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About Cottage Grove sentinel. (Cottage Grove, Or.) 1909-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 7, 2019)
Cottage Grove Sentinel Sports & Recreation SOUTH LANE COUNTY SPORTS AND RECREATION • A hello to Cottage Grove, Drain, Elkton, and Yoncalla New faces for Elkton football, ND volleyball • WEDNESDAY |AUGUST 7, 2019 By Nick Snyder nsnyder@cgsentinel.com I was born and raised in Eugene, Ore- gon, and unlike our previous sports and education reporter, Zach Silva, I did not attend a rival high school to Cottage Grove, so please hold all reservations about my future rooting interests! However, perhaps similarly to Zach, I had a typical Eugene childhood where B1 CONTACT SPORTS REPORTER NICK SNYDER AT 942-3325 OR NSNYDER@CGSENTINEL.COM - and I apologize in advance for this - I almost exclusively experienced Cottage Grove as a highway stop on the road to elsewhere. It’s richness was hidden to me by ignorance, by the inability to take just two more turns off the highway to Main Street, by one thing or another. My only clear memories of the area are the occasional trip to go swimming in Bryce Creek and, strangely, as the place where I found out Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, had perished at the hands of a stingray. After a few short weeks working in the area, these memo- ries have already grown tenfold. Despite my lack of experience in this particular corner of the state, I’m nonetheless an Oregon boy through and through. I am a diehard Portland HELLO see B2 History on display at Stearman Fly-In Jeremy Lockhart takes over as Elks’ coach, Emily Reed for North Douglas By Nick Snyder nsnyder@cgsentinel.com In a summer that has seen a fl urry of changes in athletic department personnel at schools around the area, the pic- ture is coming into focus for North Douglas vol- leyball and Elkton foot- ball. The Warriors have announced that Emily Reed will be taking over volleyball coaching du- ties at North Douglas, following the retirement of former long-time coach Anne Campbell. In Elkton, Jeremy Lockhart will be taking over for Bill Shaw - who recently left Elkton for Reedsport - as the Elks’ head football coach. However, for Reed and Lockhart both, though their positions may be new, they are already recognizable faces at their respective schools. In Reed’s case in particular, she enters the job with a wealth of coaching experience and an enduring connection to the Drain community. “This next year will be my 16th year here. I’m not going anywhere, we have kids here, so I’m here for the long haul,” said Reed while recount- ing her many years spent in the community. Reed began her long path to becoming North Douglas head coach while she was in college, acting as the assistant varsity and junior varsi- ty coach at Central High School in Independence, Oregon. After moving to Drain, she then coached fi fth and sixth grade vol- leyball for South Valley Athletics for three years before taking over as the middle school volleyball coach for the past six seasons. When the head coach- ing position fi rst became available, options were initially limited as they sought an experienced coach who was also in- vested in the community. Eventually, it was mem- bers of the volleyball team themselves who thought of a familiar face: their former middle school coach. “Some of the old- er girls kind of started talking to me and I’ve coached all these girls all through middle school so I’m pretty close with most of them ... I fi gured it was a perfect opportu- nity and the perfect time to move up with them. “I’ve even taught most of these girls when they were little so I feel like the connection is there and the buy-in is there and so that’s why, that’s one of the reasons I’m COACHES see B3 Pilots and visitors chat and relax next to one of the antique Stearman biplanes at the Oregon Aviation Historical Society on Saturday. PHOTO BY NICK SNYDER/CG SENTINEL Antique biplanes fi lled Jim down the West Coast, all originally those planes were used in World now-classic biplanes played an inte- Wright Field during the 41st built many decades ago yet all pris- War I to train pilots that later went gral role in the history of American on to fly fighters and bombers and aviation, the deeper revelation after tine in their current condition. annual event By Nick Snyder nsnyder@cgsentinel.com It’s a reflection of how advanced we’ve become technologically that, for some select people, flying an airplane is considered a simple pleasure. But when the airplanes in question are antique biplanes with rudimentary controls and instru- mentation, the sentiment becomes clearer. For a group of around 20 pilots and a bevy of attendees this simple beauty was on display Saturday, August 3 at the Oregon Aviation Historical Society