Holidays, sports and home

Corey Costelloe.

I remember the holiday season in my previous career as being laced with travel, airports, hotel rooms, tournaments, games and lots of new places throughout my journey as a broadcaster.

There was one Thanksgiving that I left the snowy plains of Wyoming in the morning, just in time to catch a flight home to Bakersfield and to have Thanksgiving dinner with my wife and in-laws, fresh off the plane at Meadows Field. The following year I was in Dayton, Ohio for Thanksgiving, eating in a restaurant, while I enjoyed the company of my co-workers and young men on the team I was traveling with, it was not home, it wasn't family. Internally I vowed to never do that again. It was my last Thanksgiving as a broadcaster.

Since the college basketball kids were out of class for much of December that usually meant travel, so we took that opportunity to play whoever, wherever. It took a toll as I got older, the novelty of it all having worn off years prior. Once I became a father the anxiety of being half a continent away from my young family was too much to bear. Call it fraternal instinct, I call it maturity.

These days the holidays are filled with family activities, and yes still in some small way, sports. In late November, the Warrior Booster Club hosted the Inaugural "Warrior Cup" Five-A-Side Soccer Tournament at the new Valley Park facility. We had seven teams register for the all-day affair that showcased players from as far away as Visalia and one from Mexico who was in town visiting family. The talent was amazing as I refereed all 25 matches that day. I was stunned by the level of soccer talent our little tournament generated, and the buzz was palpable. The final, which featured a couple of teams made up of local talent including Tehachapi High School alums, saw packed grandstands and standing room only along the field's exterior. We even had air horns and confetti. It felt more like a World Cup final than the final of a small fundraising tournament for our local soccer program. Congrats to the Belligols, our inaugural winners who will have their name engraved on the perpetual cup prior to the next tournament. What a day.

November also saw the end of an amazing career at Tehachapi High School as head cross country coach Mike Heckathorn coached his final meet for the Warriors after 30 years of service. Heckathorn has coached a lot of sports at THS in both his time as an employee of the district and well into his retirement years. He ended with a bang collecting the boys' programs first league championship in history and the girls' first league title in over 30 years. A solid way to go out as he hands the program over to a well-qualified successor with a solid talent pipeline established as cross country runners become more prevalent in our community. Coach Heckathorn had the "pleasure" of coaching myself and a few other miscreants in junior varsity baseball in 1996. We were a challenging bunch that never quite lived up to our potential.

He named me "Defensive Player of the Year" that season for my efforts behind the plate as catcher, although I didn't even offer to catch until about five games into the season when the five other catchers on the roster couldn't manage to stop a ball behind the plate. We lost games due to passed balls and wild pitches. I was satisfied playing in the outfield and getting playing time before I could not take it anymore and offered my services behind the dish. I remember his speech in the awards banquet that mentioned, "if only Costelloe would have told me sooner that he could play catcher, we might have won a few more games." I never ran cross country, but I remember one gaffe during the morning announcements at THS when they were reading off the cross-country schedule and their tag line was "Why do we run? We run for Corey!" It was supposed to say "glory," but the typo was not caught in time. We had a laugh about that one when I saw him on campus later that day after I told him I was happy to inspire his team.

Thirty years coaching in this town is commendable, and although he has refused any public recognition, I figure I didn't listen to him much in 1996 when he was my coach, so why start now? Congrats Coach Heckathorn on an outstanding cross-country career and I am sure you will keep coaching some other sport down the line.

December means the beginning of basketball, soccer and wrestling seasons with the THS hoopsters off to a few solid starts. The varsity girl's basketball team recently went 3-0 at a tournament in Dinuba to capture the title while the boy's varsity team took home the consolation championship in their season opening tourney as well. Soccer is off and running and gets to enjoy some unseasonably warm evening soccer weather for a few home matches. It is nice to see the new soccer shelters in place in the bench areas of Coy Burnett Stadium, sheltering both teams from the weather and completing the transformation of the football field into a proper soccer pitch for the winter months. Tiny details go a long way, and as I mentioned, the soccer talent locally is abundant, we must foster that talent and provide those details to ensure their success at the high school level.

While I won't be broadcasting games in faraway places during the holidays as I once did, you will catch me in the stands at some of our local events, and once in awhile at the scorer's table filling in as public address announcer, something about December and basketball just seems to keep me attached to that microphone.

I have come to realize, that while my days of being a vagabond lugging broadcast gear across this nation are no more, there is no place I would rather be during the holidays than right here at home, still attached to sports, and occasionally that microphone, which may have seen bigger venues, but certainly not any venues more important to me than those right here at home with the sports, the people and the community I love.

Corey Costelloe has covered NCAA, professional and local sports for more than 20 years as a reporter, broadcaster and athletics administrator. He advocates for the value of athletic competition and serves as the President of the Tehachapi Warriors Booster Club. He can be reached at [email protected].