A Word from the Outlaw 004

“Hard times breed better men.” - “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes

The past couple of months, these last few weeks in particular, have been a definite change of pace for good old JP over here taking his steps further into a digital only world.

Tuesday night brought a first for me that I can honestly say that I didn’t think I would ever have on my personal bingo card of life. Actually, there were a couple.

I covered a ball game. Yeah, the amount of times I have done that could number in the thousands. I honestly wouldn’t mind knowing the amount of stories I have written since the Dyersburg News/Tennessean published my first article on Aug. 5, 1998. Now, don’t be impressed, that wasn’t some kind of amazing recall. Momma was a scrapbooker and I have pretty much my entire run of clippings from that one until the very early days of my time in Weakley County with the Weakley County Press.

After over 26 years, Tuesday night was the first time I covered any kind of sport in Lake County with the purpose of serving the people up there in Tiptonville. Green doesn’t look too bad on me it seems.

A fun night of basketball was had though I am sure the green and gold crowd would have liked to come away with a win in one of the games that night.

Trust good old JP to find some positives.

With only one senior on their squad, Lake County’s girls found themselves 23 points in the hole going into the fourth quarter. For a younger team like that, I don’t think anyone in attendance would have been surprised to see the score get more lopsided and the girls call it a day.

I mean, it’s situations like this where I put a mercy rule in for myself when it comes to taking notes. Here’s a peek behind the curtain in how I do things. If a team I am covering either goes up 20 points or trails by the same amount or more, I stop taking notes. I would say about 99 percent of the time the story is pretty much written at that point.

Well, there’s always that one percent because good old JP had to do a mental rewrite to the story he had in his head. Was I done taking notes?

Nope. Enter Lady Falcon Caren Johnson. The Lady Falcon standout and Dyersburg State commit had herself a quarter and helped her team cut deep into the deficit. Thanks to Johnson’s 19-point frame and a 17-0 run to start the quarter. Add in some scrappy plays from Mariah Valentine, Laken Chism, Destaney Mullins and several others and the crowd was back into the game.

Sure, the Lady Falcons didn’t get the “W” Tuesday night but from the few games I have seen them play, maybe this can be a turning point for the team. Not just for this year as time is winding down, but for the group which will return in 2025-26.

I also never thought I would be at a game where a Gleason boys team nearly put up triple digits. As great of a performance that Drake Lehmkuhl had – 49 points (a missed free throw in the fourth quarter preventing a 50-spot) and a 33-point night by Kade Sawyers, Gleason probably needed all those points and more as Lake County was a hot spot away from taking them even further.

You gotta love District 14-1A basketball. Yes, I do miss being in this district full time but you can’t really blame me as it was my home district for over a decade before moving back home in 2014.

The other first for me on Tuesday night was – after all these years – I covered the games at Tiptonville as an official business owner. Since I never imagined being on my own here in the Fourth Estate, I can honestly say I never imagined I would be a business owner of any kind. But, here I am. This is a road where I don’t know where it leads or ends. I only know the direction – forward. Thanks for all the support so far guys. See you at the games!