Tag: sports

Why the high five tunnel needs to go

I knew we were in trouble when she spent three minutes telling me how she just wanted her team to have fun.

I remembered her from last year–she just wanted the kids to have fun then too, which meant playing her two best players the whole game and objecting when we stopped her team’s breakaway because it was happening on the field next to ours. “It’s just for FUN!” she yelled.

On Saturday she said “Gosh, they’re only seven.”

When I was seven, I won my first President’s Cup. When Gabe was seven, he lost his (it was five years ago and the details are hazy, but it was something like: the ref, who had a grandson on the other team, allowed an extra minute of play in which the other team scored the tying goal and then he awarded a pk in OT on an incidental handball).

One of my players has scored 15 goals in two games—four of them left footed and one that she pegged out of the air as it flew across the front of the goal. I don’t have to ask her to back off in the second half—she hangs back on defense all on her own. She’s seven.

One of my players hates it when the other team scores so much that she chased down a breakaway last week, waited til the other player slowed down to shoot and ran her off the ball. Then she cleared the ball to the sideline, not the goal line, because throw-ins are better than corners. She’s seven.

A girl on the other team saved a breakaway by grabbing my player by her jersey, allowing her teammate to steal the ball. Her coach told her never to do that again. I told her next time don’t get caught. She smiled at me because she knew I knew.  She’s seven.

My own daughter buried her head in my hip and burst into tears at halftime—because she’d only scored one goal. She’s seven.

So they’re not only seven. They’re already seven. And a meat-eater is a meat-eater they day she is born.

After the game, we shook hands and my girls went for their snacks. “Hey,” Just-For-Fun called “Don’t you do the high five tunnel?” This is where the parents make a tunnel and the kids run through it all together after the game. Fun and necessary for four and five year olds.  Last Spring, my team decided it was dumb. At the end of the game, they want one thing: snack.

“We don’t” I told her.

“Really? Why not?” she asked incredulously.

I shrugged. “They don’t like it. They’re seven.”

“Right, ” an outraged voice belonging to the dad coaching on the field next to us piped in.  “They’re only seven.”

“Yeah, you know they do the high five tunnel with the 5th graders, right?” Just-For-Fun said.

“Right,” random coach dad said, shaking his head at me. “Wow. Whatever.”

I didn’t say any of the words in my head.  

But I did watch her team run the high five tunnel, game completely forgotten.

Then I watched one of my girls Facetime her mom at work to tell her she’d scored twice. I watched another get an up in the air hug from her dad for a pull back move she used to change direction and break away.  I watched Annie kick dirt over to Shea with a puss on her face because she didn’t play the way she wanted to play. I didn’t have to hear it to know that the man I married honored her frustration by saying “Ok. What are you going to do better next time?”

And I thought What a load of BS.

This sports parenting culture that asks the meat-eaters to make themselves smaller so no one else feels badly is ridiculous.  So is flatline parenting—we can’t eliminate the highs and lows. We have to teach kids to negotiate them. And don’t even get me started on random guy popping off from the other sideline. This isn’t Facebook, friend. You don’t get to comment.

Beware the parents who are so intent on manufacturing every emotion their child feels that they will even try to control other people’s kids. Which is what Just-For-Fun coach really wanted—for my team to act like winning wasn’t important so that her team would feel better about losing.

I’m not doing that. We won 11-4. I played all eight players the same amount of time. Four of them scored. We don’t need the high five tunnel–we had lots of fun all on our own.

Why We Let Her Play

On Saturday, Kate and some of her teammates found out they were badass.

They’re playing basketball for the YMCA. Shea is coaching them. He’s taught them to run the 3rd and 4th grade version of the Michigan State offense. You should see my girl set a pick. It’s a thing of beauty. And she only had to set it once. The rest of the game, that poor other girl was looking over her shoulder.

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That’s Kate setting the pick and Abby rolling off. Down inside is JoJo, waiting for the outlet.

