A side of Kraut

by

Casey K rautkramer Reporter

It’s not fun to cover a heated meeting

People might think that I enjoy the thrill of covering a controversial meeting for the newspaper, but that’s not my personality. I hate seeing conflict during local meetings, especially when teacher’s jobs are on the line as was the case on Monday night in Athens.

I met Athens varsity football assistant coaches Craig Diedrich and Dale Westfall the first time I stepped onto the Athens football field in August of 2015, when I was there to find out how I could interview head coach Mike Thurs about the team for my first Bluejays football preview story.

Diedrich and Westfall were happy to meet me that day in 2015 and they continue to treat me with respect to this day.

Todd Diethelm is the current Athens varsity football head coach and Diedrich is still nice enough to carry a ladder to the high school track so I can get high enough over the railing in front of the home football bleachers to take a team photo.

That’s why it pained me to see Diedrich fighting for his job at Monday’s Athens Board of Education meeting. The school board couldn’t make a decision on Monday about whether or not to reduce his teaching position from full to part-time next school year, so it is meeting again at 5:30 p.m. this Thursday, March 23, in the middle/high school library.

Diedrich told the school board on Monday that if it reduces his job to part time with no health insurance, then he’ll need to find a full-time teaching job elsewhere.

This Friday I will be attending the Wisconsin Newspaper Association education seminars and awards banquet in Madison. I won a second place and honorable mention this year. Everyone, including me, always wants to win first place, but winning awards has never been important to me.

I believe local high school sports coaches like Diedrich care more about developing student athletes into great young adults, rather than winning individual coach of the year awards. Of course if this happens to be his last school year teaching in Athens, then he’d for sure like to guide this spring’s Bluejays varsity softball squad to its first state tournament berth in school history.

The Athens and Stratford varsity softball teams begin their seasons this Friday at a tournament in the Hodag Dome in Rhinelander. Spring sports teams will need to find indoor venues to play games because there is still a lot of snow on the fields, and it’ll take a while for the fields to dry out even when the snow melts. That’s why varsity high school track and field teams are currently competing in the indoor portion of their season schedules like they do every year.