It’s a brand new year here at the View and things are going to change! I have made my New Year’s resolutions, some old and some new. Of course there are my old standards: get the truck running, get teeth fixed, get broken refrigerator off front porch, etc. This year I’m putting “stop smoking” on top of the list. It’s been there before but this time I am really going to do it. It’s been ten years since I put “stop drinking” (alcohol that is) on top. So far, so good. That’s 3649 days more than I thought I would really go. I have proven that I am a genuine quitter, game on. So, if you see me at the concession stand at half-time buying 4 hotdogs instead of the normal 3, popcorn, and whatever else I can carry, all while laughing and crying with my eyes wildly blinking (but not in unison), don’t be alarmed. That’s just me quitting.

I want to thank you, my most kind, thoughtful and above average in everyway reader for your encouragement in my journalistic endeavors this past year. Very often it starts with “I’m not a sports person but...” All I can say is it’s a good thing because I’m not much of a sports writer. But, I do like photographing sports and watching a game through a little rectangular viewfinder is interesting. You can hear me ask people around me “what just happened” a lot. I enjoy watching kids play ball. I like being a parent of a player and being around other parents of players. I like watching the band, and of course I really like all that the band boosters do to make a buck. My column could just as easily be about ancestry and I could recap a funeral in the last paragraph. Then I would hear “I don’t usually read the obits but…” So until my kind and benevolent editor tells me otherwise, let’s talk a little basketball.

Old Santa put three lumps of coal in the Trigg County Wildcats stocking this Christmas in the Marion (Illinois) Invitational over the holidays. The Cat’s came home losing three, winning two. They won big and lost big and a few were close (how’s that for top notch sports writing?). But as they say “what happens in Marion, stays in Marion”. That was last year anyway. The good news is the teams that beat Trigg were not based in Kentucky and after a thorough investigation I have learned, without fear of contradiction, that all of our district opponents are in fact Kentucky based teams. We got that working for us.

For the rest of this column, read this week's Cadiz Record.