Letters To The Editor

Be a part of the final B in the Barn

Spokane-area sports fans should consider making room in their busy schedules this week to attend the final State B Basketball Tournament to be held in the old Spokane Coliseum. That facility will soon be dust in the wind, replaced by the new Arena. This will be your last chance to experience the electric atmosphere of the State B in the facility that has housed it since 1958.

Many of you may have considered attending the tournament in the past, but just never quite found the time. I encourage you to make the time this year, so you may obtain a memory of the “Bees in the Barn.”

The quality of the basketball is good, but the enduring character of the tournament is its historical heritage and the importance of the tournament to the communities that will be represented. It is true many of these towns empty out during tournament week, as dad, mom, grandma and the next-door neighbor pack up the family truckster and head to the Big House. It is inspiring to see people not just give lip service to supporting their kids (or their neighbor’s kids), but actually do it.

A good way to experience the tournament is to take a day (or three) off work, buy a pass (cheap) and a program, and watch a whole slug of games. Talk to some people from out of town. Pick a couple of favorite teams on Wednesday, and root for them the rest of the week.

Many people say the tournament will be as good or better in the new Arena. Maybe so. It will certainly feel different. Come out this year and give the old Barn a good sendoff. Dale L. Strom Spokane

A reader held hostage

(Outdoors editor Rich) Landers seems to have missed the boat again and everyone with a pole has gone fishing without him.

I can’t believe how this “reporter” has consistently managed to promote his personal agenda using The Spokesman-Review as his soapbox.

As many times as Landers has managed to tick me off, I have tried to refrain from doing him the honor of rebuttal as I suspect his superiors figure this kind of attention sells newspapers. I try to refrain from reading his articles as well as crime reports and funerals.

The baskets at the capitol are full with new revelations. Our northeastern Washington representatives are fulfilling the agenda we sent them to do. I only wish your job had been put to a vote, we would no longer have to endure your inane opinions.

The wave has crested and is falling in on itself. Environmental extremism will now be accountable by those who have been held hostage in their own land.

I hope the Spokesman’s management will eventually allow for the same exposure they have given Landers and liberal left editorialists to level minds such as (Fenton) Roskelley.

Maybe your paper could interest Patrick McManus to replace Rich Landers, at least he has a sense of humor and knows a Royal Coachman from a Wooly Worm.

Go fishin’, Rich. Maybe you will get inspired enough to run for office and not have to hold this readership hostage. Gregg Caudell Keller, Wash.

Prep reporting needs more balance

Why is there such biased reporting by The Spokesman-Review on sporting events when Mead High School is involved? Why does it receive continuous accolades and emblazoned headlines - whether it wins or loses? What about a fairer share for other coaches and schools?

It was a cynical report of the girls basketball game between Shadle Park and Mead. Instead of giving credit to Shadle for a great performance and all-around skill; of the stranglehold it had over Mead to stop it in its tracks after a run of 32 victories, reporter Dave Trimmer only saw one side of it, Mead’s.

Even at the end of the report he left out the names of the Shadle team. That is how biased the reporting is. It is most notable over and over again in your paper that Mead High gets all the attention, whatever sport in which it participates.

Would it not be nice to see the other schools get your attention and more publicity? After all, this is supposed to be about schools and sports, not just about Mead. Charles E. Auton Spokane

Attention given sports out of line

At my daughter’s high school, the main sports teams have at least two sets of uniforms (I’m told there’s even a third for pep assemblies), one for home games, one for away games; yet, the school band has no uniforms, and the choir no performance dress.

A few weeks ago, a local television news reporter suggested Super Bowl Sunday should be added to the list of national holidays. In a National Public Radio “Morning Edition” report on Feb. 9, the Washington Post’s Tom Boswell compared the ongoing dispute between baseball players and team owners to the Middle East conflict between Israel and Palestine. Not to mention that, if the attempts to involve the Congress and President of the United States in the current baseball strike show us anything, it is that we have lost all perspective, if not our collective minds.

Boswell’s analogy is particularly disturbing, because with one indiscriminate metaphor, he trivializes decades of conflict and suffering. On the other hand, he epitomizes this country’s historic and histrionic obsession with sports, and attaches to it a degree of importance which is lopsided and undeserved. Rob Kroese Coeur d’Alene

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