R-C Sports Notebook: It's not going to be the Great Wall of China

Okay, Okay. We might have poked a little too much fun at Douglas High School for wanting to install a 12-foot fence around the newly-renovated sports complex in Minden.

We ran an online poll asking what lengths you, the reader, would go to in order to protect the field complete with setting live tigers loose and extending an electrical current into the chain-link setup. There was also our editorial cartoon in the Aug. 8 edition of the paper depicted the proposed fence as a literal prison cage.

What can we say? It's a 12-foot fence. The idea lends itself easily to humor.

But when it comes down to it, the idea of the fence only came around because of a much less humorous trend.

Anyone who has been here longer than five years knows the bitterness of the rivalry between Carson and Douglas. It has characterized itself with costly pranks and sometimes aggressive altercations.

It goes without saying that the multi-million dollar remodel of the field, track and accompanying facilities at Douglas will be among the biggest of targets once it is finished.

While the field has certainly added a new luster to the school, it has also given administrators and coaches quite a headache in terms of figuring out ways to protect it.

You can't fault the administration for desiring to go to the greatest lengths possible to protect the new asset.

We tend to forget, what in the wake of the generous donations from Big George Ventures owner Ray Sidney, that before he came around, the school had spent the better part of the last decade attempting to raise the money just to install a $300,000 to $400,000 track with very little success.

In fact, it wasn't until the district itself committed $150,000 to the project in 2004 that it appeared the track would ever come to fruition.

The point being that, should anything ever happen to the field in terms of damage or vandalism, the funds won't be in the district coffers to make wholesale fixes, or worse, replacements.

The fence ends up being the most cost-effective solution. Sure, it's 12-feet tall, but the number tends to evoke a much larger barrier in the mind than actually serves in reality.

The fence will be no taller than the fence currently standing around the tennis courts. Take a walk on down to the high school this week and have a look. It doesn't even match to top row of the bleachers on the football field.

Take a jog on over to the soccer field, and you'll note that the proposed fence around the football field is shorter than the "backstop" fence on the north end of the soccer field. The one went in last year with no outcry from the public.

It'll be tall enough to discourage potential vandals, but it will not be impenetrable.

If someone really wants to cause the damage bad enough, it's tough to say that they won't be able to find a way.

But there is no question that it will be extremely more difficult to get over the fence at 12 feet than at its current height. And if someone is caught in the act, they are going to have a heck of a time getting back out of the complex without injuring themselves in the process.

There is no doubt that when completed, it will be one of the finest high school facilities in the state, if not the western region.

A fence is a logical effort to try to protect that. It won't end the threat, though.

If we are truly going to call this a gem of our community, it is going to end up being the community's responsibility to keep it that way.

It was nice to see athletes actually out on the field during the voluntary summer workouts. Now that fall practice has officially opened at the high school, things have picked up considerably.

We'll start our previews of each team this week and extend those through the first several week of school. A number of teams at Douglas are in line for extremely successful seasons. It should be an exciting season on all fronts.

There is a better than average chance I'll be missing at least two weeks of the fall season, most-likely in early August or September.

I've made it a personal policy not to take vacation during the school year so I can be there as much as possible, but this year will be an exception.

My wife and I are expecting our first child and she is due Sept. 8. That means we're technically on "baby watch" for the next two months.

Once she is born, I'll take a two-week leave to try and figure out this whole parenting thing and, of course, get to know my daughter.

I'll be back shortly thereafter, so if I suddenly disappear on y'all, you know what happened.