Relay Teams Right On The Money For West Valley
It looked like a scene from Lawrence of Arabia.
Clustered together were gads of striped tents, with nomadic residents squirming about inside. The only thing was, this wasn’t a desert. And there was no sign of Omar Sharif.
It was in the middle of a football field, and the camp was circled by swarms on the surrounding track.
It was West Valley High School’s annual relay fund-raiser for student activities. About 300 people signed up for the 12-hour Saturday spectacle. Teams of 10 runners raised a minimum of $350 each in entry fees alone. Entrants had also solicited for pledges earlier, and that’s where the real dough came from. Team members took turns running, jogging, or most often, walking one mile shifts.
“This way, we don’t have kids knocking on doors selling candy bars every week,” athletic director Wayne McKnight said. He manned the loudspeaker, interrupting Green Day and White Zombie tunes to give quick updates from the Cougar game.
Oh, yeah, and those tents. Because of previous years’ weather fiascoes, it was the general consensus that a roof overhead was a smart idea.
“The first time it poured rain, it was freezing cold and people were walking around in garbage bags,” said stalwart organizer Cathy Wolfrum, WV’s activities director. “It was horrible.” And, it was a 24-hour slosh fest.
This year, teams did a 12-hour shift, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. And the only thing people hid from this time was sunshine.
Joe Bonner, a senior football player, was sheltered from the rays by a white and blue umbrella. He sat in a lawn chair, reading one of those muscle car magazines, waiting for the rest of his team to show.
In another camp, a whole colony of band members was waiting it out. Their team name: The Band-Aids. They had raised the most of any team, $1,300. That was effort enough, they figured. No running required.
“I walked,” said sophomore Danna Vermeers.
“It took us an hour to do our leg,” piped up another sophomore, Adrianne Imada. “We didn’t want to burn ourselves out over the 12 hours.”
Another team was hard to miss. Cherie Marisch, a junior, wore a Hawaiian shirt and a lei around her neck. Her whole team dressed like that. Fashion faux pas united them.
As she and two friends rounded a bend during track turn, an ambitious fitness type almost mowed them down. “Oh! A sprinter,” said one of the girls, dodging the go-getter.
The loudspeaker once again cut off the echo of grunge, declaring it was dunk tank time. Wrestling coach Kevin Henrickson reacted gleefully to the news that some class officers might get drenched as well as administrative types.
“That’s a good idea,” he said.
Close by the track, teacher Angela Adams kept the troops on her team of students in line. “OK, who’s on deck?” she demanded.
Junior Kenneth Oldmixon, a cross country runner, was. He didn’t pass a baton to a waiting comrade after one mile, though. He kept going. “We have to run on Saturdays anyway,” he said.
Adams turned her attention to some more idle kids. “We need some kind of spirit!” she hollered.
On a small patch of field left tentless, a bunch of guys opted to emulate Top Gun over Lawrence of Arabia. They played volleyball in the sun instead of setting up digs in the vinyl shelters.
Principal Cleve Penberthy smiled at the whole thing, surveying the sea of pointed rooftops. “I love it,” he said. “It looks like a city.”
Definitely not a city, though. The entrants raised $9,000, a figure the school district said it would match. If this had been a city, the tent dwellers would have paid twice that in property taxes.
, DataTimes