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With scholastic sports on a break until August, many kids -- and their parents -- are spending the summer playing recreational sports.
Many sports, like football, wrestling and baseball (unless you play for Lilly's City League team), get harder or impossible to participate in the older you get. If you can find a league, you also run the risk of injury which could keep you away from a full-time job.
Two sports that remain popular for adults into their 80s though are running and golf.
Other than being exercise that people can easily find places to participate in, the sports don't seem to have much in common, but is there a way to combine the two to make both more interesting and competitive for athletes that aren't at the running level of A.J. Kelly or Loc O or at the golfing level of Artie Fink Jr. or Anthony DeGol?
Blame the heat or the extra time now that the Mirror's Blitz magazine has been sent off to the printer (to be released on newsstands at the end of July), but as a below-average runner and an at least average golfer, I recently had a conversation with the Mirror's Bill Kibler, an excellent runner for his age, that doesn't play golf.
Here's my pitch.
The idea of running on a golf course isn't completely foreign. Portage uses Maple Crest Golf Course as its cross country course in the fall.
The most popular race among adults seems to be a 5K run, which is 3.1 miles.
What if participants played a hole of golf, ran a mile, played another hole of golf, ran another mile, played another hole of golf, ran the final 1.1 miles and then played one final fourth hole.
We can play around with whether the time playing golf is timed or not. It might make it more interesting, but playing golf at a faster pace would hurt the people participating who were better golfers than runners.
Especially if the time golfing isn't timed, the scores on the holes need to matter.
Perhaps a birdie (one-under par) would subtract three minutes from your running time. Maybe a par would subtract one minute, a bogey would not add or subtract any time and a double bogey or worse would add a minute or more (progressively more based off the higher the score).
If this dual-sport event developed, concrete rules with exact times and rewards/penalties would need to be developed and probably needed to be approved by both the running and golf communities so that it wasn't too biased toward one or the other.
It would be fun to watch how well some golfers who were usually close to scratch players would do while trying to catch their breath from running a mile and to see some runners who have never picked up a golf club try to finish out a hole.
Once we came to an agreement on a fair presentation for both, perhaps golfers who would never come close to a runner's time in a 5K could compete with some of the top runners in the area and some runners who could never compete with a top golfer without the help of a huge handicap could boast they outdid that player in a golf-related event.
Just a different concept to think about as a way to make things a little more competitive for both sports during the dog days of summer that often see many of the same names atop race finisher lists and golf tournaments.
And one last thing, since we should probably split the attire -- how many people have polo shirts that match gym shorts?
Michael Boytim can be reached at mboytim@altoonamirror.com or 946-7521. Follow him on X @BoytimMichael