Someone, reportedly Harry Truman, once said, and I’m paraphrasing here, that it is amazing what can get done when no one demands the credit.
That quote is running through my mind as I try to write about Mike Bauer. He’s just kind of always there, whether it’s facilitating Regis High athlete interviews for reporters at the state track and field championships or taking care of cross country runners stung by bees at an invitational at Silver Falls State Park. But he deflects credit like the shields on a Galaxy-class starship.
He often will email me with story ideas. Good ones, too. Once he had info on a fundraiser that used a closest-to-the-pin contest at a backyard pond. The pond had an island and that’s what the golfers shot at. When Scouts, Stayton High and Regis teamed up to improve the cross country course at the middle school, he got in touch with me. Ditto when the Stayton Road Runners figured out a way to keep the juices flowing by doing solo runs during the pandemic and “competing” by logging their times in spread sheet.
And a couple of weeks ago when I visited Regis to shoot photos of Alison Wood, the Rams’ high jump coach (see opposite page), there was Bauer, working with the long jumpers. And he had another good story for me. It’s the story of the Regis Community Twilight Meet, now ten years in. The goal of a group of Regis alumni, parents and board members was to raise $300,000 for a new track at the high school as well as enough funds to set aside some for the $100K needed every ten years to put a ”top coat” on the surface.
The event started as the Regis Twilight Meet, but it morphed into an entity that added “community” to the title because of massive assistance from Stayton-area companies, service clubs and a volunteer base composed in good measure of Regis alums, many of them with Regis ties that almost match the age of the school. About here Bauer would be telling me to be sure to mention everybody. But we just don’t have access to that many trees. The upshot is that each of the 34 events has a fund-raising sponsor, service clubs annually pitch in to coordinate the various field events and the meet has grown from an original 16 teams to 31 squads and more than 700 athletes.
As Bauer notes, “teams use the meet as a tuneup for their district meets the following week. Each year, the quality of the teams gets better, and the times and distances rank among the best in the state.”
And the Stayton-Regis community keeps getting better via the hard work of Mike Bauer and a host of others.
Baseball: Regis placed two players on the Class 2A all-state team. Pitcher Bryson Nygren earned a second-team nod, while infielder Max Eaton was placed on the third team. The Rams finished 17-10 overall and 12-6 in Special District 3, where they finished second to eventual 2A-1A runner-up Blanchet Catholic. Regis, the No. 10 seed in the playoffs, fell to No. 7 Bandon-Pacific 2-0 in the Round of 16.
Softball: Stayton won its first league title in 21 years, fulfilling a key goal of the team and first-year coach Ryan Borde. The No. 3 Eagles were a perfect 15-0 in the Oregon West and advanced to the Class 4A quarterfinals before falling 4-0 to No. 6 Scappoose. The Eagles finished 24-4.
“The last time Stayton won a league title in softball was 21 years ago,” Borde told Our Town after the May 26 game. “That’s what we’re going after we told them way back in February. We’re getting better today was the goal. And they bought into it and bought into our process.”
Track & Field: The Regis High girls track and field squad totaled 35 points and finished seventh in the Class 2A state championships May 25-26 at Hayward Field in Eugene.
The Rams were led by their sprinting corps of Mac Parrish, Daisy Hernandez, Clara Persons and Rachell Koellman. Parrish took second in the long jump and fifth in the 200. Hernandez was fifth in the 100 hurdles and sixth in the 300 hurdles, and Persons took fifth in the 400. Koellman combined with the other three runners to take third in the 4×100 relay and fourth in the 4×400. Also scoring for the Rams was Adelle Otter (seventh in the javelin).
Tim Crowell led the Regis boys by taking first in the pole vault and second in the high jump. The Rams totaled 19.5 points and finished 14th. Also scoring for Regis were Aidan Klascius (89th in the pole vault) and Josh Blish (tied for eighth in the high jump).
The Stayton girls, led by Haley Butenschoen and Hope Bridge, scored 24 points in the Class 4A meet and finished 13th. Butenschoen won the 800 and finished seventh in the 400, while Bridge was second in the 1,500 and eighth in the 300. In addition, Stayton’s Evelyn Welch took 4th in the 300 hurdles.
Travis King was third in the 100 and sixth in the 200 to help the Stayton boys score 15 points. Also scoring was Emmett Riedman, third in discus.
Kalina Seachao took second in the shot put to spark Cascade’s girls in the 4A meet. Lillian Pickett of the Cougars was fourth in the 200 and Rylee Prichard was seventh in the high jump. Ethan Newton took fourth in the 300 hurdles and eighth in the 100 hurdles for the Cascade boys. Participating well in non-scoring para-athlete events were Micah Laws (first in the 1,500) and Zhang Wilson (fourth in the 100).
