Mark Watson

SPORTS EDITOR

Because the Tooele County high school football teams played only one playoff game this year there seemed to be a bit of a lull in sports action this month.

Looking ahead, the basketball teams are anxious to get started with Tooele hosting Ben Lomond and Grantsville hosting Rowland Hall Tuesday night, the THS swim team has been working hard and winning meets, and it looks like the THS wrestling team will have a good year with some top wrestlers returning. So there's plenty of prep action yet to come this winter.

But there was still a lull in prep sports this year. Fortunately, there have been other interesting and unique events to cover, including turkey hunting, indoor archery action and the mixed martial arts event held last Saturday night at Deseret Peak Complex.

The martial arts event was quite intriguing. I understand some of these fights have been held at bars or strip joints, so having a big, open venue in which to demonstrate their skills was a good thing for the fighters.

Deseret Peak Complex reported a good crowd of 1,000 to 1,500 people, and the fighters got a portion of the gate. So I'm sure the payday was more substantial than if the fights had been staged in, say, an Elks Lodge in Layton.

These martial arts guys are in tremendous condition and really know how to fight and protect themselves. If I interview any of these guys in the future, I definitely will try not to offend in any way lest the offended decides to come and hunt me down and snuff me out with his bare hands.

Sometimes the world makes a big deal about sports, and I agree that it's great to achieve goals and win championships. Basically, however, sports are just competitive games, and if we analyzed why we become so euphoric when we win and so downtrodden when we lose, we might go berserk.

As the appetite for sports coverage evolves, we may see more stories about sports not currently being splashed across newspapers.

In the process of writing this column, I typed in "unique sports" while searching on the Internet. I didn't spend much time going through Web sites, but on one of the first sites it mentioned a few sports I haven't thought of for several years. I've actually played two of them -- both during grade-school years.

One is "kickball." I learned there is a World Adult Kickball Association with a Utah Capitol Division in Salt Lake City. According to one dictionary, kickball is a playground game and competitive league game, similar to baseball, invented in the United States circa 1942. Night kickball -- along with the weather -- is hot in Arizona. Participants join coed leagues, and enjoy the game along with a little social interaction. Dodgeball -- a sport based on a similar rubber ball -- also has leagues forming throughout the United States.

Weird game No. 2: marbles. Last year, the world marbles championship was held in a pub parking lot in London. Two hundred spectators showed up along with six, 22-member marbles teams. I suspect that major conditioning is not needed for this sport, but you never know.

Weird sport No. 3: Pooh sticking. Recently, the 23rd annual World Pooh-Sticks Championship Race was held in Oxfordshire, England, where the Japanese defended their title. Pooh Stick racing actually consists of finding a stick, dropping it in to a river, and then seeing how long it takes the stick to float to the finish line. That's it. That's all they do. According to deadspin.com, the sport is inspired and named after Winnie the Pooh, as he and Christopher Robin used to play the same game. Pooh would routinely win.

mwatson@tooeletranscript.com