As any coach of young girls will tell you, it’s a struggle to get them to be aggressive. Part of it is nature, but part of it is nurture, too. There’s something to that song Sit Still, Look Pretty and if you disagree consider this:  Coaches implore boy’s teams to stop shooting and pass. But they implore girl’s teams to stop passing and shoot.

All week, Shea worked with our team on stealing the ball. Because they wouldn’t. Would not. And Kate let go of a contested rebound two weeks ago because it was the other girl’s turn to have it. So every day when she woke up and before she went to bed he said to her “Kate, what do you do if someone sticks the ball in your face?”

“You steal it, dad.”

“That’s right. Then what do you do?”

“You drive for the basket.”

The team we played beat us four times last year because they have a gifted little point guard whose older brothers have taught her well. She was the star of the league because no one would challenge her.

Saturday, Kate stole the ball from her in the first thirty seconds of the game, and it was on. I mean on. As a team, we had over 20 steals and ended that game pink-cheeked, sweaty and winners. Our girls were lit up. You know why?

Because they LIT IT UP and no one told them to slow down, be quiet, or fix their hair.

I can make an argument that the song and dance class Kate takes and her desire to play the guitar and her artistic talents will all contribute to her sense of self-worth and giftedness.

But not the way sports will. Nothing else will ground her strength to her feet and help her hold her space in quite the same way.

Sports will raise her chin, her goals and her voice. And that is why we let her play.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ok, you got me.

“Let her play”. Ha!

As if we could stop her.

 

God is a Sports Fan

On Sunday, Gabe’s football team—which hasn’t lost a game in five years—was down 18-14 at halftime of their playoff game.

We’ve only been on this team for a season so the mystique of the Undefeated is new to us.

I was proud of how they all handled it. Coach kept his cool. The parents kept cheering positively, with the exception of me and Shea and AJ’s mom–but to be fair, Gabe and AJ were being held for twenty plays before the refs actually threw a fricking flag.

Still, Gabe’s eyes were wide and his eyebrows were floating around his hairline, which is family code for “I’m freaking out.” He kept looking at me, but the league frowns on parents doing pep talks on the sideline so I just gave him a thumbs-up and a smile.

Thirty seconds before halftime ended, it hit me: between Mass and Sunday School and pre-game practice, we hadn’t prayed. So then I did get up and walk down to the sideline. He saw me coming and when I said “We didn’t pray” he stood on his tiptoes and reached his hand up to the railing. I grabbed it and we prayed this prayer:

Dear Lord,

In the battle that goes on in life,

We ask but a field that is fair

Give us the strength to meet the strife

The courage to do and dare.

If we should win let it be by the code with our faith and our honor high.

If we should lose let us stand by the road and cheer as the winners go by.

His eyebrows went back to their normal place and in the second half the refs found their flags and the offense got their feet under them and we won the game 28-18.

Afterwards he came to me and said “It’s because we prayed.”

Oh buddy. He comes from a long line of athletes who pray. In high school, we hit the quiet cool of the church for a decade of the rosary before every game. When we made the play-offs, it was a full rosary. Then we prayed the Memorare on the court before lining up, along with a shout-out to St. Therese: Little Flower, show your power, help us in this needy hour. The end of every huddle went like this: Our Lady, Queen of Victory…pray for us…St. Anthony…pray for us.

When I coached, we did the same, except I replaced the Memorare with the prayer I say with my kids. You ain’t heard nothing in a huddle until you’ve heard high school boys pray to “cheer as the winners go by”, although one later admitted to me that he crossed his fingers every time he said that part.

But it was never superstition. It was what we did, but not what we needed to do to win, like wearing lucky socks or sitting in the same seats on the bus.  I think that’s a really important conversation Gabe and I will have. His team didn’t win because Gabe and I prayed. My teams didn’t win because we prayed. God doesn’t work on a pray to play basis.

But did we play better because we took those moments to be centered in the presence of God first, to lay down our cares and worries? To remember that win or lose, we were beloved children of God? I did. I looked forward to the empty, darkened church and the murmured prayers of my teammates. As a coach, I wanted my players to know that peace.

