In 1988, Paul Nielsen and I left the newspaper office in Rogers to write a story and take photos of a planned golf course on the southwest side of town.
The pictures weren't much, mostly a clump of trees with maybe a rabbit or a cow in the background. But we used them any way.
That same spot today is the entrance to Pinnacle Country Club, a first-class golf course that hosts an annual LPGA event. But that's not all. The area around the golf course is part of a metropolitan area of 500,000 people with hotels, restaurants, shopping centers, and the accompanying traffic congestion.
A person in a car could develop whiplash trying to catch a glimpse of all the new buildings along Interstate 49.
The tremendous growth of Northwest Arkansas is reflected in its high school sports teams, where seven of the eight teams in the 7A-West Conference are now located in Washington and Benton counties. Van Buren is the outsider, but the Pointers can reach Fayetteville in less than an hour and Bentonville in about 90 minutes.
Farmington is already in Class 5A while growing communities like Gravette, Huntsville, Pea Ridge and even Berryville could jump to 5A before long.
Welcome to high school football, Northwest Arkansas style.
Teams have changed conferences and teams have changed coaches, but the arrival of a second high school in Bentonville is the most significant development for 2016. More than 1,200 students in grades nine through 11 are expected at West High School when the school opens on Aug. 15, and the Wolverines will take the field this season with a team comprised of sophomores and juniors.
Even with the split, Bentonville High and Bentonville West will rank 13th and 14th in enrollment among the 290 high schools in Arkansas.
That's quite a contract from 1989, when Bentonville played as an independent for two years after refusing to be bumped up in classification by the Arkansas Activities Association. The argument was that the Tigers couldn't possibly compete in a league with Fayetteville, Springdale and the two Fort Smith schools. Too small. Not enough athletes.
Twenty-seven years later, Bentonville High doesn't anticipate much of a dropoff after winning five state championships in football and dominating the all-sports category. But a large, slimy glob of purple threatens to smother any team in the 7A-West with championship aspirations.
Fayetteville recovered quickly after the resignation of coach Daryl Patton by hiring veteran Bill Blankenship to lead the football program. The defending state champions appear in good hands again with Blankenship and a load of talented players.
If not Fayetteville, then who?
Springdale Har-Ber will be a contender again after winning the conference last season, and Bentonville returns six starters on offense from a team that finished 10-2 last season. No one expects a start-up program to compete for a conference championship, but the West High Wolverines will certainly be a force before long.
That climb begins Friday when Bentonville West plays its first game at Pryor, Okla. and initiates a new chapter in the history of high school sports in Northwest Arkansas.
Sports on 08/28/2016