Pretty good place to be

 

I was an athlete. I was the parent to athletes. And now I’m grandparent to athletes.  I’m here to tell you that that last category is the easiest.  Let’s chat about all three.

I remember my days of competitive sports vividly.  Despite many decades having passed since I was in any game where we kept score other than pickup basketball, I remember details you would think would have been lost to memory.

Most of what I played back then was football.  I played a little basketball but when the high school football coach told me that I could be good at football if I worked at it…well, that was the end of any basketball career.

But I remember it all.  The practices, the Friday nights, the smell of the locker room—I remember it as though it were yesterday.  Going to battle with your friends--it doesn’t get any better than that.  Many of the friends that I still have from high school days are from my high school football team.  Lonnie Hawkins. JL Millsaps.  Mike Bivens.  Greg Cagle. Ricky Alexander. Byron Lawson.

Not all of them are still with us, but the occasions when I’ve seen any of them just makes those memories a bit brighter.

As a parent, I started out determined to let others coach my own kids.  That lasted but a moment.  I have been around sports my whole life, having seen the good and the bad, and I realized that I might be able to coach my kid and yours better than maybe what they were getting.

So I coached.  And supported.  And never missed anything.  One of the good things about being a youth sports coach is that you get to decide when and where to hold practice—that means those things are on your schedule, not someone else’s.

I’m sure I was harder on my own kids than I was on anyone else’s kid, but isn’t that they way it is supposed to be?

I believe competitive sports are a very important part of childhood development.  I do not believe that being on a championship team at age 8 makes a kid a “winner.”  Quite the contrary.

I believe that learning how to be coached, how to work together with others, and how to perform unselfishly are hugely important in childhood development. So, play they must.

I really enjoyed those times.  Road trips with an AAU basketball team. Football practice on the grass beside John Sevier School.  Soccer practice wherever we could find a field.  Those were special.

Ah, but the best gig out there?  Being the grandparent.  You don’t have the angst that comes with being the parent of an athlete. You are granted the latitude to see the big picture-the joy of sport, the development of a child, the rewards found in effort.

Then, on a magical night, it all comes together and your grandchild “gets it.”  They get the importance of teamwork. They get the rewards of a hard fought game.  They get what it is all about.

And maybe, if you’re lucky, you’re there when they hit the winning shot, or when they find that joy in being part of something greater than themselves. That is really a sweet place to be.