https://www.canyonville.net/the-final-weeks-of-boarding-school/ Fri, 02 Apr 2021 23:40:38 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.24 https://www.canyonville.net/the-final-weeks-of-boarding-school/#comment-2647 Sat, 04 Oct 2014 17:05:42 +0000 http://www.canyonville.net/?p=4886#comment-2647 An old high school friend recently sent me a picture of our 1966 cross country team at Eagle Point High School. Jim Crumpton was our coach. The picture brought back a flood of great memories of that time, and I found myself talking to my wife at some length about what a wonderful coach and mentor he was. As I recall, the year before we were a very mediocre team, although we had virtually the same field of runners, but had a different coach. Then Mr. Crumpton became our coach. That year we were amazing. I believe we won our district championship and placed very high in the state rankings for 2A teams. What made the difference? It was Mr. Crumpton. He had that rare quality of instilling in all of us the desire to be our best. He didn’t yell or threaten or punish us. Instead, he encouraged us and was our advocate. That made us want to work hard. When we’d go out on a 10-mile run he’d give us a soccer ball to take along. “What fun!” we thought. He knew that by having us running and kicking a soccer ball for 10 miles meant we’d actually run 12 or 15 miles chasing the darn thing. I’ve thought about him often and am sad to hear he’s passed away. If I could send a copy of the photo I would. He was a wonderful coach and mentor. Dean Konopasek

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