Not necessarily vicarious

OK. I get it. You want your children to have opportunities that you did not have. You want your children to accomplish things you did not or could not.  I appreciate that. I understand that may not be living vicariously (something that very involved parents get accused of all the time).


Let me back up a minute. The last two columns have preached a harsh sermon at parents that would yell at their children’s games. Yell at the referees. Yell at the coaches. Yell at their kids. Lots and lots of yelling.


In 34+ years of writing this column, I don’t think I’ve ever had more positive response to a column. Tons of emails, getting stopped by friends and strangers, text messages—you name it, I’ve heard about it. And they’ve all been positive.


Well except for the examples shared from all across the country about youth leagues being abandoned because they couldn’t get referees or coaches. That part is sad. And devastating to the physical and emotional development of our children.


As so often happens, instead of focusing on all those negative comments, I started looking for the positive comments. And they were everywhere. Positive far outweighed negative. Oh sure, there has still been the occasional parent yelling about a missed call and I really did hear this week a parent yell “BLOCK SOMEBODY” after their own child was tackled for a loss.


But I really liked most of what I was hearing. I watched a kicker run off the field being mobbed by his teammates after making a kick (he had missed one earlier). I heard people in the stands whooping it up after a big play. I heard parents and others clapping for a goal or a good play, regardless of which team they were on.


And I realized a few things. I realized that good parents want things to be better for their own children than maybe it was for them.  That is what being a good parent is. Good parents want their children to have positive experiences in sports, again, that maybe they didn’t get to have.


Wanting those positive experiences for your child isn’t necessarily living vicariously through them. There’s a basic difference…if you are doing it for you, then it is living vicariously. If you are doing it for your child, it is not. If their success somehow validates your unrealized potential, then it is living vicariously.


I learned some things through being a parent. I learned that I could not make success happen. I learned that nothing I did came with a guarantee. I learned that coaching from the sidelines never helped anything. I learned that yelling at the referees didn’t change a thing. I learned that being critical or second-guessing teachers or coaches never accomplished anything.


I certainly wanted my children to be successful in everything they did. Everything. I wanted to enable them to achieve their dreams. But here’s the difference—I wanted them to achieve THEIR dreams, not mine.


At the end of the day I found that it is most important to teach your children how to be happy, to enjoy life, and to be satisfied with what they have instead of always wanting more.


It’s OK to enable your kids to have experiences that help them achieve all that. It’s OK to insist that they be treated fairly and have opportunities. But if it is not kept in perspective, if it isn’t fun, if winning becomes more important than playing, then we have a problem.

You may not choose to be a role model but you are

I happen to believe that our true character is revealed by how we act when no one is watching. We need to also consider that even when we don’t know it, somebody might be watching you, copying you…wanting to grow up and be just like you.


A year ago, I told the story about taking one of my granddaughters to a soccer game. We stood at the playing of the National Anthem and I saw this granddaughter look at the team lined up and slowly copied them—her right hand over her heart and her left arm behind her back.


I snuck a photo which is an all-time favorite. The story was about role models. About how children are looking at others to learn how to behave. About how impressionable children are.


And how important it is for us to set a good example. That is a timeless message. Age doesn’t matter. Somebody, somewhere is looking at you, especially if you are an athlete.


Just last week, another story about the same granddaughter came out. It seems she is now copying the hairstyle of her favorite soccer player. Something about putting bands in her ponytail all the way to the end.


Thankfully, this young lady has embraced the fact that she is indeed a role model. She is now playing soccer in college but knows that her influence can reach all the way home.


We should all be prepared to assume the responsibility that comes with being someone’s role model. It may not be a role that we want and we might not be ready to accept it, but it often belongs to us anyway.


I’ve told the story here before about sitting on the balcony at a basketball game dropping popcorn on people below. A young mother turned to her son and said “don’t grow up to be like them.” I might have been 10 but I remember it to this day.


We are constantly role models for someone. Take smoking. Statistics tell us that if both parents smoke, there is a very high likelihood that their children will smoke too. Often while still teenagers. Is that what you want for your child?


And a sedentary lifestyle. We don’t inherit obesity. We get it from a sedentary lifestyle and bad eating habits. If the parents sit in front of the TV for several hours each day and dinner is fast food, that is what the kids learn to do.


