In continuing thoughts about what makes a winning team, or individual, events of the past week quickly come to mind. Yes, Virginia, (to paraphrase an almost forgotten column) there are great athletes in this world, even in a small town like Gallup.

Some of them come from the pricey homes on the hill, and some come from the depths of deprivation and want. You can’t tell which, when they are all young and of nearly equal size and stature. The differences between them and the ‘average’ child normally don’t show up until puberty, though some would claim that those who are coached, even reasonably well, from an early age are obvious to pick out before then.

In January, I learned of...

Gallup Legends Softball Association Labor Day Weekend tournament has been going on for many years under four different names and involves teams from outside the area. Women play in a 40-and-over division, while men are split into 50-and-over and 60-and-over.

There are those in the world of athletics who believe in the axiom of players making the difference in the outcome of any sporting endeavor, but there is the opposite belief as well. Real coaches – the one we don’t often hear about because of our desire to elevate one individual over another – do and will make a difference.

When Miyamura became the second public high school in Gallup, one of the most offensive remarks overheard – aside from the downward change in classification size, based on student population – was that the new school was going to have all the best athletes. This outright falsification was not borne out by any real fact – Gallup’s basketball girls...