September 03, 2014
Wednesday PM

I enjoyed a lovely KayHi football game this past weekend with my children and several other fans from around town at our beautiful field at Fawn Mountain. I felt very fortunate as we got to enjoy a game as many people around the country usually do, with decent weather in the sun, dry and halfway warm. We had a soccer game that evening that was not as nice. By the time we got home at 8:30 all of us were drenched, dripping and more than a little cranky. Should we have been more prepared? Probably. Was I ready for the next game in the rain the following day with raingear and boots? Absolutely.

This led me to an interesting observation though. We live in a rainforest. A rainforest that gets a ton of rain. And a rainforest that has children who play in the rain or shine. Gotta love good ole Ketchikan parents and players. They will be there regardless, but why couldn't we have it just a little drier? We need a covered bleacher area. At one point I thought this was in the budget for all the fancy work they were doing at Fawn Mountain. But nope one more football/soccer season without it.

Imagine my surprise when I read the priority list in the paper from the Ketchikan Assembly asking for $2 million to put a new field on the list. Granted, it went to the bottom of the list but it is still unnecessary and wasteful. Let's count the fields we currently have and the uses. Fawn Mountain has a beautiful field with a track, and a small field by the playground. Schoenbar has two fields, Houghtaling has two fields, Kayhi has two fields and Pt. Higgins has THREE fields. That is 11 fields. How about instead of asking for another field, we ask for some improvements on the existing ones. We have 3 fields at Pt. Higgins that aren't used for any community sports. That is a tad ridiculous. We have a football/track field that has no covered bleachers in a town that gets more rain than any other. I think we need to start making a little noise about what is getting done to the existing fields before we start thinking about where another one would suit us best.

Received September 01, 2014 - Published September 03, 2014

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