Let the record reflect, Jay High School in north Santa Rosa County does not have a wrestling team. The district’s county commissioner, James Calkins, shared a post over the weekend on social media and congratulated Jay’s wrestling team – Jay, Oklahoma. He later blamed it on a staff member and removed the post. It is just a suggestion, but if you follow the Santa Rosa Press Gazette sports page on Facebook, and X, you wouldn’t make that mistake. Also, we are sure if our Jay High School had a wrestling team, they would be worthy of congratulations. When you are unsure about your sports teams, just ask Brian Lester – our Santa Rosa County sports reporter. He is the expert on Navarre, Milton, Pace and Jay sports.
#Respectmydecision. That’s the hashtag that has become quite popular on social media when an athlete announces he or she is decommitting or transferring to another school.
Typically, you only see it in football. In the end, it’s one of those things that shouldn’t have to accompany a decision.
The Mardi Gras Parade will be here before you know it. You may have forgotten, but last year’s was cancelled due to the weather. The weather has rained on a lot of parades lately. The Navarre Christmas Parade was cancelled due to rain this year and Crestview’s was also cancelled, rescheduled, and then cancelled again due to bad weather the following weekend.
The congregation I serve as pastor, is a church plant of the Evangelical Free Church of America. Yes, we are as advertised, evangelicals, though these days with gluten-free, sugar-free, and caffeine-free products, a person might surmise we are not.
If you are looking for the strongest girls weightlifting in the state, look no further than right here in Northwest Florida.
Those aren’t just words in a column either. It’s fact.
EDITOR’S NOTE: State Rep. Dr. Joel Rudman filed a draft version of HB 1485, which would create the North Santa Rosa County Utilities Authority on Friday. He said edits to the bill already have been filed and will appear in the version of the bill considered in committee.
The day after Christmas, what my kin call Boxing Day, a kinsman posted on Facebook pictures of various Christmas cards reading, “JOY to the world!” and “Peace on Earth,” then gave this advice for the new year, “We must find joy where we can since peace eludes us.” At first blush, this advice seems insightful given the bleak state of our world; news outlets are awash with reports of crime and war. Peace on earth seems nonexistent and joy a rare commodity. The reason these proclamations of joy and peace seem such non sequiturs is that they have been reduced to mere holiday slogans severed from their source.
As I’m typing this column we are posting about the storm and deciding on whether or not to send people home early and then delaying our start time tomorrow. As I came down the stairs at my office and looked around, I thought out loud that if a tornado hit our building, we would have papers all over Navarre. Gail chimed in and said, well, we say we have Navarre covered…we literally would.
I can remember shooting baskets for hours in the humid summer months and even, at times, the brutally cold winter months on the basketball court in the driveway back home.
You are talking to someone here who used to chip ice off that old court just so my friends and I could play, and once, we even walked in a snowstorm down to the community center to play ball.
