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Dec
30
Posted by Matt Thomson
Sticking with yesterday’s theme of great chef’s in Gig Harbor, today I’m going to introduce you to the Kettle Corn Man in Gig Harbor! Anybody who has attended any kind of fun function in the Puget Sound region has tried Kettle Corn…you know, the it’s almost pop corn but WAY better stuff!
What you may not know is that the Kettle Corn Man is from right here in Gig Harbor. You may also not be aware of how many ways there are to prepare Kettle Corn. If you have an event in the South Puget Sound region that you’d like to have some Kettle Corn for, give Greg Sweet (the Kettle Corn Man) a call (253-255-1955) or visit his website for more information.
Take a look at this fun video for how to pop Hot and Spicy Kettle Corn!
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Aug
26
Posted by Matt Thomson
Gig Harbor High School graduate Kate Stuart (’08) may have felt ready for her freshman year of college, but there is no way she could have been prepared for what lay ahead. Kate was an academic and athletic star for the Tides. In her four years as a cross country runner at Gig Harbor, the Tides girls won 3 consecutive State Championships and one second place finish (they tied Bellarmine for 1st that year and lost in the tie breaker). Kate’s best finish was an 18th place showing her senior year. As a track and field athlete, Kate helped the Tides to a State Championship as a junior, and her 3rd place finish in the 800m and 5th place in the 3200m helped secure a 2nd place finish for Gig Harbor her senior year.
With numbers like those, it was no surprise that Westmont College (Santa Barbara, CA) was thrilled to offer Kate a running scholarship. While Kate had a very successful first year (ran the 1500m at the NAIA National Championships), hers is not a story about athletics. While most college freshmen are worried about how to adjust to the more rigorous academic load as well as the new world of collegiate athletics, Kate found herself faced with far more meaningful struggles.
One week before the Thanksgiving break, Westmont College became engulfed in flames as part of the Santa Barbara Tea Fire. “It was kind of exciting,” recalls Kate. “I’m not glad it happened, but it was just a huge bonding experience. Having the whole campus sitting in the gym looking outside and seeing nothing but flames was crazy.” The gym was determined to be the safest place on campus, and due to the severity of the fire, total evacuation wasn’t an option. While the flames crept closer and closer, and smoke began to find its way into the gym, things became quite “exciting.”
“There was a lot of fear while we were in the gym, but for the most part everybody was helping everybody else, and we knew that everyone was doing their best,” said Kate. She mentioned that those hours spent in the gym, not knowing exactly what was going on outside, showed her just what the Westmont community was made of. It was the selflessness of the other kids that struck Kate. The students weren’t upset or angry, they were simply looking out for each other in whatever ways they could.
When the flames were finally contained and the students released, reality set in. While Kate’s dorm room had been spared, others weren’t as fortunate. Several campus buildings, including some dorm rooms, had burnt down. Kate’s cross country and track and field coach had lost his home that neighbors the Westmont campus. Instead of leaving Santa Barbara and coming home to Gig Harbor for Thanksgiving, Kate chose to stay with some of her friends and teammates and try to find ways that they could help.
“We just went back to campus to look through the ashes,” remembers Kate. “We didn’t know what we could do. We didn’t even know where to start.” But Kate and her friends got some boots, gloves, and masks and began sorting through what was left of the burnt buildings, including her coach’s home. They cleaned, scrubbed, sifted ashes for jewelery and other valuables with sifters they made themselves, cleaned broken glass out of lawns, whatever they could find to try and ease the pain of those who had lost everything. “Some of the girls wanted to babysit, but I wanted to get dirty,” said Kate. “We’d come home at the end of the day just black.”
Soon, classes would resume, finals were taken, and the Westmont community pushed on. Spring semester came, which brought with it the track and field season, and Kate and the others simply moved ahead. Then, about one week prior to the end of the spring semester, Kate and her teammates stood on the track and watched as more flames made their way over the mountains and towards the campus. Fortunately, despite thick smoke and ashes, the flames never made it to campus this time. The school was evacuated, graduation ceremonies were moved, but the school was spared any further damage.
You’d expect the fires to be the dominant memory of Kate’s freshman year, but it wasn’t the fires, it was the people. “I can’t wait to get back and see all the GREAT people,” said Kate about her upcoming sophomore season. “I’ve made lifetime friends there. I love it here in Gig Harbor, but I almost didn’t want to come home this summer, I wanted to stay. My mom always calls and complains that I never talk to her anymore, but I’m always doing fun stuff with my friends there.”
Kate loved her time at GHHS, and credits her AP and Honors class teachers, whom she called “the best,” with preparing her for the college work load. She also expressed great appreciation for Tides running coach Patty Ley. “The atmosphere at Gig Harbor felt more competitive (than Westmont), but I realized he (Westmont Coach Russsell Smelley) wanted me to self discover that competitiveness. I’m a competitive person, but I was used to being pushed more. Coach (Smelley) wants me to find that inspiration inside.” Several times throughout the course of our conversation, Kate mentioned how Coach Smelley cares more about her as a person and her personal development than just about her running abilities. That perspective runs thick through the blood of the Westmont community, and Kate has prospered there. “Being cared about as a person is way more important than being a record setting athlete.”
As she prepares to head back to Santa Barbara for her second year as a Westmont Warrior, Kate doesn’t appear to be thinking about the fires at all. She’s excited for a more challenging academic load as she pursues her degree in Pre-Med, and she looks forward to getting faster and helping her team qualify for the NAIA Cross Country National Championships. But most of all she looks forward to reuniting with her friends and all of the “GREAT people” at Westmont.
“I don’t want to lose my social life,” says Kate. “We just do so many fun things. We’ll go out and play croquet on the lawn at 1am, or have a bouncy ball war in the library, just silly things.” She’s eager to learn to surf this year, as well. For Kate, college isn’t about hunkering down in your room and studying, it’s not about running for hours each day, and it wasn’t about the tragedy of a fire that destroyed portions of her campus and the homes of her friends and her coach. It’s about the people whom she gets to do those things with.
**Note: The Peninsula Gateway ran this article in today’s paper. Photos of Kate running are courtesy of John Laralde, Westmont XC asst Coach. Fire photos courtesy of Flickr; click on the photos to be taken to the photographer’s Flickr site.
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