It was one small step for Chuck, one giant leap for Chuck’s heart.

Say what? 

You’d have to be me to understand, or have had the displeasure of coronary bypass surgery, to know what it felt like to walk into the stadium in Frenchtown or sit in the bleachers at the softball game in Thompson Falls this past weekend. 

Three long, long years ago and counting, I had a quadruple bypass to alleviate four clogged arteries in my heart. The surgery kept me in the hospital in Missoula for 14 days, but I made it home. 

From there, I did what the docs said, took it easy while staying as active as I could.  Within a couple months I was back on the sidelines of the fields and gyms of the seven schools I cover in these sports pages. 

I’ve been in fights before, but this was one opponent who kept getting back up and knocking me down. 

But as one of St. Regis coach Jesse Allan’s favorite sports axioms goes, as uttered by legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi, “It’s not whether you get knocked down, it's that you get back up”. In other words, the real measure is that you get up at least one more time than you get knocked down. 

So, off I went on the healing process. Along the way, two more procedures were needed to keep my heart in line, including a coronary ablation (where a rowdy nerve bundle was burned off my heart), and most recently, the installation of a pacemaker. 

Yup, I’m the battery-powered bunny in human form. 

Along the way, I missed several games I would otherwise have attended. This broke my already broken heart. 

Providing the best coverage I can has always been my goal in covering sports for the Mineral Independent and Valley Press newspapers. Seven high schools in two counties (Mineral and Sanders). 

It has been an awesome post-retirement job after more than 40 years in Radiology doing x-rays, CT scans and MRIs. I was writing and actually getting paid to watch, then write about sports, one of the loves of my life. 

But sitting at home, watching games online, gleaning statistics and scores however I could, was and still is frustrating to say the least. 

So, when I looked at the crowd and saw the athletes in action this past week, live being the key word here, it felt really good. 

This is likely my last season of covering sports in this capacity.  And let me make it clear, a group of student-athlete parents with cameras were there to help me with photos from those events. 

They turned out to be really good photographers and I am forever in their debt. 

I hope to repeat this past weekend’s scene several more times before the end of the school year.  I’m still a bit wobbly on my feet and I don’t have the go all day energy I once had, but I am alive and doing what I like. 

Thank you, Lord. Thank you, parents, coaches and administrators. And thank you student athletes from Noxon to Alberton for giving me this avenue to write about sports.