JFK’s message lives in Ritzville

On Jan. 21, 1961, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as President of the United States. Toward the end of his inaugural speech he said the words that are the most quoted of his shortened presidency.

In his speech he said, “And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.

For anyone that attended the Undeberg Invitational Track meet on Saturday, you might get an idea of some of the things I think Kennedy meant. If you change country to community you will get the gist of the message.

Community is a big part of country and something most everyone can give a part of their life to.

I can’t tell you how many volunteers were on hand Saturday but there were a lot and because of their hard work and dedication were able to pull off what is fast becoming the best invitational meet in the state, in my humble opinion.

About one year ago, I sent an email to Mark Meyer to let him know about the Ninth Undeberg Invitational Track meet, the first held in Ritzville in a number of years.

Mark graduated in 1969 and was a member of the Bronco track team specializing in the pole vault.

Mark remembers those Ritzville Invitational meets usually held on a blustery April afternoon but still a great meet.

Anyway, Mark told me to keep in touch because he wanted to help out at the 2015 meet. So I did and on Friday he traveled over the hill from Lacey to volunteer at the 2015 Undeberg. The only hitch to the whole gig was that he would have to work with me at the long jump/triple jump area.

It was great visiting with Mark and talking about “our glory days” on the football field and basketball court where we were teammates. It is great that 46 years later we are still good friends and enjoy visiting whenever we get a chance.

We told a few stories about Coach Agee, and Grimm and Mark had a few about former Odessa Coach Lee Boyk. There were a lot of laughs and those memories are important to us.

Mark and I also had a story or two about Harold Undeberg, what a great guy he was and how important he was to this community and just how much we miss him. Which just goes to show you that you can’t replace individuals especially those that have a huge influence on a community.

My takeaway from the meet on Saturday is that there are some remarkable people that have taken time out of their busy lives to help put on an incredible track meet. There are some folks that have been involved with this meet since day one and traveled to Medical Lake when the meet was held there.

This is the second one I’ve helped with and the experience is better because I learned so much last year.

I also know that being around young people is helping me to stay at least young at heart. With all of the up and down motion getting measurements my body was in dire need of Ibuprofen on Sunday. I found out that I wasn’t the only one.

It was a lot of fun visiting with the athletes and watching the intensity they displayed with each jump. I talked with Sam Schafer, the long jump winner from Odessa and I told him that he had won the competition with one jump remaining. He said he wanted to set the meet record. He came up a bit short but I greatly admired his determination.

At the end of the day we were treated to a great triple jump competition that was worth every minute for us, as well as the spectators who came to watch. Joe Lang of Royal won with a distance of 43 feet, winning by over a foot and a half. All of the finalists did a great job and will do well the rest of the season and should all have a great shot at state competition in their respective classifications.

As sports fans, we all get excited about our teams or competitors but at a track meet with a bunch of individual athletes competing for top marks, we should all become fans of great efforts and applaud each and every one.

Congratulations go out to the Lind-Ritzville/Sprague girls who won the meet with a whopping 86 points.

Coming in second was Colfax with 70.5.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to see much of the racing portion of the meet. Riverside won the boys’ side with 57 points. LRS finished in 15th place with 24 points.

I appreciate the many thanks we received from parents, coaches and the competitors themselves. There are a lot of great kids out there and they don’t all wear a Bronco uniform.

Of course, I think most of them would look good wearing the red and black!

A big standing ovation needs to go out to Greg Whitmore who organized this meet and has a big hand in making it so great! Even on his birthday.

When Project 56 came up with the idea of an all-weather track in Ritzville and the voters gave the final approval to make it all come to fruition I’m sure that few of us thought Ritzville could pull off the first class meet that the Undeberg has become.

But JFK’s message resonates in Ritzville when we say, “…ask what you can do for your community!”