Justin Kline wishes that several sports would make their way into the area.
Last Thursday, I was doing a Q&A interview with one of the Florida Strawberry Festival redcoats that you’ll see in our upcoming 2016 Florida Strawberry Festival Guide. Deep down on my list was an open-ended prompt: “If you could add one thing to the Strawberry Festival that’s not already there, what would it be?”
I started thinking about this question later on, but not in terms of the Strawberry Festival. What sports would I add to the Plant City scene if I could?
Several things came to mind. I couldn’t bring myself to narrow my answer to one specific sport, so I figured I’d float all of my ideas out through my column. Who knows — maybe it’ll inspire someone to start a movement?
I know we already have a little bit of lacrosse in the area, through Durant’s teams, but I’d like to see Plant City and Strawberry Crest get in on this action too. It’s got the appeal for kids that want to play hockey but don’t necessarily have the means to travel and for kids that play soccer but would like to try something a little faster and more physical.
It’s also an FHSAA sport (although Durant’s teams are governed by HALAX), so it shouldn’t be particularly difficult to install in local schools.
Water polo is another FHSAA sport I’d love to see. It’s big on the east coast — several of my college buddies from West Palm Beach played in high school — and there are resources to host games around here. It’s a surprisingly rough, physical sport and, as such, I’d love the opportunity to go to a pool and take some action photos.
This one’s probably a huge stretch, but here we go: roller hockey. It wouldn’t be as easy to implement as lacrosse and water polo, which simply need the football fields and pools that we already have, because these rinks are bigger than two basketball courts put together. But it’s much easier to maintain a roller rink than an ice rink, and it’s possible to practice and play roller hockey year-round. The community I lived in while at Florida Gulf Coast University, San Carlos Park, had a concrete roller rink tucked away pretty much in the heart of the area, and playing out there in the spring and summer was always fun.
Not to mention, one of the highlights of watching ESPN in the 1990s was when the network would show off-the-wall sports, which included “pro beach hockey.” These rinks were built at, well, beaches, and each end had an incline to increase speed. It was very much a product of the ‘90s, but watching clips online make me wish it had stuck around.
I doubt we’ll ever see all of these things come to the Winter Strawberry Capital of the World but, hey, can’t a columnist dream?
Contact Justin Kline at jkline@plantcityobserver.com.
