Letters To The Editor

Unfair horseplay

Regarding an Associated Press article in Saturday’s (Sept. 21) paper about Auburn’s Emerald Downs racetrack and owner Ron Hubbard vs. Spokane’s New Playfair Park, Inc. and the Muckleshoot Tribe’s attempt to get a license to operate their track.

Bruce Batson, Executive Secretary of Washington State Racing Commission says the Muckleshoots’ application did not make sense. POOR excuse. It sounds to me like the commission was unduly influenced when they made their decision and that they have a specific financial interest in Emerald Downs.

Where is the justice when the big guys keep taking over the little guys due to their control and connections? Definitely NOT the American way! We want live racing in Eastern Washington and North Idaho, not lining Ron Crockett’s and Emerald Downs’ pocket with simulcasting.

And where is our fine governor during all this? Ha, ha. Anne Bryant Spokane

Let everyone play the game

Ah, football! A GAME many of us love. All that thumping, grunting, pushing, thundering! Love it, and want our kids to love it, too. What better way to appreciate a GAME then by playing it, so we encourage our kids to play football.

Playing the GAME, kids can learn cooperation, healthy competition, coordination. They can learn how to win with grace, lose with dignity. They learn how to be team players and when it’s cool to swagger, sweat and spit. Football is a GAME that utilizes all that natural aggression to relatively harmless, healthy purpose.

Football can teach valuable lessons … if they get to play.

Rathdrum folks set up an after-school junior football program. Any kid with $55 and the desire can play. This isn’t connected with Lakeland School District, but the District lends use of its fields and whatever used equipment it can spare. Parents volunteer as coaches. This is pre-serious, pre-pennant-pursuing football. There’s no prize money, no photos in the paper. Only parents cheer as their kids knock down other kids.

Why then do we see the same handful of too-small, too-clumsy, “not ready yet” kids warming the benches when a GAME is played where someone actually bothers keeping score? These sidelined kids ran the same miles, pushed up as often and groaned through the same ballerina stretches preparing for a GAME they never get to play. As they sit cooling their heels and their hopes of joining in, they learn doing their best really doesn’t count, not in this GAME. Playing only counts if you win the GAME.

All the lessons we hoped they could learn are lost when they can only watch, not join in, the mad scramble for a misshapen ball everybody wants and we all paid for. Football … a GAME where the truly valuable lessons are learned only by playing, even badly, not by warming a bench well. Marilyn Roberge Rathdrum, Idaho