Wow! Let us remember the duet of Deneice Williams and Johnny Mathis...yes it's over; call it a day; sorry it had to end this way...

The year flew by. Then another thought; whew! that was one long year. It's funny, it's your perspective and your attitude in how you reflect upon how life went through those days.

A friend of mine (you guess) always tells me the longest years of his life were the three years he spent in 6th grade......just kidding...but what we are speaking about is one's perspective on how time flies.

Good things; positive attitude; life flies by; bad things; negative attitude; the years drag on and on.

So where are we? We're flying boys and girls, and here's why.

Interscholastic athletics teach the lessons of a lifetime; lessons learned in a competitive environment which breeds positive outcomes, win or lose. The lessons that are learned are only at the highest levels of other areas of education and other areas of education cannot replicate the raw emotion that interscholastic athletics cultivate and display from one's soul.

Tremendous acts of cooperation, commitment, teamwork and good sportsmanship. Yet, we also endure boorish examples of unsavory acts and the poorest of sportsmanship which are on display each and every day.

So, we take the good with the bad and continue to germinate the positive values of athletics that help us compete in a competitive society. Because, in athletics, as well as in life, it always what have you done for me today.

So it's a wrap. A great year! A fantastic year! One, in which we have started to tell the story of what is achieved upon the field, the court, the track, the course, the competition surface. It's real. It's simple. It's cold. It's fact and it's final. Wow! That's great fun!

With that, we salute all of those 350,000 student-athletes that have made this year, an outstanding year of personal performances, team achievements and commitment to the ideals of interscholastic athletics.

Interscholastic athletics: Achieving life goals; every day.