I read the recent article in the Seattle Times about the situation at Garfield High School and the recruiting of an athlete from Texas to play football at the school. Then I remembered what happened in BelIevue and the accusations at Nathan Hale. How did this happen? When did fun get eliminated from high school sports? When did “win at all cost” become the norm instead of the exception.

I was a high school head wrestling coach for almost 30 years. The information pamphlet I passed out at the beginning of the year contained the following: “Citizenship and discipline are the most important things I can teach.” I told the athletes that if they have those two things, we will be successful as a team and they will be successful in life. We practiced hard but made sure we had fun.

As a program we had success and we had failure, but we also had a lot of fun. The thing I am most proud of is seeing how successful these former athletes and stat girls became as professionals and most importantly as parents and citizens.

As I wrote earlier I read the article about Garfield High School and sighed.

Walter Kostecka, Federal Way