Nice time for memories . . .

By John Fragodt, Sports Reporter

I finally got a chance to get out to take some pictures this spring for sports during an actual competition and it happened to be a boys tennis match against Benson-KMS.  Wow, what a wonderful day it turned out to be to get out and watch some Laker sports’ action.

It was nice for me to visit with some of the parents of the Benson and KMS student-athletes, people I’ve known for many years while covering their kids at the Benson newspaper.

It’s interesting to note that one of Minnewaska’s players, eighth-grader Carter LeClair, had a brother playing first singles for Benson-KMS.  Yes, that’s right; brothers were playing for two different schools.

Carter’s parents live on the north side of Lake Minnewaska, but since his older brother, Hunter, a senior at Benson High School, was active in hockey, the family decided to let him finish out his senior year at BHS while Carter started out in the Minnewaska Area school district.

Wow, two kids playing sports in two different school districts.  And you thought your spring was busy.

After looking at who was playing for Benson-KMS, I noticed that 10 of the 12 athletes on the team were kids that took part in our  annual Fragodt youth summer tennis camps that we taught for about 10 years in Benson.

My kids were always so busy in high school during the summer practicing their sports and taking part in summer leagues that I started them with mowing during the summer and also helping out with Fragodt tennis and basketball camps during the summer to give them some extra money.

We did a youth basketball camp for over five years, and we continued with summer tennis camps for over 10 years, finally quitting about 5-7 years ago after all my kids graduated from college.  We must not have taught the Benson-KMS players quite good enough though, as Minnewaska Area started out slowly before going on to earn a 6-1 victory.

Did I say yet that it sure was nice to get outside to cover some sports’ action?