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Troopers vs. Warren High staff

A rag tag team of Warren High School staff members plan on fighting the law Friday night in the high school gymnasium.

The teachers, coaches and administrators will be taking on a team of troopers from the Ohio State Highway Patrol in a game of basketball that will certainly be entertaining for the entire community, said Terry Reiter, who teaches physical science and algebra at the high school.

“We’re fit, but we’re not in basketball condition by any means,” joked Reiter about the staff team.

The troopers are more confident.

“We plan on coming away with the victory for the highway patrol post,” said Marietta Post commander Lt. Carlos Smith.

The 7:30 p.m. game is part of the state patrol’s push to take an active role in the community, said Smith.

Proceeds from the game, which costs $3 for students and $5 for adults, will help raise money for the Warren Local school district athletic program, said district athletic director Debbie Proctor.

“Because athletics can be so costly, it will go back in our program, back toward athletes and their needs,” said Proctor.

One way the athletic program does that is by discretely helping athletes who need some assistance pay for athletic activities, uniforms and equipment, she said.

In addition to helping raise money for the athletic program, the event will also be an opportunity to the troopers to deliver a message about distracted driving.

“We use this as a mechanism to talk to the community. At half time we’re going to interact with parents and students and put on a presentation about distracted driving,” said Smith.

The presentation will hopefully be as entertaining as the game, he added.

“We’re gonna do stuff like have students try to do a layup with (drunk) goggles. We’ll have little giveaways,” said Smith.

The message aligns nicely with the message of responsibility that Ohio High School Athletic Association is strongly advocating this year, said Proctor.

The school helped put together a poster which featured fall sport athletes and read “If you text, you can’t see what’s next,” she said.

Reiter said he has also found ways to work the distracted driving message into his lessons.

“I do an activity in class where I have a student come up and check a text message and I time them reading it,” he said.

Reiter then asks another student how fast he or she traveled on the way to school that morning. Finally the class calculates how much distance they would have traveled blindly while checking the text.

“It’s a real world scenario and you see their eyes opening up,” he said.

Reiter said the staff have been hyping the game and students seem to be excited. One student even loaned Reiter some of his basketball shoes, he said.

“We hope to get some kids to come out and laugh at their teachers,” he said.

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