One cannot have a Softball program maintain a degree of excellence like has taken place at Page County High School over the past 40 years without a slew of folks that step up and accept the baton from the people before them.

Dennis Zimmerman is one of those people and just being in the vicinity of ” Preacher ” can raise a smile. The combination of energy and passion is the key to his disposition. Years after his daughter, Caroline,  graduated 🎓 (Class of 2019) with the third State Championship in 5 years, Dennis can still be found at Lady Panthers Softball games, keeping the scorebook.

Zimmerman was one of the main people who helped us in our Raise A Barn project at Page County High School Softball Complex. There are so, so many roles that Dennis has played over the past decade or so and we look forward to rehashing them all !

Christopher Andrew Carter is the fourth of our five Children and the just turned teenager was in the Co-Pilot seat 💺 for our eight Pacific Northwest baseball ⚾️ stadium 🏟 tour in eight days, back in the late 1990’s.

Short Season Class A Baseball, where it would turn out that legendary Joe Goddard began his professional career, was the setting for our ” Practice Run ” to our Around the Valley in 60 Days promotion.

Three teams in Oregon, three in Washington, one in Idaho and one in the Great White North of Canada 🇨🇦, the challenge was finding out the minimum amount of evenings it could take someone to visit all eight parks. Rubic cube type of puzzle to search out the quickest path to completing the Loop.

The Sports Editor of the nearby Everett Herald agreed to sit down with Christopher after the trek was done. Pretty big deal for a Middle School student. Math puzzles are fun and there needs to be a game being played in the park that day for it to count.

Yakima Bears 🐻 opened the loop and the Boise Hawks wrapped it up. The trip over to Boise was the only one that required a flight ✈️ (Southwest Airlines-$39.00). The shortest day was Lake Stevens to Everett (10 miles / 21 minutes) and Boise was what we call the ” Runner “.

This loop was a low budget one, that included returning each night but it created a memory for a lifetime between a Father and one of his three Sons. That  fact would come very handy when we were encouraging fans of the various Valley Baseball League to participate in our Around the Valley in 60 Days.

Here’s Christopher Carter on the left, alongside Mr Andrew Good of the Page County Parks Department at their fundraising event this past weekend.

The goal in everything we try to do is to find joy for others, never doing something just because we could. Spending time with your Children when they are young is a treasure so grab it while you can!

    We will have the highlights and the feature story that ran in the Herald.

Just for fun, here is the much younger Christopher