Panama Village Board members are discussing the best way to honor a boatload of Panama athletes who have won state championships over the past several years.

It’s good to see that board members are pushing to bring on-again, off-again discussions to a close in the wake of the Panama boys basketball team’s 2025 state championship and the Clymer/Sherman/Panama football team’s 2024 state championship. It’s the football team’s third championship after back-to-back wins in 2018 and 2019 to go along with the Panama volleyball team’s 2016 state championship and state champion track athletes from Panama in 1996, 2011 and 2019.

Talks about signs in Panama date back nearly a half-decade to the second football state championship. Bill Schneider, Panama mayor, said there was a vote to move ahead with a sign project but at the time the board wanted to have both the Clymer, Sherman and Panama schools and the three municipalities involved. Those conversations became pretty complex.

Panama has forged a sports identity outside of the C/S/P merged teams in the years since then. We’re glad village residents haven’t let the issue fade away, and we hope the village and school board are able to come to an agreement on both the design and placement of the signs.

It may not seem important now. After all, except for the 1996 track championship, most of the other title teams from Panama are fairly recent. That won’t always be the case. The time is right to recognize a special time in Panama’s history.