Dog Dayz

By Braden Dohrmann

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another edition of Dog Dayz.

October started off with a great homecoming week and ended with league championships for both football and soccer.

Personally, my life has been revolving around football for most of the month, but there is so much more to high school and I will fill you in.

I will give you a recap of homecoming since I detailed out the happenings last month. It was a great time. Our sophomore hall turned out awesome. We had probably 30-40 kids show up to make it extra special. Our class advisers were a huge help as well. Spirit days were definitely fun and interesting. We have some creative people in our school. I took full advantage of pajama day and it was comfy. I also used a bunch of stuff I got in Hawaii just for this reason on tacky tourist day. Finally, the dance was a good one spent with some great friends.

As I mentioned, both football and soccer racked up another league title. Football went undefeated. Soccer went undefeated in league and tied with the former state championships. Volleyball earned a place in districts by placing third in league.

Now the real work continues for each of these teams.

In golf, both Payson Parker and Ben Royer played their way to qualify for state. Unfortunately for them, they will have to wait for Spring for that. In the meantime, I know I can count on all of you readers to head out to the district and hopefully state games coming up. Go Bulldogs.

Speaking of football, you may have heard that there have been some complaints about the fact that we haven’t been able to do a lot of the things that we see as traditions in this school. In the past there have been pep assemblies every home football game. This year we were only allowed three during the regular season. Also, the cannon was taken away that was let off after every home touchdown. That tradition has been around for decades as well.

While it feels like I am missing out a bit by these changes, I mostly feel bad for the seniors. They have grown up watching these traditions happen, waiting for their turn. What a bummer. On an exciting note, our coaches noticed and felt like the seniors did deserve something special. They surprised the team with some new alternate uniforms. We wore them on senior night. They are sweet. They are charcoal gray jerseys with maroon lettering and charcoal gray pants. If you weren’t there, you should find some pictures, because we looked good. It was seriously one of the biggest highlights of my month.

As for academics, I am having a good year. This is no doubt my toughest year ever. It is easily the most homework I have had on a daily basis. However, I do enjoy my classes and my teachers. I’ve been learning a new language in Spanish, done some cool experiments in chemistry and am getting stronger in weights. Do I think keeping my 4.0 GPA is possible? Yes. Do I think I will? I sure hope so. It is my biggest goal this year, but being a student-athlete-writer isn’t easy. I am doing my best.

This year I am participating in Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA). I am hoping it will help me become a better speaker in front of audiences and I will gain some business experience and learn a lot. I think it will be a lot of fun.

I am also doing Knowledge Bowl again this year, which is always a blast for me. We have the same team as last year when we were all freshman. We actually did really well and I expect us to move up in the rankings even more this year.

Thank you all for hanging with me this month.

Go Bulldogs. Go Seahawks. Happy Thanksgiving.

Braden Dohrmann is a sophomore at Montesano High School. He writes about what it’s like growing up in Montesano. He participates in many school sports and activities, works hard in class and enjoys taking vacations with his family.