Anyone who has been a starving and aspiring athlete can attest to the challenge of making ends meet. Hard work, dedication, training, travel and so forth are about all a person has time for. So much time is spent on one's self that the act of giving back to those who helped get the athlete to the tipping point of "making it" is typically unfathomable until retirement. Which is where Play Hard Give Back becomes one of the next big ideas to come from the Sun Valley lineage of innovative thinking. Spencer Brendel grew up in Sun Valley as one of its most promising hockey athletes. Graduating through the ranks, his life was a circuit of hockey rinks and hard work. His talent and grit landed him in Sweden playing center in the "Juniors" before being recruited to come back to the States and play for Division 3 Saint Thomas College in Minnesota. The Sun Valley Suns had given him much. How would he return the favor? As a student he took the path of his father, Jeff (a guy who has been known to come up with a good idea or three), and earned a BA in marketing and entrepreneurism.
Ride Sun Valley: More Fun Than a Monkey on a Unicycle
Ride Sun Valley has become a major staple of both the Sun Valley’s summer event offering and the bike festival world as recognized by Outside Magazine. Spanning two weekends with events ranging from the Shimano Super Enduro to kids racing to pumptrack racing to free guided rides to the US National Championships and all parts in between this is a week which celebrates the area’s 400+ miles of mountain bike trails and the thriving local bike scene.
Wine Auction Weekend: Where the Wine Flows Like Beer
For four glorious days here in Sun Valley, the wine flowed like beer, the beautiful women instinctively flocked like the steelhead of Stanley, Idaho and some serious funding to foster future arts and humanities opportunities for the Wood River Valley was raised. The 32nd annual Wine Auction Weekend invited attendees to partake in copious amounts of world renown vino varietals, mouth watering bites from the valley’s finest culinary experts, and boot stomping live entertainment. While the long weekend showcased a wide variety of wine induced events, two major spectacles took center stage. Friday night played host to the Wine Auction Gala where, “high spirits, great wine, superb food, good company, and a little friendly competition” melded together for some serious fund raising.
A MASSV WEEKEND
The 4th of July weekend brought an alien invasion of sorts to the Sun Valley area this year with the arrival of the second edition of the MASSV Music Festival. The Music and Arts Showcase Sun Valley's (MASSV) vibe permeated the air from the Trail Creek parking lot filling the town's street with throngs of youth wearing costumes which no doubt turned many a head in our typically conservative little town. As the day turned to evening you could hear the excitement building with the thump of bass which gave way to night.
SHEEPTOWN DRAG RACES: FLAMING LOGS, SINGED NOSTRILS
Every good drag race has a Christmas Tree. Sheeptown is a good drag race. It didn’t seem likely that this event could ever have happened. The idea was in actuality a creative ruse, nothing was really supposed to come of it. But minutes after posting a photo of a drawing scrawled on wrinkled paper showing riders towing logs behind bikes in front of hundreds of screaming fans that had flames added to the logs in an attempt to garner more attention, the fire chief had called and demanded more information. “What was the fire chief doing on my blog during the middle of the day anyway?” I wondered. The Avenue of Sheeptown is littered with charred dreams Seven years later and the Hailey FD as well as the majority of the Sun Valley area has embraced the Sheeptown Drag Races. It’s a fairly simple event: fill up a single elimination bracket for head to head drag racing on bikes. The bikes tow logs. The logs are soaked in diesel. It’s free to enter and literally no clear rules exist. Once you make it to the round of 16 the logs are lit afire and the crowd begins …