The in-service day at Nyssa School District appeared to be another routine staff event for its more than 200 employees ahead of the first day of school.
But as the training ended on Thursday, Aug. 15, Superintendent Ryan Hawkins had a surprise for those gathered in the high school auditorium.
He revealed that the high school basketball court was being renamed: Joleen Reece Court.
The longtime Nyssa educator was in the crowd. She was unaware until about an hour before the event.
Hawkins told Reece that the Nyssa gym was the house she built over her more than 60-year career with the district.
Reece oversaw the expansion of girls sports in Nyssa, paving the way for female athletes, according to Hawkins.
In her time, Reece has coached volleyball, basketball, softball and track and field coach. She taught physical education and history in Nyssa. She retired from teaching in 1994 and since 2000, she has overseen the district’s in-school suspension program.
Each year, she officiates home volleyball games.
Reece said she was “humbled” by the honor.
“The whole situation has just been fascinating,” she said. “I am still trying to absorb it.”
Reece, who earned a history and physical education degree from Brigham Young University, said she always enjoyed working with kids and loved sports. When she got to college, she “fell into physical education” and became a teacher.
Reece said she stepped back from coaching in the late 1980s and retired from teaching in 1994. She continued to fill in as a substitute in Nyssa and in other districts around the county.
In 2000, after Reece retired, she began administering the district’s in-school suspension program. Middle and high school students can find themselves in Reece’s program for everything from cutting classes to getting into fights, she said.
Reece said suspending a student but keeping them in school is an “intervention” for students designed to change their attitude from a “negative to a positive” one. She said that’s done by helping the student craft a plan that looks at their behavior and the problem that stemmed from it.
From there, she said, she and the student will look for ways to stop the behavior. At that point, she said the student writes an apology letter to their parent or guardian.
“I try to encourage kids to do the very best that they can and to be the best that they can,” she said.
Reece said the school is responsible for helping students figure out how to stop unwise decisions. Over the years, Reece said she has seen students make significant changes and make better decisions after an in-school suspension.
“It’s sometimes a hard job,” she said. “And it’s also a very rewarding job.”
Another rewarding aspect of Reece’s career came after the passage of Title IX, a federal civil rights law passed in 1972, which prohibits discrimination based on sex in any educational program that receives federal funding. The landmark legislation increased the number of women playing sports at all levels, from high school to the Olympics.
Reece said when she was in college in the early 1960s “the sports system that you know today did not exist” with no women’s athletics.
It was not until nearly a decade into her career that the passage of the federal legislation led to participation in women’s sports, along with additional funding.
In 1971, fewer than 295,000 girls participated in high school varsity sports. By 2001, the number ballooned to 2.8 million, according to the National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education.
In Nyssa, Reece said it took a while to build those programs. Reece, said while none of her teams went far into the postseason, more and more girls participated each year.
“We built programs,” she said.
When she looks back on where the volleyball and softball programs were when she began her career in Nyssa to where they are today, she said she is excited to see that opportunities for women continue to expand.
She said sports teach important life lessons that students can take into their lives long after they are out of school, from learning how to work with others and how to be good citizens.
As a coach, Reece said the only thing she expected from her players was to give “100% of what they were capable of.”
Reece, originally from Idaho, said she appreciates the “smallness” of Nyssa and its “ability” to help out when there is a problem.
“There’s never a situation that the community does not rally around,” she said.
News tip? Send your information to [email protected].
HOW TO SUBSCRIBE – The Malheur Enterprise delivers quality local journalism – fair and accurate. You can read it any hour, any day with a digital subscription. Read it on your phone, your Tablet, your home computer. Click subscribe – $7.50 a month.