The calendar tells us summer started last week and ends in late September.

But for those of us involved year-round with high school sports know that summer is actually the narrow window between the end of the spring season, sometime in mid-June, to the beginning of August, when we start preparations for the fall slate of action.

That remaining six weeks or so is left to cram in vacation and other activities like graduation open houses. For the first time in three years, we didn't have a child finishing high school, so the docket hasn't been quite as busy.

The occasions haven't been as frequent, but the few I've had were special, since both grads, Chesterton's Tommy Peller and Portage's Ryan Cherry, are athletes I've known since they were ankle biters.

Dating back to age 8, Ryan always was a key player on baseball teams with boys in the grade ahead of him.

The exception was when he was 14, and a "veteran" on my Junior League team. Let's just say it wasn't the greatest array of talent I ever drafted in my decade of coaching. Yet thanks to Ryan, classmate Steve Bryan and a group of kids who tried really hard, Ryan's dad Scott and I managed to extract a .500 season for Don's Motel and Mobile Home Park out of what shaped up to be a long, hot summer

Other than the fact that Ryan wasn't caught stealing all season (I don't count the one in the tournament when the ump blew the call at third base), what I remember most was the manner in which he handled himself. Ryan knew he was a superior player -- we all knew -- though he never acted like it around teammates, nor did he ever show any frustration when they messed up. He probably didn't always want to pitch and catch, but knew that's where we needed him to play and he did it without complaint.

The irony of it is Ryan didn't end up playing baseball in high school. He excelled in football and was also on the basketball team, which brings me to my other memory of Ryan -- the half-court shot he hit to beat my team in a Portage Youth Basketball Junior Division game. I didn't hold it against him and never will, now that Ryan is going to be a fellow Boilermaker.

I first met Tommy when he was in fifth grade, the year his dad Tom -- Chesterton's boys hoops coach -- and I arranged a few basketball games between his group of boys and ours. One of my claims to fame, to this day, is a win over Tom, who has gone on to bigger things at Chesterton. The fact my team was a year older and we had "homer" refs that night is inconsequential.

It was much more enjoyable watching teams try to stop Tommy's than trying to devise a defensive plan of my own. When he beat Valpo with a buzzer basket this season, my first thought was, "been there, done that." Always humble and hard working, little Tommy sprouted along the way. A sharpshooter then, he's a sharpshooter now, and for the next four years, he'll be a sharpshooter at Taylor.

It'll be strange not writing about a Peller kid anymore. But that's the inevitable passage of time. The boys I've crossed paths with have grown up and become men, leaving behind cherished moments captured both in scrapbooks and in people's hearts.

This column solely represents the writer's opinion. Reach him at jim.peters@nwi.com.