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