From the Bleachers
with Rich Summers
We lost two icons in Cameron County sports recently, which may or may not have gone unnoticed by younger readers. James Baker and Byron Horning Jr. are two people whose contributions to our youth are immeasurable and their passing is, in a sense, the end of an era.
Baker was a longtime varsity wrestling coach at Cameron County High School. No, let me rephrase that; in my high school days he was THE wrestling coach. As a basketball player I never had his influence in sports, but he was Mr. Baker, our biology teacher in ninth grade. Mr. Baker had the good sense to sit me beside the window in the front row of his class, because although I was generally a pretty good student, I was only marginally interested in any science class. But a wrestling match was an event when Baker was the Baguba mentor, as he always coached one of the top teams in the area.