Reflections on youth football, season two

Right after a crushing playoff loss in cold, windy weather, the football coaches of my son’s youth team gathered the kids around for the usual post-game talk.

The season is over now, there’s no getting around it. This is the end.

After 13 weeks of practice six hours a week … after 9 games … after all the team-building that results from good leadership of 25 ten-year-old boys who love football and get along well with each other … here we are now. Done. Over. After all that effort, and all that investment, suddenly, it’s all over.

Some of the coaches got choked up trying to put their intense emotions into words. Just like last year. And listening to them, and watching them, so did I. Just like last year.

And this was a totally different set of coaches from last year.

Two seasons of football, two different sets of coaches, but two identical scenarios at the end of the season: a tough loss, and an emotional message.

Two sets of good people connecting with our young men, doing a wonderful thing for them, and for us. Two sets of dads who throw themselves into coaching with great dedication and desire. with a sincere and earnest wish to teach football to 9- and 10-year-old boys. For nothing. Well, it isn’t really for nothing: the coaches get to spend a little of their own money, and a lot of their own time, energy, and emotion.

Some kids aren’t so lucky, I know, and end up with jerks for coaches, who ruin an entire sport for them forever. We’ve been lucky enough to go 2-for-2 in the Good Football Coaches category, but I know that maybe some folks feel differently about this whole thing. And maybe I’ll even feel differently someday.

But clearly, for the coaches we’ve had, this is a labor of love. And when it all ends so suddenly, it’s extremely hard to face without some powerful emotions bubbling up to the surface. For some of us, it means an apple in the throat, and watery eyes.

I know if I was a coach and had to get up there, and look at the young faces of 25 young men that I’d grown to like and respect, and deliver a summary of how proud I was of them for trying so hard, for so long, I’d struggle to get through. I know I would.

As I’ve learned over the last two enjoyable seasons, football builds bonds like no other sport that I’ve ever been involved with, as a parent or as a child. The investment of time and emotion is so big. SO, so big. And with all that investment comes bonding. Boys with other boys. Coaches with boys. Parents with each other. Parents with coaches.

It all comes together, slowly, over a period of weeks. It turns into a team, a real team, where everybody works together for a common goal, without concern about who gets credit.

And it hurts when it ends. It hurts a lot. There is a very real sense of grief for the end of that bond. Maybe it hurts the adults more than the kids. In fact, I’m pretty sure about that.

And then we drag ourselves back to work, school, or wherever it is we put in our time each day, but we do so as changed people.

We’ve been transformed. Literally, transformed by the power of connecting with other people and working towards a common goal. It’s an amazing and beautiful thing. And I’m pretty sure this is one of the most powerful draws that keeps people coming back to play football, and keeps coaches coming back to coach it, at least in our local youth program.

Someday, when I’m old, and Jacob is grown, we’ll talk about the good times we had when he played youth football, and how much we both enjoyed it, and how much we both learned. Not just about football, but about other people, especially his coaches. What good people they were, and how much giving they did.

In some respects, life is really all about building memories, and it feels good to know you’ve just built another one. It feels really, really good.

Taking the Costco Plunge

After years of holding out for some now-inexplicable reason, we finally saw the light and joined Costco this weekend.

Costco, for those who’ve never heard of it, is a discount retailer that requires a yearly membership to join, similar to Sam’s Club. We could just as easily have joined Sam’s as well, but there isn’t a location that is very close to us. In fact, the closest Costco is about a twenty-minute drive, so that isn’t super-convenient either. But it’s close enough, starting now.

We went to the Bloomingdale store at around 12:45 on Saturday. Parking lot: big, and jammed. The membership process was easy, and fairly quick. We opted for the Executive membership, which costs $100, instead of $50 for the standard membership, but you get 2% back on your purchases, so it will easily pay for the difference if we spend $2500 in a year there. Which shouldn’t be very hard, since we spent over $100 the first day we went, mostly on food.

We spend an unbelievable amount of money on food, for a family of five. $250 a week, more or less. And we don’t buy lots and lots of extras, like chips, pop, convenience items, etc. (we do buy some of those things, but not much).

