Valley Sports

I was up in the valley on Tuesday and as I drove by Snowcrest I could see a softball game about to begin. Some bad memories came flooding back as I noticed the green and gold worn by the other team. Wahlquist was in town for another killing of Snowcrest in softball. When I saw the game score this morning in the paper my prediction was confirmed "Wahlquist 22 Snowcrest 4."
We lost to Wahlquist by the slaughter rule in ninth grade, but not before they tallied twenty- something runs. I was the pitcher that day unfortunately. But that wasn't Snowcrests' worst loss to Wahlquist. No, there was one even worse than that. My younger sister recounts losing to Wahlquist 42-1. They must have made 32 runs in one inning before the slaughter rule kicked in. Poor Snowcrest. The softball team has never been able to win more than a few games at the most. When I was there we won one game in three years. Oddly enough that game was against Wahlquist my eighth grade year. The year before we had some close games, but couldn't pull 'em off in the end.

I guess now at Snowcrest on the morning announcements they just give the highlights of the game and leave out the fact that they didn't win. They should have done that when we were there. That would have saved us a bunch of teasing from some of the boys. It was hard to go out every time giving it everything you had just to lose in the end. That is part of the problem in the valley. If you don't win, you don't know how to win.
Maybe they should score the games like they do in Coed soccer. Girls get two points for a goal and boys get one. Snowcrest would get double the points to make it even. I guess that wouldn't have helped in the game on Tuesday. Snowcrest would have still lost by 14 points. Oh well.
Valley teams do a lot of losing because of the disadvantages, but there has been success from time to time and there is and has been some great athletes who call the valley home.
When searching through an old Valley scrapbook from the 50's and 60's I found a success story. The volleyball team at Valley Jr. High in 1960 and '61 won the county volleyball championship two years in a row. There in the middle of the team photo that I was unable to upload, was the small coach, a woman by the name of Ms. Stallings. Amazing! This same lady lives down the road from my parents. All my life I never knew I had a legend living a short distance from my home.
If you go to Snowcrest you'll see a few trophies in the trophy case. Along with the sportsmanship awards you'll see a girls basketball championship trophy from 1996 and two more girls basketball second place trophies from 2000 and 2002. The boys track team also won a second place trophy in I think 1999. Steven Shepherd from Eden was on this team and is now running and doing well for Weber State.
I'd like to think our basketball team planted some seeds. Our ninth grade year we won six games and lost three. This was Snowcrest's and maybe Valley's first winning season in girls' basketball. Ever since then they've done good especially under current coach Cindy Baker.


This first picture is of a proud moment for our fifth grade rec team. We made it to the county championships and eventually lost to North. We invited Miss Kartchner, our first bball coach, and our current teacher, Mrs. Gayle Anderson to come see us play. Pictured is my madre, Melissa Cazier, Jill Anderson, Tasha Hunsaker, Michelle Brown, Kathy Anderson. Bottom row: Kelli Carver, Sharon Brown, Me


Here's a picture of us playing in ninth grade. Sandridge is one of the two teams we lost to and you can see why. This girl was at least a head taller than Lindsay who is trying to get the tipoff.

I love this other picture because it shows "Terry Tanker." She's the redhead in the background. She didn't give us much trouble in basketball, but soccer was another story. She got her name because she was big and you just couldn't get past her. She was the last man on Roy's team and any time you'd get near her she would boot the ball or head the ball way out of sight. She was our "Goliath". In about the last game we played against her, we beat her just like David beat Goliath. It was in a tournament in Sandy in the summer after sixth grade. It was the championship game and the score was tied. Somehow in the last remaining minutes I snuck past her after a pass from Kelli Carver and barely put it in the near corner of the net. That goalie probably didn't get much practice thanks to Terry and luckily she missed. We won 2-1. It was a great moment for our little valley team.
Most people will remember valley for being the team that always lost, but the players will never forget the times when they faced impossible odds and came out winners. Go Valley!

