Small Town Success Story

A while back I had a conversation with Coach Guyer, who stopped in to let me know that North Fayette alum and Warburg All-American, John Helgerson had qualified to participate in the Olympic wresting trials in Iowa City.  I have only been introduced to Helgerson and shook his hand, but I have heard a number of people talk very highly of him since I arrived nearly four years ago.  Without knowing a lot about the history of our area, I wonder how many people from our community have had opportunity to reach the pinnacle of their chosen field?  Helgerson did not make the Olympic team, but he was in that final one or two percent that had a chance.  If you ask me, that is a pretty exclusive club and when you think about it, according to the last census, there are 313,914,040 people in the United States, so the fact that he was one of eight that even had a chance to make the team, that certainly puts him at the very top of peak!

I mention this because there seems to be an inferiority complex among many folks who grow up in a small town.  You often hear someone in less than a proud manner say in a conversation, “I grew up in a small town.”  One doesn’t need to have an advanced degree in mathematics to figure out that where there are larger concentrations of people, there is a greater likelihood that more people will excel.  It’s in the numbers.  I read a story recently about the number of outstanding professional basketball players who grew up in Brooklyn, New York.   Brooklyn is one of the boroughs of New York City and holds a little over 30% of the cities population.  In the 2010 census there were just fewer than 2.6 million Brooklynites.  Iowa has a population of a bit over 3 million.  Now I am not as much of an aficionado of basketball as I am other sports, but I wonder over time how our state compares to Brooklyn in terms of players who have done well in the NBA.  Fred Hoiberg, Raef Lafrentz, Kirk Heinrich, Nick Collison are four names that come to mind and it appears as if Harrison Barnes and Doug McDermott have careers at that level in front of them.  So maybe being from a small town doesn’t make it a long shot.

To go further with this, many of us are aware of the fact that at one time in the past ten years or so, four men who graduated from Aplington-Parkersburg were playing at the same time in the NFL.  In fact, per capita, A-P was producing more professional football players than any other high school in the country.  Take that Texas high school football!  That goes to show that the small town kid can make it to the top level of a given field!

So why do I bring this up?  One of the things that I have stated a time or two in the past year as we have moved forward into the whole grade sharing agreement is that where a person lives should not impact the opportunities they have in life.  In some respects being in the right place at the right time is a definite advantage.  Not too many Iowans are going to become professional surfers.  But, over the long haul, growing up in a small town should not impede goals and aspirations.  The key in the education area is that you have to have resources and opportunity, and that is why I was 100% on board with sharing from the first day it was mentioned.  An example that I shared with some folks is with a question: why should students at West Des Moines Valley have a choice of English classes when they are juniors and seniors and our students don’t?  There is a critical mass that provides opportunity, and with what we are planning to have in place next year, we are taking advantage of that.  I want to make sure that our students have what they need to move toward that dream or goal.

John Helgerson didn’t attend a big school.  He graduated from North Fayette with a class just a little bigger than the ones that are going through our high school right now.  He had the opportunity to wrestle in high school and he parlayed that into a chance to wrestle in college.  Through hard work and perseverance, he qualified for the Olympic Trials.  If anyone ever told him that he couldn’t get there because he was from a small town, he ignored them.  I would like to think that we have students in our school now that have aspirations and dreams, and with John Helgerson as an example, hopefully it doesn’t matter that they are from a small town.