Places like Costco and Sam’s have good deals for families like us with their large packages of frozen meats, like hamburgers and chicken. Also deli meats, and the largest tub of yogurt I’ve ever seen, four pounds of yogurt. You need two hands to lift the thing.

And they had a ten pound bag of apples for like $8. Usually, people that buy ten pounds of apples have 6 kids, or horses. We, however, have a 10-year-old son named Jacob.

We go through all that stuff really fast, and it is all pretty expensive at our local Jewel Food Store.

So even though a Costco run takes forty minutes round-trip, we’ll find a way to squeeze in one or two trips a month, if we can save some bucks on the food bill, not to mention all the other things they have there. Like wine, beer, booze, a pharmacy, even golf balls!

Just two things to remember. One, we now need more storage space in our house. And two, we must never, ever go to Costco on Saturday afternoons.

Some People Aim Higher Than Others

Every once in a while, we hear about a young person who digs down deep and shows us that all those negative stereotypes we think we know about young people can be wrong.

Way, way wrong.

My latest column at The Love of Sports is about one such young man.

Ryan Paxson is the 20-year-old son of John Paxson, former NBA star and current GM of the Chicago Bulls. Ryan was the son of privilege, and he knew it. Last year, instead of continuing down that easier path of life, he chose to become a US Marine.

Here is my treatment: Off the Field … With Ryan Paxson.

The original version is on my Essays page: Off the Field with Ryan Paxson, USMC.

Offering Thanks

It isn’t every day that we get to thank God for miracles.  Today is an exception.

My Uncle Bill has kidney disease, and has been on dialysis since August.  He’s only 56 years old, and in excellent health otherwise.  He played football at Wheaton College — just one mile from where I live now — and he looks like he could still suit up and play, right now (he weighs less today than he did then).

His wife Betsy is a genetic match and so they were told she could potentially donate a kidney, and they’d pinned their hopes on that.  Later, they were given the devastating news that a previous health concern with her would prevent her from donating.

But new doctors and hospitals changed that diagnosis.  As it turns out, the previous health concern was trivial, and she was cleared as a donor a couple of weeks ago.

Yesterday they did the transplant surgery, and it was deemed an immediate success, and both are recovering today.

I just want to offer my thanks to God, for a gift of life for my uncle, his wife, and his 3 kids.

One day at a time, and today is a great day!

Sportsmanship 101

Take some time out from a busy day and read an inspiring story about a young man, his mom, and how his life’s circumstances affected a basketball game. You’ll be glad you did.

There isn’t much more I can add, except that the coaches and kids at both high schools — Dekalb (Ill.) High School and Milwaukee Madison (Wis.) High School — have a lot to be proud of here. It sounds like everybody acted exactly the way we’d want them to, if it were us in that position.

Hope, Pride, and Change

Steve H. has a very touching post about his Dad called “Christmas Gift”. Please go read it now. Twice.

I can relate, though my own Dad passed away a couple of years ago, so the resolution phase didn’t happen, unfortunately. We were actually closer long ago, but then drifted apart, for various reasons. I know part of that was my fault; I had mistaken for distance what was instead clinical depression, as I found out after he was gone.

He was a very proud man; too proud to rely on anybody, even his only son (and only child, period), for help. But I can understand that, because I’m a lot like him, in a lot of ways. As you can imagine, this is not a comfortable feeling as I approach my 50th birthday this year.

But the larger point I wanted to make here: I’m happy for Steve H. that he has found happiness through religion. Really, really happy. The contrast between his online persona today vs. a few years ago is striking, and its obvious he’s a much happier person today. It comes through on his site, loud and clear.

For those who’ve never read his various sites (I’ve been a fan since early in my blogging days 6 years ago), he is a very talented writer and humorist, but personally, he suffered from some obstacles in relations with his family. I don’t know Steve personally, but he puts it all out there with his writings, and the impression I got was that he was letting those obstacles define his relationships, instead of forgiving, and accepting people for who they are, and realizing that we all have things we should apologize for.

Who among us can’t relate to such feelings of failure as we get older, and our lives turn out to be so much more complicated, messy, and inconvenient than we pictured them as young adults?

