The frequently terrifying, sometimes humiliating, and sometimes self surprisingly glorious challenge of youth sports.

What’s sports…

I wasn’t that good at sports when I was a kid. In fact I totally sucked. I was afraid of pretty much everything. I think part of it was that I wasn’t really introduced to sports. I wasn’t sitting around with my Dad watching sports. I’m not sure if my Dad had any interest in sports at all to be honest, literally no clue. Some of my older brothers and sisters were into sports but maybe not the really mainstream sports. My oldest brother was a pretty sweet gymnast as I remember but I saw him hit some golf balls once and it was a painful blast to watch. We were at the driving range and he would kind of hit the ball and then look up and say, “Where did it go?” That happened like a dozen times as he called the sport stupid. My youngest older sister was also big time into gymnastics and, as I recall, she was into softball which was probably the most mainstream sport of the group. My oldest sister ran track and field and if I recall correctly she was pretty damn good at it. My older brother took fencing for a bit, yes, fencing, with a sword, or I guess a blade, or foil (?), whatever the fuck thing it was. There was almost no interest in or watching of professional sports either, except for my middle older sister. She is a big Browns fan and was when we were younger as I recall. I have no idea where she got that from, but when I started getting into professional sports she was the one I could connect with on them. She always knew what was going on. So now that I’ve updated and recapped the sports involvement of the family what I’m trying to say is that sports weren’t really driven into me at a young age. However, my Mom, being the extremely diligent Mom that she was, and being a parent myself now realizing she was probably just trying to expose me to whatever, put me into some sports. She was doing the good Mom thing, let’s get this kid into some sports to get some exercise and get some of that energy run out of him, I had a lot. I was terrified.

…oh, I see, please get me out of here…

I remember the first time I went to soccer, having almost no clue what it was, we walked into the gym and I started crying like crazy. Just balling my eyes out. My best friend was there too and he was running around playing soccer with the other kids and I remember him kind of looking at me and trying to get me to come out and play and me not having it. I remember he looked kind of concerned, it was probably because I was literally wailing as I recall it. So my welcoming of sports, at least my participation in them, wasn’t that great. That’s a firework memory I will have at least until my mind starts to deteriorate. They aren’t all pretty right?

I could, and probably will, write numerous entries about sports, and maybe that’s part of what I now find so glorious about it. Sports have the ability to tear you down in one moment and make you feel lousy and no good and not up to the challenge to being on top of the world the next, inspired, confident (the elixir of the Gods) and elated. It’s gloriously rough, and in my opinion it’s even rougher as a kid, well I should say, it was rough as a kid for me. In addition to soccer, my Mom signed me up for little league and then basketball when I was a little older too as I remember, and I was mostly terrified of every single one of them, and as a spectator you could tell. For some reason though, and honestly I don’t think it was forced as I recall, I kept at them. Every year I was signed up for these sports. Soccer would eventually fall off, because it’s soccer, but for the most part I kept on with the other sports. I even signed up and participated in wrestling around or in middle school.

…wait, maybe I got this…

I was probably the most skilled in wrestling to be honest. I was a scrawny kid and really kind of wiry and strong. My sister had a boyfriend at the time that had been a good wrestler and he showed me a few moves on the side and I ended up being decent. This makes sense because honestly most of the wrestlers I knew kind of sucked at traditional sports, maybe not football, but they always looked awkward when playing traditional sports that required things like dribbling a basketball, so made sense that I was this kid who was always kind of awkward at traditional sports and I was a decent wrestler. I remember the high school coach kind of “recruiting” me from this youth wrestling program, and they would probably recruit a turd if it meant having another body around, but he asked about some of the moves I had performed and commented on their execution. This was kind of a big deal because at the time my high school was outstanding at wrestling, numerous state championships and signs that when you drove into the city from any direction touted that we had a 4 time state champion with his name on it. We sucked at everything else, but don’t mess with us in wrestling.

I took this skill and this knowledge and then went and instead signed up for basketball, a sport I was God awful at. I’ve always sort of done that, I tend to gravitate towards stuff I’m not that good at, I wonder if it’s because I want to challenge myself or if I’m afraid of being good. Somehow I think it’s the latter maybe, which is interesting because this is the first time I’ve contemplated and considered that angle. If I get a therapist anytime soon I’ll have them read these entries and then we can work through some things. It also just dawned on me that it might be because I simply like to torture myself as there were years during high school in which I was a three sport “athlete”, funny for a kid that wasn’t much of an athlete.

Now that I’ve regurgitated some of my random and not logically put together thoughts on my career in sports I’ll get to the other firework memory that’s been on my mind related to this topic. So soccer was a thing for a while, even though I wept like a widow that first day, I eventually would step on the pitch (I’ve never called it that in my life and really have no idea what that means but I just watched the first episode of Ted Lasso last night so there you go). I recall, again, kind of sucking and everyone knowing it. By everyone I mean that innate feeling in which we, myself, my family, my coach, my teammates, the fans, are all generally on the same page about the fact that I suck at this, painfully suck. We don’t talk much about it outwardly, but we all know it and we live with it, some of us more painfully than others. I’m not sure who it is most painful for, me, the one living it; my family, the ones living it through me and trying to be supportive; the coach, the one who has to literally manage through it and give me a decent experience but not let me totally implode all over the team; the teammates who see that I’m wide open but don’t give me the ball and really on one hand you can’t blame them, it’s a tough call.

