2nd Annual Mrs. Madsen Exchange Welcome!

Lots of goings-on at Kirby School as the 2014-2015 heads into its fourth week!

Over 50 students have signed up to be on this years archery team!! Mrs. Wright is working hard to get everything ready with the much appreciated assistance of Sara McKinney! Archery update, with photos, coming soon!

Today, (Friday, Sept. 5,) Mrs. Linda Madsen held her 2nd Annual "Exchange Student Welcome" party in her classroom! Both years have featured a fun gathering complete with snacks, enjoyed by all! Below, are Ale, Nubia, Ashley and Miguel this time last year!

Exchange Student Welcome - 2013

* * * * *

Today's party was full of big smiles and lots of laughter! 12 countries worth, I believe! It is a wonderful thing to witness!! (Click on pictures to enlarge and right click to save!)

Welcome 2014-2015! 

A sneak shot! :) 

International Trojans pictured with Mrs. Madsen at left! 

Cheesin'

:-)

Guten tag, y'all; Kirby families welcome exchange students

It is a year to remember at Kirby!

Danielle (me!) and Lais from Brazil! 

The Crump family with Anna from Italy! 

The Dodson girls with Dusana from Slavakia!

Rider family with Bettina from Hungary! 

Foshee family with Alexandre from Belgium! 

Hearn family with Bill from Thailand

Alexander family - Sophie and Valentine from Germany and Belgium! 

McKinney family with Josephine from Belgium

Mount family with Julian from Italy! 

Putz family with Cale from China! 

Stewart family with Sophie from Sweden!

Swanson family with Mai from Thailand! 

Whisenhunt family with Marco from Spain!

White family with Katerina from the Czech Republic!

And coming soon, Pedro, from Mexico! 

This is still Kirby

This is still Kirby...

We've never been the biggest school around.

We have never had the nicest, most state-of-the-art gym.

We have never had football.

We don't a huge population to pull from and the greatest part of us are in the lower side of the income bracket.

We don't win every single game every single year.

We are not usually big enough to drown a wet rat.

But here's what we do have.

We have heart.

We have tradition.

We have the love of a game that we all grew up playing, many of us from before we could walk. Same with our parents and grandparents before.

We have basketball goals in our yards that cost nothing to use.

We have access to our gym, and kids practicing there pretty much any and every night.

We have an expectation of 100% balls-to-the-wall effort.

I was curious where that phrase came from, especially since it's sounds so, ummm, colorful, so I looked it up.

It came from the Vietnam War, said during an air-raid. The throttle in the airplanes had a ballgrip and when you push the ball forward, close to the front wall of the cockpit, the fuel increases resulting in the highest possible speed. It was said, "You're in good hands... as long as you go in on those targets balls to the wall."

That sounds like us, right?!

We are also not all blessed with the same level of talent, but we are taught from the start, that effort matches talent ANY DAY.

Stephen King said, "Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work."

So how does a little old school, out in the sticks, continuously excel each and every year? What are we cooking up here?!

When I was in college, a friend and I were looking at my old basketball clippings from the state paper after we learned we graduated the same year. We looked at those little one or two sentence write-ups, most of which I still have. I showed him mine and we flipped over the papers and found several he was in. (He played ball at ASU on scholarship.) He said he remembered playing Kirby and that it was always a job. He said Kirby was always a bunch of small, corn fed country boys who would run you to death for 32 minutes. He said he remembered we never had much size, but that we were scrappy and you had a job ahead of you when you went there. And yes, if memory serves me, we DID beat them (Fouke) back in the mid-90s.

This year I was standing outside at halftime visiting with some folks from another school. They commented that our senior girls team didn't know they were little.

No, they don't! Because small in stature doesn't equal small in performance!

Now back up and look at our school with a wide angle lens.

This is still Kirby.

We may not be the biggest.

We may not have the newest, nicest facilities.

We may not have what a lot of others do....

but what we do have, is BIG.

HEART, TRY, TRADITION, and as it was pointed out to me the other night by my good friend, Lisa Wright, we have an old gym with years of heart, determination and intimidation and grit ingrained into that old wood floor, that's seen a lot of generations of basketball that didn't know the meaning of quit!!

We are small. And we are fierce!

This is still Kirby.