Josh Hamilton is the Feel-Good Story of the Year

Faith, Recovery, and Good Baseball — What’s Not to Like?

Josh Hamilton might not have won the overall Home Run Derby last night, but he put on an amazing display of hitting in the first round, with 28 homers, many of them in the upper deck. He hit 500+ foot blasts not once, not twice, but three times.

But Home Run Derbies come, and they go. The main thing to understand about Josh Hamilton is that, in the most important ways, he’s already won. After being drafted number one overall by Tampa Bay in 1999 — and being called “the best I’ve ever seen” by multiple scouts — he ended up taking a detour as a drug addict and an alcoholic for three or four years, and was out of the game from ‘03-’05. He could easily be dead already.

But because of his new-found faith, and his wife, and his family, he’s turned his life completely around, and can now show the world his talent for hitting baseballs. Win … win … win.

So good for him. God Bless Josh Hamilton.

Sports is often filled with stories of failure and disappointment, especially because so many young men with too much time and money on their hands are central to just about every sport. It’s sad to watch, even if it is inevitable much of the time; young men will do what young men will do. But because Josh’s recovery is faith-based, it would seem that he has a higher chance at success; here’s a quote from UT-Southwestern addiction specialist Dr. Bryon Adinoff (from the above link):

“If you replace addiction with religion, it’s not an addiction, it’s something meaningful, socially appropriate and rewarding,” Adinoff says. “It’s typically very healthy behavior.”

It was interesting to me how neither the broadcast crew on ESPN, or the article I read this morning (AP), noted that faith played the central role in Josh’s recovery. It’s like they’re scared to even mention it.  Out here in the real world, we know that oftentimes, religion helps people, and we also understand that acknowledging one specific instance where it quite likely saved a man’s life is just mentioning a true fact.

If they all care so much about the Josh Hamilton story, don’t they owe that to him, if nothing else?

Tacos for Breakfast

This morning I was sitting with my nine year old son in our living room, in our big red chair, him on the huge oversized armrest, me in the cushioned part, watching Wimbledon tennis on ESPN2.

Suddenly he announces, “I have a taste for … tacos”.

It was just after 8 o’clock.

Then we laughed.  And for a few seconds, life stood still, and it was good.  It was one of those silly episodes from my life, and his, our life together, that seem disposable, but are in fact the glue that holds people together, the canvas we write our favorite memories on.

Word has gotten around in this household:  apparently, I’m a sucker for a silly kid, and somehow I have THREE of them; not sure how that happened, except that I love to laugh with my kids, and they all seem to learn that early on, and so they make me laugh.  Huh.  What is THAT about?

Being silly just to get Daddy to laugh?  Who could imagine such a thing?  Clearly, a riddle for another day.

But he wasn’t just being silly; he actually wanted tacos at 8 in the morning.  Which is still a little silly.  Not completely, though.  That actually sounds kind of good, to be frank.

Maybe tomorrow morning.

Happy Father’s Day

I wish my Dad was still here for me to say that to him. But he’s not, and has been gone almost two years now, and so the best I can do is to remember him today.

When I picture him in my mind, I see him smiling and laughing, because he did that more than just about anybody I ever met. It was his defining characteristic, and anybody who ever knew him would probably agree.

I could use some smiling and laughing right about now, for a whole bunch of reasons. I could also use a little more faith, because mine is being tested now in ways I’d never imagined. Today’s sermon at church was about worrying, and what a waste of time and energy it is. And when you really break it down, intellectually and rationally, of course that is so true.

The trouble starts when we see ourselves painted into corners that we don’t fully understand how to get out of. So we worry as a way to exert control over events beyond our control. Worrying causes bad stuff to happen in our bodies; it physically changes your body chemistry for the worse, which adds a whole new layer of stress over whatever was already going on. It is just about the worst thing you could do.

I’m not sure how much time my Dad spent worrying about anything. He was very sensible about a lot of things in life, except for the appetites that ultimately proved his undoing. He always liked the saying “que sera, sera”, which apparently means “whatever will be, will be”. Hard to argue with that.

