Sports can be an either/or proposition. Either do this or do that.
Go with soccer or football? How about basketball or wrestling? Baseball or track? Tennis or golf?
Sometimes, it's an easy decision. Think Albert Pujols fretted about his options? Think Tiger Woods lost sleep?
Most of the time, it's not so easy.
Joseph Richmeyer II, who will be one of the leaders for the South Division team at this week's Jefferson County Junior Golf's Ryder Cup-style team event, couldn't decide when he walked into St. Pius X as a freshman. How could he pick? He had dabbled in almost every sport as a kid. He was a good enough athlete, but hardly a prodigy or wunderkind at one thing or another.
So how do you decide?
It'd make a great story if the decision can down to charts and graphs, or if a team of doctors, trainers and coaches produced a recommendation based on tests, times and measurements. That'd be an interesting story ... if it had happened that way.
Of course, it didn't happen like that.
"It wasn't all that thought out," Richmeyer said.
Instead, Richmeyer narrowed his choices to a couple sports - golf and tennis - and looked over their schedules. That's all there was to it.
"I think my freshman year they only had eight golf meets and in tennis they had, like, 17 meets," he said.
Decision made.
"It just seemed like a more active team," he said.
Richmeyer isn't the only player the St. Pius golf team lost to another sport. Will Basler, another key player on the South squad that will tee it up Friday in the JCJG Ryder Cup, picked baseball over golf at St. Pius.
This week's JCJG team championship format is a slightly pared-down version of what the popular Jefferson County Parks and Recreation Department program has gone with in previous seasons. This year, the North and South teams will go only eight deep. In recent years, each team had 12 players in its lineup for the season-ending match play.
Last year, the North routed the South 22-2, winning 11 of 12 matches.
Tennis turned out to be a pretty wise choice - for Richmeyer and for St. Pius.
"Everyone on tennis is really cool," he said.
"It's just so much fun."
Long and lean at 6-foot and 128 pounds - "I've always been skinny," he said - Richmeyer banged his way into the Lancers starting lineup as a freshman in 2010. Last spring, as a sophomore with a little more muscle behind his shots, he moved up to the No. 1 spot in both singles and doubles. He and doubles partner Jon Wilson won Class 1 district and Jefferson County Conference titles and finished the season at 16-3.
While tennis keeps the 16-year-old Richmeyer busy, it is not an obsession. His summer schedule, in fact, has no lessons, no leagues, no tournaments.
When he gets the itch for tennis, he scratches it. Phone calls are made, schedules are coordinated, games are set up. Simple as that.
"We'll go out to the local courts and hit around a little bit," he said.
Keeping a low-key schedule with tennis leaves time for Richmeyer to keep a hand on his golf clubs. While he resisted the temptation to play high school golf, he still plays - and plays well - during the summer. Playing on a couple of the hottest days of the year recently, he posted a pair of top-three finishes in the JCJG South Division junior tournaments.
He carded a 40 at a tournament at Joachim Golf Club on July 11 and shot 45 at Union Hills on July 21.
"I was thrilled with the round (of 40), especially considering that it was, like, 98 degrees," he said.
And those scores come with only a limited - very limited - time invested in pulling his game together.
"I practice approximately once every few years," Richmeyer jokes. "I hardly ever practice."
Practice or no, he has an even-par (36) score to his credit at Joachim and has been one of the top players in his age group since signing on with the junior golf program when he was 8. This summer, though he had a brief battle with a slice ("I think I've figured it out," he said), he is hitting the ball 260, 270, even 280 yards off the tee.
Taking a spin around an area course or two with the Lancers golf team is tempting for Richmeyer. But he doesn't see how his tennis schedule would work for the golf team - or how its schedule would work for him.
"I'd love to do both, but I don't have time," he said.
If, even for a moment, it sounds like Richmeyer is back where he started - trying to make that either/or decision - the Lancers junior said his not looking for a new sport, even if that new sport is an old favorite.
"I'm definitely sticking with tennis," he said.
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