Photo by Patrick Ray. Matter of Opinion by Ray Conner
Stop me if you’ve heard this statement before. “There’s nothing to do around here!”
If you look around the Kern River Valley there is a menagerie of sports related things to do. One definition of a what a sport is: An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment. For that matter there are a lot of non-sports related things to do in the Kern River Valley, but that’s another story as I’m keeping this, sports related.
One could almost cover the alphabet in sports around the valley. Let’s start with the easiest: A as in aquatics. Plenty of water around this valley to swim, dive, or splash around in a pool. You have the lake, the river, (Please be safe if you choose to swim in the lake or the river), the pool at South Fork or an individual pool.
No, I’m not going to list the 26 letters in the alphabet of sports. If I was online I def would have out LOL at the end of that statement. One that I will mention is ‘sk8’ boarding. The brand-new skate park has had plenty of people trying out the new novelty spot in the hopes of perfecting their gnarly 180’s, 360’s, airwalks, carves, or sticks. All in hopes of not being sketchy or producing the dreaded wipeout.
Then of course there is baseball, basketball, bicycling, bowling, hiking, trail riding, running, softball, adult softball, soccer, tennis, windsurfing, water skiing, and in the winter snow skiing, snow mobile riding, cross country skiing. Then of course you have corn-hole, horseshoes and rodeo. Rodeo is a bunch of sports all rolled into one category. One of the newer fads in the KRV is pickle ball. There’s a club that competes up here and it’s literally sweeping the valley. Players are playing in tournaments just about every weekend or playing on the home courts that are out there. Once the rage, that now has settled down to a sometime thing is the Texas Hold ‘Em poker tournaments offered for groups as a fund-raiser. One was just completed and a good time was had by all.
So, as you can see these are just a few of the sports happening around the KRV, I could go on and on like Don McLean’s American Pie, but I won’t subject you to another long litany of sports. One must make an effort and you could go to find out more of what’s exactly going on in the Kern River Valley.
So, the next time someone says, “There’s nothing to do.” Bring out this column that I know every one will save for future use and remember, it’s usually the one complaining, “there’s nothing to do”, that is failing in effort of finding things to do. That’s a Matter of Opinion.