So if he were here today, I’d tell him that I miss him, and I miss the feeling that he was as close as a phone call away, and that I admired his more “happy go lucky” ways, an attitude that I’m not quite as naturally tuned into, for whatever reason. And that I loved him, despite the distance that developed between us in the latter years. I mistook the side effects of clinical depression for emotional distance, and didn’t stop to think that maybe he needed me sometimes, too. And for that I’m deeply sorry; it is a debt I can never repay to you, Dad.

But I try not to dwell on that. I have three kids of my own, and they need me, at various times and in differing amounts. So the best thing I can do — the only thing I can do, really — is to be the best Dad for them that I possibly can.

So today, I think that’s what I’ll try to do. And tomorrow, it will be time to do that again. And with the help of my wife, and our kids, and our families and friends, and God, and a little luck, and a lot of patience with myself and others, I hope and pray that I can not mangle it up too bad.

Poignant Writing, Sage Wisdom

Bob Frisk, who writes about high school sports for the Daily Herald, has a tradition of writing a birthday column for his grandson every year. I’ve read a few of them, and they’re always good, full of love and advice and encouragement.

Today’s, “Grandson, it’s that time of the year to share some thoughts”, is his last, because Mr. Frisk is retiring at the end of the year, after 50 years at the paper. FIFTY. YEARS.

You should read it.

My favorite part:

It reminds me of the story about the father who arrived late for his son’s Little League game. He sat down behind the bench and asked one of the players what the score was.

The boy was beaming when he answered, “We’re losing 14-0.”

The man said, “Really? You don’t look very discouraged.”

The boy said, “Why should I be discouraged? We haven’t been up to bat yet.”

That’s perseverance, Mark, and I have a feeling you will show this same spirit as you continue on in life.

I find it interesting that last Sunday your Little League team in Madison got behind 9-0 in the first inning and ended up winning 10-9.

Success in the future requires that same kind of perseverance as well as a strong dose of courage.

You already have had some success in baseball, soccer, basketball, football and running, but also some setbacks that I hope became valuable teaching moments. You’re not going to have winning sports experiences all the time.

I want you to always bounce back quickly from temporary setbacks.

Mark, as you continue in sports, enter situations with confidence and optimism.

Keep your thoughts positive in those difficult situations because your thoughts become your words.

Keep your words positive because they become your actions.

Keep your actions positive because they become your habits.

Keep your habits positive because they become your values.

Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.

No matter what you do in life, accept 100 percent accountability and expect it of others.

Advice for the ages.

Another very good recent column: “Senior athlete’s final event is tough day for entire family”.

I’d like to thank Mr. Frisk for being a role model, not just for kids in sports, but for all kids everywhere — and for their parents and grandparents, too.

He will be missed.

A Quick Heads Up

Try Not To Be As Dumb As Me

If you have a Liftmaster garage door opener, and the light behind the push bar (on the switch) starts blinking, and your remotes then stop working … it might be something as simple as “somebody done pushed the ‘LOCK’ button”.

Which, apparently, causes the the light behind the push bar to blink, and the remotes to stop working! Who knew? I’ve seen that button on that thing for years now.  No idea what it did. Never pushed it. Never read about it in the instruction manual.

So after about 3 weeks of no working remotes, and the damn light flashing at me every time I walked by, and pushing the button and running out of the garage AND stepping over the safety beam thing that stops the door WHILE ducking to avoid the door — about 30 or 40 times between me, my wife, and our kids — I finally remembered to look into this online, and found the answer in about 10 minutes.

As it turns out, guess what?  Somebody had pushed the LOCK button! So by pushing it again, it was all fixed. The blinking: gone! The remotes: working!

So once again, we learn the valuable lesson that reading the manual often leads to fixing problems.

Hence, the acronym RTFM: Read The Frigging Manual.

Usually the “F” stands for a different word.  See if you can guess what it is!

Kids, And Why They’re Sometimes Surprisingly Handy to Have Around

Today we were getting ready to leave the house for my eight year old son Jacob’s first baseball practice; he couldn’t find his mitt, which is actually the normal course of events ’round these parts. From my vantage point in the car on the driveway, I watched him walk towards me and then look in the trunk. It wasn’t there.

