Sport dilemma

Another change I have undergone in the past fifteen years (five earning a degree and ten teaching) is definitely how I feel about sports.

One of my main goals in college was to be a head football coach. After all, I idolized all of my coaches in high school. If they said it or asked, I did it. Or tried.

I also think that I'm one of the few who actually loved practice. I mean I loved it. Most dreaded it and lived just for the games. I was never that way. Don't get me wrong, I loved competing on the field, but practice fascinated me.

In football, toward the end of my sophomore year, I began to adopt the attitude of trying to improve my technique and speed with every single repetition. So every practice became a microcosm. Could I pull faster? Could I use a better angle when blocking the nose tackle? Could I blitz more effectively? These became my obsessions in practice.

In an odd way, I think this has carried over to how I write. For I have the same attitude toward that. Well, maybe not all my writing (witness the multiple errors and rarely revised rants on here) - let's just say my serious writing, then. When I was working on my thesis, I honed every single sentence.

I mean that.

You might think that odd for a piece about 86 pages long. But that's the truth. I labored over ever sentence.

And that labor fascinated me, just like I was fascinated by my assignments on our offensive plays in football practice.

Outside of that, I have to admit it: I learned next to nothing from sports.

This is where my change in attitude comes in.

I just can't bring myself to believe that sports makes for better students and citizens anymore.

Can't do it.

Maybe in another fifteen years, I'll have changed my mind, but I doubt it.

Why?

Well, first I think many coaches get into coaching because they did well in their respective sport and the subconsciously want to relive that.

Or they get into coaching to win. I have a feeling that this is integral to the real problem sports generates in our culture - an all out emphasis on winning. Now, I know somehow people have come to believe that winning is part of the American Way, whatever that is. And though I don't personally buy that, I can see why many people believe that - they don't want to be associated with losers.

Yet, it's dealing with loss that makes one better, not gloating over a win. One of the rare positive messages I actually took away from sports occured in college. We were getting ready to trounce Hibbing in football. They were a perennial doormat. Our defensive coordinator was a bear the entire week. We tried to get him to lighten up, but he was all business. He made a point I will never forgot - "I could give a shit less if we beat Hibbing by 4 or 40. The high school team could beat them. What I want to do is beat the Vermillion's and Fergus Fall's of the world. We'll learn nothing from this game."

That changed me. I was all ready to enjoy romping on an inferior opponent. Yet, as our coach stated, what do we learn from that? The real goal is to beat a worthy - or better yet - a superior opponent.

But even that mentality seems to get lost in sports lately.

Now, there are exceptions. Our high school football coach is a perfect example. He molds young men. He teaches them that they are not just athletes or students. They are a part of a tradition - something larger than themselves. He teaches them how to be leaders - or followers - and how to maximize themselves.

Another example - my hometown boy's basketball coach found out that his elementary program was having an end of the season awards night. He told his volunteer coach that he'd bring his seniors there. It was surprise to the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. Not only did the seniors show up to their party, but the signed autographs, took pictures with the kids, and spoke to them about being part of the basketball program. He even called the local paper so a reporter would show up to take some pictures for the next issue. Then the coach gave a plug for his summer basketball camp and told the kids that if anyone couldn't afford it to see him. Sure enough, a little boy came up to him and said that he wanted to go but his parents had no money. The coach told him that that would not be a problem and that he'd see him at the camp this summer! Then the coach picked up the bill. That is a class act.

If more did it like that, my attitude would change.

But I've seen that type of teaching and coaching become the minority. Instead, you get coaches who scream at kids and tell them they suck, or hold an awards night and only talk about their three star seniors, while two other seniors aren't even mentioend, or a coach who buys chewing tobacco in front of his players.

A colleague of mine dropped off an article from the Star Tribune on some suburban schools dropping athletics, and the outrage that it is creating.

Many response have been the cliché “sports are a vital part of our community.” I used to actually believe this line of thinking.

But I can’t bring myself to be that naïve anymore.

Three years ago, I was guilty of screaming like a moron at an elementary school basketball game. First, it was an elementary basketball game. Second, I was a fan, not the coach nor participating. Third, I was ashamed of myself. But, sadly, I wasn't the only one screaming like a moron. I had become one of those parents I often talked about. Now, I find myself shutting up now and just enjoying the game. But how many really do that?

I think of the parent at a boy’s basketball game who damn near bum rushed the court when he disagreed with a foul.

Or the parent who literally chased the refs off the court.

Or the parents who drank in their vehicles during halftime of a football game.

