First Take

On Monday night we held our annual all-region sports banquet at the Yuma Civic Center. It went as smoothly as usual with the exception of one unfortunate mishap.

The winners of Male Athlete, Female Athlete and Coach of the Year are supposed to be revealed at the end of the banquet with the nominees on stage. Banners, with the winners’ names on them, hang from a curtain on stage — rolled up — throughout the banquet, and are unrolled when the winners are announced.

Unfortunately, the banner for Coach of the Year was slightly and mistakenly nudged by somebody on stage and unrolled during the middle of the banquet — ruining the drama, and making for a rather awkward moment.

To my knowledge, that’s never happened before. But I’m sure we’ll take steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again in future years.