On the night of June 4, The Columbian celebrated the culmination of the 2023-24 high school sports year in the best way ever.
That night, in front of a capacity audience at the Kiggins Theatre, we celebrated the seasons of 240 local high school athletes, 24 of which were spotlighted as the outstanding athletes in their respective sports.
Another six athletes were honored as finalists for our multi-sport athlete of the year, which eventually went to Ayden Denbo of Mountain View and Shaela Bradley of La Center.
And the tone for the evening was set by our featured speaker, four-time Olympian Kara Winger.
It was a great night, and we heard nothing but positive remarks about the event.
It was so good that we’re bringing the event back again in 2025, bigger and better.
More details will be released in the months ahead, but I can tell you this — circle Tuesday, June 3, 2025, on your calendar.
As I was looking back on that night, I was thinking about the thousands of past high school athletes who never got the chance to be a part of a ceremony like this.
The Columbian began honoring athletes in every WIAA-sanctioned sport with our first All-Region teams in 2001.
But the history of all-area all-star teams selected by The Columbian dates back four decades.
It all started in 1984 with The Columbian’s Super Five teams for boys and girls basketball.
Next came an all-star football team called The Dream Team in 1990. Dream Teams for girls soccer, volleyball, baseball, softball and boys soccer were added in the 2000-2001 school year.
Honors stretched to all sports in the 2001-2002 school year with All-County team, which were rebranded All-Region in 2002-03 as honorees included both Skamania (Stevenson) and Cowlitz (Woodland) counties.
In 2019, we extended eligibility to all teams in the 4A, 3A and 2A Greater St. Helens Leagues (adding Kelso, Mark Morris and R.A. Long), the 1A Trico League (adding Castle Rock and Columbia-White Salmon), plus Kalama and Stevenson as 2B schools.
To celebrate all these past honorees, we will begin to publish all past all-star teams, going all the way back to 1984, on our high school sports blog. We will start with football this week.
Every subsequent week, we will publish a new sport, starting first with the fall sports, then winter, then spring.
We hope this will provide a trip down memory lane for our readers. You will find many familiar names — athletes who went on to make their mark as college and pro athletes, or who went on to become area high school coaches and administrators.
When athletes are selected to Columbian All-Region teams during the 2024-25 school year, they will get a free invitation to attend our year-end celebration next June.
And by posting these past honorees, our next honorees will be reminded they are joining an elite group that numbers nearly 5,000 over the past 40 years.
