Small Roster, Big Heart, Kentucky

Students in a media class at Trimble County High School in Bedford, Kentucky, partnered with Trimble County Public Library to create digital projects about their town and its local history. As part of the Stories: Yes storytelling initiative, students collaborated on four video projects exploring topics such as sports, theater, farming, and crime in their small town.

Speaker 1 (00:11): Small town sports are special because you start with the same teammates and end with them too.

Speaker 1 (00:16): Over the course of 10 years I've played multiple sports, and since it's a small town, I'm able to play more sports.

Speaker 2 (00:23): Playing sports in a small town, you just play with the same teams. You're almost like family. The support is amazing. It's very personal. You know where everyone's going to be on a Friday night.

Speaker 2 (00:40): It might be a small school. We might be thought of as underdogs in a lot of ways, but we've also proved a lot of people wrong, and those victories are so much sweeter than coming from a big school and expecting to win, and they're just very personal. When our girls went to the regionals and state, the whole town made posters and signs-

Speaker 3 (01:00): In a small town there are a lot of times that we find that some of our former student athletes, they find their way home.

Speaker 3 (01:12): Growing up I played basketball and softball and was committed to the athletic programs of Trimble County Schools. Since then, I've gone on to become a parent still involved in the Trimble County School System, and I get to enjoy the perspective of watching my children.

Speaker 1 (01:31): And it's a fun environment to be in. Family, a lot of kids, student sections, we have a lot of student sections.

Interviewer (01:43): What is so special about playing sports in a small town?

Speaker 4 (01:46): I've been playing with the same people on my teams since elementary school.

Speaker 5 (01:49): Everybody in the audience knows who you are.

Interviewer (01:51): That sports are more than wins and losses.

Speaker 6 (01:53): Everybody on your team is like family.

Speaker 7 (01:58): I would put our community, our student athletes, our fans, this school district, and the amount of pride that we show up against any school district any day of the week.

Asset ID: 2022.02.02
Themes: Sports, pride, competition, friendship, football, volleyball, softball, memories, relationships, underdogs
Date recorded: 2020
Length of recording: 02:24 m
File Type: Video
Related traveling exhibition: Crossroads: Change in Rural America
Sponsor or affiliated organization: Trimble County High School in collaboration with Trimble County Public Library, Bedford, Kentucky
More information: https://www.kyhumanities.org/news/articles/smithsonian-coming-to-kentucky-