FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK: The Impossible Tasks Just Keep Coming

By VERNON ROBISON

Fairy tales are full of impossible tasks. Carry water a distance in a sieve. Push a boulder up a steep hill. Wake the enchanted sleeping princess. Pull the sword from the stone. Find the one girl who fits into the glass slipper. Steal a jewel from beneath the sleeping dragon. Go on an errand to the world of the dead and then return. The list goes on and on.

All of these, and many more, are examples of stories where the clever hero is given an impossible task which he must complete to prove his/her worth. These tasks are invariably assigned by someone with a vested interest in seeing the hero fail. In fact, the intention in assigning the task is usually to see that the hero never returns.

But in the stories, they always do. The hero always finds a way. Either by some deep magic that the antagonist didn’t know about, or just through some clever problem-solving; the hero accomplishes the impossible and proves himself as…well…a hero.

Isn’t it funny how echoes from old fairy tales so often resonate in the modern world. For example, this same theme has been playing out over the past several weeks at Moapa Valley High School. The MVHS Football program has been assigned a whole series of impossible tasks in its prep for this year’s unlikely season. Between state mandates, NIAA regulations, health district requirements and, most of all, the senseless CCSD bureaucracy, this five-week football season would send even the bravest fairy tale prince into hiding.

No one was sure whether a football season would even happen this year. But in mid-February, the Governor announced, just in the nick of time, that a short football season was possible. Everyone celebrated!

But it wouldn’t be easy. Now started a seemingly endless string of impossible tasks. A laundry list of rules, regulations and restrictions flowed from every possible direction.

Perhaps the thorniest of the impossible tasks was the one dealing with COVID testing for football. The details of this matter are chronicled in an article published elsewhere in this edition. But in brief, NIAA regulations required every full-contact athlete to be tested weekly in order to play. Fair enough. But even though the football season is starting six months late; and there has never been more time to prepare; no one at CCSD seemed to have thought about a mechanism for testing athletes when the time came. They were caught utterly unprepared.

“Of course, we fully support you in playing football,” they seemed to say. “But only on one condition: you must all get tested. And there are no test kits for you, nor do we have the appropriately cleared personnel to administer the tests. So I guess you’re on your own. Good luck in your football season!”

Might as well have required the team to spin a barnful of straw into pure gold. In the old stories, this kind of behavior indicates that the antagonist is calculating for the hero to fail.

Kind of makes one wonder about the CCSD intentions toward the MVHS athletics program. After all the school’s teams have been the only one up and running in CCSD (only recently joined by Virgin Valley High School).

Fortunately, there were some clever and resourceful “heroes” in town who stepped up, looked outside the box, and found a way to achieve the impossible. They brought the puzzle to Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick who spared no time in smashing it wide open and slashing through the red tape. Because of her advocacy, the selfless service of Moapa Valley Fire District Chief Steven Neel, and the community-minded efforts of Andy Rose and his staff at Logandale Quick Care, the impossible was accomplished. Test kits were found and the kids were all tested and able to play.

Unfortunately, in the fairy tales That’s when things can become dangerous. After all, the bad guy never gives up. As long as the antagonist is in power, he is working on more impossible tasks to trip up the hero.

So, in the story of the Pirates, just when the good had prevailed and all seemed right in the world again, another roadblock loomed into view.

On Friday night, the Pirates had just finished playing their first season game at Faith Lutheran in Las Vegas. It had been a loss for them, so probably no one was in a particularly cheery mood. That was when the CCSD dropped another humdinger on them.

The team returned to the buses to be transported home finding all of the vehicle’s windows, and the overhead ceiling vent, open full-wide. The team was instructed that all of these must remain open for the entire, hour-long journey back to Moapa Valley. No discussion. It was a policy from on high. End of story.

With the temperature in the low 40s, rain still falling and a steady breeze blowing, this made for a cold and drafty trip for the athletes and their coaches, all of whom were still cooling down from the heavy workout they’d experienced on the field.

It should be noted here that the entire entourage had been tested just the day before, as had the team they had just played – all according to regulations. All of those tests had presumably come back negative. Otherwise the game would not have happened.

But no matter! Accomplishing one impossible task doesn’t not prevent another. Some middle manager in the CCSD bureaucracy had made a hasty, ill-conceived decision which made no sense at all and had the potential to do more harm than good. Just another impossible task.

Now, it has been clear to many that the CCSD brass has not been overjoyed at MVHS being able to play NIAA sports, while the rest of the county has been forced to sit it out. Undoubtedly this puts the district in a very tough political spot. You might call it an impossible task that has backfired.

But couldn’t it be, just once, that the bureaucracy set all of its self-centered nonsense aside, and just make a decision based on what is good for the kids? Surely, they can do better than the utter nonsense that happened to the Pirates on the way home from the game Friday night!

…And so it was, the mighty Pirates bravely faced this last humiliating ordeal, making their long journey home in silence. And the townsfolk and villagers celebrated the bravery and nobility of their return.

After that, the Pirates continued through the other five weeks of the season, with their only opponents being those they faced on the football field.

And they all lived happily ever after (we can only hope).