Sports

Put growing rivalry in teams’ towns’ hands

By Matthew Semisch

09/30/2014

I must warn you now: What follows is a story about business from a guy that has a bachelor’s degree in secondary education but instead became a journalist for a living.

Therefore, I wouldn’t take it personally if area business owners take this column with a grain of salt. Or a liberal amount of salt.

Or, in fact, all of the salt.

If you are one of those people, though, I have a business proposal for you. It’s one that, should the idea come to fruition, would be good for our region of North Dakota and would look good on you, too.

If you read last Tuesday’s edition of the Courant, you’ll know that the North Dakota High School Activities Association (NDHSAA) has approved preliminary football reclassifications for next year and 2016.At the moment, it appears the football teams from Bottineau High and Westhope-Newburg-Glenburn (W-N-G) will be together in Class A’s Region 3.

This will be the first time the Braves from BHS and the Sioux of W-N-G, the latter of whom currently play nine-man football, will be in the same division. The two teams played twice before in 2011 and 2012 when they were both in 11-man, but those games didn’t pit region rivals together.

Their next two meetings, however, will.

There’s every reason to believe that this rivalry will develop into something that will mean a lot to people throughout Bottineau County and into Renville County with Glenburn.

This will have a reach farther than just into Bottineau, Glenburn, Newburg and Westhope, though. How far it could potentially reach is difficult to tell.

The reason is that not all alumni from these schools - or any school - stick around town after graduation. Knowing their hometown schools’ teams are battling against nearby rivals, however, would give those far-flung alums a reason to rekindle some hometown pride and keep an eye out for their alma maters’ results.

What I’d love to see happen is for the four schools involved to collaborate and come up with extra incentives for their student-athletes to excel against their area rivals.

Several area teams already have a history together, of course. Westhope-Newburg basketball and Newburg-Westhope volleyball, for two examples, have been going at it with Bottineau High for a while now.

With BHS and W-N-G finally playing in the same football division starting next year, though, now is the time to start thinking about how we can boost our area’s high school sports rivalries further.

My suggestion for this is to come up with a set ot traveling trophies for the area’s teams to fight over. Having one trophy for all sports is unworkable - especially so for softball with the Westhope-Newburg-Bottineau co-op team - but one for each applicable sport would do nicely.

This, area businesses, is where I think you’d do well to step in. Area residents - your primary customers - are naturally going to want to see their local teams get one over on their nearby rivals, and sponsoring that would further endear yourselves to your patrons.

There is, of course, the challenge of giving the rivalries and or their awards names. I would personally prefer to have names in place that represent the area, its history and what our communities stand for.

What say you? Do you think giving area high schools something tangible to play each other for is viable? E-mail me at Courant1@utma.com and tell me what you think.