Seeing as the work I do as a sportswriter spreads throughout the state, as opposed to a single town, I feel akin to a wider community and not all commonwealths are traditional next-door-neighbor groupings. Sports, for instance, present a glowing example of what a commonwealth truly is in a very spread out way. In my more particular case, high school sports in Kansas.
As I’d mentioned in my first blog post, sports are the great glue that hold America together. Participants and fans can be find anywhere in the United States, and Kansas has a particular passion in theirs.
Throughout the pandemic, athletics have chugged along, albeit in a manner unique for the times, because they are an irremovable aspect of our lives. Whether its a town lining Main Street to send off the team bus the morning of a state tournament, the school coming together for an outdoor socially distanced pep rally on a 2020 Friday night, a county rebuilding a high school after a natural disaster, or a team adopting a highway to keep the opposing team’s entrance into town trash free… there are few communities that do so much good and spread so much positivity.
Whether its a KC school in the northeast, St. Francis in the northwest , Pittsburg High in the southeast, or Elkhart barely on our side of the Oklahoma pan-handle, there is nothing that relates Kansans more than sport.
So next time you attend a high school game, remember you are a part of something much bigger than that field or gymnasium.
