The Front Row: How much different are sports in the Northeast?
If someone told me that I would be covering sports in North Idaho one day, I probably would have told them they had some screws loose. Nevertheless, here I am in Sandpoint adapting to a different, yet similar sports culture.
It felt like just yesterday I was back in Central Pennsylvania watching Penn State Nittany Lion football players lift Joe Paterno high into the air after his 400th career win. Penn State won 35-21 that day over Northwestern and I considered myself a pretty lucky 10 year-old to be able to witness it from the 13th row of Beaver stadium. Thanks, Uncle Randy, for the tickets.
Around the same time, I remember writing “ESPN This Way” with a thick sharpie on cut-up cardboard boxes, taping them to the side of some paint-chipped stairs that led to an attic in my father’s small apartment. Up here, I would play basketball games against myself, commentating every single play that happened with the utmost enthusiasm. The truth is, I have always loved sports since a young age, and that love prompted me to pursue a career where I could tell stories about some of the most adrenaline-pumping moments our society has to offer.
After years of play-by-play and color commentating, announcing, and writing articles on every single sport imaginable, I decided to add to the adventure by moving out West. Yes, I woke up one weekend and just decided to start driving across the country, pretty bold for a 23-year-old, I suppose. Here are some of the similarities and differences in sports between the Northeast and the Pacific Northwest.
People travel more than an hour for sporting events. Yes, this came as a big surprise to me. My home county, a small county in Pennsylvania’s coal region, had 12 high schools, and I don’t recall traveling more than 30 minutes for cross-country or track and field meets. When I realized high school teams around here sometimes travel six hours, round trip, in one day, sometimes for multiple days in a row, I just had to tip my cap to these athletes. That shows a crazy amount of dedication.
There are no Division III colleges in Idaho. There are 62 in Pennsylvania. It almost seemed as if a new local athlete was committing to play a sport in college every single day back East. With so many options close by, dedicated student-athletes did not even have to leave their home to become a college athlete in some cases. Clearly, that is not the case for the athletes of Priest River, Clark Fork, and Sandpoint. Thankfully, I have been able to cover some great athletes who play at Lewis-Clark, NIC, or junior colleges in Washington thus far.
My dad was an outlier for liking the Seahawks in Pennsylvania. It was pretty rare to see another Seahawks fan back East. Now, I see one just about everyday and my brain is still trying to catch up with that. My dad became a fan at a young age due to the play of Hall of Fame wide receiver Steve Largent. Unfortunately, for his sake, I did not keep up with the trend, and instead chose to become a fan of a team even further away – the San Diego Chargers. LaDanian Tomlinson was just too exciting to watch. We can all at least be thankful I’m not a Philadelphia Eagles fan because the rumors are true, the fan base is brutal. Dare I say, it’s a cult like no other.
Gonzaga University is not a made-up school, it’s actually real. Back in the Northeast there is a joke that Gonzaga was merely a figment of our imaginations. They’re just a team that randomly appears in the NCAA March Madness bracket every year. If you’ve watched Jimmy Kimmel’s skit on Gonzaga before, you know what I’m talking about. Funny enough, as I was moving out here I still was not entirely sure where Gonzaga was although I knew it was in Washington state. Now, I'm about an hour away and everyone from back East wants to know if I have seen Drew Timme yet. The answer, no.
The Northeast and Pacific Northwest agree, high school wrestling and football are to die for. There’s nothing quite like Friday night lights. Pennsylvania’s coal region took football very seriously. After all, my high school’s rival was Pottsville, home of the 1925 NFL champions, the Pottsville Maroons. Rumor has it, Sandpoint takes football just as serious and I’m excited to find out. With an athletic complex like War Memorial Field, I can believe it. I may be biased, but it’s one of the nicest high school sports fields I have ever seen. Even high schools with 4,000 students on the East Coast do not play on fields like that. As for wrestling, Pennsylvania is known for breeding some of the best in the nation. In my high school class alone we had three Division I wrestlers. That being said, Team Idaho just captured the Greco-Roman national championship in Fargo not too long ago, which tells me there is going to be some dang good wrestling in North Idaho this winter.
It’s true. I have never been skiing or snowboarding. Is this considered a sin? I admit, I also did not know what slalom racing was; I’m still trying to learn more about it. There was a small resort about an hour away from my hometown in Pennsylvania, and it was pretty rare that any of us country boys ever made it to the slopes. If anybody is willing to teach me how to 'shred the gnar' and will let me know some skiing and snowboarding terminology, I promise to cover races in-person at Schweitzer this winter. I just learned what a snow tire was, so maybe my car can make it up the mountain.