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Sports
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Written by Andy Brown
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Friday, 27 August 2010 08:00 |
For the last few seasons, it has been tough for the remaining seven Frontier League football teams to match up with Gardner-Edgerton.  The Trailblazers were bigger, faster, stronger and were better at almost every position than their fellow league rivals. This season, however, it has all changed. Gardner has made the move to the Eastern Kansas League and left the remaining seven Frontier schools to battle it out for themselves. The battle will be a tough one in the upper half of the league, according to the coaches. The league coaches picked Louisburg to win the seven-team league with five first-place votes. The Wildcats return only three starters on defense and lost 15 starters from their regional championship team last year. Louisburg returns several skill positions back, including their quarterback, the back field and a couple starters on the offensive line. Senior quarterback Kody Cook, coming off a torn ACL that sidelined him a year ago, will lead the Wildcat offense. Junior tailback Garrett Griffin and senior fullback Alex Gentges combined for 742 yards rushing and 15 touchdowns a season ago. |
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Sports
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Written by Gene Morris
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Monday, 23 August 2010 09:43 |
When Kelsey Carbajo left for Grand View University in Des Moines earlier this month to start training with the volleyball program, she did so in a brand new 2010 Mazda 6.
The fact that it matches her Spring Hill Broncos colors is not by chance either.
The car is more than just a cool set of wheels; it’s a that-a-girl for 15 years of perfect attendance.
That’s right, even dating back to two years of preschool, including one as a peer model, the Spring Hill High School graduate never missed school.
All told, she attended 2,742 days of classes without missing a single day.
Considering her track record, it is little wonder she dedicated herself to four Bronco athletic programs, earning four letters in cross country, volleyball, basketball and track and field, plus one in softball.
Kelsey left SHHS with 17 letters. She headed for Grand View University on an athletic scholarship for volleyball and track and field.
The perfect attendance keeps her firmly in the footsteps of her father, Tom, who never missed a day of high school, graduating from St. Joseph of Shawnee (now St. Thomas Aquinas High School). He did miss two weeks in second grade with the mumps, but not a day after that.
While Kelsey has caught her father on one perfect-attendance streak, he has set the bar high on a second one to undertake: teaching 31 years in Spring Hill USD 230 without missing a day.
Kelsey’s mother, Janel Carbajo, also teaches in the school district. Janel is a business instructor at the high school and Tom a technology teacher at the middle school.
setting a goal
Kelsey’s quest for perfect attendance began in preschool. Her father was presented with a gift for not missing a single day of school in the time he had been there.
“I brought it home and she looked at that, and you could just see Kelsey’s mind working, ‘I can do that,’ ” Tom said.
As the years went on, Kelsey took to the challenge. She never missed a day. When she went to high school, she became a four-sport athlete and was involved in other extracurricular activities, such as school plays.
Even with those time constraints, she never took a day off.
“We told her if she graduated with a perfect attendance, we would buy her a car,” Tom said.
“I think she would have let us off the hook if we asked her to, but we thought it was a necessary thing to do,” he said. “We wanted to send her off to college with a safe and reliable vehicle.”
ZERO days
In the final days back in May, when it became clear Kelsey was going to make her perfect attendance goal, Tom had SHHS Principal Angelo Cocolis go to Kelsey’s class and tell her she had to go home to take care of Kaden, her younger brother, who was sick.
“I was like, ‘What?’ ” Kelsey said. “I almost started to cry. Not because of the school days, but because of my brother.”
One evening, after school was out, Kelsey got a telephone call from neighbor and longtime family friend Betty Corliss Smith.
“I answered it, and she wanted to know if I could come by and turn her garage lights off,” Kelsey said. “I got there, and no one was in our home. I walked across the yard, and I could see balloons and thought that was odd. I could see a light on inside. It was from Dad’s camera.
“I went over there and saw everyone and saw the car,” she said. “I saw the license plate, 0 Days, and knew it was mine. I was just like, ‘Oh, my gosh.’ Betty was so happy, she started crying. She wanted to treat me and my friends. We had Sprite and cookies, and she gave me money to go to the Cheesecake Factory the next day.”
There were a few obstacles that threatened the attendance streak, but in the end, it was meant to be.
Kelsey went to the doctor’s office when she had a temperature in seventh grade to be cleared to go to school the next day, spent a night coming back from a club volleyball tournament with her mom to be able to make to school one day and went to school on senior skip day.
When the bell rang on the last day of school, it felt like any other day, Kelsey said.
“It really didn’t feel like I had done anything,” she said. “I was just used to not missing school.
“I had a full schedule, and I didn’t want to miss anything,” she said.
Mission accomplished there, too. Kelsey graduated with a 3.87 grade point average.
Work ethic
While completing school without missing a single day is an accomplishment, the lessons learned through this journey, 0 Days or not, are ones the Carbajos value.
“Once you get on a roll, you just want to keep going,” Tom Carbajo said. “I think this is something that will carry over for college and work and everything else.
“It is a good habit to get into. Kelsey loves school and likes being there. She has always been around it with us. I think that is one of the reasons she wants to be a teacher — she loves school.”
Kelsey plans on studying physical education. She would love to coach and teach some day, just like her mom and dad.
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Sports
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Written by Andy Brown
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Friday, 13 August 2010 08:00 |
ST. JOSEPH, Mo. — As Brian Boeve looks through pictures on his phone, he comes across one of his son, Triston, and he can’t help but smile.
The Louisburg High school athletic director grins like it is one of coolest pictures in his collection. If you ask Triston, who will be a freshman at Louisburg, it probably is.
“I got a great picture of my son with Jamaal Charles,” Brian says of the Kansas City Chiefs young running back. “They were just so great there, and he was a nice guy and took the time to take the picture. They were just so nice there.”
“There” is the new training camp home of the Chiefs in St. Joseph, Mo. More specifically, the team broke camp on campus of Missouri Western State University on July 30, and red-and-gold-clad fans filled the new practice facility with ease.
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Sports
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Written by Gene Morris
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Friday, 13 August 2010 08:00 |
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The temperature is brutal. It is another day heading dangerously close to 100 degrees. A heat advisory with indexes in triple digits grips the Midwest.
None of that seems to matter for the thousands of Kansas City Chiefs fans who have turned out for an up-close and personal look at their 2010-11 football team at training camp in nearby St. Joseph, Mo.
It is early morning anyway, 8:50 to be exact, and there is a slight breeze to keep things moderately tolerable.
Many fans are taking in camp for the first time, taking advantage of its new home on the campus of Missouri Western State University, a much closer drive than the club’s former training home in Wisconsin.
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