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Summer. Sunshine. Swimming pools. And enough hot dogs to make you forget about your lack of exercise. (Running after the ice cream truck doesn’t count.)

Uh huh. Try telling that to the kids who play a sport.

They’re competing in organized scrimmages for their school.

Or traveling around to AAU events, Colt League games and tennis tournaments.

Or going through tailor-made workout programs, as my colleague Robert Bell wrote about last month.

In the ever more competitive world of sports, the term “off-season” is becoming less and less relevant.

What do you think about that? Is it a good thing that student-athletes stay so committed to their crafts? Or are we pushing them to sacrifice too much of their free time? A little bit of both, I’d say.

While you ponder that, I’ve got a Sno Cone to chase after.

I just got off the phone with new Eastern Guilford boys basketball coach Dion Lansdale, who I'll have a story on tomorrow. I introduced myself and asked him how the move from San Antonio has gone. Eventful, he said, what with a wife, five kids and a dog in tow.

"I know how that goes," I said. "I just moved here from Detroit not too long ago."

"Oh, really?" he said. "Where in Detroit?"

"North suburbs," I said.

"Near Grosse Pointe?"

"Yeah, I grew up in St. Clair Shores."

"I spent two years near there."

"No kidding."

"Yeah, and my best friend still coaches up in Macomb County."

"No way. That's where my family is now."

"He was with Chippewa Valley Schools."

"That was my district."

"He was the coach at Dakota."

"Adam Demorest! Are you kidding me?"

It was the basketball coach from my high school, a guy who opened up the gym for me countless times. Lansdale said they met in fifth grade, were college roommates and talk pretty much every day. How weird is that?

Not to crash your summer vacation or anything, but have you realized that fall sports are right around the corner? We're two weeks away from the first day of football practice, at which point the pads get strapped on, the popcorn machines get fired up and marching bands everywhere start rehearsing "Rubberband Man" again. All other fall sports can start practicing a week later on August 8.

Help us get ready. Who are the players and teams to watch?

The East-West games are always interesting to cover - a remarkable amount of talent playing with the right mix of intensity and light-heartedness.

They're also a reminder of just how competitive it is to advance athletically. Glenn's Kendall Smith, the Piedmont Triad 3-A player of the year, passed on the chance to play basketball at schools like VMI and UNC Asheville in favor of the Parks Scholarship (full academic) at N.C. State. (See audio slideshows of Smith and Grimsley's Trumae Lucas here.) Thomas Driver and David DuPont of Grimsley, both first-team all-area soccer selections for a team that advanced to the state finals, won't be on scholarship come fall. DuPont will attend UNC, and Driver will try to walk-on at UNC-Wilmington. Even the Alderin-Fleagle soccer twins from East Forsyth - Kristin and Ashley - said they said they still hope to play somewhere bigger than Limestone College, where they'll both be this fall.

The lesson: If you pin your hopes on the NBA, it helps to have a winning lottery ticket in your back pocket.

Other thoughts from the last two nights:

-Man, Lucas is fun to watch. She was really the only player in the East-West Game who could create her own shot off the dribble, and she did it unflinchingly with the game on the line. She's about as fearless a point guard as you'll see.

-Secily Ray of Thomasville will be a very good player at Wake Forest. A first-team all-area selection for us this season, she's got a long body and very good control of it. She's 5'11" and can operate inside and outside, so it'll be interesting to see what position she settles into in college.

-West guard Cameron Sealey, who's headed to Lenoir Rhyne via East Gaston, was the most impressive non-local player in the girls game. She was flying all over the place like her scholarship depended on it.

-I still can't figure out why the boys soccer game had to end in a draw last night. It seems these players, parents, coaches and fans invest too much for as anticlimactic a final score as nil-nil. Can't we arrange a sudden death shootout or a game of musical chairs? Give me some closure here!

Story coming tomorrow about three local teams heading to the Black World Series in Columbia, S.C., and a look at local efforts to promote baseball to African-American youth.