Family Time
August 29, 2014
When my wife and I were raising two sons who participated in high school wrestling, we had two hopes before each large wrestling meet in which they participated. First, that they wouldn’t get hurt; and second, that they would win their last match of the day.
We didn’t care if that last match was for 7th, 5th, 3rd or 1st place. The ride home was just a lot brighter when the last match was a victory. We always struggled for the right words when the last match of the day was a loss.
So my wife and I found it especially interesting to read an article about Jeff Daniels published Aug. 7 in the Lansing State Journal that included this excerpt:
Daniels attributes some of his family’s closeness to life in Chelsea and traveling around Michigan to play hockey.
“I’m a big fan of soccer, however, we went hockey and never looked back,” he said. “Ben was 8, and Luke was 5 when they started in hockey in Ann Arbor. All those 5:45 a.m.’s on Yost Arena ice on Saturday and Sunday. All the way through the end of high school.
“I tell parents now, it’s not whether the kid excelled, it’s not, ‘Why didn’t you shoot instead of pass, ‘You’ve got to work on your slap shot.’ It’s not that,” he said.
“It’s the drive there and the drive back. And you talk about anything else except about the game. And we believe that the time we spent doing that, and not focusing on pounding your kid to be better at the next game when he’s 12 damn years old, is one reason we’re so close as a family when the kids are in their 20s.”
The Best Is Yet To Come
June 17, 2014
My last posting was built on six words from the novel, No Small Mischief, a fictional memoir of life in Nova Scotia’s northernmost region. Today’s posting is launched from an 11-word passage from the same work: “Living in the past is not living up to our potential.”
How horrible it is to peak in high school.
To remember high school as the best days of life is not such a problem, unless it is true. If, in fact, we were at our best during our high school years, then we have failed to fully develop as human beings.
I heard an athletic director close a senior student-athlete awards program recently by saying, wisely, “I hope you will visit us, but not too long or too often. You need to get on with your lives.”
The high school experience – including competitive athletics – is not the end, not the fulfillment of anything. It is, at its best, the launching pad for life.
That it can be the best days of one’s youth should not make school sports the best years of one’s life.