Carnes: Glad that’s over
The tension was taut, the anxiety agonizing.
The suspense — insufferable.
Who would win, or even more titillating for the masses, who would lose?
Entering into last week’s contests, neither side could guarantee a win, and although both were confident, positive attitudes only go so far, especially in this day and age of false bravado and boisterous talk rarely backed up with positive action.
One side came oh-so-close before, while the other seems to be right in the thick of things each time, though always falling just shy of winning the big one of late.
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But why waste time talking about politics when we have two — count ‘em — two state soccer championship teams right here in Happy Valley?!?!
OK, Battle Mountain ended as runner-up, but the fact the Huskies made it to the finals in the first place was more than enough to designate these 2022 Huskies as the most exciting 4A team in Colorado, and they returned home with their heads still high.
Defending state champs, the Northfield Nighthawks, scored in the first five minutes and never looked back. Well, actually, they spent the rest of the game looking perilously over their shoulders in fear of the scrappy Huskies who refused to ever back down from a full-pitch press the entire game.
But like Adam Frisch in District 3, nobody gave them a chance to take it as far as they did, so look out next year, as Coach Dave Cope and his merry band of young warriors will be back to once again prove the naysayers wrong.
And then we have Vail Mountain School, who won its 2A state championship match over the Lotus School for Excellence (weird name, great team).
VMS lost in the state semis to Kent Denver back in 2015, but this year took it all the way, the young players refusing to settle for second in any context all season long.
And I admit, the stress from listening to each game was damn near as challenging mentally as following election results all last week.
But in this day and age of imaginary characters exposing themselves on Twitter (Jesus lives!) and other fictional characters daring to change colors (The Little Black Mermaid), I relish in the realization that election deniers have been relegated to the dustbins of history.
Interestingly enough, I spent opening day in Vail (yeah-yeah, it was only for après, but I still wanted to “help” celebrate the 60th anniversary) and ran into our very own Kerry Donovan. Making eye contact, she guessed exactly what I was going to say before I said it, and just knew she would have beaten Lauren BooBoo in District 3 had she stuck with her original plan of challenging Colorado’s biggest embarrassment since Alfie Packer.
I agreed.
But as Maureen Dowd said, “One of the bright spots of the election is that a lot of people seemed to turn their back on crazy. Let’s hope that Republicans will get the message and move on from the King of Crazy before he gets another shot at destroying democracy.”
So what’s done is done, and though no amount of hindsight can change an outcome, elections are over and both VMS and Battle Mountain have done this valley proud.
Congrats, boys.
Richard Carnes, of Avon, writes weekly. He can be reached at poor@vail.net.