OHS Track and Field season opens Saturday

by Ben Dicksion

Early Saturday morning a convoy of school district buses and family vehicles will hit the road to Lewiston to answer the starter's gun that will open the Orofino High School Track and Field season.

The athletes will face off with members of as many as 12 other teams from across the region at 9:30 a.m. at Lewiston High School.

Head Coach Keith Stuffle is a 1988 graduate of OHS who won, in his words, "a few state championships". After graduating from Northern Arizona University, Stuffle started teaching and coaching in Lakeland, OR. In 1999, the opportunity came to move back to his Orofino where he teaches World History and weight training, in addition to his track activities.

One of his principle goals is to turn out athletes who are also exemplary scholars. "We expect our young athletes to be good citizens and good students," he explained.

Stuffle has five assistants: Scott Schochler is the assistant head coach, Dawn Stuffle (Keith's wife) is an assistant who handles running and relays. Tam White is the jumps coach, Elvin Pfefferkorn is the pole vault coach and Tony Snyder is the throwing coach.

Stuffle is not predicting outcomes for his team this early in the season. In the first place, he says, he has no scouting report on opposing teams. He is not even sure how many different teams the Maniacs will be facing in Saturday's opener. "There might be eight different teams there, and there could be as many as 20," he said. "I'm expecting 12 opponents, or thereabouts."

Then, too, the team is a bit scraped up, even before the season starts."We have a good team this year," Stuffle said, "If we can keep them healthy. We're a little banged up right now, so I dare not predict our performance as a team. Right now, we're going after individual performances and just standing by to see how things shake out."