KHUM Leisure Sport Sextathalon

Local radio station KHUM-FM's first Leisure Sport Sextathalon [sic] was inspired by the city of Ferndale's new bocce ball courts. DJ Larry Trask and friends would make a habit of playing a game of bocce, then wander up the street to The Palace, the neighborhood bar, for a game of pool.

”Someone said, 'You know, we should just have a tournament, bocce and pool,'” says Trask, and then after some beer, “it became a five-sport pentathlon, then the next day I realized that if we just added one more sport, we could call it the sextathlon.”

Did Trask add a sixth sport, just to be able to repeatedly throw around double entendres on the air?

”Mostly,” he laughs.

The first KHUM Leisure Sport Sextathalon was held last September and included games of croquet, bocce, badminton, darts, horseshoes, and a sport that is popular in northern Kentucky and southern Ohio, cornhole. In short, cornhole is like a competition beanbag toss, but instead of a one-pound bag full of beans, it's a bag filled with corn.

A couple of lessons were learned during the inaugural event, says Trask. One was the number of two-person teams, which was more than 40 last year, was too many, causing every game to take too long. This year, the competition has been limited to 32 teams, which Trask says fits perfectly onto a single elimination bracket.

The other lesson learned last year: One cannot play a proper game of horseshoes on a hard surface.
”(Horseshoes is) a perfect sport for the Sextathalon, but they don't have horseshoe pits in Ferndale, and it turns out that if you throw a horseshoe on the hard ground, it just rolls around,” says Trask. “Normally, you have a sand pit, so when it hits the pit, it stops. People were throwing their horseshoes right next to the stake and they would end up 30 feet down the road.

”For the people who were sticklers (to the rules), it took like an hour-and-a-half to play a game of horseshoes, so that clearly did not work.”

Replacing horseshoes this year is a “secret surprise sport,” according to the Web site, www.sextathalon.com . Without giving away the secret, Trask will say that, “it's kind of an invented sport,” which “involves balls and hula hoops and a couple of other pieces of equipment.

”I haven't tested it yet, so I have no idea whether it's going to work, or not,” he says.

Trask says that trophies are handed out to winners of individual events, plus medals for winners of the whole event. The biggest trophy goes to the first team out of the competition, a move that was provoked by Kinetic Sculpture Race's Mediocre Award, which is given to the team that comes in, in the dead middle. Most importantly, the purpose of the Leisure Sport Sextathalon is, 'Don't take things too seriously and just have fun.'

To that end, there has been some controversy surrounding the logo for this year's event, created by local artist Zeke Smith. The art, which features a monochrome, World War II-style pin-up girl in a swimsuit and provocative pose, surrounded by a variety of leisure sport equipment, created disquiet in the blogosphere a couple of weeks ago. The concern? Whether or not it was inappropriate to feature a scantily clad woman on the poster for an event that, as of this year, benefits Humboldt Domestic Violence Services.

Trask says that the move to make the event beer sales, donated by Mad River Brewing Company, a benefit was inspired by the local roller derby league. When he looked at the success of last year's beer sales, “I just figured, why don't we make that money for people who are facing all these budget problems.” Defending the event logo was not part of the plan.

”When I first saw (Smith's) design, I thought, 'this is going to be controversial.' We kind of talked about it in-house a little bit and I checked with Dawn (Watkins) and the people at HDVS to see what they thought of it, and everybody said, 'Well, it's something that some people will have a problem with,' but we decided to go with it, anyway.”

”We don't want anyone to be offended by it, but if people are, that's regrettable,” Trask added.

According to Watkins, the director of crisis services at HDVS, KHUM has been a supporter of the organization for years, through its annual Stop the Violence campaign, as well as making the group the beneficiary of the Signature Coffee-brewed KHUM Blend, a “coffee with a cause.” Now, more than ever, though, because of state budget cuts, Watkins says the agency needs community support.

”The Governor completely eliminated all state funding for domestic violence shelters,” says Watkins. “We lost about 40% of our funding, but we're still here. We aren't closing. We've been in the community for 32 years, and this won't put us out. We were created a long time ago to create social change and if there was ever a time that was needed it is now.”

”We were approached by the Sextathalon folks when they heard that we were going to be hit hard by the budget cuts - which we were,” she adds. “Every little bit helps. The (money) we will make that weekend will go a long way.”

The KHUM Leisure Sport Sextathalon will be held this Saturday, Aug. 8, in Ferndale. As of early this week, there were still registration spots available for two-person teams, through the event Web site, at www.sextathalon.com .

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