LOCAL & STATE
6A — BAKER CITY HERALD
THURSDAY, MARCH 4, 2021
Clearing
the way
for sports
■ Travis Bloomer, an assistant varsity
football coach at Baker High School,
used his snowblowing equipment to
clear football and soccer fields at Baker
High School and Baker Middle School
By Corey Kirk
ckirk@bakercityherald.com
T
ravis Bloomer is the
rare football coach
whose work pre-
paring his players includes
driving an ATV connected to a
snow blower.
But then Bloomer, an as-
sistant on varsity head coach
Jason Ramos’ staff at Baker
High School, didn’t expect to
coach in a season that started
in the depths of winter.
When he’s not in the
fast-paced world of real
estate, Bloomer, who’s a BHS
graduate and former standout
football player, spends a lot of
his free time as a coach.
And when heavy snow fell
in Baker City around the
time the Bulldogs started
practice for their pandemic-
abbreviated season, Bloomer
was happy to volunteer his
time and his ATV, which is
equipped with tracks instead
of wheels.
“I had the equipment, so
it wasn’t a big deal for me, it
was just I felt that it was my
job to do it,” Bloomer said.
He has removed snow from
the football and soccer fi elds
at BHS, as well as the football
fi eld at Baker Middle School.
Ramos, in his second year
as varsity head coach, wasn’t
surprised that Bloomer of-
fered to make sure players
weren’t slogging through
ankle-deep snow and slush.
“That’s what Travis does,
he just steps up and fi lls any
need that’s there, even with-
out being asked,” Ramos said.
Bloomer said he was moti-
vated largely by the bond he
has developed coaching many
of the Bulldogs over the years,
including his son, Gauge,
a junior running back and
linebacker.
Travis Bloomer said he
wants to ensure the players
have the best experience pos-
sible after their usual season
was canceled due to the pan-
demic in the fall of 2020.
The Bulldogs, who haven’t
played in a game since No-
vember 2019, return to action
Friday, March 5, at Vale.
“It’s for the kids, it’s for their
souls right now. I believe that
fi rmly,” Bloomer said.
Gauge Bloomer said his
dad has been involved in his
athletic pursuits since Gauge
was a fourth-grader, and he’s
grateful to have his dad as
a coach. He said he wasn’t
especially surprised when his
dad volunteered to clear snow
from fi elds.
“I love it, I don’t think I’d
be where I am without him,”
Gauge said.
Travis said it takes about
four hours to clear snow from
one fi eld. The biggest challenge,
he said, is laying out a grid to
follow with the blower.
“Every time you throw
snow, snow packs, and then it’s
harder to throw a second time,”
Bloomer said. “Well, there’s at
least three throws to get it off
the fi eld when you start in the
middle. So it’s how you grid
that.
“The biggest thing is the
thinking part, how do I go
about doing this effi ciently
so I can actually get it off the
fi eld, because if you throw it
too many times, it won’t throw,”
Bloomer said. “That was a hard
learned lesson on that fi eld.”
Jennifer Trader/Contributed Photo
Travis Bloomer, an assistant varsity football coach at Baker High School, uses an ATV and snowblower to clear
snow from the practice football fi eld at Baker Middle School.
— Travis Bloomer, assistant
varsity football coach at
Baker High School
Then there are the potential
obstacles hidden by the snow
and capable of lodging in the
snowblower’s rotating auger.
“Probably one of the tougher
things is when you catch a
football glove or a face mask or
a dog stick in the auger, it can
slow you down, but it’s worth
it,” Bloomer said.
He emphasizes that he
didn’t work alone.
Bloomer said football play-
ers wielded shovels to help
move snow.
“That’s my family, those
boys just picked up shovels
and came,” Bloomer said.
“The coaches have their
backs and they have ours.”
Ramos said he’s grateful
to have a coaching staff that
sacrifi ces so much time, in-
cluding outside of practices,
to help students.
While Bloomer worked on
the fi eld at Baker Bulldog
Memorial Stadium, line-
man coach Rick Ritter set
up portable lighting at the
practice fi eld.
“Why we all do this is
certainly not for a paycheck,
but it’s for all the important
things that come along with
it,” Ramos said. “It’s the
relationship with the kids,
Wave energy testing planned
PORTLAND (AP) — Federal energy regula-
tors have given Oregon State University initial
approval for a groundbreaking wave energy
testing facility off the coast.
The PacWave South project is designed to
facilitate and accelerate the development of
wave energy technology, which harnesses the
motion of the ocean to generate electricity,
Oregon Public Broadcasting reported.
Oregon is considered to have a high poten-
tial for wave energy generation.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
issued a license to the project on Monday, but
another review period must pass before OSU
gets fi nal approval.
“It’s huge. It’s the fi rst license of its type to be
“That’s what Travis does,
he just steps up and fi lls
any need that’s there, even
without being asked.”
“It’s for the kids, it’s for
their souls right now. I
believe that fi rmly.”
issued in the United States,” said OSU’s Burke
Hales, chief scientist on the project.
Oregon State’s project would offer a pre-
permitted area offshore of Newport, where
wave energy developers could anchor and plug
in their devices to the grid. The array would
spread over about 8 square miles of ocean and
include four testing “berths” with undersea
cables to carry energy produced back to shore
near Driftwood Beach State Recreation Site.
“We hope to be moving this summer with
groundbreaking for building our shoreside
facility,” Burke said, adding that the under-
ground and under-ocean boring work needed
to run the transmission lines offshore would
start this year as well.
— Jason Ramos, head
varsity football coach at
Baker High School
Corey Kirk/Baker City Herald
Travis Bloomer, right, during a recent football practice at
Baker High School.
and doing what’s best for
ence for everybody.”
the kids in the program, and
Now that the fi elds are
making it a positive experi- snow-free, Bloomer is look-
ing forward to the Bulldogs
returning to the fi eld for an
actual game.
“We are just grateful that
whoever is in charge is allow-
ing us to play,” Bloomer said.
“That’s our overall message,
you are going to get hit in life
with obstacles that may not
seem that there’s anything
that you can do but within the
legal parameters and realms
you can still fi gure out ways to
get them done.”
Although the weather
has been relatively tranquil
the past week, if another
snowstorm bears down on
Baker City this month, you’ll
probably have a chance to see
Bloomer driving his snow-
blower at the stadium, a smile
on his face.
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