Ken Jackson
Sports  Writer

Summer camps, summer weights, summer 7-on-7s, summer travel ball ... if you play high school sports, forget a summer break filled with pool parties and beach trips.

The beat goes on, for them, at least. All that hard work that will go into fielding winners is just about in full gear already, going on behind the scenes away from the fields, the courts, the tracks.

So for the next two-plus months, it means one thing here at the esteemed and critically-acclaimed News-Gazette sports department.

We get a break.

So you’ll beg our pardon if we go off and take a couple of 32-hour naps this month.

C’mon, we chased three teams, along with handfuls of athletes in individual sports, to the state tournaments or state meets this year. We’re very tired.

Just going back through the 2010-11 athletic year makes me winded.

While we didn’t get the deep football playoff run we’ve become accustomed to over the years, we were still busy in the fall season right up to Thanksgiving.

Harmony’s volleyball team repeated as the district champion and reached the regional semifinals for the second time. That team lost only two starting seniors. Expect the Longhorns to keep us tied up again this October.

Meanwhile, coach Kevin Harkema  took the St. Cloud boys and girls cross country teams to the Class 3A state meet in Dade City. The Bulldogs were already beaming soon after the school doors opened; their new gymnasium was christened during volleyball season. Now, matches take place under adequate light and in reliable air-conditioning, without a leaking roof.

Osceola opened its own new gym right before Christmas, to the same kind of rave reviews.

As all that wrapped up, the winter schedules of basketball, soccer and wrestling fired up. It was the soccer players that kicked into high gear, as both the Harmony girls and the Celebration boys team both advanced to the Class 4A state tournament at the University of Tampa. For Harmony, the trip through the bracket came after the program’s first district title. Celebration defended its district crown and embellished on its run to the regional finals the season prior.

In the first trips of any Osceola County soccer teams to the Grassy Four, they both lost to the eventual 4A state champs.

On the same night as Harmony girls’ state soccer semifinal, Poinciana’s girls basketball team played in its regional quarterfinal playoff game after defending a district championship of its own.

Oh yeah, while all of this was going on, Osceola’s Pete Baldwin romped to the Class 3A 145-pound state wrestling championship. His 6-3 win over Travis Berridge in the title match capped a perfect 54-0 season. Baldwin ended his high school career with national records in career victories (324) and pins (242) – numbers likely to be broken in four years by younger brother Fox, who won the Class A 119-pound title as an eighth-grader at Lake Highland Prep.

All of that postseason activity put us behind in preparing for the baseball, softball, track, tennis, flag football and water polo spring seasons.

I recall one afternoon watching Harmony win its district semifinal baseball game at St. Cloud to clinch its first regional playoff appearance in three years, then racing to the car and hauling donkey up the turnpike to Freedom High in Orlando to take in the Longhorns’ district flag football championship. They were within seven points of eventual state champion Dr. Phillips with six minutes left before falling.

Later that night, Harmony baseball and softball pitchers A.J. Stevens and Breann Vanderzyl were hurt in a car accident leaving the softball team’s regional playoff win. I’m happy to report that, while Vanderzyl had a metal rod inserted into her leg and Stevens suffered a concussion, both are doing well now. We should see them on the fields next season.

Harmony cut through its district softball schedule like the proverbial hot knife and, even without Vanderzyl, went to the 4A state tournament in Clermont. A 2-1 win over Bradenton Braden River put the Horns in the title game. Alas, Eau Gallie won the championship, 7-2.

Three days before the softball tournament, track stars Tynia Gaither, of Osceola, and Celebration’s Tyler Osorio ran up to the state track meet in Winter Park — then ran past their competition on their way to state sprint titles. Gaither claimed the 100 and 200 meter 4A championships, while Osorio won gold in the 100 and 400.

Phew! You get all that?

In just 83 days, the football Kickoff Classics will get us started all over again for 2011-12.

It’s guaranteed that there will be a high school football season. The NFL can’t give you that stone-cold lock right now. It’s too busy arguing about how to share $9 billion.

Whatever. Wake me when it’s settled. I hope to be hibernating. I’m very tired. Thankfully, I don’t have to attend summer weights.

August will be here soon.