The summer is upon us, and thus a fall in the number of sporting events from the usual rush associated with high school athletics has come on the heels of its approach. The once hectic days of chasing down coaches and attending sporting events has been replaced with an even more mentally strenuous and taxing chore of chasing down sports stories to hold reader interests and fill pages.

There are of course summer leagues for baseball and softball coming that will fill some of the lull. These leagues, which give high school and junior high players an outlet to continue building their respective skills during the off season, provide insight into how each school may fare next year once they again take to the diamond and represent their programs.

Golf and fishing also provide much needed fodder for the sporting enthusiast&8217;s fire during these slow, meandering months that provide many athletes, strained and pushed from performance, a chance to rebuild, re-strengthen and train without the danger of injury, prevalent in competition of their sports. I hope to be on the river and the links both for work and for play in the next several months.

During this summer, as athletes of the normal, high school and college team sports that readers are accustomed to gracing our pages take a respite from competition, I hope to provide readers with a little change of pace as well. From the normal gauntlet of team coverage, I plan to move toward feature pieces focusing on individuals. Rather than team coverage, this time will allow readers to get into the minds of specific athletes that normally would not see a large amount of coverage time as I run about to cover events.

That is not to say that there will not be team coverage. As I mentioned, and in today&8217;s paper for example, there will be a focus on summer leagues and their athletes. I will also strive to cover high school sports&8217; summer programs and keep readers abreast of the changes and adaptations that these teams tend to make on the fly during their purely practice time of the summer.

As I have recently taken over the reigns of the sports page, I hope this summer lull will also provide me with an opportunity to meet up with coaches and players from around the area to become more acquainted with them and their programs &8212; an important facet of comprehensive coverage of any program.

I hope those that read my page (I say mine because I feel the sports page reflects wholly on me) will give feedback to me during this slow period of the year. I encourage you, as readers, to contact me with what you want to read, because, just as I feel this is my page, it is equally, if not more, yours.

I write what I feel the majority of sports enthusiast find the most relevant and expect out of their community newspaper. But I know my opinion might not reflect yours and hope that you will take this opportunity to tell me what you feel needs spotlighting in the page.

I also hope that you will help point me to stories of interest that I might be otherwise unaware of so that, though the number of sports playing during the summer fall off, your interest in the sports page does not.

Readers, athletes and coaches, I look forward to meeting you, covering you and hearing from you.

Brandon Glover is the sports editor of The Times. He can be reached at brandon.glover@demopolistimes.com.