You all remember Quentin Randolph.

Especially in 2019 when he took NCAA Division II football by storm and helped propel the University of West Florida football team to its first national championship.

It’s hard to believe nearly six months have passed since we took over the Press Gazette. In that time I’ve had a chance to see a good number of senior athletes compete in different sports.

And now, it’s the end of the road for those seniors as graduation is just around the corner. Four years have gone by in the blink of an eye for you, though in your minds, it probably feels as if high school has taken forever to get through.

We need a new rule book written on how certain things should go when it comes to sports.

Things that need to be off limits simply because they serve no real purpose.

We often get caught up believing great stats give you the green light to write a ticket to the pros in permanent marker.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s awesome to have a batting average over .300, a scoring and rebounding average that is good for a double-double almost every night, or a rushing or passing total that translates into a touchdown on every drive.

Maybe you noticed and maybe you didn’t, but some of the people involved in the decision making efforts when it comes to high school athletics did something right earlier this month with boys weightlifting.

Two regions in the state were divided into sub-regions, including one locally.

Scrolling through Twitter late one evening ahead of my trip home for my father’s visitation and funeral, I came across a post I was tagged in by an athlete.

He posted a video of himself throwing a football to his dad in the backyard and mentioned me, stating that he would be dedicating his first touchdown of the 2022 high school football season to my dad.

Hey dad, if heaven had a newspaper subscription, I would ask God to pass this column along to you.

It’s been nearly two weeks since that heartbreaking Sunday morning I found out you were gone. Mom called just before 6 a.m. to let me know. I wasn’t ready for the kind of news that has changed my world forever.

Maybe I missed it, but I don’t remember hearing anyone talk about how well their brackets did for the NCAA women’s basketball tournament.

I also don’t ever remember a lot of talk about women’s college swimming this year, at least not until Lia Thomas came along and created controversy with her participation in an NCAA championship meet last month.

There’s a ticket stub attached to the inside of one of my binders that holds basketball cards from an era a long time ago.

We won’t get into just how long ago, except to say that every time I take a look at those cards, I swear I still smell the bubble gum that came with each pack of cards I bought.

It was some point in early August of 2019 when I first took notice of Austin Reed on the football field.

He was slinging the ball around in a scrimmage on one of those hot and humid evenings we are all too familiar with here late in the summer here in Northwest Florida, looking like a quarterback capable of doing big things for a UWF football program with high hopes.