From the End of the Bench...

Updates from PIAA staff.

It's a Good Time, Yet a Reflective Time

1/29/14


This is a good time of year. We have seen 120 teams qualify and compete for a PIAA Competitive Spirit Championship in four classes. They and all of those qualifiers need to be recognized for their efforts and their excellence in their work. Congratulations on all performances that were continuously practiced and performed.

That is the good time, but we also have a reflective time.

We have lost through passing of some tremendous people who have taken a part of their lives and shared it with all of us to make PIAA better. We have lost athletic co-workers, administrators, referees and friends.

These people have epitomized the athletic experience and all the good that comes from being involved in this educational epiphany of the growth of young people. We have seen it through the efforts and life of Sharon Solava, who cared so deeply about the students and her bond with her husband, Bill, to always do right by "the kids".

 It is the effort and commitment of athletic administrator, Don Engle, who for 30 years served Central Columbia HS in Bloomsburg in making its athletic program first class and he was part of the officiating community in representing the highest ideals of interscholastic education. 

The strength, courage and commitment of soccer official, Joe Reed, who battled cancer for 10 years and never did not show up to a game or meeting without a smile and a positive thought to make the game and the day better.

Today we grieve with their families and reflect upon their lives. We will miss each and every one of them for they made us all better people, who care and want to continue their efforts to make the athletic experience better than how we found it.

We thank these three individuals and others like them who have passed for their efforts, their commitment and their love of educational based athletics.

It is not the success we achieve in athletics that makes a difference, but it is the relationships and memories of those who have contributed to this experience that make interscholastic athletics an experience unto itself and one in which its life lessons create bonds that can never be undone.

May we express our most sincere sympathies to these families and may we recognize them to celebrate their lives of service to all of us. On behalf of all of us in the PIAA Family; thank you.

Interscholastic athletics; where bonds between people can never be broken.