Classmates

Bryce and Katie Lofts are living in Oregon with their two beautiful daughters and one more child is due in Feb. Bryce moved to Oregon when he was a junior in high school and now his parents live in Montana.
I've got a story to tell about Bryce. I was hoping that Bryce and Mitch could make it to the reunion so that Emily and I could challenge them to a three-legged race. It's a bit of a rematch I guess. Back in third grade Emily Froerer and I signed up to do the three-legged race at the Western Roundup. Our desire to do this came from the awards assembly the year before. We had seen the tall twisty coke bottles filled with bubble gum that they were giving to the winners of the three-legged race and that's all we needed to make the decision. We were going to be in that race next year! When the time came we practiced and practiced every recess we could, many times racing against Bryce and Mitch. Every single time they would woop us. But we didn't get down. We had visions of bubble gum-filled bottles in our minds and nothing was going to stop us. The day of the race came. We lined up with our legs tied together and our game faces on. When the gun went off we took off and headed toward the orange cone. As we rounded the cone and headed back to the finish line we were shocked to find that we were way ahead of the pack, including Mitch and Bryce. Kids were falling down everywhere and we didn't miss a step. It was a glorious moment when we finished in first place. Coke bottles here we come! Unfortunately when we proudly stepped up to collect our award, we were given lawn darts instead of the bottles. It was a sad day. Of course now we love to look back and remember the day we beat Bryce and Mitch and the rest of the world in the three-legged race.

Noelle Green Stevenson lives in Layton with her husband and three children ages 6, 4 and 2. Noelle likes being a mom although she said it is harder than she thought it would be. Noelle joined us in junior high and also went to Weber High. I've got a good story to tell about Noelle too.
When I was a senior at Weber my brother and I would take turns driving to school. He turned 16 in October that year, before most of his classmates, and he thought he could drive really good. Our mode of transportation was a silver Chevette, diesel. It wasn't fast going up the pass, but it was sure fast going down if you know what I mean. In fact it was so slow going up that people behind us would be right on our tail wanting to pass. It was at this time that we would do what we called the "smoke trick." Whichever one of us was driving would gear down and a big cloud of black smoke would shoot out the back like a skunk spraying an unwanted guest. We'd laugh and laugh as the cars kept their distance the rest of the way up.
Obviously we didn't keep really good care of this car. It wasn't cool and it certainly wasn't new. When you're in high school you think money or cars for that matter grow on trees. Not only did we burn up the Chevette on the pass, but we shook her up on the rest of the way to school.
The stretch of road from the bottom of the pass to Washington Blvd. had a series of "jumps" or high spots where the intersecting road met up with the main road and created kind of a bridge over the gutter. Driving our car off the jumps created great entertainment for us especially if we had "guests" with us. This is where Noelle comes into the picture. Noelle and I think Katie Bushell were with us one time and of course we had to take them on the jumps. You'd have to drive really close to the curb, but not in the gutter or you'd really do some damage. Even at the posted speed of thirty miles an hour that Chevette could really fly. Noelle laughed along with us as our car hit jump after jump. Well, Noelle had so much fun that she decided to try it out the next time in her own car. Her attempts weren't as successful as ours and she busted the tailpipe loose. She told me recently that it dragged for years. I still feel bad that I showed her such a poor example. As for our car, it was dead before year's end thanks to my brother's drive off the pass. Thank goodness he's still alive to tell. Unfortunately you can still see the "dead" car over at my father's repair shop. Thanks for the memories Noelle!
If you're reading this and you haven't sent in a family photo, do it soon. Let us know what you're up to.

Valley School R.I.P

The word on the street is that Valley School, the old part, built in 1958, you know the hall where our lockers were, is going down as soon as this school year ends. That's right, no more 5th and 6th grade hall. No more gym or kitchen. No more Mr. Weight dancin' to "Sara". No more dodge ball or crab soccer or that parachute thing. They are shipping 5th and 6th graders over to Snowcrest while they rebuild in the same spot. Imagine if you were in 7th grade looking forward to being in the big school and the 5th and 6th graders follow you. It's going to be so crowded. My husband teaches Spanish over at Snowcrest. Yes, he took over for Mrs. O'Hara who retired just two years ago. He said they're going to bring in a bunch of portables, but they will use 3 or 4 classrooms inside. Since they're losing the kitchen they are going to "cook" the food at Snowcrest and run it over to Valley for the rest of the students. Sounds like a mess to me. Then again, didn't we fit nine grades over at valley? I'm just tellin' you what I heard.....