Coach Wrong To Single Out Football Player As Fumbler
It’d be fitting if Kellogg High football players wore paperCLIP necklaces to school this week - as a reminder not to clip foes when Josh Easley’s running. After all, first-year coach Shawn Amos ordered the junior to pack a pigskin to class all last week because he wanted his star runner to concentrate on holding onto the ball. He’d fumbled a couple of times the week before. Against rival Wallace last week, Easley rushed for 118 yards in 20 carries but had another 100 yards nullified by his teammates’ clipping penalties. Obviously, Coach Amos’ unorthodox method worked. But that doesn’t make it right. A high schooler faces a rough time adjusting to adolescence without being singled out before classmates as an occasional fumbler. Josh Easley deserves praise, not public ridicule, for enduring twoa-day practices this summer while most of his classmates frolicked. Fewer youngsters today share that dedication to school and community. Attaboy, Josh.
State money going up in smoke
Teenagers know they shouldn’t smoke - not because Mom and Dad say so but because it’s bad for them. Yet, the state of Idaho is spending $4 million to warn them of the dangers. Duh. The effort probably will have as much effect in stopping smoking as the DARE program has in reducing drug use. Zero. (Yeah, yeah, I know DARE makes everyone feel good. But statistics show that it doesn’t do much good - other than to allow a few cops to drive those nifty black rigs in local parades.) Kids are going to smoke as long as they think it’s cool. If grownups get upset, that’s a bonus. The only good thing about this feel-good program is that it is funded by a per-pack sin tax of 5 cents and not by general taxes.
Press hatchetmen at it again
Art Long of the Clean Air Coalition has a legitimate beef with area grass growers. The farmers torch their fields generally when the wind is blowing to the north, toward Sandpoint and Long’s home. There would be a lot more squawking if the growers were equal-opportunity torchers - particularly from the tourism industry (which causes its own summertime discomforts: crowded streets, parks, beaches and waterways). But Long went way too far when he told the Coeur d’Alene Press that “(grass-seed farming) isn’t feeding anybody but 23 people on the Rathdrum Prairie.” Of course, that’s nonsense. Grass farming is a $105 million industry. And Jacklin Seed Co. alone employs 110 people. I’m sure the Coeur d’Alene Press would have pointed out the error in Long’s statement - if it hadn’t been so busy doing its annual hatchet job on the growers.
, DataTimes