See you in the Sports section

Sometimes you have to leave a job.

I’m not sure if you’d call this lucky or unlucky, but once in a while a situation comes along where you’re truly sad to go — and yet excited about the destination.

That’s the case for me as we visit today.

This will be the last time I write A Brand New Day on the regular basis I’ve come to love, and that obviously qualifies as sad.

It’s become part of my life.

I’m genuinely honored by all the people I’ve met through doing this column, and by the fact that you’ve shared your time with me (and Sammie the World’s Greatest Cat) four times every week.

And yes, before we move on, Sammie is still jumping and hustling around – although she’s lost an awful lot of weight and now can’t digest her food properly.

She’s not well, but doesn’t realize it.

She’ll also be upset if you don’t remember her as the world’s greatest cat, which of course she considers herself to be.

In fact, Sammie just now snatched half of a giant cookie right out of my hand and disappeared.

She’s off the stage for a minute.

YOU KNOW by now that I’m headed behind the curtain, as well.

But fortunately, just like Sammie, I’m not really going anywhere.

I haven’t taken a job as a political reporter in Sri Lanka, or anything like that.

And I turned down Celine Dion’s offer to play in her band.

Here’s the deal: I’m moving up a few pages.

I’ll be writing regular columns for our Press sports section.

I was about to type the words “three per week,” but remembered I’m also going to continue doing the “Zags Tracker” page on Tuesdays during basketball season.

There’s an obvious question here …

Why?

Well, I discovered while writing A Brand New Day that there are a heck of a lot more sports fans in North Idaho than I imagined.

As for the newspaper, it’s a pretty big load for just Mark Nelke and Jason Elliott.

The guys do a great job, but this is a sports-crazy region and it’s getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

That means even more sports fans.

More families with kids playing for local high schools, more grads from area colleges who care passionately about their college teams, just plain more of everything.

So what will I cover?

THE IDEA is to start locally and move outward as the stories get bigger and more important to readers in North Idaho — much the way we’ve done with the incredible Zags phenomenon right down the road.

Basically, I’m hoping to add something to the work Mark and Jason do every day.

I’d like to create different angles, new perspectives and all those things that opinion columnists take on to provide a fresh look at things.

There might be a situation where one of the guys is covering a big prep game, and I’ll attend the same event to give you another view of how it all shakes out.

The subject matter itself will probably become obvious as we go forward.

I’ve written sports columns for 30-plus years, and the question of what to cover has always answered itself.

But at the end of day, we hope to give you something new and exciting.

Believe me, I wouldn’t leave A Brand New Day — and all the friends we’ve made — unless growth throughout the region made a new direction inevitable.

I hate to finish today with a pun, but I hope we can all be good sports about the change.

Ugh!

That WAS a poor finale, wasn’t it?

Good thing I’m not leaving town.

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Steve Cameron is a columnist for The Press. Email: scameron@cdapress.com