OK, let's start with the BHS football and basketball programs. Baseball could stand a little improvement also, but football and basketball are the big spectator sports, so let's concentrate on them.
Or, at least they're supposed to be the big spectator sports.
Not so at the current time in Blytheville.
There was a time, not so long ago, that Chickasaw basketball was highly respected statewide and team after team, year after year, was highly competitive. First Danny Ebbs, then David Hixson, produced good, tough teams and won a few state championships during their tenures.
Nobody looked forward to playing the Chickasaws.
The football team has been hit or miss for a couple of decades now ... mostly miss.
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Since Hixson relegated himself to the athletic director's office, the teams have simply not had much, if any, success.
The football team won only one game this season and so far the basketball team hasn't won any. To me, that's simply unacceptable.
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What I'm talking about here is program building ... you have to have a well-managed and ongoing program to have success in high school athletics.
By a program, I mostly mean a coaching staff that works hard, works the kids hard, recruits the best athletes out of the student body (and maybe a few other places) and puts them to work, makes them want to succeed.
Losing instills a losing attitude, and it infects the community in all sorts of ways, all of them negative. Winning has the opposite effect.
I feel sure the local community would support a winner if they had a chance, but a single win since September is not getting the job done.
School board, administrators, athletic director ... I beseech all of you to consider this slide a serious problem and take appropriate action to turn things around.
The town's got enough problems as it is; it doesn't need floundering high school athletics to make things worse.
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My Christmas will be spent in Columbia, Mo., where our two oldest boys and the two granddaughters reside.
This means my house-sitter, dog-sitter and general good dude Daniel and his baby daughter, girlfriend and step-daughter will move in for a few days and take care of things while we're gone. I dearly love Daniel, although I do my best to terrorize him anyway, just because that's my basic nature. He is, of course, completely oblivious to this terrorizing.
Daniel is one of youngest son Zach's high school buddies. and for some reason, he and our two miserable mutts get along great. Daniel's a farmer and isn't all that busy in the dead of winter, so it works out pretty well.
I just hope he doesn't find my beer stash in the garage refrigerator.
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I made some comments in last week's column about the possibility of dropping a day or two or three from the home delivery of the Courier News and requiring readers to access our e-edition online for the non home-delivered days.
I had several comments from folks about this, most of which were understanding of the situation, although none were particularly enamored with the idea of having to read a few days' worth of papers online and only getting two or three delivered to their home each week.
Let me state here that this is not ... repeat NOT ... going to happen any time soon.
As a matter of fact, it may never happen at all.
As things stand now, the operation is moderately profitable, and if it stays that way ... it will stay that way.
It will only be as a result of an even more precipitous decline in revenues that moving away from a few days of home delivery would be necessary.
But just think of all the businesses that have closed in fairly recent years ... all of whom were strong advertising customers of the newspaper. It's been a while, but Montgomery Ward was one of the first to go, along with K-Mart, Price Chopper, Safeway, Magic Mart and of particular significance to the newspaper, four or five new car dealerships. All gone bye-bye.
And still, we're doing OK.
And we'll do what we have to do to stay OK, because the town needs its newspaper. This much I'm sure of.
dtennyson@blythevillecourier.com