Is there a better time of the year around here?

In Our Opinion

 

Last updated 8/10/2017 at 10:35am



Is there a better time of the year here?

Another football season got its official start Aug. 3 with the first day of the sweating, swearing, grunting and groaning from players, and the barking from coaches at Eastern Washington University.

The dog days of summer — somehow labeled “fall camp” — are likely not lost on anyone who toils on the fields in 90-degree temperatures.

While a lot remains the same up at Eastern, the winter brought major changes when the architect of many of Eagles’ recent successes, Beau Baldwin, was finally made an offer to move up the ladder in coaching, becoming the offensive coordinator at Cal-Berkeley of the Pac 12 this past January.

And to the surprise of some, the red turf at Roos Field did not suddenly roll up and disappear.

The past nine years under Baldwin have certainly seen magic performed in the elevation of the Eastern program from a consistent “good” to, arguably, “great.”

After the sensational success since 2010 — a national championship, a string of five Big Sky Conference championships in seven seasons, plus deep runs in the playoffs — there is naturally trepidation with change.

The new chapter in EWU football comes with the dawning of the Aaron Best era. Best has bled EWU red for over 20 years following his arrival in Cheney in 1996 as a player. His subsequent rise through the assistant coach ranks to get the keys to the Eagle football-mobile just days after Baldwin departed, is a reward well earned.

Having played, watched and mentored under three very successful head coaches, the presumption is that Best will acclimate himself well to his new role.

And while they lost some significant talent, as is always the case, the shelf appears to be full of both veterans and new recruits to replenish the roster.

No question, it’s big shoes that Best will have to fill and he knows it. He refers to them sometimes as “clown shoes,” but Best was fortunate to inherit a job and a program where changes were made in prosperity and not necessity.

While the decision to elevate Best was swift, it was certainly not without plenty of consideration from athletics director Bill Chaves. Chaves also hired Baldwin — and other successful program altering coaches like Jim Hayford in basketball and soccer’s Chad Bodnar — in his decade-long time on the job here in Cheney.

He certainly did not want to ruin his reputation with the next reincarnation of Gerry Faust. It was Faust who was hired out of Moeller High School in Cincinnati to coach at Notre Dame and things did not work out at all in South Bend in the early 1980s.

Football will likely remain king of the sports mountain at Eastern and is the hottest ticket in Cheney, but it’s being challenged by soccer.

Eastern won its first Big Sky soccer title last fall and the Chad Bodnar coached club promises to keep the bar high. And watching Chloe Williams, the all-everything Eagle star, can go a long way in making soccer fans even out of the most skeptical.

And speaking of challenges, we toss one out to Eastern athletics to truly embrace the people in their own back yard. It’s a tough sell, and always will be, trying to pry Spokane away from Washington State University and Gonzaga.

Why not cultivate a fertile fan base in the backyard garden? Harvest the interest that grows out here on the West Plains in Cheney, Airway Heights and Medical Lake — and especially with our U.S. Air Force folks at Fairchild.

Fall is often thought of as the time when things begin to wither and die in advance of winter.

But for us here at the Cheney Free Press it’s one of the best times of the year, especially when it comes to enjoying time watching sports on the first warm, and later hopefully cool and crisp days of autumn and of course winter.

We encourage everyone else to embrace it as we do.

 

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