When I took over the Cascade athletics beat in November 2004 among several other tasks at the Times-Gazette, the Wartrace/Bell Buckle school had already been through its fair share of tragedy with the passing of young men like Allen Ray and Ben Chandler.

Since then, it's seemed like a never-ending path down the road of sorrow. How can such a small school lose so many children before they are even old enough to vote?

The passing of Joseph Floyd early Saturday morning is the latest chapter in the book of saga for locals to mourn.

I was told he was taking up for a friend at a get-together in Moore County when he was brutally stabbed in the heart and died hours later at Harton Regional Hospital in Tullahoma.

Instead of filling my heart with anger for the young man who did this to Joseph, I have tried to think back to the better days of viewing him on the baseball diamond.

Where I get chills is reading back on Joseph's clearest memories at Cascade, he mentioned how he and his teammates found out about Allen's death.

"My sophomore year at Tomahawk Stadium we had just got done playing a pretty good sized school in a tournament and we heard some bad news in the dugout about Allen Ray," Joseph recollected.

"Some people said he was in the hospital but we thought with Allen being our friend, we knew he would be all right. After the game, coach David (Parker) had to get in front of us, kneel down and tell us that Allen was gone. And, just sitting out there on that field with all my friends crying knowing that we just lost somebody that meant a lot to us."

Now somebody else has to take a knee and inform a loved one about how Joseph's gone.

Chris Wiser. Shane Rowland. Diana Keim. Daniel Tucker. When is this going to end?