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It's often said in sports that the best defense is a good offense. For the youthful La Conner High School volleyball team, which carries three eighth graders – Nora McCormick, Abi Poulton and Reese Bird – on its nine-player roster, the opposite is the case. The Lady Braves, adjusting to heavy graduation losses from its state championship net program, have transitioned this fall from a power hitting team to relying on solid defense and crisp passing. They worked that new approach to good eff...
The La Conner High School boys’ soccer team defeated Grace Academy 3-1 Friday at home for the Braves’ second straight triumph, improving to 2-3 on the campaign going into a big match with NW2B/1B power Mount Vernon Christian Friday, Oct. 6. Coach Galen McKnight’s charges will look to square their season ledger when they host the Hurricanes in a 4 p.m. start. MVC sports a 6-2-1 mark entering this week’s play, having most recently tied St. Georges of Spokane 2-2, blanked Friday Harbor 1-0 and dropped a tough 1-0 decision to Orcas Island. Hurrica...
The La Conner High School boys’ soccer team was on point against Crosspoint Saturday. The Braves (1-3) earned their first victory of 2023 with a convincing 5-0 home shutout of non-conference foe Crosspoint Academy, a traditional soccer power from Bremerton and a SeaTac 2B entry. Lane Tenborg paced the winners by scoring twice and assisting on La Conner’s other three goals. Braves’ head coach Galen McKnight described Tenborg’s play as “brilliant.” McKnight also praised Corran Eisen, who broke a scoreless tie with the lone first half goal of the...
The new-look La Conner High School volleyball team, sporting a revamped lineup following heavy graduation losses from last year’s state 2B championship roster, has not lost sight of the immediate task at hand. Which is to collect as many NW2B/1B match triumphs as possible. So far, the Lady Braves (2-4 overall) have checked that box. The team, which dropped early non-league contests with 1A Meridian and Lynden Christian, 1B Neah Bay and 4A Glacier Peak, has won the match that counts most – a straight-sets sweep of conference rival Concrete Sep...
The La Conner High School girls’ soccer team could not find the net at Auburn Adventist Thursday afternoon.On that score, the Lady Braves are in good company. Auburn Adventist has won four matches this fall by shutout. That is why they sit atop SeaTac 2B League standings, The Lady Falcons added NW2B/1B member La Conner to the list, recording a 3-0 non-league triumph, despite several outstanding individual performances cited by first-year coach Maddie Huscher. Huscher praised striker Izzy Villard, right wing Kailey Carlson, right back Aisley Z...
The drive to reinstate student public service hours as a La Conner High School graduation requirement intersected Monday with a concrete example of the level of community support enjoyed by the school district. School Board members at their 75-minute Sept. 25 hybrid meeting expressed appreciation for a donation of 11 ukuleles by the La Conner Arts Commission to the elementary music program. Board President Susie Deyo cited the commitment demonstrated by the group as a prime reason of the great value for everyone when students engage in the...
Soroptimists are optimists – and with good reason, especially in La Conner. Members of the local chapter daily express appreciation for the widespread community support received for their multiple service projects. Their global volunteer organization provides women and girls access to education and training needed for economic empowerment. “It’s totally amazing what we get in donations,” Diane Goetz, co-president with Margaret Hillard of La Conner Soroptimists, said of the merchandise stocked at the chapter’s Vintage La Conner thrift store. Go...
The sands of time have shifted from the hourglass to poly bags that will soon be strategically placed along the La Conner waterfront ahead of king tide season. Facing an Oct. 1 deadline to install sandbags and ecology blocks in areas prone to flooding, the La Conner Town Council last week approved purchases of equipment and barriers designed to thwart the high-water damage that plagued the town last December. The council, acting upon recommendations of the Emergency Management Commission, gave Public Works Director Brian Lease the go-ahead at...
The new-look La Conner High School volleyball team, beset with heavy graduation losses, produced quite familiar results at NW2B foe Concrete Thursday night. The defending state 2B title winners forged a straight-sets triumph in their league debut, after successive setbacks to tough 1A net programs Lynden Christian and Meridian and a 3-1 loss to a talented 1B Neah Bay club Wednesday at Landy James Gym. Neah Bay swept NW2B Coupeville, a team La Conner is expected to vie for conference top honors, during its long two-match road swing from Cape...
La Conner continues to dodge the bullets that so much of small-town America is getting hit by: loss of employers, employees and families moving away, empty storefronts and boarded up homes, loss of hospitals and school closures. No, instead the problems here are employers struggling to fill open positions, employees stuck with commuting long distances and the local government needing robust affordable housing planning, policies and funding. The school district reacts to a smaller student population, but the high cost of housing is a tragedy it...
Thank you for printing the Tom Robbins graduation address article. I graduated at about the same time and spent my formative years in the Skagit Valley. Although I experienced a traditional high school commencement speech, not a word of which I can remember, I clearly recall soaking up Tom’s books. I moved away from the Valley for graduate school and a satisfying career studying insects that eat trees. I’ve never tired of asking questions of the natural world, a fascination I attribute to having spent so much of my youth pondering the lim...
All wasn’t lost when the new-look La Conner High School girls’ soccer team dropped two tough non-league tests to open the 2023 campaign. First-year coach Maddie Huscher was encouraged by her club’s effort in an 8-1 setback to North Mason and 7-0 shutout defeat at Northwest House of Seattle last week. “It was tough competition playing a team not in our division,” Huscher told the Weekly News after the road trip to Northwest, “but it was a great learning experience. We played on a turf field, something we aren’t used to.” Huscher said the team’s...
