Sports Editor Chuck Stark shares insight, laughter, news, views and analysis of Kitsap sports and beyond.Tough Deal for Bree, P-I
January 10th, 2009 by cstarkIt doesn’t seem that it was that long ago when the community dug down and helped raise over $6,000 for Bremerton’s Bree Schaaf. She was a skeleton athlete at the time, sliding head-first down an icy track. Funding for the sport, like a lot of the lesser Olympic sports, was practically non-existent and Schaaf was putting herself in debt in order to compete with the best in the world. It didn’t seem right, so I wrote a column and pretty soon, the Bree Fund, spear-headed the Bremerton Athletic Roundtable, was started.
The community made us all proud by the way it rallied and nobody was more thanful than Bree, a former Olympic High student/athlete who is driven compete in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, B.C.
Schaaf switched to the bobsled three years later. A higher-profile sport with more funding, Schaaf adapted quickly. She won the U.S. National Championship on Sunday at Lake Placid, N.Y. Three days later, she found out that Home Depot was pulling its sponsorship of a long-running program that enabled Olympic hopefuls to work flexible schedules, while earning full-time pay for half-time work plus full benefits. It was the best thing going for athletes like Schaaf. Now it’s gone.
Here’s the story I wrote for Saturday’s print editions.
And here’s a link to an NPR interview with Schaaf that was conducted Friday.
And Greg Johns of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote this piece on Thursday. I sat next to Greg at Wednesday’s Husky basketball game. The guy scoops us. Turns out he knows Bree’s dad. You’d think he would have mentioned the story, huh? Just kidding. Greg and the rest of the gang at the P-I, no doubt, had other things on their minds. You’ve, no doubt, heard by now that the P-I is up for sale. The news broke late Wednesday afternoon. It’s a shame. If the paper doesn’t sell in 60 days, the Hearst Corp., said it’ll become a Web-only publication or cease all operations.
Here’s the P-I story about the sale.
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