The South County freshman football team had their first scrimmage tonight, hosting Hayfield and playing very solidly against the Hawks for the first two-thirds of the scrimmage. Unfortunately, David did not play.
His star-crossed efforts at being part of the team continued this week. Monday he missed practice because we misread the starting time, and, arriving late, he was sent home. Tuesday he made it on time, and instead of being a wingback, he began working as a strong safety for the first time. He says he asked to make the change; he says the offensive backs coaches yelled at him all the time, and as one of ten boys repping at wingback, he didn't think he had a future there. So they put him at strong safety and he began to learn that with John Eldredge.
Wednesday he skipped practice by his own choice. He didn't get around to completing his fifth English essay of the summer in time, and so he chose to stay home and work on it instead. On the one hand, I applaud his prioritization: academics, we have always said, come first, and he's chosen on a couple of occasions to miss some athletic endeavor in order to study. However, I don't think he realized that by missing the practice of the day before a game, he exposed himself to being benched for the game.
And so tonight, when the freshman Stallions hosted the Hawks, David was part of the dozens of boys patrolling the home sideline. When I realized he wasn't going to get in, my heart broke for him; on the other hand, valuable lessons are at risk of being learnt, about planning ahead, about doing what needs to be done, and about what kinds of levels of commitment it will take to be a student athlete for South County. Perhaps some will take root.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Friday, August 17, 2012
Updating: Decisions At A Crossroads
In case you've been wondering how things are coming along with regard to David's football practices...
His hamstring injury kept him from practice on Saturday, and from the freshman scrimmage on Saturday night. He also wasn't able to practice on Monday, and on Tuesday he could engage in light drills, but no contact. Wednesday, he saw the trainer first thing in the morning, and was cleared to resume full participation--yay!
...and then Wednesday night, he announced he will, in fact, be accompanying Mary and Sarah to the beach trip to the Outer Banks with the Schiponos next week.
He remains one of ten (10!) wingbacks on the freshman team; he says he's enjoying it, but I don't see him being quite as fired up about it as he was when he played for SYC three years ago. I suspect the allure of a week away from having to be up at 6:00am, and being at the beach, is still stronger than the allure of improving, day by day, as a potential wingback for his team. Does that convey some deeper message about his commitment levels overall, or is he just a 14-year-old kid who sees a chance to sit on a beach for a week and isn't about to pass it up?
His hamstring injury kept him from practice on Saturday, and from the freshman scrimmage on Saturday night. He also wasn't able to practice on Monday, and on Tuesday he could engage in light drills, but no contact. Wednesday, he saw the trainer first thing in the morning, and was cleared to resume full participation--yay!
...and then Wednesday night, he announced he will, in fact, be accompanying Mary and Sarah to the beach trip to the Outer Banks with the Schiponos next week.
He remains one of ten (10!) wingbacks on the freshman team; he says he's enjoying it, but I don't see him being quite as fired up about it as he was when he played for SYC three years ago. I suspect the allure of a week away from having to be up at 6:00am, and being at the beach, is still stronger than the allure of improving, day by day, as a potential wingback for his team. Does that convey some deeper message about his commitment levels overall, or is he just a 14-year-old kid who sees a chance to sit on a beach for a week and isn't about to pass it up?
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Just Becoming...Better
Earlier this month, my brother-from-another-mother Glenn posted in his blog some thoughts on the fifth anniversary of his dad's passing, in which he concluded that he's become a better dad in these last five years due to that loss. It led me to wonder: has there been a similar effect on me in the three years nine months since my own dad's passing?
My inclination is, no, I haven't become a better dad. I may have become a better son, though.
I don't mean to suggest I'm some paragon of dad-liness, or--heaven forbid--that I outshine Glenn in that department, and therefore have or had no room to grow. But if I'm honest with myself, I don't see a dramatic difference between how I parented before, and after, Dad's death. Since David's birth 14 years ago, I have always tried to be engaged and present with both the kids. It was at Little League practices that Glenn and I first struck up a conversation about the (dis)Astros; I always made every effort to be at practices and/or games from T-ball through now for David, and have started taking him up on his offer to let me come camp with the Scout troop. Similarly, I'm the one who's hacked through a total of 25km of races with Sarah--five 5Ks, one at a time--and brought her to Girl Scouts most weeks. Losing Dad didn't mean I started doing more activities with the kids, or somehow changing who I was for them. At least, I don't think I have.
But I do think I've become more attuned to my role vis-a-vis my older generation, though. On a November Tuesday, as part of what would be my last time seeing him alive, I told Dad we'd be OK, and if he had something he had to go do, that we'd take care of each other, don't worry about us. And so ever since returning home from his funeral, I've had a pretty good record of calling Patty to check on her about every week and a half or so, and stopping in to visit when up north. I never used to call for her before; now I do.
