Are you tired of all this winning yet?
Whoa. Calm down. That was NOT meant to be a politically charged statement, regardless of how eager some people are to flash their red-or-blue fangs in the midst of our black-and-blue world these days.
No, that was simply a statement of fact. We, the good citizens of the still-beautiful north state, are riding a world-class hot streak on the sports pages, and if there’s any venue where we can (and should) find something we can root for together, it’s sports.
So, while half the world seems intent on hating the other half out of existence today, we’ll peacefully pause in this space to ask a question: Has there ever been a better run of big-stage success involving local athletes than we’ve got going on right now?
I’ll leave that to you to decide. And if you know of a better streak of simultaneous success than I’m about to mention, by all means, let me know.
We’ll start with the big one, and that would be Tyler Reddick. A native of Corning (we’ll get back to that part), Reddick is doing things on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule that haven’t been done in, well, decades. With back-to-back victories in the season-opening Daytona 500 and the Autotrader 400, Reddick has become one of only six drivers in the history of the sport to start the season 2-0 — and only the second since the turn of the 21st century.
He just turned 30. He’s got 10 career victories and 47 top-five finishes. He drives for 23XI racing, which is owned by some guy named Michael Jordan. (Yes, that Michael Jordan.) Also, his grandfather is Benny Brown, the founder of Nashville-based BBR Music Group (that would be the label of people like Jason Aldean and Lainey Wilson) who is equally well-known locally as the owner of several car lots.
I’ve saved the rarest tidbit for last. Reddick isn’t really from Corning. He’s from an even smaller community — Flournoy, which (believe it or not) is the same never-heard-of place I grew up. Sadly, “The Flournoy Flash” hasn’t yet caught on as his nickname, so we’ll be rooting for the kid from Corning today at the DuraMax Texas Grand Prix. He’ll be chasing history; no NASCAR driver has ever won the first three races of a season.
So there’s one homegrown champion. Chico’s Kurt Kitayama makes two.
On Sunday, not too long after Reddick won his second race in a row, Kitayama came excruciatingly close to notching his third PGA Tour victory. He ended up in second place at the Genesis Invitational, shooting 7-under in the final round to finish minus-17 for the tournament. He’s currently No. 29 in the PGA Tour points standings.
Which other PGA golfers from Chico have a pair of tour victories at the tender age of 33? Hint: The same number of drivers from Flournoy with 10 career NASCAR wins.
Those two men, alone, create a gold-and-silver combination that would be the envy of any area, much less a low-populated rural area like ours.
But we’ve got more. So much more. Aaron Rodgers, at 42, is coming off yet another solid season in the NFL and might not be done yet. He’s already got a Super Bowl win and four MVP awards. How many other communities have an Aaron Rodgers? None — especially when you factor in the millions of dollars he’s contributed to local causes.
Rigoberto Sanchez, from Hamilton City, just wrapped up another solid season as the Indianapolis Colts’ punter. There are fewer than 1,700 active NFL players; we’ve got two of them.
Locally, we’ve got more college-level athletes from the north state than I could begin to list. Local high schools continue to pump out the champions — the Northern Section basketball titles won by the Chico High boys and girls teams Friday night being just the most recent example.
Heck, we even had Brandon Crawford (and his two World Series rings) in town Friday night for the annual Chico Nuts banquet, just a few miles away from Jeff Stover and his two Super Bowl rings.
There’s a lot of championship history in our midst. From Gridley native Isaac Austin (nine years in the NBA) to Chico High graduates Nelson Briles and Clay Dalrymple (a combined quarter-century in Major League Baseball) and Chico High’s Mike Sherrard (11 years in the NFL), we’ve had athletes shine on the national stage before. (And, in the case of Emily Azevedo, who placed fifth in the two-woman bobsled in the 2010 Winter Olympics, the international stage.)
But I don’t think we’ve ever had so many athletes doing so many championship-level things on national-level stages at the same time as we have today, and that’s truly something to pause and appreciate.
Am I wrong? Let me know about it.
Mike Wolcott is the editor of the Enterprise-Record. He can be reached at mwolcott@chicoer.com


PREVIOUS ARTICLE