I just don’t buy that it’s a vital part of the community. My answer to that thinking is that people need to find better things to do with their time. If you honestly come out to support your son or daughter or local athletes – wonderful. But if there are no longer athletics, what is stopping you from finding some other way to support them?

My dad tried to drive this point home to me after wasting countless afternoons watching the Vikings win for 55 minutes before blowing the game. Finally, he just got more work done on Sundays.

As a Bengals fan, and the Bengals have done their fair share of losing in my time, I know how he feels. I will waste three hours watching or listening to the game - only to be frustrated with a loss or elated with a win. Why should so much of my attitude hinge on a stupid game?

My answer - I need to find more valuable things to do in my life. Enter my daughter on September 26th!

I am also sick of hearing this line of thinking, “If kids don’t play sports, then they’ll get into trouble out on the street.”

Now the problem here is that it assumes all kids are just teetering on the edge of trouble. If I am not mistaken, recently a wrestler exposed himself to a younger member of his team, several baseball players exposed themselves to their student manager, several burned an animal in a cage alive in the middle of a lake, others competed over who could have sex with the most freshmen girls . . . God forbid, what are athletics keeping these kids from? Killing or raping someone. Then I am most definitely glad that we have athletics.

But seriously, are you that foolish to believe if kids did not have organized sports that they would then be vandelizing property, getting drunk, smoking pot, and other things? Please.

I am also tired of coaches bamboozling their athletes into thinking that sports teaches team work, sacrifice, and pride. Again, in many instances this is true. But often, it isn’t. I think of some of our athletes in my hometown who are often brow beaten into submission. I’m sure those valuable lessons will make all the difference in their future lives.

Now there are plenty of coaches who try to teach their kids how to be good people as well as good athletes. But that is not the norm.

And isn’t that the job of parents anyway?

Too often sports have become a way for parents to live vicariously through their children, coaches to strive to win at all costs, or excuses for something to do in communities.

When our school is facing a fiscal crisis where the teachers have to sacrifice half of their classroom supply budgets (that means I’ll go light on pens, pencils, and Kleenex because an extra projector bulb will likely eat up all my allotted budget)– as well as having to go without colored paper next year (I’m not kidding) – I have a hard time feeling sorry for reduced budgets in sports – or even sports being cut all together.

I think the public would do well to remember that these are extra curricular, emphasis on the extra. Just like they are student athletes, but the emphasis seems to get lost on the first part.

I’m not trying to sound like one of those fickle curmudgeons who hate athletics. I encourage KoKo and Casey and attend all of their games. But I do so for support. I don’t live vicariously through them or think that we must win at all costs or that they have to turn their lives upside down for athletics.

I once wanted Casey to lift and succeed in football, not because it’s what he wanted, but because it was what I wanted. I wished that I had the opportunities in sports that he has. Pushing him to attend morning practices or lifting sessions, because I would have killed to have been able to do that as a kid, is not the way to go. Casey can only motivate himself to do that.

He hasn’t. And I can live with that. The important thing is what he wants and values, not what I wanted and valued when I was his age.

The same is true for KoKo’s trip to her grandparents’ this summer in South Dakota. Sure, she will miss out on her summer rec activities, but she would also miss out on a month of memories with her grandparents. There is no trade off there. It is an easy decision. It’s not like she is going to be a professional softball or volleyball player. But her grandparents won’t be around forever and she will always have this trip. That’s a memory that will last a lifetime.

I also know that athletes do great things. I just helped edit a little story for our football coach’s spring newsletter about an elderly woman who called him looking for some muscle to help her move. The coach contacted one of his seniors, and the player didn’t hesitate to assist her. But remember, in addition to being an athlete, he was a student.

That’s the really important thing.

You might make memories that will last you for a lifetime in sports (maybe), but you might also learn skills that will serve you for a lifetime in school.

Let’s just have a little perspective. That’s all.

I like to think of athletics – at any level –l in the same way Oscar Wilde viewed art, “art for art’s sake.”

Let’s drop the pretense that sports are morally redeemable. Play them for the sake of playing them – and all that entails.

Play in high school because it’s one of the few times in one’s life when you can. My dad never let me get a job when I was in high school because I would have the rest of my life to work. He wanted me to play sports (because, especially in football, he lived vicariously through me and my mom, left alone on the farm when Dad was out in the truck, loved my involvement in sports because it gave her a reason to get out of the house and off the farm) because it was the only time in my life when I really could.

But that is about as important as sports get.