sports

Kent kickboxer Sinisa Jovic is the 2025 U.S. kickboxing champion

- Jeremy Brown

Kent local, Sinisa “The Sniper” Jovic, has participated in martial arts since he was 7 years old. He started out in karate, boxing and Sambo, a martial art with Soviet origins. Now, at 24, he’s become the 2025 U.S. national kickboxing champion, earning himself a spot on the World Association of Kickboxing Organizations (WAKO) USA National Team.

Round Two: Thanks, Coach Murphy

- Tom Hardesty

Late July, 1983. I was camped out on the bed in my mom and dad’s room, my leg sporting a cast from the foot to the knee and propped up on some pillows, and sweat dripping from every pore in my body in the sweltering heat of the little bedroom, which, thanks to the fact our house didn’t have air conditioning, was like sitting in a blast furnace.

Round Two: Numbers and maps don’t mean much in college football anymore

- Tom Hardesty

College football is my favorite sport.

Some of my earliest memories involve sitting in front of the television in the early 1970s watching the Ohio State-Michigan game and the Buckeyes playing in the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day. The eye-catching visuals of the Scarlet and Gray lining up against those dreaded maize-and-blue wing-tip helmets, and the magical way the Buckeyes’ own silver helmets gleamed in the Southern California sunshine, were powerful images that are indelibly etched in my mind.