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Joel Reichenberger

Joel Reichenberger's column appears Sundays in the Steamboat Pilot & Today. Contact him at 871-4253 or e-mail jreichenberger@SteamboatToday.com.

What's the secret to being a successful Routt County athlete?

I thought it was just hard work and big dreams. That's a formula that proves true everywhere and in probably everything.

But it seemed clear to me this week that there's something else at play. A stroll through the Routt County Fair in Hayden was like a who's who of Oak Creek and Hayden sports.

They all were there. Recently graduated Soroco and Hayden standouts Sarajane Rossi and Holli Salazar were fixtures. Lauryn Bruggink, the Soroco wrestler who last year became the first girl to score a point at the Colorado state wrestling tournament, showed a pig.

Iditarod finisher Tom Thurston and his family were there, too. Thurston's daughter Greta participated in the swine showmanship competition.

I know a thing or two about county fairs. I was a 4-H kid growing up and spent plenty of time at the fair near my hometown.

I did all my work on the exhibition side of the 4-H ledger, though. I grew up farming, but not on a farm, and thankfully never had to wake up at 5 a.m. to take care of a cow or spend a valuable summer afternoon walking a pig.

Turns out, though, the hours I spent working on my rocketry, geology, leathercraft and woodworking exhibits might not have done much to prepare me to be a local sports superstar.

I guess that's why I always was at the back of the pack come cross-country season.

As miserable as raising livestock always seemed to me, thinking about it a little further makes the benefits become obvious.

Wake up early. Work really hard. Stick with something for months, maybe years at a time. Learn discipline and responsibility.

Even simply getting outside every day, hauling feed and supplies around a barn or a pen every day, is sure to have a positive effect.

Obviously there are other ways to the top. Steamboat Springs has produced plenty of quality athletes, both in terms of small-scale prep sports and larger scale Olympic sports.

Steamboat, though, doesn't have the same agriculture connection as other towns in the county, no matter what the ski area's advertising campaign might lead prospective skiers to believe.

Hard work and big dreams are definitely still the key, and successful athletes learn to apply those traits toward everything they do, be it pigs or snowboards.

But surely, farm work helps. It certainly seems to pay off for the athletes of rural Routt County, and the trials they go through would surely do any athlete anywhere good.

Plus, rural training obviously served Rocky Balboa pretty well against Ivan Drago.