Abra Cadabra! Shazam! Presto! Whatever words you want to use for it, it truly does seem like magic.

Every year in Thompson Falls at around this time in April it happens this way.

Just plug in the teams and the athletes, the big day arrives and the Thompson Falls Invitational track meet goes off without a hitch. It happened again, just like clockwork, at Previs Field fast alongside TFHS last Friday, and the master of ceremonies seems to love it that way.

Blue Hawk coach Trenna Ferris considers the pre-packaged Thompson Falls Invitational to be the perfect plug and play track meet. Her distinguished predecessor Randy Symon set it all up over his years of running of the Thompson Falls Invite during his hall of fame career as head coach of the Blue Hawks.

Now all Trenna has to do is snap her fingers and, presto, just like that, it all happens again, almost as if by magic.

But it’s not by magic, it is actually by virtue of a lot of hard work as she has a lot of help from the TFHS faculty and often, former faculty, during the running of the meet, and she greatly appreciates all that valuable volunteer help she receives.

“Randy Symon really set this meet up well, and Mrs. (Jody) Morgan (the high school principal) plans a school day of making the field ready to make this possible, also allowing a lot of the high school staff to help run events,” Ferris said, adding that Thompson Falls athletic director Doree Thilmony also made sure every organizational detail was taken care of for this year’s meet.

But the real heroes of any Thompson Falls Invite, at least in Ferris’s mind, are the folks that make it run so smooth, the same ones that keep showing up to do their thankless jobs year after year.

“It’s the community members, they show up big time,” she said. “We could not do it without them.”

Ferris then went on to gratefully list some of the members of that community, feeling guilty in advance for anyone that she missed thanking. People like Mike Benson (who served as announcer), Jeff Wheeler (head timer), Tina Wheeler (event runner), Chadd Laws (starter), Sue Whittenburg (results recording and management), and Bill McGuire (his shop students produced first and second place team plaques for the meet) as only a few of those she is so indebted to for their fine work on her annual track and field meet in Thompson Falls.

Ferris says all the quality help allows for her to not have coaches from visiting teams run events as they normally would in regular season track meets. “Teams love to come to this meet because they don't need to worry about running anything,” she said. “They get to coach their kids and it is a well-run meet.”

With another successful running of the Thompson Falls Invite now under her belt, Ferris doubled down on her gratitude to those who helped this time and will likely be there again next year. “All I know is that it does take a village and we have people who step up and help out,” she said. “It is a great event.”

DON’T SHOOT SIDLEONG LOOKS at the messenger, I’m only here to report on sports, nothing more, nothing less. Sports writers actually have very little power when it comes to the more important things in life – like the weather.

Seems this column has been getting a little bit of the blame for the almost endless delays and reschedules caused by the terrible sports weather this spring of 2026. By talking about it, and pointing out how some events have unfolded, I have somehow been made responsible in some people’s eyes, but I’m not buying that.

This spring’s crazy weather, which most recently caused the rescheduling of the Gary Thompson Invitational golf tournament at River’s Bend (originally set for April 23, now moved to May 5) and the cancellation and rescheduling of two more Plains Trotter softball games (with MAC April 23 and at Eureka April 24), is leaving some teams scrambling to make up all their missed dates as spring winds down.

If the weather turns nice these next few weeks maybe we can forget this episode of casting blame on innocent sports writers and turn our focus where it should be – to the fields and courts of play. Until then, do you have an umbrella I could borrow?