The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

How many players line up on offense on a foot- ball team? For our sports-challenged readers, the answer is eleven.

For a high school team, it doesn't matter if your school has 200 students or 2,000, the answer's still 11. (Okay, there's such a thing as eight-man football at RE- ALLY small schools, but we'll ignore that.)

And how many sports are there for kids to play at Dayton or WP? Just in the fall, there are four: Football, volleyball, soccer and cross country. All year long there are more than a dozen.

Young athletes at our local high schools have a great opportunity to participate in - and be an important part of - their teams. If you're a student at Bellevue or Mercer Island, you almost have to be an elite athlete to make the team in just about any sport.

This fall, WP's football team defends its league championship for the fourth consecutive year. (They were state champions in 2011.) WP will also return strong teams in volleyball and soccer (also state cham- pions in 2011). The Cardinal cross country team will be without its star runner, Seth Deal this year, but they still hope to be competitive.

Dayton's volleyball team was a playoff contender last year, and plans to be back again this year. The struggling Bulldog football and soccer squads hope to improve their performance this year, as do the cross country runners.

This week, and the next two, The Times brings you our annual fall sports previews for all eight high school teams. We provide insights from the coaches on who their key athletes will be, along with lineups and ros- ters.

Each week we will also bring results of recent games and competitions, along with photos of the action.

We want to thank the coaches and athletic directors for their assistance in providing information for these previews, and we also thank them in advance for their help in allowing us to report on their great wins - and tough losses - as they progress through the season.

We also thank all of the generous sponsors of our booster ads that allow us to publish complete schedules each week for all the teams.

A big thank you goes out to the coaches and parents who give their time to allow our student athletes to compete in sports throughout the year. It couldn't hap- pen without them.

Most of all, we wish all of those student athletes on each of the teams a great and successful season.