So I spent much of my formative youth in a small Dutch town in northwest Washington state called Lynden. Population last I heard was 10-15 thousand people. About 5 minutes from the Canadian border and in the shadow of Mt Baker and not far from Puget Sound. A very special place to me and the rest of my family still live around there. The town is very similar to Byron Center or Caledonia here in Michigan so big surprise I live in a community similar to it.
I went to high school there at Lynden Christian (LC), which is a private school of around 300 kids. it may be more now, but it is in that neighborhood for student size. Lynden public school is also there but it is much bigger. But you have a small town with two schools in it.
It is fair to say that the community, which in the case of LC probably extends past Lynden into the county, has a passion for sports--for both schools. I don't know exactly how you would qualify this, but people there heavily support and participate in youth and high school sports in various ways. It has been several years since I lived there, but I think if there was a need for someone to coach or help out with something, you can generally find those people willing to help. People generally attend sports events and love when the teams do well and take pride in the teams.
The sports programs from these two schools are incredibly successful from a win/loss standpoint and also from a state championship standpoint. I don't have hard data to give you right now, but state championship banners litter the walls of these two schools. The other thing, and I believe this is still the case at least at both schools, is that they don't put up banners that say things like "runner up" or "final four" or regional, district or league champs for anything--the only thing you will see up is state championships. I think that says something about the expectations that are present.
I think the banner program that I use for my base comparison is the LC girls varsity basketball team. This team is amazing. They are a force that has dominated the sport since 1979 and as small as the school is, they do extremely well against competition from much higher level schools as well. How in the world does a program like this do well year after year? I believe they make the state tournament nearly every year. The one stat that I have is that this program has been in the state championship game since 1980 (or something like that) 40% of the time. Please allow that to sink in for a second. They have won 1st or 2nd in state 4 out of 10 times that the game has been played. That's absurd. My point here is that they are a machine.
I want to mention something here that comes up with some frequency. I know there are private schools and even public ones that recruit athletes to come to their schools. I can say with some certainty that LC is not one of them, even though there are accusations that this happens. Knowing the kind of people that run that school, I would be shocked if this ever has occurred. This doesn't mean that someone hasn't moved there for other reasons, and sends their kids to the school because they happen to be there. it also doesn't mean that the school doesn't get in touch with someone who has decided to move to the area and attempts to get them to attend. I mean they don't go out to athletes in other places and try to urge or pay them to come to the area just to pick up an athlete. LC doesn't have an abundance of extra money, so they aren't paying athletes to come. I don't know of, nor have ever heard of anything of this nature that has ever occurred.
Back to the community of Lynden, this is the environment that I spent most of my youth in. It is what I accept(ed) as the norm for better or for worse. For those who may live around my area, I would liken LC (or Lynden public) most closely to Rockford in there attitude toward sports. Not the exact same, especially since Rockford is much much bigger, but the general approach of the community.
So how does my alma mater and Lynden High School continuously get top notch athletes for their sports teams? And how is this place so successful?
The picture attached here to this entry is the gymnasium wall that I discussed before, if you need it. It continues to grow each year it seems....
In my next entry, I will try to figure out some of where this comes from...
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