Perspective

Most days while my son is at practice I get to chat it up with another mom who is one of my best friends.  I love this part of my day because she gets me (which I’m pretty sure a limited number of people do) and she is super smart and logical.  I am very straight forward and I love that she is too and she’s not afraid to be honest.  We had a bonus today when another good friend showed up to our chat who is also very smart and practical in his thinking:)  And so our social time commenced.  I’ll be honest these are often chances for us to vent about our days and today wasn’t really an exception, but I do feel that we often present good points and it’s also nice to be able to release our frustrations to another adult that gets it…..a therapy of sorts:)

So while there are many topics hit upon at our “sessions”, I was a little frustrated about a situation with my daughter today. She told me about this last night when she arrived home and was still kind of bothered by it today when she got in the car.  Apparently her coach decided to do a pizza party for the team just as a nice gesture….sounds great right.  However, the stipulation to be able to participate in this pizza party is that you had to attend the varsity game tonight.  I get the reasoning that we are trying to encourage the JV kids to support their older counterparts.  I fully support that, but here is my list of issues with this circumstance.  First off, we have attended many varsity games already this season where I’m sure not all of her teammates have including both boys and girls games.  Second, we live about 15 minutes from the school so she can’t walk to and from these games and therefore you are taking the control away from her as to whether she can attend….that’s on me.  Third, my daughter had dance classes tonight.  She has taken dance since she was 2 years old.  Dance is by far and away her “thing”.  She loves her sports too, but her first true love is dance.  Why should she have to skip dance class (which I also pay for) so that she can attend a game that isn’t hers in order to be included in her “team” pizza party?

I’m not telling you all this to have you all say, “what a horrible person this coach must be” or anything of that nature.  I’m guessing the coach never thought about any of these facts and probably didn’t mean harm in her decision, but this led myself and my friends to a much bigger discussion with some very thought provoking points.

Our “guest speaker” today brought up a story of when his daughter played a sport in her senior year.  She was quite good at this sport.  She also, however, held down a job while maintaining her grades and being a student athlete.  She would set her work schedule two weeks in advance and plan around her sports practices which were mandatory.  The amount of time you got to play in games was based on your attendance at practices as is the case with most sports.  However, her coach would from time to time throw in an extra night practice that she would not be able to attend because at that point her work schedule was set.  On one particular occasion that this happened, she had a game the following day and was not played at ALL due to missing the previous practice.  So, this is her reward for being a hard working, self-motivated teenager that is well rounded and will one day help support our society instead of someone who will never have a job and will instead let society support them.  Why not pat her on the back and say, “How was work last night? Sorry we missed you at practice, but I’m so proud of what a hard worker you are”.  It’s one practice and she didn’t miss it because she just didn’t feel like going or was downtown causing trouble with her friends.  She was being responsible and setting a good example for other kids her age.  She should be commended, not punished.

My point to all of this is that I think that sometimes school sports are taken a bit too seriously by those in charge.  I love sports and fully believe in dedication.  I’m not by any means saying that we should just let the kids do as they please and show up when they like, but a little perspective would go a long ways.  I believe when a child signs up for a sport they are part of the team and there is a certain amount of responsibility that goes with that.  I will never let my child sign up for a sport and not see the season through or skip practice because they just don’t feel like going.  Discipline is very important and I am a huge advocate for that.  I just think coaches should realize that this one sport is not all that child is and not all that they have going on in their lives.  To assume that is unfair and unrealistic.  There is a very real difference between working at a job that depends on you as an employee with a boss that you have to answer to and skipping because you have to beat the next level of fortnite.  Why would we not praise a child for taking a dance lesson or piano lesson or karate or whatever else might help them enhance who they are?  I’m not the Army but I say be all that you can be and I’ll buy your pizza!!