Sideline Sid Sports correspondant & historian www.sunlive.co.nz

Sideline Sid returns this week after a couple of weeks of R&R, with plenty of food and drink and catching up with his reading.

While we had a few days in the big smoke of Auckland, the return to the Western Bay got me thinking about the lack a cohesive summer sports programme.

The Bay of Plenty Rugby Sevens played on the first Sunday of the new year has grown from humble beginnings when the event was resurrected some five years ago to the prelude to the National Sevens played in Queenstown.

This year's event saw Bay Rugby crank up the tournament several notches to where the Bay Sevens sits just behind the Nationals in status and prestige. More importantly, it is the entrée to the National Sevens with all the major contenders coming to the Mount to check out the likely opposition in Queenstown.

Such is the mana attached to what is effectively the North Island sevens championship that Canterbury made the long journey north this year in order to get a handle on the North Island style of play.

For the second year in a row, the Bay of Plenty team took out the Bay Engineer Supplies Provincial Championship, defeating the 2010 National Champions Waikato 47-26.

The Bay Sevens is just one of a considerable number of top class sporting events that are now run in the Western Bay of Plenty in summer.

Like most things in life, summer sport in the Western Bay has evolved over the decades. Probably the longest running event is the iconic Mount Maunganui King and Queen of the mountain race, which dates back at least five decades.

While the Mount was a whole lot smaller in size when the race to the Top of the Mount started, one thing that has never changed is the huge influx of visitors each year.

In the early days of the annual race, crowds used to line the beach and streets on the traditional Boxing Day date.

Another event that dates back many years is the New Year's Day athletics meet at the Tauranga Domain.

During the 1980s, when triathlons were still in their infancy, one of the biggest and most popular, both in competitor numbers and spectators, was the Mount Surf Breaker, where again large crowds used to line the streets.

Surf Lifesaving has always been synonymous with the Mount. Probably the biggest crowd in New Zealand to ever witness a surf lifesaving carnival was at the main beach at the Mount, when Queen Elizabeth attended a surf carnival, during the 1963 Royal visit.

Today sports such as mountain biking, Twenty20 cricket and ocean swimming events along with the iconic Port of Tauranga Half Ironman help form a sports calendar that runs throughout the summer season.

However, it is typical of the laid back attitude in the Western Bay of Plenty that the summer sporting calendar hasn't been brought under a promotional umbrella.

The capital city has the Wellington Sevens, Taupo the New Zealand Ironman, Hamilton the river race and the Super Eights (and so on and so on).

Sidline Sid believes that the Western Bay Summer of Sport should be promoted under a brand or banner that would be as recognisable as the other standout sporting events in the country.