Shortly after 7 on a recent summer morning, Bobby Hurley walks on the Gateway Loop Trail on the McDowell Sonoran Preserve, a 4.2-mile stretch that winds into the mountains not far from his house in North Scottsdale.
The Arizona State basketball coach smiles as fellow hikers pass on his left and continues up the mountain, climbing toward an elevation that will reach 2,378 feet. Throughout his life, Hurley always has fit in on the basketball court, but out here in the desert, with the temperature creeping toward 90 degrees, he fits in in a different way.
“There’s different things I can do with it, which is why I like it,’’ Hurley says of hiking.