Ask a high school athlete how his or her “summer vacation” is going, and you’ll probably get a laugh, as though that was a joke good enough to be told again.

If one wants to play sports—and be successful—in this day and age, taking off two months or longer each year is not an option. Instead, baseball players hit and throw as if the season never ended, football players work out harder than any other time of the year and participate in 7-on-7 competitions, basketball players attend team camps, and softball players join travel ball squads and burn the rubber off their parents’ tires.

And who knows what else goes on. These are just the activities The Clanton Advertiser has learned about in the little more than a week since school ended. I’ve joked that, once summer begins, the local sports editor has to get creative to find out ways to fill up his page each day. In reality, my calendar is full.

The Jemison baseball team will kind of kick things off Saturday with a varsity and junior varsity game at Bibb County High. The Panthers will also play Montevallo a couple of times the next week. In one of the more interesting developments of the summer so far, Verbena basketball will host three “play days,” which will each feature a full day of basketball played by 18 different teams. Chilton County High School will host four other baseball teams for a tournament Thursday through Saturday.

That’s just the beginning. There will be local sports action all summer, and, as always, The Clanton Advertiser and www.clantonadvertiser.com are the places for the best coverage. To make sure you don’t miss anything, keep an eye on our “SportsWeek” calendar, which appears in each Weekend edition, including this one, and provides a weeklong look at what our local athletes are doing.

They sure aren’t taking a vacation.