Wednesday, January 12, 2022
A4
OPINION
VOICE of the CHIEFTAIN
OSAA is
closer to
getting
it right
T
he Oregon School Activities
Association is closer to getting it
right.
The OSAA Football Ad Hoc Commit-
tee last week dropped its support of add-
ing nine-man football to the mix for 2A
and 1A schools in Oregon.
The problem wasn’t so much the
potential addition of nine-man football,
but that the proposal would do away
with 11-man football for 2A schools
and eight-man football at the 1A ranks.
Instead, there were going to be two divi-
sions of nine-man football.
Schools didn’t like that, and it appears
the committee listened. According to a
report in The Oregonian, there was 95%
support of keeping eight-man football
in the fray among surveyed 1A athletic
directors.
It may seem insignificant to add one
more player to the field (or, for the big-
ger small schools, to remove two play-
ers) but for many small schools in the
state, including in Eastern Oregon, eight-
man is a way of life. For a lot of these
schools, it is all they know, and it is
where their heritage lies.
That the committee was quick to lis-
ten to the coaches who wanted to main-
tain an eight-man rank shows that voices
matter, that speaking up can have an
impact.
While we want to give the ad hoc
committee kudos for listening, there
is one more considered alteration that
needs to be dropped for the entity to gain
our full applause.
And that is the concept being
looked at of making schools who play
down a classification ineligible for the
postseason.
Many schools who play down do so
because of a lack of success at the clas-
sification they should be slated for, and
part of that is due to a lack of players
on their teams. Player safety is also a
consideration.
Enterprise has been a prime exam-
ple of this. It’s no secret the Outlaws
have struggled on the gridiron for sev-
eral years now, especially when they
are playing 11-man football. The last
few years, they have dropped down to
the eight-man ranks, and that is serving
the purpose of getting the program built
back to where it needs to be. And as a
result, the team is having more success.
Getting wins goes a long way to getting
players out the next season — and the
year after. It helps younger athletes who
aren’t ready to mix it up with their older,
stronger teammates get trained up so
they can handle the next level.
Punishing schools for trying to do this
— which is what the postseason ineligi-
bility would do — defeats the purpose,
and takes away from the reality that high
school athletics should be about the kids.
It should be a no-brainer for the Ad
Hoc Committee: drop the ineligibility
clause from consideration.
Then the group will, indeed, be get-
ting it right.
LETTERS to the EDITOR
Would vaccinate
again in a heartbeat
I read with interest about the fever
reported by the editor on Page 5 of the
Dec. 29 Chieftain in reaction to his sec-
ond vaccine dose. A Google search for
“FDA 144637” finds a document show-
ing adverse reactions to the Moderna
vaccine. The table on page 17 for those
aged 18-64 shows that 12 subjects out
of 10,985 had a fever of 104F or greater,
only one case required hospitalization.
Meanwhile, the death toll due to
COVID in the U.S. is at 836,000, with
millions having permanent disabilities.
The vaccine tricks our immune system
into mounting a defense against COVID,
a fever is the natural result. The new
omicron variant is somewhat milder than
delta, but still dangerous and far more
contagious. Oregon hospitals are already
under severe strain, and omicron won’t
peak till the end of January. The Wash-
ington DOH reports that those unvacci-
nated between ages 35-64 are 14 times
more likely than the vaccinated to require
hospitalization for COVID (Google “doh.
wa 421-010”).
We must all come to our own con-
clusions about where to go for informa-
tion and how to calculate the odds for the
best outcome. To me the numbers indi-
cate that it is clearly in the best interests
of myself and of my community (espe-
cially for overworked hospital staff and
those with other medical issues) to be
vaccinated. I, too, was laid flat for a cou-
ple days after the second dose, but would
vaccinate again in a heartbeat.
Jerry Gaffke
Flora
Checklist for
Democrat standards
In reference to the Checklist for
Republican Standards submitted by Ste-
phen Ducat (Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2022), I
offer the following:
The midterm elections are only 11
months away. Many of us in Wallowa
County might have some uncertainty
about which of the upcoming 2022 can-
didates are really worthy of the Demo-
crat brand.
Given the high standards set by Pres-
ident Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Oca-
sio-Cortez and Virginia Gov. Ralph
Northam, not every would-be politician
could measure up.
To aid in that determination, I’ve put
together this convenient checklist. Our
aspiring representatives should:
• Rail against CNN-fueled culture
war phantoms like White Supremacy
Theory, but never define what the “fair
share” is that the super rich should be
paying.
• Believe the right to restrict anoth-
er’s freedom without due process is a
fundamental duty.
• Argue against science-based public
EDITORIALS: Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the Wallowa County Chieftain editorial board. Other
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Enterprise, OR 97828
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health guidelines.
• Promote medical treatments that
have no evidentiary support.
• Fight for the interests of transgen-
dered people in sports and support
Title IX.
• Pretend that the BLM rioters who
have caused billions of dollars in prop-
erty damage are “peaceful protesters.”
• Assert that in spite of losing the
Electoral College, Hillary’s loss to
Trump was stolen with the help of the
Russians.
• Insist that requiring identification to
vote is contrary to maintaining integrity
in our voting system.
• View foreign dictators like Chi-
na’s Xi Jinping and Venezuela’s Nico-
las Maduro as role models for American
leadership.
• Believe in open-border policy while
at the same time supporting higher
wages for low-skilled workers.
• Teach our children that if they’re
white, they’re oppressors and that if
they’re black, they’re oppressed.
• Believe that Black Lives Matter
unless they’re in the womb.
Feel free to use this handy checklist
to see which local Democrat candidates
might deserve our vote. Sweeping gen-
eralizations are incredibly helpful to the
public dialogue, so I wanted to play my
part in keeping the Chieftain balanced
for those of us voting D.
Jim Rice
Enterprise
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