It’s been awhile since I’ve done any reporting on Class 4A football and I’d almost forgotten what it’s like.

A few years ago I covered Hermiston and Pendleton, both Class 4A schools in eastern Oregon, but for the past five seasons the teams in my reporting area were Grant Union, (a team 2A now moved up in classification to 3A), Priaire City and Monument/Dayville.

Prairie City and Monument/Dayville played 8-man football. If the teams had any more than 15 players on the roster, they had a big group.

Now I’m one happy camper reporting on 4A Oak Harbor and 2A Coupeville.

Coach Dave Ward told me Oak Harbor has more than 140 players on the roster.

Having coached myself, numbers like that will bring a smile to any coach’s face.

I can remember one night taking 19 warm bodies from Stanfield over to Boardman to play the Riverside Pirates. It was homecoming and they had 56 players suited up. Our kids were a bit in awe, they looked like Notre Dame standing on the sidelines!

The kids played their hearts out and I pulled everything I could think of out of my defensive bag of tricks, but we lost 16-12. Still, we were a happy group and felt we couldn’t have done anything more.

Being a member of a high school organization, no matter whether it is athletics, band, or on the debate team is something you’ll always remember.

It’s disturbing to me when high school students say they are unable to play on the volleyball or basketball teams because they’d rather work.

Oh, you wanna buy a car? I’ll bet a SUV will look cool pinned to your varsity jacket instead of the letter you could have earned being on the track team.

I guarantee when you get together for your 10th or even your 25th reunion, somebody will bring up the time you defeated so-and-so and kept them from going to the playoffs, or, “Remember the time our debate rebuttal was so good that guy from Southwestern forgot what he was going to say?”

At our 25th reunion, somebody showed home movies from when we went down to the stadium on Thanksgiving Day and beat Central 15-0 in the mud our senior year. We didn’t have any business being on the same field with the Indians that day, but the Vikings got the job done and won the city championship.

After the movie was over, everybody sang our school’s alma mater and there were a lot of tears shed by a lot of adults.

What you do in high school is magical and something you’ll never forget.

Sports editor Tim Adams may be reached at 360 675-6611 or email to sports@whidbeynewstimes.com