Though born in Oklahoma and raised in Missouri, I spent the past 16 years working in the Pea Ridge area and while not quite qualifying as being an old timer, I'm a kinda old timer, arriving here when the school was still all located downtown with not a whole lot going on with it.
In 1998, the football/basketball/diamond sports were the main things. Facilities were limited, the enrollment was far smaller and money less abundant and the numbers of students involved in the athletic programs were far smaller than they are today.
I was speaking with a parent I hadn't seen in a while last week and he remarked on how the school has added sports and added more teams to the sports they already had, and he wondered aloud as what sports might be added next. Like most folks who like and are interested in sports, I have my own opinion, and I do think that schools need to have enough programs so that anyone who wants to participate can have that opportunity.
While sports may differ from town to town, state to state, region to region, and country to country, there is something about competing that draws most people to either want to participate or to watch. Talking with my friend about what sports might or could be added, the question came up -- just how many sports are there anyway. Arkansas has 14 official competitive sports in high school with more than 35 sports competed in high schools across the entire U.S. The number of sports worldwide reaches into the thousands.
The oldest organized sport that we know of is track and field and it is still going strong. The Greeks got it going in ancient times for a couple of good reasons. One reason is that it entertained the citizens but the more important one was that training for the games kept the Greek men ever fit for combat in the event of the outbreak of war. The shot put, discus and javelin were all weapons of the military of the time. Running far, running fast and leaping over obstacles were important skills for a formidable army to have.
Since we found my grandfather's journal of his life as a young man from 1910 through the 1920s, I have been doing a lot of reading and research about who his parents were, why they came from Ireland and where they came from. In a lot of my reading old records and journals, I have read references to men who were hurlers. Of course, I really didn't think the Irish played baseball so what was a hurler and I found out it was -- and still is -- a major sport in Ireland, called hurling. Finding this fact led me to realize that perhaps every culture on earth has a sport peculiar to just its situation.
Now hurling is a sport kind of like field hockey with a hockey looking stick and a small leather ball with 15 men on a side with a net on each end. A ball smacked above the net gets you a point and ball below the net gets you two. After I read the rules, I still didn't quite get it except to note that the game is hundreds of years old.
It's a lot better than that game in central America that the Mayans played in ancient times. That was a kind of basketball like game, where they had a rock basketball that two teams tried to throw through a hoop. As the rock was heavy, it took a while to win although one goal was all it took. The odd thing was that the winners got the "honor" of being beheaded so that they could go straight to be with the "gods" to celebrate their victory.
While not leading to funerals, there are a lot of sports today that are just weird but plenty popular. In six current and former members of the old United Kingdom, the game of Octopush is very popular. What it is, is underwater hockey. Another sport is more recent, started by an English author in a book of fantasy, the game of Quidditch has been adopted by 200 American colleges and universities and has developed into actual league play.
Horse racing is big in America and we even have dog racing in Arkansas over by West Memphis though it doesn't attract much news interest. Ostrich racing is very big in Africa, camel racing the same in the Arab states, and I am sure that just about every kind of animal that can move has been raced by someone somewhere.
Looking a some websites for unusual races in the world and just about all of them list the Chuckwagon Races in Clinton, Ark., as a world's highlight. I happened to be in Clinton one day several years ago and caught a little of the racing. Noisy and dusty, at least that day, but also very exciting.
Though it never makes the news, there is a sporting event every year in Batesville that is unique that I have attended a couple of times. The event, which comes up later this month, would be the Highland Games. These are sporting games based on the games played in the Highlands in Scotland. Events like the caber toss, the stone throw, the sheaf toss, and a variety of runs and races.
Held at Lyon College, the event brings folks from all over the U.S. to compete, many wearing the authentic kilt of the clans. In 1993, when I was living in Batesville, I invited Milton Williams of Cabot to come up and compete. Williams had never been to a Highland Games but he had been an Olympic trial finalist in the discus once and I figured he'd do well. He and I coached together in the summer some in the AAU program.
Williams threw the caber (think large log), 25 pound stone, and hay bale so far that he got offers to join some Scottish National Athletic Clubs. He later coached at Cabot High School and is now the head track coach at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
I saw Williams a few years later and mentioned the event and, though he never did it again, he did have a good time doing it. And really, when all is said and done, that just has to be a part of what you are about when you participate in a sport.
Sports builds character, check. Sports will build your health, check. But did you enjoy it? If you compete in a sport and can't say you like or enjoy it, then maybe you are in the wrong sport.
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Editor's note: John McGee is an award-winning columnist and sports writer. He is the art teacher at Pea Ridge elementary schools, coaches elementary track and writes a regular sports column for The Times. He can be contacted through The Times at [email protected].
Editorial on 04/16/2014