Straight from the Bull's Pen - April 2, 2026

There’s a cool breeze on the back porch this morning, as I look over the backyard and the neighboring pasture with several ideas swirling in my head about this week’s topic.  I’ve watched a lot of baseball this past week, the NCAA March Madness tournaments are taking place, and attending a funeral awakened some bittersweet memories from the past. As much as I want to write about something else, the emotions experienced at the funeral have risen to the top.  My apologies to those who prefer lighthearted paragraphs over somewhat sad words.

My wife and I often visit historic cemeteries when we’re on vacation. There’s a quiet comfort in those old places with the weathered headstones with names from another century, epitaphs that speak of pioneers and Civil War veterans and mothers who buried children in the 1800s. You can walk the rows and feel the weight of time without it pressing too close. But walking through a local cemetery, the one where her parents and kinfolk rest, is different. The names aren’t distant history. They belong to people you sat beside in study hall, or announced their names on Friday nights, or shook hands with at the feed store. They’re part of the fabric of Austin County, and suddenly the stones feel a lot closer.

That hit me again this past week.

I was at the funeral for my high school classmate and nephew-in-law, Michael Schovajsa.  The Welcome Lutheran church was full, the way it always is when someone from a well-known family passes. Kenneth Kaase was one of the ushers, quietly helping folks find seats, offering a steady arm to anyone who needed it. I knew how hard it must have been for him. His son Colton— a Bellville High School baseball and track standout who went on to run for Colorado State— died suddenly at 19 from a pulmonary embolism while he was in Colorado. It was one of those things no one saw coming. Kenneth still shows up, still serves, still puts one foot in front of the other for the rest of us. I don’t know how he does it some days, but he does.

After the service, we made our way out to the cemetery for the burial. It’s a short walk from the church, just across the road, but that little stretch of ground holds a lot of stories from the west end of the county. I was thinking about Michael Schovajsa and his family gathered there when my eyes caught a familiar name on a headstone I hadn’t seen in years. Another Mike, Michael George Mikeska.

Mike was also my classmate, born in 1961 just like my wife and me. I came into the world on May 11; Mike on May 12 and Lori on May 18.  He died on April 30, 1977, a few weeks shy of his 16th birthday. I was a pallbearer at his funeral. I can still remember that day and how heavy the casket felt, how quiet the church was except for the sound of people trying not to cry out loud. Mike played football and ran track for Bellville. He wasn’t the biggest guy on the field, but he had heart. You knew it the minute he stepped on the grass. He was the kind of kid who made you laugh in the locker room and then left everything on the field when the whistle blew.

I hadn’t thought about that spring day in 1977 in a long time. Not the way you do when you’re 15 and life feels like it stretches out forever. Mike’s death was the first time one of our own was taken. A car accident on the way to his brother Charlie’s wedding. The kind of cruel twist you can’t make sense of no matter how many times you turn it over in your mind. One minute he’s getting dressed for the ceremony, the next he’s gone. I remember sitting in the church pew the day of his funeral feeling something I didn’t have words for yet - the sudden understanding that the future isn’t promised. Not to any of us, and especially not to the kids who still had so much ahead.

As Lori and I were sitting with our granddaughter Ava having a light lunch prepared by the always cheerful ladies of the Welcome church, Charles Mikeska walked up. I hadn’t seen him in years. I didn’t even remember his name at first, just that he was Mike’s older brother. But Charlie knew me. He grabbed my hand and held on for a long time, the way men do when there’s more to say than words can carry. We just looked at each other. Then he smiled a little and said, “I remember the football team and how the offensive line would move.” I nodded in agreement, squeezing his hand a little tighter. I didn’t have the heart to say how much I wished Mike was still here to enjoy it with us. We both knew.

Earlier, when I turned from Mike’s grave and took about five steps, we saw the columbarium where Colton Kaase’s remains are kept. Another Bellville athlete. Another young life that ended far too soon. Colton was fast, really fast, and had that same spark Mike had. There wasn’t much he couldn’t do on an athletic field. He was out chasing his dream on a college track when his body just said enough. Nineteen years old. I thought about Kenneth again, standing in the back of the church earlier, doing his best to be there for someone else even while his own heart was still broken.

Two young men. Two headstones. Two families who still carry the weight decades apart. Mike in 1977, Colton more recently in 2023. Both May babies, both of them gone before they could really get started. Both of them athletes who wore the Bellville red and white and gave this town something to cheer about. And both of them reminding me, as I stood there in the March wind, how fragile this whole thing is.

Small towns like ours are built on stories like these. We raise our kids together. We pack the stands for their games. We line the streets for parades and pack the stands for graduation ceremonies. We think we have time. Then one day you’re walking through the cemetery and you realize how many of those kids never got the chance to come back for their 50th reunion, or coach their own children, or sit on the back porch and tell stories about the glory days.

I don’t have any grand answers, and as Pastor Sutton said during the service Wednesday, we don’t know why. I’m just a guy who watches a lot of high school sports and writes about life in Bellville. But I do know this: every time one of our young people is taken too soon, it leaves a hole in the community that never quite fills. The Friday night lights burn a little dimmer. The track meets feel a little quieter. The families carry something the rest of us can only try to understand.

Yet we keep showing up. We keep cheering. We keep serving as ushers at funerals even when it hurts. We keep shaking hands a little longer when old teammates and classmates cross paths in the cemetery. Maybe that’s the lesson tucked between those rows of stones. Life is brief and precious and sometimes brutally unfair. But in a place like Bellville and Austin County, we don’t face it alone. We face it together, with pimento cheese sandwiches and prayers and shared memories and the quiet understanding that every kid who puts on that uniform is carrying a little piece of all of us.

Michael Mikeska would have been 65 this May. Colton Kaase would have been turning 22 on May 1. I wish they were both still here. I wish I could watch them coach their own sons and daughters on the same fields where they once played. Instead, I’ll keep their names in this column and in my heart, along with all the other young people this town has lost too soon.

We remember and we keep going. One handshake, one game, one Sunday service at a time - until it’s our turn to rest among the stones.

This week’s quote is from James Dean: “Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today.”

You can reach me at Steven@BellvilleSports.com.