Life is amazing (VIDEOS!!) ...and wrestling

When ordinary people do extraordinary things, it is amazing. I see it all the time locally. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

I hope you can take a moment and read through this week's newspaper column. It starts on page 2. Many hours of thought went into that, although I dreamed it up in a grand total of 5 minutes.

I also! Hope!! That if you have 31 spare minutes, you can take a look at the Box Score Sports show recorded at B-B-E high school featuring an interview of me. As I type this, it has 143 views!

I'll be finally getting back to sports blogging tonight. I am extremely honored to have video interviews of senior Abby Berge and head coach Kristina Anderson to unveil tonight. I've been riding on a high lately on a personal level. I've had a stretch of recent wins that have been absolutely spectacular to take in. Often, or usually, the universe intervenes and everything you plan out seems to never go your way. Then when the universe backs off and you have an opening: you TAKE THE WIN! Take it! SOAK IT UP! Don't apologize for winning. Enjoy it. Every day you want to win the day...even if in reality you will win very few of your days. Don't back down and give the universe the easy win. Winning is YOUR JOB. Do your absolute very best to win the day. Generally you will suffer many defeats. But you have to keep working towards earning the win.

The absolute truth is I am living an extremely privileged life here in Jaguar Country while living and working amongst the most amazing, incredible people. It is an extreme honor to cover our sports teams. Any sports reporter out there should be this lucky and blessed. We are not saints, but we are a collection of hard-working, outgoing, forward-thinking caring people living in the upper Midwest. We love one another, and we love our school and our community. I hope you all can continue reaching out and taking care of one another and those who are in your own circles and neighborhoods and places of employment. We live in a very cruel and nasty world. We have to pick one another up and be very focused on making Jaguar Country a wonderful place to live and to raise a family.

Speaking of amazing people...below is a video interview of the one and only Abby Berge! A total of 10 days have passed since I recorded this. That's how long of a layoff our girls' basketball team has had since their season opener, which was also their last game. Yikes!

Post-game after beating Melrose with Abby Berge:


Some history relating to Abby's family...on November 13, 1983, Abby Berge's grandfather Bruce Thonvold was killed in a corn picker accident on their Norway Lake Township farm. Abby's mom, Tammy, was only 10 or 11 years old. It was a horrific tragedy that shook this entire area and devastated the Thonvold family. So while that is truly awful and difficult to remember, here's the ray of light coming out of it: Bruce's neighbors rallied together and proceeded to complete the fall harvest and tillage on Bruce and Hazel's farm. It was far and above too much of a burden to bear for their children: Mike was in 11th grade, Rick was in 9th grade, Danny was in 6th grade and Tammy was in 5th grade. Those children and their mom did not have to carry that burden alone, because an ordinary group of neighbors did something very extraordinary in a great time of need.

*Here's Coach Anderson talking on a range of topics we came up with tonight during the tail end of girls' basketball practice:


More to come. I have spent part of my night rallying the troops and stressing to others the importance of traveling to Holdingford tomorrow night!!! It will be a very, very tough game.

Wrestling results from Willmar tonight...
The No. 5-ranked B-B-E Jaguars wrestling team lost 34-27 tonight to the host Cardinals in one of their triangular matches. Willmar was ranked No. 12 in the latest Class 3A Guillotine rankings. No word yet on the outcome of B-B-E's match against Waconia. I will get that updated in the morning.

**Final score in the other dual: Waconia 51, B-B-E 12. The Wildcats are currently the No. 3 ranked team in Class 3A. They are STACKED.