Countdown to fall football season is underway for many sports fans

Now that spring football has wrapped up at Hillcrest High School and Sparta Academy, we’re moving into that part of the year where there’s very little going on in the local sports world aside from youth baseball and softball.

Many sports fans have already began counting the days until the fall football season. Hillcrest High School can began fall practice on Aug. 6 and the Jags will begin regular season play on Aug. 31 when they will travel to Chatom to play Washington County High School. Sparta will kick off their regular season schedule on Aug. 24 when the Warriors will go on the road to play region opponent, Pickens Academy.

Alabama’s first football game will be played on Sept. 1 when the Crimson Tide faces Michigan at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Auburn will also kick off the season on that day when they play Clemson in Atlanta, Ga.

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I’m never disappointed by the syndicated Ripley’s Believe It or Not! cartoon. During the past week, those entertaining, daily feature cartoons mentioned two sports that I’d never heard of – downhill shovel racing and combat juggling.

Monday of last week’s cartoon mentioned that Angel Fire, N.M. is the home to an annual downhill shovel racing competition. Friday’s cartoon talked about the sport of combat juggling in which participants do battle by attempting to knock an opponent’s balls or bowling pin-like clubs out of the air while maintaining control over their own.

I did some checking and downhill shovel racing is just what it sounds like. Competitors find a snowy hill, sit on the blade of a snow shovel with the handle between their legs and race downhill. This sport originated in New Mexico ski resorts in the 1970s, and got its start when resort employees used shovels to move quickly from one location to another while working. Some shovel racers wax the undersides of their shovels to make them faster, and some shovel racers have reached speeds of up to 70 miles per hour. Believe it or not, but this sport was actually featured in the 1997 Winter X Games.

If you can believe it, the details about combat juggling are even more bizarre. The basic rules of this game are simple. At a signal, everyone begins juggling a set number of clubs (usually three), and the last person still juggling a full set of clubs wins. While juggling, players intentionally juggle in a way that will interfere with the other competitors. However, it’s against the rules to come in actual physical contact with the other players, but its perfectly fine to grab an opponent’s club out of the air.

In order to win, some jugglers employ a number of unusual tactics. They’ve been known to move face to face with an opponent to confuse them or to throw a club high enough so that they’ll have time to wave a hand or club in front of an opponent. You also don’t necessarily have to end up with all the clubs you started with, so you can grab an opponent’s club and drop one of your own or continue on with four clubs. You can also bat an opponent’s club out of the air with one of your own.