Winter, dare I mention you?

So you know how stores have this habit of not letting you get through one season before they're on to the next? Like how at most major grocery stores right now there are Halloween candy displays and pumpkin-carving kits, and clothing stores are starting to not only get shipments of winter boots and hats and sweaters, but are putting them out on display? And worse, people are asking for this stuff?? 

Well, the same apparently goes for sports. I drive past the granite sign for the Aud and the BOR at least twice a day, if not more than that, and I can't help but cringe at the announcement for BYSA hockey signups. Is it really time to talk hockey?

Yes, I am all for youth sports. Yes, I am all for pre-planning. Yes, I understand these things take an incredible amount of work by parents, coaches and the organization's leaders, and it takes time to sift through the number of kids who participate in hockey. I'm not anti-hockey or BYSA anything, and I'm certainly not whining to take the sign down (it just really surprised me and made me do a double-take). 

I'm anti-winter when it's just barely fall, in the same way I'm anti-Christmas in July and anti-Valentines Day when it's the day after Christmas. I just don't want to think about winter. Again, can it really be that time of year again?

I got a text message from a college friend who lives and coaches in Connecticut and Massachusetts in the last week or so asking me, "Hey, who invited winter to August?"

Exactly.

The winter season is one of my favorites, even though I'm a huge wimp when it comes to being cold, and I am really excited for basketball, hockey and wrestling. But I just don't want to be there yet.

-Anna Grearson

Comments

[Chuck Miller]

I don't know... every time I visited Vermont last year to photograph the Frost Heaves games. it was full-blast winter at Barre and at Burlington. It was so cold I probably could have skipped the ferry from Charlotte to NY and driven across Lake Champlain!