SACCO: Let’s keep hoping and dreaming

Let us hope and dream together.

No matter your age. No matter your sports background.

It does not matter. None of that does, nor should it.

Because it’s the kids we’re talking about.

So let us dream and hope that someday those kids, these athletes, can be proud again. That they’ll see goal posts that don’t look like they were last painted by Jubal Early before he retreated from Waynesboro.

Let us hope, together, that the next time a coach who once led a team to a state championship walks through the high school doors and offers his services, someone says, “Sign here, please. And right now.”

Together, with hope and a touch of dreams, it has to happen. Right?

Let us hope that, someday, the students who attend a high school football game can walk along the track, meet with friends and not have to listen to an annoying announcement declare every five minutes that, if they wish to stay, they have to sit in the stands.

Really? Since when are high school football games for the comfort of the adults? Aren’t the games for the kids? Should they not have the right to, however and from wherever they choose, cheer on the quarterback who sits two desks over in math class? Or scream “atta-boy” at the wide receiver who has a locker right next to theirs in the hall?

Shouldn’t they, like us, have the right to do so?

To blazes with adult comfort. It should be for the kids.

Let us hope that, someday, those athletes who look forward to football all spring long — sometimes because it’s the only thing they have to look forward to — get to change in a room that has more than a large fan with a urinal cake dangling from it to ward off the bad smells and provide some semblance of ventilation.

Let us hope they’ll eventually get it right. Let’s dream that next time a girls team heads to a state championship game, there’s more than a handful of students filling their designated section. And with the R.E. Lee girls basketball team there’s going to be a next time (and you can lock that thread, folks).

Let us hope the Southern Valley District realizes that the different sites, same nights basketball format only hurts the girls basketball players.

Imagine the interest people could have taken in that Lee Lady team if boys fans showed up to watch at least one quarter of the girls game while waiting for the Leemen to take the court.

Let us hope they see this.

Let us dream, together, that one day schools will realize you have to tell the students why they’re getting rid of a coach.

Lawsuits be damned.

Sorry, kids are not stupid. And when their baseball coach leads them to the regional tournament for the first time in nine years, your “new direction” explanation just isn’t going to cut it.

Nor is that explanation going to work when you get rid of any coach those kids have grown to love.

Tell the kids. Let them know. Let us know. We pay taxes, we pay salaries, we have a right.

Right?

Let us hope and dream that, at some point, someone will come along and realize that, sorry, high school sports isn’t about making money, it isn’t supposed to be an inconvenience for you if your job is, well, running the athletic program.

It should be your passion if it’s your career. And, by default, the kids should be your passion as well. The top rung on your life ladder.

Give kids credit. A group of them got organized and kept indoor track off the chopping block. Should that not dispel any myths about what these kids can do?

Let’s dream of the day when it all becomes right again. When education is no longer treated like a business bent on profit. When education gets back to the business of not being a business.

And the day when high school sports goes back to being pure. When it goes back to being about what it’s supposed to be about — the kids. The members of a community’s future who play for nothing more than pride and the school colors they throw over their shoulders.

The one time in their lives when what they do in a uniform matters to a whole city or town.

Let’s dream of the day when a school that flies a “Commitment to Excellence” banner over its football field actually means it.

Ah, but these are just one man’s hopes and dreams and, after seven years, I’m going to miss sharing them.

I’m going to miss reading and hearing yours even more.

Jim Sacco has been sports editor and columnist at The News Virginian since 2002. His last day at The News Virginian is Aug. 26. He will begin work Aug. 31 as assistant sports editor at the Bristol Herald Courier, a sister newspaper of The News Virginian.