Not back in the swim of things

Errors come with the territory

By John Brewington

The South County Spotlight, Mar 9, 2010

Sports Editor John Brewington

Self-portrait / The Spotlight

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I really hate it when we make a mistake here at the newspaper, but they happen. More frequently than we’d like to admit. My biggest mistake this time, may have been taking a vacation right around winter playoff time.

Never blame your wife is a credo to live by. She did book the vacation, along with my best friend’s wife, but I was the one who said, “Oh book it whenever you’d like, I’ll adjust.” By the time it actually sinks in, the plane tickets are purchased and they’re non-refundable.

I wrote up notes for those filling in, but pretty much got blank stares and “yeah, yeah, we’ll take care of it.” I put it all out of my head and our foursome all headed off to Mexico in time to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. My wife doesn’t allow me to call the office during my annual vacation, but I did sneak in one call.

Bottom line is that we left out the results of the Scappoose swim team from their state meet. It wasn’t a dazzling finish by state standards, but it was important and showed some remarkable improvement in the program.

The best effort at state came from Ryan Rafferty in the 100 meter breaststroke–a fifth place finish. He was the first Scappoose boy to appear at state in many years. His improvement from his seed time was over two seconds in the preliminaries and nearly three seconds in the finals. The Scappoose girls didn’t place in the finals, but they performed well. The 400 freestyle relay team of Anna Ford, Cassandra Miltich, Rachel Rafferty, and Rona Schmellenkamp took ninth place. The 200 medley relay team was eighth. That team also included Rafferty, Schmellenkamp, Ford, and Miltich. Ford had an individual ninth in the 200 free, dropping over two seconds off her previous best, and Miltich was 11th in the 100 butterfly.

It was a good year for the Scappoose swimmers. They girls won the league championship, and came very close to winning district. The boys also did well in the league championships and at district. Coach David Richmond is right to think the program is improving. They have a lot of kids out and swam with a lot of heart.

I’ll take my vacation earlier or later next year so I won’t miss as much.

Last week, I messed up with the St. Helens wrestling team. After the big story and seven pictures we gave Scappoose for their championship, I neglected to make sure the St. Helens story was in. I’m running it this week to make up for it. I could note how little time I had after I got back from vacation, or the nasty cold I picked up, but the truth is I just missed it. No excuses, it just happened.

The newspaper devoted a lot of time, and space to writing about swimming and wrestling this past season. We covered most every event, and had pictures to go along with many of them. I was pleased with how much we did get in. All of the wrestling and swim teams had some good efforts during the course of the season.

Things always seem to balance out and we try out best to make sure things are covered. And we’ll do a mea culpa when we mess up.

Oh, I don’t want to forget my other foul-up where I copied a cutline for style and size but then didn’t change the verbage. It should have named Emily McDaniel and Andi Bartle for being named all-league in girls’ basketball. I rerun the photo in abbreviated version below.