I didn't think about it a whole lot when I lived in there, but when I moved to Caledonia and had children of my own in sports, I began to wonder what the formula for success was at my old school/community in Lynden, despite being right in the middle of it. Sometimes you can't always see things clearly until you are outside of it. So I lied. this section will describe Caledonia where I currently live.
Caledonia (Cal from here out) is a great community and my family and I love it here. It is filled with quality people and I could go on and on about it and the things I like. It is a larger school (about 1500-1700 kids I think) and competes in the OK red division, which contains all the big schools in the area. There are a lot of kids that go on from Cal to play collegiate sports and they offer a number of sports due to the size. There are several kids also that have gone on to division 1 sports also, although the number is just a couple for boys football and basketball.
From a sports standpoint, I would rate Caledonia as average overall. Standard disclaimers apply. A few years back they won their first girls softball state championship and they had a really good baseball team last year before Covid shut that down. I believe the equestrian team did very well last year also. I am not in a place where I can give hard data again for what sports have done this or that, but I can say that while they do have some years and sports where they play deep into the state tournaments and sometimes win, overall they are quite average when it comes to sports. Some people would argue I am being too harsh and some would say too generous.
If you look at the "big" sports-- basketball, football, track and field, baseball/softball--there isn't a history of success (defined here solely by wins and losses and titles). Other than the title I mentioned in softball, there isn't much here. The softball team has been pretty good lately and perhaps they might be the top program. Basketball is straight horrible. I need to do an entry completely on the differences I see between attending a basketball game at Cal and one that I went to in my high school--very different. Football is depressingly average. Usually about .500 every year, sometimes better, many times worse. They won a state title in football back in 2005 when they were in a smaller division, but have not been great since. The coach they had for many years just retired and a new one was hired. Baseball has been "meh" and track and field nothing special overall.
Facilities are ok, but nothing great and not as good as other schools in our conference. The athletic department I would say is average. They got a new athletic director last year who replaced the guy doing it before that didn't do a good job in my and many others' opinions. This new guy seems to be ok--by that nothing great, nothing bad.
I also need to mention that the quality of athletes that come from here is pretty good. This is a rural community with some farms. But the kids seem to be good athletically. I don't know how you can quantify this objectively, but I don't think that a lack of quality in athletic ability is a factor in Cal's mediocrity.
What seems to happen here is that kids who are very good and serious about basketball or football, which are predominantly "school" sports versus "club" sports, (school sports being ones where kids will show for college playing for their school more than for a club, club being sports where kids are picked more from club teams than from school teams), tend to go to other schools where the quality of these sports are better than Cal. When you have this kind of situation going on, you have real problems from a sports standpoint.
I am trying to paint the picture of my current community as accurately as I can to help illustrate my points. Are there people like myself that do prioritize sports and want greatness? Absolutely there are. There are people in Lynden too that couldn't care less about sports. I am just trying to give the best general feel for the area and community.
Ok, now I will use these two communities to help make my points....
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