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Attitude Adjustment

January 12, 2016

As an everyday, every hour observer of what’s happening to school sports and within school sports, I can get into a negative rut.

But if I step back, and then step out to a local school event – especially at the subvarsity level – my attitude changes. This is where I get a “fix.” This is where I discover the antidote for creeping cynicism.

Here I see coaches teaching, more than screaming. Here is where I watch an official not only make a call but explain it to the participant. Here is where I see athletes smile. And I do too.

Many years ago my son told me how much more he liked coaching at the middle school level than at the high school level. At the younger level, appreciative parents saw him as the one tapping into new talents. At the higher level, overbearing parents said he was missing or misusing their child’s talent.

The subvarsity level – the arena of discovery and development – is underappreciated. In fact, it is often where the best of what we call “educational athletics” occurs.

Baloney

January 27, 2015

When I was in high school and college I worked a different job each summer, usually looking for hard labor that would help prepare my body for the next football season, and each time confirming that it would not be my choice for lifetime employment. One summer I worked at a lumber yard and paper mill complex along the banks of the Wisconsin River.
Every day I ate lunch with the men who had made this their life’s work; and I grew in ways both positive and negative as I listened to their conversations and tales. We all brought our own lunch pails.
One day, one of the more veteran employees opened his lunchbox and flew into a rage. “I can’t believe it,” he exclaimed. “Baloney again! I hate baloney.”
Trying to calm him down, another worker said, “If you hate baloney so much, just ask your wife to make you something else.”
To which the complainer replied, “That won’t work. I make my own lunches,” which resulted in an uproar of laughter from the rest of us.
I thought of this incident recently as I was preparing to meet with constituents about the rules they most love to hate: policies relating to coach and player contact out of season. Those are our most criticized rules.
But it occurs to me, if we don’t like the sandwich we’re eating – out-of-season coaching rules – we should remember: we made them ourselves, and we can change them. In fact, no one is in a better position to do so than we are. And no one has a greater duty to do so than we have, if we really are in need of a new recipe.