‘It was a phenomenal trip’

When kids get back to school Tuesday, a group of guys at Lakeland High in Rathdrum may just have a summer vacation story to top everyone else’s. Members of Lakeland’s boys basketball program traveled to Mexico in early July, but it wasn’t your typical high-school road trip. These kids were there to help bring running water to a village, to spend time at an orphanage and to see what it’s like to not have a lot.

“It was a phenomenal trip,” coach Trent Derrick said. “We were able to have just a tremendous amount of exposure to a lot of different things.”

The team usually travels to a tournament or training camp at the end of the school year. Derrick decided that, this year, they’d do something different, something to give the kids a look at a totally different place.

Derrick and another coach accompanied 10 players to Puebla, Mexico, about 60 miles southeast of Mexico City. They were there the day of the Mexican presidential elections – a day on which they had been warned to lie low for fear of inciting anti-American sentiment. But Derrick said they never felt shunned by the locals. Quite the opposite, actually.

“We didn’t receive one bit of animosity ever,” he said.

The group spent the first two days in a small village outside of Puebla, digging trenches for pipes for a well, something villagers had never had before.

They also spent time at an orphanage, an experience Derrick described as a “very, very powerful time.”

Everyone was thrilled to have them there, Derrick said, something the boys said really hit home.

“We said, ‘You know, these kids had so little, but they offered us so much,’ ” Derrick said. “And that, in a nutshell, is what we truly experienced …They offered us so much for having so little.”

The trip was paid for with the approximately $13,300 in donations the team raised. There was money left over, Derrick said, so they bought toys and other gifts for the orphanage.

The group even met up with a boy from Puebla who’ll be attending Lakeland this year as an exchange student. They spent election day sightseeing with the boy and his family.

The group worked side-by-side with villagers and other locals when helping set up the well. Derrick said the government official in charge of the village even showed up one day to see what was happening and pledged to provide a permanent power source for the well. A man who’d been working with the village for years said such an appearance was unheard of.

“This is way more significant than you can even imagine,” Derrick said the man told them.

The trip wasn’t all work, of course. The group went white-water rafting and played five basketball games. They played former members of the Mexican national team, as well as teams from three high schools. They lost to the former national team members but won two of the high school games, Derrick said.

A couple weeks after they returned home, the boys got together to look at pictures and talk about the trip.

“This is what the kids said: ‘It just seems right when people treat each other with respect and kindness. That’s the way the world should be, instead of being so guarded,’ ” Derrick said.

Derrick hopes to take another team on a similar trip in the future.

New faces in the halls

Post Falls and Coeur d’Alene high schools each have new principals. Randy Russell was the assistant principal at North Central High School in Spokane for five years before being hired to take over at Coeur d’Alene for Steve Casey, who ran unsuccessfully for state superintendent of public instruction.

Steve L. Smith is the new principal at Post Falls, having previously served as principal at West Valley Junior High School in Yakima. He replaces John Billetz, who announced his resignation upon receiving an offer to be the executive director of the Idaho High School Activities Association.

Peter Knittle is the new principal of Skyway Elementary, taking over for Pam Pratt, who’s now the director of elementary education for the Coeur d’Alene School District. Knittle’s wife, Jeanne, recently was hired to teach sixth grade at the Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy. Both come from the Moses Lake School District in Washington state.

Alternative schools in Post Falls and Coeur d’Alene have new leaders, too – Jim Ferguson at Project CDA and Chris Sensel at New Vision. Sensel taught social studies at the school before serving in Iraq. Ferguson previously was a counselor at Bryan Elementary School.

New superintendents are on the job, too. In Kellogg, former Kellogg Middle School principal Sandra Pommerening is the new superintendent. Dick Cvitanich, formerly an assistant superintendent in Puyallup, Wash., is the new superintendent of the Pend Oreille School District.