Wednesday, July 26, 2006 10:36 AM CDT

While enjoying a break in the heat and watching local soccer players compete at Friday afternoon's Show-Me State Games, I could not help but reflect on two of the most important "teams" at the games: volunteer coaches and the Show-Me Game volunteers.

The south county area is blessed to have parents who are willing to volunteer in a variety of activities - from 4-H to youth sports to Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts. It was easy to see during Friday's soccer games that local players benefited from the experience of coaches such as Darlene and Ronnie Moore, Doug Verduin, Tom Oleski and others.

The success of this year's teams has been a few years coming - Ashland soccer teams have reached the finals twice before, only to lose in overtime - and these volunteer coaches have raised the bar in the quality of youth athletics, while also teaching great team play, sportsmanship and similar lessons that should be a part of youth sports. We appreciate the time and effort of all of our volunteer coaches.

The volunteers who worked to make the games run - making sure teams winded their way through the maze of Cosmo Park soccer fields to get to the right field and play the right opponent, recorded results, worked with game officials, etc. - were also a winning team.

Ashland's Home Movie Depot provided 15 of these volunteers on Friday afternoon and Saturday. "We received information that said the Show-Me Games was looking for corporate volunteers and a bunch of us thought this would be a good way for us to work together on a good cause," said Home Movie Depot's marketing coordinator Laurisa Hinkle.

The Home Movie gang put in some long hours and got the games under way Saturday morning at 7:30 a.m.

While we are all impressed with the beautiful new building being built in downtown by Home Movie Depot, talking to their Show-Me volunteers reminded us that a successful company is much more than a nice building. It is the people who work in that building and work to make their community a better place to live.

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