50 years flies by, but memories remain.

That is what a small group had in mind as they plan to celebrate 50 years since they were students of Drumheller Vocational-Academic High School.

The classes of 1964-1966 are holding their class reunion on the weekend of September 25.  Oscar Leske and David Lehn have been working on organizing the event. Leske says it has been like detective work to track down contacts for his classmates, but it has been rewarding.

We’ve have had a very good response,” said Leske. “It started off as a handful of people and has grown from there.”

  “The Place to be Since ’63,” the Drumheller Vocational-Academic High School opened its doors five decades ago.  Drumheller was growing and so was the need for schools. 

The school opened as part of the Drumheller School Division and it combined a High School with a vocational school. It had 14 regular classrooms as well as science labs and a business training section. 

It also had vocational sections with labs for trades including beauty culture, automotives, electronics, welding, carpentry and drafting. The school has an auditorium and gym, a library, cafeteria and residence capable of housing 100 students.

Over the years, the school has undergone many changes, both physically, and its programming.  In 2011, the school became DVSS after an extensive renovation. Today it offers Grade 7-12, as well as an extensive international program, which reopened the dormitories.

While they have done their best to invite the grads from 1964-1966, they welcome any student who attended the school during those years.

“Some are coming because they know the people, or they may have been in Grade 10…we’re keeping it open like that,” said Leske. 

They have a full slate of activities planned for the weekend.

On Friday night, the reunion is kicking off with a dinner reception at the Badlands Community Facility. Registration begins at 4:30 p.m. for an evening of appetizers, dinner, speeches, reminiscing, visiting, music and dancing. 

Participants are asked to bring anything harking back to high school days. This could be everything from sport uniforms, to yearbooks, photos, class projects or other high school memorabilia.

On Saturday morning, participants can come and reacquaint themselves with the hallways of their old school. A tour begins at 9:30 a.m. Following the tour, there is lunch at the Last Chance Saloon in Wayne. The rest of the day is open to revisit the valley. This could mean checking out the museums and sites, golf or other activities.

On Sunday morning classmates are invited out to the East Coulee pancake breakfast for one last chance to visit and remember their school days.

Leske says it is very important for organizers to pin down their numbers to aid the caterers for Friday night's get together and for lunch in Wayne Saturday.

He asks those who have not yet responded to their invitation, or have just learned of the reunion and want to participate to email oleske@telus.net or lehn2@telus.net.

When it rains it pours for the Senior Drumheller Titans, as they took on the Crescent Heights Vikings in their home opener.

Titans, who are still assembling their 2015, squad met a well polished Vikings squad that is hitting its stride. Compound that with last Thursday night’s driving rain, it turned out to be a miserable night for the senior Titans.

“We knew that Crescent Heights has been gaining steam for the last year and half. It looks like we just ran into a team that is hitting their stride, going on to a good run at their tier 3 level,” said Coach Ken Fournier. “When it rains it pours. We dug ourselves into a deep hole and whenever we tried harder to get out of that hole we just pulled the wall down on ourselves.”

The Titans did show some promise on offense, but weren’t able to punch it into the end zone as the Vikings went on to a 54-0 win.

   “That was one of the best defensive performances I have seen at the high school level period,” said Fournier of the Vikings. 

   “For our offense to get shut out means that there are a lot of things happening that didn’t allow us to move the ball forward and continue drives. The guys are going to have to dig deep this week because we have an equally tough opponent this Friday,” said Fournier. 

For Coach Fournier, the game will provide all kinds of information for the team to learn and improve from, especially when they go to the film.

“The plus for us is we get to go back and look at the film because we had a team that showed us every single mistake we have made, and they played a pretty flawless game,” said coach Fournier.

The Titans have had a little bit of luck as of late and brought on more players, however with short notice, they were not able to utilize ten in last week’s game.

“Throughout the week we actually registered another 11 players, and six of them were the day before the game. Only two of them actually went in. We couldn’t put them in with no practice,” said Fourier, “especially against a team like that.” 

This Friday they face another tough team in the Medicine Hat Mohawks on the road.

“Every team is going to be out for blood now, they are seeing this as an opportunity to take away a win from us, so our guys are going to have to dig down and play with heart and intensity, and play the game that we as Titans play.