Jacob rarely knows where his mitt is. Or his shoes, coat, or anything else he uses every day. Organization is not his strength.

Last week he couldn’t find his mitt one day before a baseball camp session, and we had to run around looking for it when it was time to go, which drives me insane. Finally I glanced over at the table where we stack backpacks and other stuff, and it was sitting at the top of the pile. We have a little bin in the kitchen for sports gear, and the mitt is supposed to go in there. “That way you know where it is when you need it”, as I’ve explained to him countless times. It has not sunk in yet.

So tonight, I hear his little brother Jordan, who is six, yell from the other car in the garage, “IT’S … ON … THE … KITCHEN … TABLE!”

And, of course, it was. We like having Jordan around. He smiles and laughs a lot, is learning to play piano and getting pretty good already, and he knows how to find stuff sometimes. We’ve, more than once, asked Jordan if he knew where something was, or asked him to help find it, and he came through.

Whether this reflects more positively on Jordan as an observant little kid, or more poorly on us as parents, it’s your call. I’d go, oh, 80 / 20 there, myself.

Kids Say The Darnedest Things

On Sunday morning, as I was driving my two youngest boys to Sunday school, my eight year old asked how many people live in Wheaton. He guessed 500, then 1,000, then 2,000, then 10,000.

Finally, laughing, he asked, “A million?”

It’s around 58-60,000, so I finally let him in on that elusive piece of info.

Then he said, “can you believe I used to think there were only 204 people in all of Illinois? Then I remembered, that was the number of square people in Illinois.”

Me: “Square people?! You mean people per square mile, I think.”

We all laughed. But he’s closer to the truth than he knew; I imagine there are a lot more than 204 square people in Illinois.

And since Wheaton College only recently overturned their ban on dancing, and on allowing grad students and faculty to drink alcohol off-campus, I’d guess there are a lot more than 204 square people on campus.

Some Resolutions for ‘08

I don’t normally do New Year’s resolutions. Not sure why; I just never thought of that date as the best time to make changes, I guess. I tend to evaluate things on more of an ongoing basis.

But this year, the time to change some things coincides nicely with the New Year.  So here are my resolutions:

1. Chill Out – I get kind of intense sometimes. It can be a burden to those around me, and probably to me too. So I really need to remember to take a chill pill on things, once in a while. Like this morning, I got behind some a–hole on the road, and he was refusing to pass this snow plow, and … ooops! Never mind.
2. Less News – I still waste too much time keeping up with useless news. I’ve already given up on mainstream media coverage of the war and politics, and deep thoughts from Hollywood. Now, to that I have to add the mortgage “crisis” and global warming (or climate change or whatever the hell they are calling it today). Soon all that will be left is Dilbert.
3. Think Seriously About a New Career – or else 18 months from now, I’ll be like the Albert Brooks character in “Lost in America” who goes to the employment office in that little town in Arizona, asks the guy for the file with the “hundred thousand dollar jobs”, and gets laughed at.
4. More Smoking – I’ll help celebrate Smoke Free Illinois by smoking more cigars. My annual consumption is likely to rocket up from the current rate of 0 to 3 or more. Hey, maybe even 4 or 5. You just never know how far out on that edge I could go!

I’ve got a few others, but if I put them down here, somebody will hold me to them. And that we cannot abide.

Giving Thanks

Every. Day.

For a school assignment just before Thanksgiving, our youngest son Jordan had to make a list of the things he is thankful for.

Number one on the list? “Dad”.

He was super excited to show it to me, and had a big grin on his face. Of course, he’s always grinning. I’ve never seen a kid who smiles so much. A big, goofy, blonde-headed, dirty-faced, 6-year-old-boy grin, 24×7. It’s infectious, and everybody likes him because of it.

Just one more reason that I love the little guy. He smiles all the time, and squeals like a stuck pig when I tickle him. He loves football, and even reads point spreads in the newspaper. And now, he puts me as Number One on his list.

Of course, next time, I could fall to third, after his dog and LT. But I can live with that. Who can compete with LT, now, really?

It’s easy to lose track of what’s important in life. I do it myself, multiple times a day. But then my kids or my wife say something, or do something, to remind me just how beautiful life really is. And thank God for them, and for that, because otherwise I’d probably stress myself to the breaking point over stupid things that really don’t matter.