I've also had the opportunity to become much more a caregiver to my Mom, of course, since her move to Virginia just over a year ago. We joke about her doctor's appointments being sufficient to qualify as our "third kid," running her here and there, but in point of fact I'm what she's got locally available, and the progression of her Parkinson's has afforded me other opportunities to serve. I always used to h-a-t-e going to "old-folks homes," such as when my Mom's dad was in one twenty years ago. Now it's my Mom who's there herself, and the change of the last few years has allowed me to go into one without cringing.
I'm also enjoying an opportunity to be a better "son" to Mary's folks. Over the last few years we've been able to be of some small service to them now and then, taking care of projects around the house that are harder for Dad T. to do anymore: last year it was digging post-holes, this year it was replacing the trim on the garage. I can't do these kinds of things for my own dad anymore; but it does give me a warmth to be able to help out Mary's.
In re-reading the above, I recognize it can come off as incredibly self-congratulatory. That's not what I'm trying for. Instead--and here's where Glenn and I actually see eye to eye, I think--it's about the personal growth that a crisis such as losing one's first parent can inspire. It is an ending, to be sure, and in the depths of the pain of that time it's all that seems present. But in hindsight, it's also an opportunity to become more of what we're called to be in the first place. Perhaps that makes some of us better fathers; perhaps some become better sons. (And I do not even want to contemplate what sort of tragedy makes me become a better husband, thank you very much.) Perhaps it is what C. S. Lewis described, in Sheldon Vanauken's excellent book of the same name, as "a severe mercy"--one that brings us to a point of grace through a most horrific ordeal, one which we might never have reached on our own, and one which leaves us better than the people we were at the start.
My inclination is, no, I haven't become a better dad. I may have become a better son, though.
I don't mean to suggest I'm some paragon of dad-liness, or--heaven forbid--that I outshine Glenn in that department, and therefore have or had no room to grow. But if I'm honest with myself, I don't see a dramatic difference between how I parented before, and after, Dad's death. Since David's birth 14 years ago, I have always tried to be engaged and present with both the kids. It was at Little League practices that Glenn and I first struck up a conversation about the (dis)Astros; I always made every effort to be at practices and/or games from T-ball through now for David, and have started taking him up on his offer to let me come camp with the Scout troop. Similarly, I'm the one who's hacked through a total of 25km of races with Sarah--five 5Ks, one at a time--and brought her to Girl Scouts most weeks. Losing Dad didn't mean I started doing more activities with the kids, or somehow changing who I was for them. At least, I don't think I have.
But I do think I've become more attuned to my role vis-a-vis my older generation, though. On a November Tuesday, as part of what would be my last time seeing him alive, I told Dad we'd be OK, and if he had something he had to go do, that we'd take care of each other, don't worry about us. And so ever since returning home from his funeral, I've had a pretty good record of calling Patty to check on her about every week and a half or so, and stopping in to visit when up north. I never used to call for her before; now I do.
I've also had the opportunity to become much more a caregiver to my Mom, of course, since her move to Virginia just over a year ago. We joke about her doctor's appointments being sufficient to qualify as our "third kid," running her here and there, but in point of fact I'm what she's got locally available, and the progression of her Parkinson's has afforded me other opportunities to serve. I always used to h-a-t-e going to "old-folks homes," such as when my Mom's dad was in one twenty years ago. Now it's my Mom who's there herself, and the change of the last few years has allowed me to go into one without cringing.
I'm also enjoying an opportunity to be a better "son" to Mary's folks. Over the last few years we've been able to be of some small service to them now and then, taking care of projects around the house that are harder for Dad T. to do anymore: last year it was digging post-holes, this year it was replacing the trim on the garage. I can't do these kinds of things for my own dad anymore; but it does give me a warmth to be able to help out Mary's.
In re-reading the above, I recognize it can come off as incredibly self-congratulatory. That's not what I'm trying for. Instead--and here's where Glenn and I actually see eye to eye, I think--it's about the personal growth that a crisis such as losing one's first parent can inspire. It is an ending, to be sure, and in the depths of the pain of that time it's all that seems present. But in hindsight, it's also an opportunity to become more of what we're called to be in the first place. Perhaps that makes some of us better fathers; perhaps some become better sons. (And I do not even want to contemplate what sort of tragedy makes me become a better husband, thank you very much.) Perhaps it is what C. S. Lewis described, in Sheldon Vanauken's excellent book of the same name, as "a severe mercy"--one that brings us to a point of grace through a most horrific ordeal, one which we might never have reached on our own, and one which leaves us better than the people we were at the start.
