Feel(ing) good story

Among a huge heap of scattered papers, empty energy drink bottles and a random baseball on my desk, I came across a letter from one of our valued V.I. Daily News readers.

Usually, people just leave crazy, F-bomb-riddled voice mail messages on my office phone to let me know I'm doing such a wonderful job covering sports in the territory.

Well, this reader ignored the phone book and typed out a lovely letter for me. It was in response to an article I wrote about a high school football player who found success amid early struggles.

The people who call the shots at the paper liked it so much, they put it on the front page and it was one of those true journalistic moments when sports transcends into news.

Or they just had nothing else to go with that day.

Please don't laugh too hard at our website design and check out the story at this LINK.

The only reason I found the buried letter is because the lady who wrote it just dropped in to discuss the article further with me. She did not know him personally, but if you read the article, I think everyone on island knew of his antics.

We talked for a while and she pleaded that I write more stories like it because there are plenty of young people that are trying to turn their lives around.

"And if you keep writing about them, the kids will read about it and try to do the same with their lives," she said, while holding my hand and trying to hold back tears.

"Wait, let me get this straight, high school kids are actually reading the newspaper?" I asked to break the tension. I think she wanted a hug.

Apparently, they do. Which is why this newspaper somehow still turns a profit. And that's probably why we haven't updated our website layout since 1990. Hmm, interesting.

Running into appreciative readers is always a breath of fresh air.

Like I said before, it does not happen often. When it does, it's pretty awesome. Especially when it comes in the form of a random grandmother with soft hands and kind words.

Running on empty

This is a photo I took of Theresa Hodge, who is the high school track and field commissioner on St. Thomas. Moments before, she delicately poured baking flour on the track to mark the finish line for an island meet held Thursday at Charlotte Amalie High School.

When I asked her if that was indeed baking flour, she sort of gave me a sly look and snickered.

"Yup, it's come to this," she said.

Just two days earlier, she held an elementary school track meet on a grass field and it took her two days to mark the lanes in different colors with spray paint.

"It's kind of hard to have a track meet when you don't have a track to run on," she said. "Some people wouldn't even consider this a track. What do you think?"

The track at CAHS -- the only one that exists on St. Thomas -- has been decaying for years. They can't even use Lane 1 because of all the divots. I wrote a story in the Daily News about it in August but the athletic director, who went off on the government during our interview, almost got fired.

Quote from the story:

"We are America's paradise and we don't look like it. We don't look like it at all. The facilities around here make us look like third world."

He had a very good point but to save his job, he scheduled a press telephone conference the day after the story was published and he apologized for his remarks.

And so it goes. The track still looks like shit and athletes still hold back because they don't want to get hurt.