and museum (OAHS) at the 41st annual Stear- man Fly-In. Filling the airfield be- hind the museum were around a dozen antique Stearman biplanes as well as a number of other antique aircraft that came from up and “[The pilots] are happy to show off their planes and answer peoples’ questions. Great bunch of guys. A lot of them are retired military … after you’ve flown a bunch of peo- ple in a big aluminum tube, it’s nice to come back to something simple and just fly,” said OAHS President Doug Kindred. After a morning pancake break- fast that helped raise funds for OAHS, attendees young and old had a chance to admire the beau- ty of the aircraft, walk freely along the airstrip, catch glimpses of other antique machines like a 1932 Har- ley-Davidson motorcycle, or speak with any number of the men and women pilots whose knowledge on the subject of aviation and aviation history ranges from vast to infinite. “The Stearman thing is really more a history of aviation because everything else in World War II … so it’s important that these guys in- vest their time, their love and their money into keeping these planes in the air,” said Kindred. And keeping these antique, de- cades-old machines aloft isn’t sim- ply about preserving a physical ob- ject, or continuing a group of select individuals’ hobbyist pursuits. It’s about the preservation of history; aviation history, engineering histo- ry, American and Oregonian histo- ry. “There’s a story there. Every sin- gle one of these airplanes has got a story and so to make [those stories] available to the public so they can have an appreciation of what we’ve gone through is a goal,” Kindred continued. While the Stearman compa- ny and the production of their exploring OAHS is the central role the state of Oregon played, from the very early days in the 1920s, in American aviation history. Vice President of OAHS and head of their antique aircraft res- toration team Tim Talen has been flying and working on airplanes practically his whole life and it was very early on in his aviation career that he began learning of this local Oregon historical connection. “Being an early member of the experimental aircraft association, in reading the sport aviation mag- azine, I just picked up on all these articles and Oregon was always kind of right there, sometimes in the foreground, but always in the background,” Talen said. “So when I moved here - and that’s been al- most 40 years now - the interest FLY-IN see B2 Row River Trail reopens for summer’s second half By Nick Snyder nsnyder@cgsentinel.com Late winter snowstorms, wild- fires, and scheduled maintenance have made for a tumultuous last six months at the Row River Trail, but after a long wait the popular recreation destination is open once again. On top of scheduled mainte- nance in the late Spring and early Summer, the February snowstorm brought down hundreds of trees along the trail and a May wildfire further muddied the situation. According to the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Upper Wil- lamette field office, however, the trail is now open as of July 17. “We were able to work with [lo- cal contractors] to be able to have the trail open and even though they were still finishing up some [scheduled maintenance] work, we were able to work it in such a way that allows them to complete their work while ensuring visitors could enjoy the trail,” said BLM’s Public The popular trail is open again after a lengthy closure, shown here Affairs Officer Jennifer O’Leary. at the Mosby Creek trailhead. PHOTO NICK SNYDER/CG SENTINEL “There were some sections of Athlete of the Week Th is week’s athlete of the week is Sam McCamant who rode 100 miles on a PeaceHealth Rides bike at Saturday’s BlackBerry bRamble bicycle race. the trail that had a hundred trees down for miles over the trail and there, too, we utilized local con- tractors to help complete the cleanup work to be able to reopen the trail,” O’Leary continued. Local residents and visitors from around the region can now look forward to taking advantage of all the trail has to offer in the waning months of summer. “We know it’s an incredibly sought-after trail … It’s an amaz- ing paved trail, 13 plus miles of it, that draws people who want to experience the area by foot, by bike, for a quick picnic and so we are very conscientious of any time there is any part of the trail that is not accessible due to public safe- ty concerns,” said O’Leary. “We’re going to do our best to complete the necessary work to be able to reopen any impacted sections of a trail as quickly as we can.” According to the BLM office, the routine scheduled maintenance and cleanup during closures has left the Row River trail in better shape than previously. Sam Mc- Camant posing atop Skinner’s Butte in Eugene. PHOTO C/O SHERI MC- DONALD/PEACEHEALTH
