What’s the strangest thing you’ve seen surrounding Sequim sports?

The year 2010 marks my ninth year here at the Gazette — most of them as your sports reporter — and even in that short time I’ve seen some stuff.

But I’m likely not the only one. So, you know, feel free to blog back with some goofy stuff you’ve seen around here with at least some tangential relation to the sporting fields/courts/pools (you get what I’m getting at) …

In February of 2005, a crazed “fan” of the Peninsula High School girls’ basketball squad and dad of one of the players went OFF on the coach, literally. Rick Rae, a parent of a Peninsula High School player, climbed out of the stands after the girls basketball game and punched the team’s head coach, Jerrod Fleury, following Peninsula’s 58-54 district play-in, loser-out game.

Although, to hear Rae, tell his side, he said the coach initiated contact.

Some of the incident was caught on videotape, as Dennis Bragg of Peninsula News Network was covering the game and aftermath.

A pair of off-duty Clallam County Sheriff’s deputies — Lyman Moores and game public address announcer Steve Snover — jumped in and helped to restore order after only a short amount of time passed.

Rae was eventually found guilty of fourth-degree assault.

I was about 20 feet away but looking the other direction when it happened. Talk about being at the wrong place at the right time.

The punch (or punches, whatever the case) made national news. Of course, all people heard was “Sequim,” “basketball game" and "fight.” Everyone in town seemed to be talking about it, how shameful it was that we’d get tagged with that kind of media coverage.

I think it’s blown over by now.

Then there was the time a Sequim fan got caught with a laser light pointer. I think it was at the Nov. 7 game in 2008 as Sequim hosted Fife (I could be way off here, though). Referees stopped play and threatened to charge Sequim with an un-sportsmanlike penalty if the fan didn’t knock it off. They even confiscated the thing. Very odd.

I was at the MatClassic state wrestling tournament in 2007 when Sequim’s own Summer Steenberg was making a run to the finals in the first-ever girls-only bracket in state history. She wound up wrestling a young woman from North Kitsap High School in the quarterfinals.

About halfway through, I started hearing these foul words from somewhere. Steenberg had control of the match so I figured she wasn’t the source.

Turns out it was this young woman Steenberg was wrestling. She was either in so much pain or so distraught at losing that she lashed out (verbally) at her coach, the ref, no one in particular.

She got penalized for it and, mercifully, Steenberg quickly won the match.

I’ve heard stories about a certain young Sequim High School student — yeah I know who he is, and no, I’m not telling — who decided to streak across the football field during Homecoming, sans clothing.

The highlight of the year, several students told me afterward, was assistant principal Mark Willis (I think he was working at the middle school at the time) sprint across the field to try to nab the perp. Nearly got him, too.

On a more serious note, the most violent incident at a Sequim sporting event fortunately never happened. In the fall of 2004, 14-year-old Azel Chavez stole his father’s shotgun and mother’s van in an attempt to kill three Sequim High School football coaches who had disciplined that summer.

Fortunately, the Wolves were on the road playing in Tacoma and had already left by the time the youth got to the SHS field. Chavez fled Sequim and led police officers on a high-speed chase from Clallam County, through Jefferson County, and into Kitsap County, where the pursuit ended when he collided head-on with a police car on the Hood Canal Bridge. Officers disarmed him and placed him under arrest.

He was charged with first degree robbery, second degree assault, second degree unlawful possession of a firearm, second degree taking a motor vehicle without permission, and three counts of attempted murder in the first degree. 

On a much more endearing side, I’ve seen a blind sprinter and a blind wrestler, neither from Sequim but competing here, showed that athletics knows few boundaries.

The wrestler, Brian Hergert, grapples with the Port Angeles Roughriders. He always gives up a couple of points at the beginning in the down position and must always stay in contact with the other wrestler for safety’s sake. He’s an inspiration, through and through.

The sprinter — and darned if I can’t recall what school she’s from — made at least one clean run at an early-season event a couple of years ago. She raced from start to finish using a kind of walkie-talkie with her coach on the other end. One run she made claen, and on another run she wound up bumping into someone by the side of the track. She was terribly apologetic and embarrassed, but she shouldn’t have been.

I include these last two not because the athletes themselves are strange, but that they are simply competing with challenges you don’t see every day.