Our job is to report the news, but that doesn’t mean we enjoy reporting all of it.

So, we had a story in last Thursday’s paper on some Northwest College men’s basketball players arrested for allegedly vandalizing an old school in Byron. 

But, we also had a whole bunch of pictures of Northwest College volleyball players signing shirts and laughing with Westside Elementary School students, who had been invited to Cabre Gym to cheer on the Trappers. College volleyball players also helped out at the school’s harvest festival. Last summer during the first day of school, Trapper basketball players were shooting hoops with youths at the elementary schools. 

Many of the programs also held summer camps for local youths, and there may be more programs that do so in the future. 

Suffice it to say, college athletic programs have been doing a stellar job this year being out in the community and getting kids excited about the college. As Northwest College works on the steps to overhaul the website and increase its national and global reach, locally it doesn’t seem like you can do much better reaching the community than to do so through student athletes. 

My oldest son has just started middle school wrestling, so how cool would that be if he could learn some skills at a youth camp put on by Trapper wrestlers and coaches? These camps and outreach are a great benefit to the community, but also to the college, creating those lasting impressions that may just convince even more Powell High School grads to stay local to begin college or secure training in a trade. 

So, yes, some college kids invariably do things they shouldn’t do, and we have to write about those when they reach a certain level, as we would with anyone else. But we much prefer publicizing all of the good these Trappers are doing around the community.