We all know that kids need their parents. I’m of the opinion that parents often need their kids, too. To push them to become better people, better Moms and Dads, better brothers and sisters. And really, who couldn’t use some help in that department?

I don’t often write much about family or spirituality any more. But I don’t think about it any less.

And especially now, after Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor was laid to rest Monday.

Yay, Jake!

Congratulations to my eight year old son Jacob, for running his very first road race, and finishing a 5k — a distance he had never run before, ever – in 32:40.  The results are posted here.

He had never run more than a mile at one time, but insisted that he be allowed to run in this race. And not just the 1 mile fun run, like most of the other kids his age; he wanted to run the 5k. And he ran it all by himself!

I think the fact that his third grade teacher, who is young and attractive and was running in the event, might have been a factor.  Just a teensy little bit.

But hey, what’s wrong with that?  Nothing, nothing at all.

So congratulations Jake!

Pause To Remember

Today is the 6th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001. Viewed in this way, today is a somber day, when we should pause to reflect on the memories of those who died that day, and their families. Never forget.

We should also pause to say a prayer for our troops serving far, far away, across oceans and deserts, where it gets to 130° on a summer day, and realize that they do this voluntarily. To protect us, and to bring freedom to people they don’t know, and to kill evil in its tracks. It is a job that needs doing, and those of us lucky enough to live in a nice place, with a comfortable lifestyle, and enough money to fund all that, must always remember that these luxuries and freedoms were not just handed to us. They were earned by the spilled blood of those gone before us, and it is up to us to make sure we teach our kids about such things, to keep the history alive, and to pay respect.

And finally we should pause to honor all those killed or maimed serving the cause of freedom — both since 9/11 and before — and their family members. Your sacrifices are not for naught. Thank you for your service, and to the family members who have suffered loss, my deepest and humblest condolences to you.

To all: may God shine His face upon you, and give you Peace.

Happy 6th Birthday, from the NFL

And From Daddy, Of Course

Today, there are two big events in my life: the first game of the 2007 NFL season, and my youngest son’s 6th birthday.

And believe it or not, he is a huge football fan, and has been since he was 4. So he is super excited. He knows all about the Bears, and many other teams in the league. He watches college football, and pro football, and high school football.

He’d watch prison league football, if they put it on TV.

And when you’re turning 6, and you’re a huge football fan, and the first game of the new season is on your birthday? Well. Life just doesn’t get any better than that.

So Happy Birthday Jordan! I love you!

Catching Up With David Duval

If you’ve been wondering whatever happened to David Duval, read Searching for David Duval from John Hawkins at Golf Digest.

Duval and his wife are expecting their second child, to go along with the three his wife already had from a previous marriage. He is apparently a very devoted father to all of them. And not all that excited about publicity, just as he didn’t like it back in his 1997-2001 heyday.

This much longer article from 2004 is revealing; it reveals Duval as someone who learned, after he won the British Open in 2001, that sometimes the goals we set for ourselves end up not being as fulfulling as we’d thought. Hence, a crisis and a search for meaning.

His family background seems key: he lost his twelve year old brother at nine, after donating bone marrow for a transplant, and the death of his brother caused conflict in the family, so much so that his parents later divorced.

So, at least for me, it isn’t that hard to understand how he now values a strong and healthy family over the game of golf.

Didn’t Get The Memo, I Guess

One evening last week, I saw one of those cheap-o laser pointer lights in the checkout line at a local auto parts store. So I bought it.

It was a well-thought out purchase, obviously.

But it was only $4, and it had a little flexible LED flashlight head on it too. Plus, and here’s what sealed the deal, the guy told me he had one and his cat loved it. Well, we have a cat too, and I’ve seen those videos on America’s Funniest Home Videos, where the cat jumps around like a maniac, chasing a little point of light. So I figured, why not, I’ll get one and maybe the cat and I can have fun with it.

So I bring it home, and shine it at his feet, at the wall, at the floor nearby. Nothing. I shine it in his eyes, on the wall again, on the stairs, on the ceiling. Zip.