As I read the recent article in Sports Illustrated about Poland High School’s Halsey Copp and his sportsmanship in a state golf tournament, I couldn’t help but write.

Sports have become a bevy of bad behaviors, starting in the pros. We all hope for the day when our sons and daughters have some honorable role model to look up to. I hope area residents have embraced this young man and the honor he brings to any game. As a mother of two sons who have also been confronted with choices (although none of that magnitude), I can’t even begin to imagine what his peers have said or even done.

Halsey must have a wonderful family, school and town. To be so confident in his honesty, he had to have been surrounded by that all his life.

Halsey will go far. He will be paid back for his honesty, someday, somehow.

I applaud him for showing my children the right way, no matter what, and for the courage to take the heat for being right. Many blessings to him from Iowa.

Sue Engels, Plainfield, Iowa
Editor’s note: Halsey Copp’s story was reported in the Sun Journal Sports section Oct. 21 and the golfer was praised in an editorial Oct. 23.