After job as sports editor gave senior exciting opportunities, he reminds Lancers to have high-school pride in college
BY CLARK GOBLE
I know more about Olathe East softball and the starting running back at Olathe Northwest than any person on this planet should.
A lot of the time, due to underhand sneaking into online databases and reading newspapers from here to Lawrence, I know more about the team East is playing than any of the players do.
That’s the result of being the sports editor on this paper for two years.
However geeky it sounds, it actually has had some cool benefits. I knew Olathe East’s goalie Mark Saxby was an All-State punter from rivals.com, and in that epic regional final soccer game, after 80 minutes of “SAAAAAXBY” chants and after East shocked the Hawks, I used my journalistic knowledge.
As we rushed the field, I screamed “Good luck with punting!” at Saxby, who had his back turned. After I uttered the syllable “punt,” he turned, stared and surprisingly, smiled, even though he had just played his last high school soccer game.
While knowing stuff I shouldn’t is neat, talking to people I would never dream is really the best thing about the job.
After talking to SI writer Grant Wahl about his high school days at East, we talked about his interview with Tyler Hansbrough. Wahl claimed for all the crap Hansbrough gets about being an overachiever and a jerk, he was one of the nicest guys he’s interviewed. Hearing about the actual life of the best player (well, that’s debatable, but it sounds better) in college basketball was pretty cool.
I’ve spoken to Yahoo! Sports Andy Behrens, who gave me more than enough Fantasy Football advice to serve a lifetime.
Bob Dutton, the Royals beat reporter, offered me a T-Bones blogging position that I will always regret turning down.
I’ve talked to Ultimate Frisbee and Team Games legend Kenny Dobyns about how his 8th grade English class was really understanding the themes of To Kill a Mockingbird.
And the thing about high school is that the memories I have working on the newspaper will amount to about two percent of my memories of East.
What have I learned? How to solve Euler differential equations. How to create a 8-team round-robin tournament (something I’ve done on four, soon to be five, Team Games finals). That East is the most hated school in this county and this country.
And when we all go to college or to the workfoce, whether it’s KU (see: most of us), NYU or Fontbonne U, all of us seniors will always have that bond of being the 2008 graduating class at Shawnee Mission East.
At KU, they’ll call us “smeasters.” At NYU, they’ll hear the words “Shawnee Mission” and ask what going to high school on an Indian reservation was like. At Fontbonne U, I don’t know what they’ll do because I’ve never heard of the place. But we’ll all have attended the same high school and graduated the same year.
No matter what, we should be proud. Proud that everyone hates us because we have high test scores and Kanye West cockiness levels. Proud that opposing fans at basketball games collaborated weeks in advance to pop their Hollister polos, flash their aviators and look like fools. Proud that we were part of a class that is destined to do great things in the future.
So next year, wear your “1000 Lb. Club” and “4-Peat” shirts with the same swagger you wore them around Johnson County for four years.
When your frat brothers at KU note your 2-7 football record, stand tall, and describe that impossible schedule.
When they ask what “Domo arigato, Mr. Migliazzo” means, hold your head up high and tell him he was the best Bio 2 AP you’ve ever had. (OK, the only)
And when they tell you that East isn’t the greatest school out there, calmly gather yourself, remember the wise words of DJ Khaled, and say, in the same screaming, confident tone of Khaled, “We the best!”
Because we know we are.
And we always will be. Is that arrogant? Sure.
Is that the Shawnee Mission East way? Hell yeah.
We appear smug and cocky to every other student in this district, this state, and this country.
That’s who we are.
And even if you change your ways, and regress to a shy, unconfident college freshman, that’s great.
Just be proud to say you went to the most hated high school in this country.
