This week, I wrote a feature on Skyline High School freshman wrestler Kade Lincoln. He has dominated the 98-pound weight class so far in his high school career and looks like a star in the making.

The fact that Lincoln has become so successful while his father has battled esophageal cancer and its aftermath makes his story even more incredible. My interviews with Lincoln and his father were devastating, but they seem to be handling it as well as anyone in their situation could.

Here’s the link. Here’s the first section:

Kade Lincoln tries to clear his mind when he steps on the wrestling mat. Background noise is muted. Off-mat distractions evaporate.

Sometimes, life muddles things for the Skyline High School freshman. When it doesn’t, he becomes nearly unbeatable.

Kade has gone 22-0 in his young Skyline career, which includes a title in the 98-pound weight class at this month’s prestigious Rollie Lane Invitational. He’s become a star wrestler while his father, Mark, has battled the aftermath of esophageal cancer.

“Wrestling really helped me go through that phase,” Kade said. “I could stay focused with wrestling and not just worry about my dad.”

If I’m not covering a game for the Post Register, I’m in the office taking calls from area coaches (my work week spans from Tuesday-Saturday). Ideally, every coach whose team plays that day calls in the score, provides stats and gives us a couple of quotes. Whoever takes the call then writes up a 100ish-word recap.

These recaps, as you can imagine, are usually bare-bones and formulaic. But one I wrote a few of months ago served as a mini-feature.

I covered a Rigby High School boys soccer game in late September and found out Rigby’s coach, Bart Mower, was in Salt Lake City. He traveled to a hospital there with his wife, who was getting a brain tumor surgically removed.

Mower called in his team’s score the following week. It was his first game since his wife’s surgery. After getting the details of the game, I asked Mower about his wife. As you’ll see in the story below, he was open with me. Here’s the link to that recap.

A fews days later, I was in the office and took another call from Mower. He gave me the usual details from the game and talked about his team’s performance. But at the end of the call, he thanked me for writing the recap about his wife. He said he received a lot of feedback and support.

Out of all the stories I’ve written for the Register so far, this stuck with me the most (and I’ve written other stories about athletes or coaches who have gone through life hardships). There are a couple of reasons for that: 1) Hearing about the impact of your story from a subject firsthand — especially an emotional story like this — always makes a mark; 2) the impact came from a short recap in a soccer roundup. Ninety-nine percent of the time, those don’t elicit emotional responses. I would’ve loved to do a bigger feature on Mower, and even though I was busy at the time, I probably could’ve gotten something bigger published. But part of me thought, maybe this short recap was more than enough. The fact that a story so basic could create such an impact, however big it truly was, always reminds me about the value of this profession.

At Pocatello, the Rigby High School boys soccer team prevailed 3-0 in coach Bart Mower’s first game since his wife’s surgery last week.

Mower accompanied his wife, Chantel, to Salt Lake City during the middle of last week while she underwent surgery for a brain tumor. The surgery was successful, but she has felt nauseous in the days since and is deaf in her left ear because of the surgery.

“This has been the toughest week of my life,” Mower said.

Mower didn’t know if his team played extra hard for him Tuesday, but he believes his return played a factor. His players certainly made him proud.

“The best I’ve seen them play all season,” Mower said. “It was the way soccer is meant to be.”

Kyle Bichsel and Carlos Murillo each scored a goal in the first half, and Dexter Johnston completed the scoring midway through the second half. On Murillo’s goal, Mower said the ball went from goalkeeper to Murillo without one Pocatello player touching the ball.

Rigby (3-8-2, 2-3-1) hosts Preston Thursday.

In December, the Post Register’s sports desk discovered that senior basketball player Keegan Hansen was attempting to become eligible to play for Bonneville High School after transferring from Capital the previous summer. This was big news for us, not just because a great player was attempting to play in our area, but also because he played for the Bees during his freshman and sophomore seasons.

The first thing I wrote was a short post about Hansen’s attempt to play for Bonneville. That post can be found here.

As I write, the Idaho High School Activities Association would determine Hansen’s eligibility four days after my story was published I checked in with the IHSAA on that Tuesday and was informed he was declared eligible.

I broke the news on Twitter (scroll down to Dec. 9 on that linked page).

I then wrote a story on his eligibility for the next day’s Post Register, which can be found here.

But Hansen’s story didn’t end there. Through interviews with Bonneville’s head coach and discussions with my editor, I heard that one of Hansen’s main decisions to transfer to Capital last year was to try to reconnect with his father, who had been absent for most of Hansen’s life.

So, I interviewed Hansen a couple of days after he was declared eligible, and he told me his story of trying — and ultimately failing — to develop a relationship with his elusive father (Hansen declined to give me contact information for his father or mother).

That Sunday, the Post Register published my feature on Hansen’s one-year quest to reconnect with his father. Here’s the link to that story. Below are the first eight paragraphs.

Keegan Hansen was riding in his friend’s car when his cell phone started ringing.

The call was from an unknown number. A curious Hansen answered.

It was his father, La’Mar Davis.

Hansen hadn’t seen Davis since he was a kid, let alone talked to him. Now, in his sophomore year at Bonneville High School, Hansen was catching up with the male figure he craved for the past decade.

Near the end of the hour-long phone call, Davis asked his son a question: Did Hansen want to transfer schools and live with him?

After some deliberation, Hansen said yes.

This marked the beginning of a two-year emotional maze for Hansen. He lived in the Boise area for a year to be closer to Davis, 49, but their relationship fizzled. That would derail many student-athletes. Hansen, now a senior at Bonneville, keeps on moving.

“I grew a lot from that experience moving to Boise,” Hansen said. “I felt that I could take that, grow with it and become a new person here where I started.”