I loved our voices raised in prayer together. I loved Gabe’s dirty, reaching fingers in my hand as we prayed in the rain. And the sweet bowed heads of Kate and her teammate Jo as we prayed in the gym. I loved watching high school players pray over each other on the sideline of their public school game a few weeks ago. I love how Tim Tebow—that’s right, I said it—leaps into the stands to pray over fans in distress.

And that’s how I know God is a sports fan.

“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

                                                                                                                                                Matthew 18:20

THIS was the greatest win

That kid made a big shot Monday night. And the Villanova-North Carolina game will go down as one of the greatest.

But not THE greatest.

And I’m not talking about Laettner. Or Edney.

I’m talking about one Easter Sunday morning when I was a senior in college. I was huddled in the corner of a 1940s farmhouse in Massachusetts with my roommate’s newborn cousin asleep on my lap. Everyone else was crowded around the TV watching the Championship game.

One team, a perennial powerhouse, with two National Championships and three second place finishes under their belt. The other team had never won the title.

The game was close except for one stretch in the second half one team carved a 7 point lead. With 48 seconds left, though, they were all tied up.

Then with fourteen seconds to go, the favorite went ahead on a jumper. The score: 59-57.

The other team inbounded and with four seconds left, heaved a shot that missed. In the scramble for the rebound, the refs called a jump ball. Possession to the team who was losing with .7 seconds on the clock.

Time out. Then another time out to reset the play.

Less than a second. National championship on the line.

I remember the conversation: Do they shoot for OT?

Would you?

Watch:

I screamed so loud I woke the baby.

No one talks about this game. It never gets mentioned in the conversation about greatest games. We know why, because the players had ponytails. And (John Gibbons, I’m looking at you) probably wore dresses.

But tell me a game that was closer, with less options than North Carolina inbounding the ball from underneath the basket all the way out to the three point line, bypassing their 6’5” big girl in the paint and their clutch guard at the free throw line to hit the 3 guard more known for rebounds than shots?

Show me a college coaching decision with more steely hubris than that one.

I don’t think you can.

.7 seconds. For the win.

Do One Thing Right

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Coaching taught me that you better never call a time-out unless you have a plan.

What in the name of sweet baby Jesus are you doing out there????? is not a plan.

Once I made the commitment to come to a time-out with a plan to climb out of whatever hole we were in, I was forced to look at the game differently.

I had to see what we were doing well.

How else could I have a plan? You can’t tell your team Keep doing that thing that’s not working and hope to hell it works this time. When one part of our game fell apart, we had to make up for it somewhere else. So when I called a time out, I tried to start it with Ok, here’s how we’re going to fix this.

(Tried. Tried so VERY hard. But sometimes sweet baby Jesus got the best of me…)

In our worst moments, the plan was to take it all the way back to the basics.

Pass, hit, serve.

Do one thing right. Then do two. Then three and four and on and on until it’s finished.

Gabriel just played a game like this, against a team that beat them badly the first time they played. Nothing worked. Not one thing.

But this time, the defense got their feet under them and it was a different game. They still lost, but it was a victory too—they stood their ground against a team that is bigger and faster than they are. We can’t win every game, but we can win moments and quarters and halves. And sometimes that’s enough.

Life is like this, too.

It’s very rare for everything to go bad at once. Usually, it’s one or two things, but I can get so focused on them that I feel overwhelmed.

Instead, I have to see what I’m doing right, and keep doing it. I have to take it back to the basics of faith, hope and love. I have to solve one problem, live through one hour, take one step. That’s all. Just one. Then two. Then three and four and on and on until I am back on my physical, emotional or spiritual feet.

This is how we welcomed our second child, and then our third. We folded those babies into our lives one hour, one day, one week at a time.

It’s how I survived my cancer and post-partum anxiety—one doctor’s appointment, one medicine, one blood test at a time.

It’s how Dana is surviving her summer—one breath, one prayer, one decision at a time.

So when it feels like I’m getting beat four ways til Christmas, I try to remember these rules:

Don’t call a timeout unless you have a plan.

Focus on what’s working, instead of what’s not.

When all else fails, go back to the basics.

Do one thing right.