View from the cheap seats

A weekly perspective on sports

Casey Krautkramer Reporter The Record-Review

I’ve returned to my farming roots by working part time at Greenberg Farms in Stratford. I now wake up at 4:45 a.m. each day and spend 2-1/2 hours feeding milk and water to 100 calves on the farm.

This job allows me to earn extra money to buy Christmas gifts for my family and it also keeps me humble, because I realize how fortunate I am to be a journalist at The Record-Review newspaper.

I appreciate any local student athletes, such as sisters Reagan and Emery Borchardt of rural Edgar, who work hard on their parent’s town of Wien dairy farm while doing their homework and playing sports after their school.

Reagan is only a sophomore in high school, yet she was awarded the Edgar varsity volleyball team’s Most Valuable Player this fall. She and her sister learned the value of hard work while growing up on their family’s dairy farm.

The girls’ mother, Penny (Hall) Borchardt, recently said her daughters love to run outside to “hit and pepper” with a volleyball in between scraping calf pens, feeding hay, throwing bales and their other chores on the family’s dairy farm.

I remember working on my father and uncle’s town of Marathon dairy farm one afternoon during the winter of 1996 when I was a senior at Marathon High School, which also happens to be Penny (Hall) Borchardt’s alma mater. I assumed my Marathon varsity boy’s basketball game versus Pittsville was canceled, because we’d received several inches of snow that day.

Unfortunately, I learned it’s wrong to assume anything without checking first. My varsity boy’s basketball coach, Jack Culhane, called me at home to find out why I didn’t show up for the game. I arrived at Marathon High School during halftime and played in the second half of my team’s blowout win against the Panthers.

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There is an intriguing non-conference wrestling matchup between Stratford and Fennimore on Friday, Dec. 18, as the Tigers will travel to southwest Wisconsin to compete against the Golden Eagles.

I’ve witnessed both the highs and lows the Tigers have endured against the Golden Eagles in the University of Wisconsin Fieldhouse. A tiebreaker gave Fennimore the state championship win against Stratford in 2016.

The Tigers then easily beat the Golden Eagles in back-to-back state team finals in 2017 and 2018. Fennimore then beat Stratford in the 2019 state team championship.

This year, Stratford jumped out to a big lead in its state semifinal match against Fennimore, only for the Golden Eagles to come back and win.