It’s a heat wave, folks.
Somehow, someway, temperatures are into the 80s and Franklin County is hinting at summer weather. Hard to believe after the spring we’ve had, I almost thought we were doomed for gray skies and cold afternoons for eternity. Maybe there is hope after all?

Happy Wednesday. Once again, I’m choosing to break up the week with our mailbag column. As always, these are mostly real questions from some real folks. Some combination of truth, I promise. Don’t worry.

Let’s dive right into the questions…

It’s basically June: What are you going to do to honor the senior spring high school athletes? – About 23 people, Everywhere USA

I’ve gotten a nice batch of emails from people asking about a way that we can honor the senior student-athletes who were unable to compete in a spring season due to school closings from the coronavirus pandemic. Some were nice (thank you), some demanding (don’t yell at me!) – the usual mix that we receive here at the good old Reeeeecorder.

I’ve been working secretly behind the scenes for the past month trying to compile information from coaches and ADs at every MIAA school in our coverage area (that would be eight in total) in order to pay homage to the kids that would’ve been seeing their names in print throughout the spring season in the Recorder.

OK, here’s the plan: starting next week, we will be rolling out spreads for each school – one per day. The hope is to build nice commemorative pages, so you’ll be able to save them, frame them and hang them on your wall. Say what you want about digital companies, but for things like this, there’s no substitute for print publications. We will try our best to make them look good. So stay tuned, and hopefully the issues will coincide nicely with high school graduations throughout the beginning of June.

What did you think of Tom Brady’s golf game? – Bill, South Deerfield

For most of the front nine it looked almost exactly like my work on Wednesday nights at Northfield Golf Club: Slice, hook, chunk, decent shot, slice, three-putt, hole-it-out from 150 yards.

Look, playing in a setting like that can’t be easy for anyone, much less a non-professional golfer. National TV, with two of the best golfers of all time, in the rain? No thanks. And it looked like Tommy Boy hasn’t been golfing all that much in preparation, probably because of that whole move to Tampa Bay and such.

Golf writer Jason Sobel summed it up nicely in a tweet: “Tom Brady has holed out from the fairway, rolled in an eagle putt and lost about three sleeves of balls.”

Tom is human. And he plays golf the way most of us do. All it takes is one shot to keep us coming back for more, though. But is he an eight-handicap, as he claims? No chance.

Enjoying the check-ins with college coaches from the area. We seem to have a lot of locals at big schools at the moment. – Mary, Greenfield

It’s definitely an impressive list of coaches from the area, at the moment. Last week I had stories about Kelly Doton (Boston College field hockey), who is joined on staff by fellow Greenfield native Jill (Putnam) Gambino, as well as Tara (Jelley) Danielson, head coach of Stanford’s field hockey team.

This week, we’ve run a story about Greenfield’s Bill Decker, who coaches the baseball team at Harvard, and we’ve got one or two more on deck. For such a small community, there is a rich sporting tradition in Franklin County, and that has continued into the coaching ranks.

Jeff Lajoie is the sports editor of the Recorder. Send him mailbag questions, story ideas, music recommendations and food recipes at jlajoie@recorder.com