When I was a teenager, I had this family friend that I thought was from the coolest family ever. They lived in a house north of Atlanta that had a wilderness playground for a back yard. The dad had model trains. Three brothers, something I always wanted. When I visited, we were always fishing and exploring.


Mark decided in high school that he wanted to be a wildlife biologist. I thought that was pretty cool. Any guesses what my first college major was?


I had another friend that I thought had great taste in music. Guess what I listened to? Yep, whatever he was listening to. Another friend was a great dresser. Guess who I copied?


My point is this…you should always be conscious that somebody might be looking at you to learn how to dress, talk, behave. And it might be your friends. Maybe it is your family. Teenagers, those little kids in your life are going to look at you as their role model much more than they do their parents.


Embrace that role. It will help you make better decisions. If you even think that someone is modeling their behavior after you, it makes it easier to do the right thing all the time. And you never know when little eyes are watching.

I'm not going anywhere

I will retire one day. Not today. Not soon. But one day. I will give up my spot on the sidelines of the Maryville High School football team. A spot and a privilege that I will always cherish. It will be someone else’s turn. Someone younger. Someone just as qualified. Someone who will hopefully love it as much as I do.


And when I do, I’m not sure I’ll ever go back. For sure, I could never walk the sidelines with the team and the coaches. Whomever takes my place doesn’t need that. Too many years and too many relationships—I wouldn’t do that to my replacement. The last thing they would need is them thinking that I’m looking over their shoulder, judging whatever they are doing. I won’t do that. They will do fine and I hope will do a better job than I ever did.


I won’t sit in the stands either. I just don’t think I could listen to people yell at the players and the coaches. There probably isn’t enough bond money for me to do that.


I remember when my son was playing football in college. It’s probably the only time I consistently sat in the stands and watched a game of any kind. I’ve always been a part of whatever game I attended.


All the parents sit in the same section at college games. Obviously, those deciding such things know better than to put families with the fans. It was also one of the coolest things about having a son playing college football—we made lots of friends with other parents.


One time, there was this family sitting on one side of us and one of the family members said something about one of the players. That player’s family happened to be sitting on the other side of us. Now, keep in mind, this sort of thing doesn’t happen often. Families understand things. 

Just when things between them started heating up, one of them got distracted and things went back to normal. Being in the middle of that mess told me pretty quickly that I didn’t want to sit in the stands very much, especially if I had a vested interest in the team on the field.


As for MHS football, for the rest of my life, this team and these coaches will be my family. So no, I won’t be able to sit in the stands and listen to people criticize them.


I just don’t get it. These are teenagers and these coaches want nothing but the best for these kids. I remember hearing someone yell from the stands to George Quarles “you need to pass more coach.” Really? You know more about calling the offense than GQ?


My least favorite is “BLOCK SOMEBODY!” Uh…I don’t think so. Block somebody on the other team, not just any somebody. That one hurts more as the parent of a lineman (and a former lineman myself) when it comes from the parents of a running back that just got tackled.

I wrote last week about yelling at referees and umpires. That column got a lot of comments on social media and a dozen or more emails in my box. Everyone had egregious examples of bad behavior by parents of young children. My son-in-law thought he might have to protect his 9 year old son from the other team’s parents in a soccer game last weekend.


It’s beyond ridiculous. I had several people send me articles about youth sports leagues having to close down all across the country because they can’t get officials.


If you are a parent, support your son or daughter. Be their parent, not their coach. You do not know more about what is going on than their coaches. If you disagree with the officials, understand that they know that they don’t get everything right, every time. If you think you can do better, great. They would love to have you.


But be kind. Be positive. At the end of the day, these kids aren’t going to be making their living playing sports. And maybe 3% of them will get college paid for by their athletic exploits. They are much more likely to get college paid for by their academic exploits. I heard a statistic once that said for every athletic scholarship, there are 1000 academic scholarships.

You are much more likely to get there by reading to your younger children, taking them to the museum and art gallery, and expecting academic excellence. Sure, sports are important, essential even, but you're not helping them in any phase of life by yelling at their coaches and referees or by coaching them from the sideline.

You want you child to be a great athlete?  Get out in the yard with them. Throw a ball with them. Run with them. Encourage active play.  Let them play everything. Hike, paddle, ski...do it all. You're building athleticism when you do that.

Let our children learn positive lessons from their sports. Don’t teach them what they don’t want be like with their own children.