Brian Out Loud Archive

Interviews on the radio aren’t a new thing for me. I’ve been doing them every week for close to a year now.

Yet, I was put on the spot last week when I was asked to hop on the air for a few minutes on ESPN Pensacola to talk high school sports on a day that I wasn’t expecting to do it.

Fans lined the railing along the walkway leading from the tunnel to the field on a rainy Tuesday night in early July at Blue Wahoos Stadium.

They had hats, bats, gloves, shirts and cards. Someone even had a plastic shovel.

I’ve never really been a big fan of all-conference, all-region or even all-state teams.

Don’t get me wrong. The recognition for the athletes is great and well-deserved. I have nothing against that part of it.

Hiring a coach can prove to be tricky times. Like trying to pick the right door to choose in one of those game shows.

But it’s safe to say Navarre and Milton got it right when it came to filling the voids they had for the position of head coach of the softball team.

As I walked around Beyer Stadium in my hometown of Rockford, Illinois, a couple of weeks ago, I thought about the Rockford Peaches and what it must have been like to play here in the era that they did here in this Northwest Illinois city.

They began playing in Rockford while America was still at war, and they continued to play here nearly a decade after World War II ended.

Four years. It just doesn’t seem possible.

But, yes, it really has been that long since DJ Deas, a promising young athlete who seemingly had the world at his fingertips, died by suicide shortly after the end of the school year.

I came across a blank Father’s Day card the other day while cleaning off my desk at home.

I can’t tell you when I bought it or why it was never sent. Perhaps it was an extra card that I planned to send out for Father’s Day down the road.

When Jon Moon reached out a couple of weekends ago to let me know his wife’s battle with cancer had taken a turn for the worse, it hit me hard.

Not just because I know how much Daphne Moon loved her children, and how well known she was for being a kind and sweet person, but also because it’s been only a couple of months since I lost a parent.

I’ve been running between all three newspaper locations, and I’m often in Navarre, Milton and Crestview in the same day.

At the first of the year as I was visiting all of the properties, I decided that it was very difficult to drive carefully and pay attention to the road while also paying attention to everything in the three organizations.

Chris Williams is out after three years as the head coach of the Navarre baseball team.

He has stepped down to spend more time with family.