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Decisions At A Crossroads
David's first full week of football practice ended Friday. He had skipped nearly all of the weight-room sessions over the winter and spring, and due to church mission trips, SeaBase, Scout camp, and our annual summer trip to Vermont, he scarcely participated in any of the summer ones. So he reported to combine on August 2 without much training or effort having been put in all year.
To his credit, he is not whinging about how tired he is, or how much it hurts, or anything I might have expected. He spent his first full week of practice doing whatever the coaches asked him to do; it appears they had put him in the pile of boys who they were looking at as possible wingbacks, and he dutifully began learning blocking schemes and plays with the six others (really? how many wingbacks does a team need!) who were similarly assigned.
However, my "this can't possibly go this smoothly" radar was correct: Friday he pulled his hamstring in practice. Was it because he's so raw and unprepared for practices? Possibly; but it's not like he was completely inert all summer (c.g.: Kleppinger, Sarah). It's not a bad pull; he's quite mobile still, although a notable limp can be seen (especially when chores are to be done, but that's a different blog post). However, the trainers have told him it'll be several days, maybe even a week or more, before they'll clear him to return. He said one of the coaches, apparently somehow aware of the fact that Mary and Sarah were going to the beach later this month, gave him a nudge in that direction--"you might as well spend time with your family," or something like that--for an event still a week and a half away. Hmmm.
I had thought that the rigors of the practices, and his lack of preparation this spring, might consign him to a second-string role; I had also commented privately that I would not be surprised to see him, come the beach week, weigh the costs of getting up every day at 6am for a decidedly minor role vs. the benefits of going to the beach, and "cut himself" from the no-cuts team. I just hadn't thought of a hammy as the genesis for anything.
And so tonight is the annual intrasquad scrimmage for the Freshmen, in front of their parents; he obviously won't play, and now has chosen to skip going altogether, even to cheer on his squad. Hmmm. Will he get up Monday morning at 6am to go and stand on the sidelines for another three or four hours? We'll see, but my intuition is that a camel's nose is under the tent.
He wants to play, he really does. The fact that he's not allowed to, in my opinion, really does bother him: he wants to get out there and show coach what he's capable of doing. I can almost see the tug of war going on in his heart and mind over what to do next; what happens the rest of this summer could be a real bellwether event for him, much as the 1987 College Republican National Convention was for me (don't ask). I only know that I can't make up his mind for him, nor should I, as the young man struggles towards his own path in his own way.
To his credit, he is not whinging about how tired he is, or how much it hurts, or anything I might have expected. He spent his first full week of practice doing whatever the coaches asked him to do; it appears they had put him in the pile of boys who they were looking at as possible wingbacks, and he dutifully began learning blocking schemes and plays with the six others (really? how many wingbacks does a team need!) who were similarly assigned.
However, my "this can't possibly go this smoothly" radar was correct: Friday he pulled his hamstring in practice. Was it because he's so raw and unprepared for practices? Possibly; but it's not like he was completely inert all summer (c.g.: Kleppinger, Sarah). It's not a bad pull; he's quite mobile still, although a notable limp can be seen (especially when chores are to be done, but that's a different blog post). However, the trainers have told him it'll be several days, maybe even a week or more, before they'll clear him to return. He said one of the coaches, apparently somehow aware of the fact that Mary and Sarah were going to the beach later this month, gave him a nudge in that direction--"you might as well spend time with your family," or something like that--for an event still a week and a half away. Hmmm.
I had thought that the rigors of the practices, and his lack of preparation this spring, might consign him to a second-string role; I had also commented privately that I would not be surprised to see him, come the beach week, weigh the costs of getting up every day at 6am for a decidedly minor role vs. the benefits of going to the beach, and "cut himself" from the no-cuts team. I just hadn't thought of a hammy as the genesis for anything.
And so tonight is the annual intrasquad scrimmage for the Freshmen, in front of their parents; he obviously won't play, and now has chosen to skip going altogether, even to cheer on his squad. Hmmm. Will he get up Monday morning at 6am to go and stand on the sidelines for another three or four hours? We'll see, but my intuition is that a camel's nose is under the tent.
He wants to play, he really does. The fact that he's not allowed to, in my opinion, really does bother him: he wants to get out there and show coach what he's capable of doing. I can almost see the tug of war going on in his heart and mind over what to do next; what happens the rest of this summer could be a real bellwether event for him, much as the 1987 College Republican National Convention was for me (don't ask). I only know that I can't make up his mind for him, nor should I, as the young man struggles towards his own path in his own way.
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