to work together and show respect and support for everyone. We are making it work with the facilities that we have. Practices may be fewer and they may be shorter but we make do with what we have.

I debated whether or not I should really be writing this. It doesn’t change coach Allured’s opinion or elitist attitude toward varsity boys basketball. It does however clarify some misinformation. It seems that once something is in print people just believe it to be so. Letters to the editor are supposed to be opinion pieces but if anything I have written here seems to be untrue please feel free to correct me.  

PAM COPELANDBonners Ferry