Community is a word that has jumped out at me recently.
Community ties should always be strong in theory, but it seems like with time they tend to weaken.
That’s actually the very reason that I love high school sports. Through years of various iterations of the Pikes Peak Bulletin, my name has been on the bylines of so many high school sports stories. Some of them have been basic recaps: Team A beats Team B by this score. Other stories have been about elevating the profile of student-athletes and their quest to be better than every expectation that is placed upon them.
And that right there is the essence of what I love.
I remember sitting at my computer on the night of state wrestling and listening to Sierra High School’s Lilliana Limon following her state title win, the first girls wrestling title in Sierra’s history.
She took pride in her accomplishment to be sure, but she also took pride in what she did for her school.
She didn’t just represent herself; she represented her friends, her teachers, her administrators. And her community.
As the Pikes Peak Bulletin relaunches and expands to tell more stories of the Pikes Peak region, the sports pages (digital and print) will get to focus on more student athletes.
The Manitou Springs coverage? That’s not going anywhere. Anyone familiar with my coverage knows I’ve worn green and gold all my life.
But coverage expansion will bring Coronado, Palmer, Mitchell, Harrison and Sierra into the mix. We get to tell stories of the communities that athletes like Limon take so much pride in.
At a point in history where it seems like political and social issues should be in the majority of the spotlight, there is always the need to highlight sports, especially when we’re talking about the high school level.
There are two big reasons for that in my mind.
Sports tend to serve as a bit of a distraction and means for everyone to rally together. There is (for the most part) a respectful tribalism that reveals itself as we choose teams and players to root for across various competitions. At the end of the day, when the better team/person wins, hands are shaken, and everyone moves on to the next task.
The second reason is the process and the result. The life lessons that kids get through their participation in youth and high school athletics are vital to their ability to survive in the real world.
There is a task to be achieved. Hard work is needed to get good enough to accomplish the task. Sometimes kids work by themselves, but mostly they and others make up a team to accomplish said task.
Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose.
But regardless of the result, the way in which kids process it and move forward is the true revelation of character. NFL and NBA stars are spoiled. If they don’t win, they’ll leave their teams and play with better players so they can reach a “championship” level.
The vast majority of high school kids don’t get to win state championships. According to the Colorado High School Activities Association’s participation database, there were 143,907 participants in high school sports for the 2024-25 year. Excluding spirit state championships, there are 100 team sports champions crowned in a year.
The average roster does not have 1,439 spots.
Champions are celebrated to be sure.
But it’s the kids like Limon that push themselves to be better than what others expect from them that make up the essence of what those sports are about.
So as we push forward to keep everyone informed of local news and information that we should know, we’ll continue to tell the stories of kids competing and learning to traverse the waters of high school athletics.
The more we encourage the kids to embrace the true purpose of playing for their high school teams, the more they’ll become the kind of citizens that can shape our society into one that we all claim to want these days.