C.J. Edwards reeled off a 53-yard touchdown run, Ivory Damien delivered a 45-yard scoring strike to Tommy Murdock and the La Conner High School defense recovered five fumbles, but the Braves still fell 28-12 to Evergreen of Seattle in their grid opener at Whittaker Field Friday night. The difference, even more than the Wolverines' 16-point margin of victory, was in roster depth. Evergreen is a 2A King County program that rolls out 57 players. The 2B Braves, by contrast, suit up 20, two of them f...
Among its many devotees, the annual Pioneer Picnic in La Conner is always a winner. Especially by the staff and volunteers at the Skagit County Historical Museum. This year was no exception as proceeds from the annual picnic in August allowed the La Conner Civic Garden Club and Skagit County Pioneer Association to contribute a total of $4,000 to the museum last week. The joint contribution by the organizations to the museum was approved during the association’s board meeting at the Skagit City School Building on Fir Island Friday afternoon. T...
Merlin James "Jim" Hanson, 87, died peacefully on Aug. 23, 2023 from complications of congestive heart failure surrounded by his wife Margaret (Midge) and daughters Brit, Laura and Kari. Jim was born in McGregor, N.D., the sixth-born child of Minnie and Erwin Hanson. His life journey included the roles of Lincoln Lynx, UW Husky; U.S. Army officer; and insurance man. Jim was a member of the 101 Club, found golf late in life at the Skagit Golf Club; an adventurous salmon fisherman and boater; and...
The vibe coming out of the Pac-12 Conference this summer couldn't have been more grim. But a La Conner High School alum is providing a rare bit of good news, especially in her hometown, ahead of what will be the final year of the Conference of Champions as it is known. Ashley Watkins, a 2017 La Conner grad, has been elevated to director of football operations at Washington State University, the youngest sports administrator to serve in that capacity within the Pac-12. Her promotion was...
After slogging through a spring and summer beset with budget woes, La Conner Schools officials and staff shifted gears last week to focus on what they do best – create priceless memories for local students and families. The 2023-2024 year launched with a soft-start half-week of instruction beginning with Aug. 29 Braves Day orientation activities. Building principals Heather Fakkema-Hovde and Christine Tripp said Braves Day, which provided a relaxed atmosphere for students to meet teachers and advisors, obtain class schedules, pose for photos an...
Saturday saw the residents of La Conner at their best, gathering for what we all love, a parade. It was made better in that it was organized by us, for us. On this day author Tom Robbins was heralded as a king. The world-famous writer has been living quietly among us for decades. Residents who have known him for a long time and those who have never met him gathered to celebrate, as did those – primarily women – who came from as far away as Ireland, upstate New York, California and everywhere in between, including Indiana and Missouri. Robbins...
In mid-August Bob Raymond and I met with Rep. Clyde Shavers over coffee. Wow, what an impressive guy! He thinks five years ahead. Green hydrogen. Agritourism. Affordable housing. Financial education in our high schools. Investing in our rural communities. Services to our veterans. The environment. Electrification of school buses. He is working on 13 bills right now that he will push forward in the next session. He knows how to get things done in Olympia. Where does he get the energy? When he asked for input, I handed him my study of the tax...
When I was the editor of the newspaper in Oak Harbor nearly 40 years ago, I was given a copy of a commencement address by author Tom Robbins that was delivered to a handful of graduates at the Off Campus School in Oak Harbor on June 7, 1974. The Off Campus School was an alternative for students who previously dropped out of regular high school. Press reports called the program “hotly controversial.” I tucked the speech away back then and recently found it in my files. I wondered how Robbins came to be on Whidbey Island that night. The Off Cam...
Longtime La Conner Schools counselor Lori Buher has retired, but she is still offering timely advice. Buher suggested that the district resume its requirement that La Conner High students complete public service hours in order to graduate at the school board’s Aug. 14 study session. The board was listening. “We recognize that volunteering connects students to the community,” Board President Susie Deyo said then, noting that the board has retained its policy promoting student public service. The graduation requirement was set aside during the C...
New La Conner High School head volleyball coach Pam Keller is succeeding a legend and her young team is following in the footsteps of the four-time defending state 2B net champions. But optimism was clearly in the air – and on the freshly painted floor at Landy James Gym – when the Lady Braves opened pre-season workouts last week. "This crew is working pretty dang hard," Keller, who assisted retired state Hall of Fame coach Suzanne Marble for more than two decades, told the Weekly News pri...
Sweet Sixteen. A milestone birthday, for sure. But it has added significance for the La Conner High School football program. Sweet sixteen is the number of players on the Braves’ preseason roster this year. That’s about twice as many who turned out at this time last August. Ultimately, head coach Charlie Edwards and his staff were able to cobble together a young group with enough depth – though, barely – to complete its 2022 11-man grid schedule, forging a respectable 2-6 mark given the circumstances. Edwards, who began his third season...
In recent years, scrapbooking has become a popular hobby. But for a La Conner area resident it has long been more than that. Anne Waldron has over time filled several of her old-school hardcover photo albums – the ones reinforced by clear protective overlay pages – with an eclectic collection of local and national news articles, favorite cartoon strips, advertisements bearing images of celebrities and treasured family memorabilia. They are assembled in no particular order. Even so, none see...
A hazy blanket hovered above La Conner last weekend as smoke from multiple wildfires in north central Washington and southern British Columbia drifted into the area, shrouding typical summer views of the snow-capped Cascades but providing brilliant red sunsets over Swinomish Channel and Skagit Bay. By Monday, though, local air quality was much improved as weekend north winds returned to onshore flows, bringing relief in the form of slightly cooler morning temperatures and easier breathing. At 3...