So here I am in a soccer match (Ted Lasso) and the other team is on our side of the pitch (?) on offense and I’m like past the half-pitch line (midfield? midpitch?) by myself because, well, I’m no good and probably just trying to stay out of things, so somehow the ball pops out of the action and starts rolling down toward our opponents goal and I’m literally the only person there. For some reason I think the goalie from the other team was either pulled or off away from protecting their goal, might’ve also been because they didn’t really see me as a threat. I have no idea, I literally didn’t even really know the rules and I don’t think I had a clue what the score was, so I’m like, well shit, I can do this, and I start running toward the ball which is sort of cutting diagonally across the field but toward the opponents empty goal. So I go running and I’m about to make my big moment, to be clear we might’ve been winning or losing by 8 and this goal would be meaningless I don’t recall or simply didn’t know, but I was gonna have my big moment and so I wound up and…fucking missed the ball. I missed it. Completely. I kicked behind the ball, you know, because it was moving. Still, no one in the vicinity, I’m still all alone, and opposed to just running after the ball, wrangling it in and still kicking it into the goal, I do what every other person that knew me as a soccer player and was watching me at this moment did, if not physically then in their minds, I threw my hands up in the air as if to say I can’t believe you missed something so damn easy, it’s painful for all of us to watch you at this game to begin with and then you have an absolute gimme and you still missed it, and then put my hands over my face and hunched over while the ball rolled out of bounds. Don’t get too sad or anything for me, I didn’t cry or breakdown, in fact I found it kind of funny, I think I found it predictable. I remember kind of seeing my Mom’s reaction and my coach’s reaction and I think they were kind of similar. I remember my coach the most, he had this look like, oh man, that would’ve been good for you kid, but it’s all good, no worse than any other screw ups. He was kind of smiling and laughing too, but not at me, he wasn’t a jerk or anything, but with me.

…nope, but maybe it’s a different type of getting it…

That’s it, that’s the extent of that memory, but it’s burned in there. Like I said, they aren’t all glorious, but then again, maybe they are. Life is a roller coaster of ups and downs right, and all the other cliches that come with it, the ones that we use to keep ourselves from giving up and giving in, “you take the good with the bad”, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”, “can we get ice cream anyhow even though I suck” (I might be the only one aware of that last one actually). But seriously, just sitting here and taking this all in…again…I’m learning from it all. Maybe, in some instances, I am scared to be good. I don’t take compliments well, I don’t really know how to handle them, maybe that all fits together (I’ll put out an open call for the therapist when I’m done here), and maybe it’s all there to still teach me something. I feel kind of bad sitting here working through it while you all, or hopefully at least one person, reads it, so I’ll move on.

…and maybe we learn exactly what we need…

So this is one of those ones that seems to be intersecting with current life, whether it makes sense to do so or not, and there is a firework memory that was created just this week that I absolutely know will be there forever. So I have three kids, all of whom are very different from one another, which isn’t surprising. My daughter is nine, my oldest son is six and my youngest son is five. My daughter will try anything and everything and is super excited to do so, my oldest boy is scared of most everything (like father like…), and my youngest boy doesn’t want to do anything, he doesn’t do well with authority, also like father like… So they all decided to sign up for flag football. Each of them at different times mind you, first my daughter who has wanted to do it for years, then my oldest son to which I was like, uh, does he really want to do this, but was also elated that he wanted to, and then my youngest son when it was almost too late to get him in. It’s crazy that all of them are doing this thing. It’s also very nerve wracking because I get anxiety about my kids having the same terrifying or crushing experiences I had and on top of it I’m coaching my daughter’s team and don’t know what I’m doing so it all really comes full circle in reliving my young childhood experiences.

However, while this entry provides the details of some of my young terrified athletic experiences I also love the experience sports give you and there is that beautiful side in which you go out and do something that you didn’t think you were capable of, or that you thought you might be able to do but now got a chance to prove yourself correct. There is a world of experiences in even the smallest of athletic events and those experiences could fill pages. So cut to the latest firework memory in which my wife and I are watching our sons’ first game, they are on the same team, and watching five and six year olds play an organized sport is pure entertainment in and of itself. One kid is eating a dandelion, another kid has his back to the play and is watching it bent over between his legs while one or two kids actually realize there is a play happening. So the coaches give the kids a shot to play all of the different positions and rotate them around. We’re shortly into the game and my kids are hanging in there and look like they’re having some genuine fun. I’m slightly uptight and thinking things like, man they have to go after those flags more, or they really need to listen to the coach, etc. Basically I’m being a Dad. At one point it dawns on me that it’s fine, they’re having fun and even a weight is slightly lifted off of me, even though there is almost no reason for me to be carrying any weight.

…to foster the future of the ones we love.

So then a play happens in which it is obvious that my youngest is going to get the ball handed off to him, because there is no throwing, to throw the ball at their current level would be like asking your cat to drive you to the ER, and I’m a little nervous but also excited. So he gets the ball and it’s clear his flag is going to be pulled pretty quickly past the line of scrimmage (oddly the other team appeared to really know what they were doing, like had plays and shit), but it’s not pulled, they miss and he keeps going and he is coming toward our sideline and sweeping up field, like really running. The ball, which is almost the size of him, looks like it’s squirting out the back of his arm but he still has half of it, and he keeps going just chugging downfield, while I’m literally in awe and looking downfield to watch him. He makes it about three quarters of the field before his flag is pulled and I run down the sideline to where the play ends and I’m in tears. I don’t know exactly why, other than I cry at everything, and I’m taking in the joy even more so than I would take in any of the anguish. I’m watching this kid do this thing and have success and an experience and I’m just, as I said, in awe of him. I get to where the play ends and it’s like no big deal, he’s just trotting back to the “huddle”. It’s fucking glorious. This is sports and whether they keep with it or not they are getting that beautiful range of experience that sports gives you. I ask him later, “Hey bud, how did it feel when you were running with that ball down the field?”, “Great”, he says, “It felt great.”