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Chris Freud: When it comes to Eagle County prep sports teams, I root for all of them

Chris Freud
KRISTIN ANDERSON |

Merry new year, as Eddie Murphy would say.

My golf game did improve over the summer, but not enough for me to join either the PGA Tour or the Champions Tour — I’m eligible in about four years — so I will be your sports writer again this school year.

In all seriousness, it’s not a bad gig. I’m paid to watch sports, and even when nearly 20 years of this job has me thinking I know what’s going to happen, the contests have a way of setting me straight.



After all, just last year:

• Battle Mountain boys soccer went to the state finals for the second time in five years, which shocked the heck, not only out me, but coach David Cope himself.

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• Eagle Valley girls soccer beat Battle Mountain for the first time in … ah … no one really knows. I’m pretty sure that shocked the heck out of Cope, too. More on “shocking” later.

With a new year, a reminder of how we’re going to try to cover all things Battle Mountain, Eagle Valley, Vail Christian and Vail Mountain.

My favorite team is, and always has been, the San Francisco Giants. You might have noticed that I wear orange and black like it’s Halloween 365 days per year. (And, yes, the Giants stink on ice this year. I keep watching every game to see if that might change. It hasn’t happened yet.)

So please stop with the “Freud likes Eagle Valley/Battle Mountain better than Battle Mountain/Eagle Valley.”

I root for the Devils, the Gore Rangers, the Huskies and the Saints equally for a very simple reason. You think I’m doing a better job when your team is winning. (Amazing how that works.)

When a pair of our four schools meet, I root for a close game, so I can write good things about both teams.

This isn’t rocket science.

I respect that readers may have concerns with what I write, and I’m always open to talking about it. My phone number and email are on everything I write. If you’re a fan of tweeting, it’s @cfreud.

Meet me halfway, though. I deal with facts. When Eagle Valley girls soccer beat Battle Mountain last spring, the Huskies had beaten the Devils 26 straight times during the last 13 years. Pardon, the expression, but that is the definition of an upset.

When I ran the headline, “Shocker: Devils upset Huskies,” it wasn’t anti-Eagle Valley sentiment. It was, in fact, shocking.

Please don’t shoot the messenger.

Cell phones are our friends

There is one of me and four schools with a total of 17 varsity teams during the fall alone. Do the math, folks. There is only so much of me to go around.

If you don’t see a guy wearing Giants gear at your game, then have your coach call me. Every varsity coach has my cell number. Please use it.

Ninety-five percent of the time that something doesn’t make the paper or http://www.vaildaly.com, it is not a nefarious plot against a certain school or team. It’s because the coach hasn’t called.

And please do check out our website. We have a 9:30 p.m. print deadline. My M.O. is to smack out whatever game I attend each day for print, and then stay here to make calls and wrap up all of the other action for the website.

Help a sports writer out

As mentioned, I’m on Twitter. I’ll be tweeting the score of the game I’m at. If you’re on the road, then tweet at me. I’ll gladly retweet scores, so everyone knows what’s going on.

Parents, please encourage coaches — in a very nice way — to call in. Coaches are usually doing the sign-out sheet and trying to arrange food for a plethora of teenagers after a game. They’re very busy — I get it. Just help them along gently.

And, yes, we’d love pictures from any game we can’t shoot. Email them and we’ll run them.

Go Devils. Go Huskies. Go Gore Rangers. Go Saints, and I look forward to seeing you all out there this fall.

Sports Editor Chris Freud can be reached at 970-748-2934, cfreud@vaildaily.com and @cfreud.


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