In an increasingly dark world, high school sports remain a source of light

This week begins my 11th year as a high school public address announcer, and I couldn't be more excited about it.

Between now and mid-October, I'll probably announce more than 50 different events, from volleyball and soccer matches to football games and marching band performances.

I even get to do several Division I college soccer matches for Cleveland State University, something to which I'm really looking forward.

My enthusiasm for PA announcing stems partly from the fact that it's fun, and partly from the way in which sports provide a wonderful-yet-temporary escape from everything that's wrong with the world.

These days, there is no shortage of things that seem to be going haywire. In the U.S., we're divided now as badly as we were in the late 1960s, and perhaps nearly as much as were during the Civil War.

I take great comfort in the undeniably wholesome nature of high school athletics. In my experience, the kids who participate tend to be smart, friendly, motivated and brimming with potential. They are fun to watch and even more fun to interact with.

Even if you don't really like sports, it's easy to admire the sustained effort and dedication of these athletes. The things they learn and apply are highly cliched (teamwork, sacrifice, hard work, etc.) yet still very real.

They give me hope.

I've been around prep sports for more than 40 years as an athlete, coach, journalist, league administrator and now as an announcer. I get just as excited for the opening kickoff of a football game now as I did back in the Stone Age when I was playing.

For those next few hours, I don't give the presidential election or any divisive social issues even a single thought. I am absorbed in the game.

Is this naive? Pollyanna-ish? Unrealistic? A case of the privileged white man sticking his head in the sand because he can?

The answer is probably "yes" on all counts. But I don't care.

I would rather watch a well-played high school volleyball match than two candidates yelling at each other on a stage any day.

The last go-round

 

The bandana'ed trumpet player pictured above is my son Jack. He is 16 1/2 years old (just had his "half birthday") and on the verge of his senior year in high school.

School doesn't officially start for another two weeks, but parents of kids who do fall extracurriculars know how this works. Jack is in band and runs cross country, both of which have been practicing for a month. His senior year started in earnest four weeks ago.

Terry and I have of course known this was coming for a long time. We've been through the senior experience with our four oldest kids and loved all of it. And we figured we would love it when Jack got to this milestone.

We'll do that, of course, but this time it's different. Jack is our youngest. Just as everything with Elissa was a "first" so many years ago, everything with Jack is a "last." Last cross country and track season, last marching band season, last first day of school, etc.

There is every reason to celebrate what is sure to be a fun 12th-grade year for a kid who does so well in school, plays the heck out of his trumpet, is serving as co-drum major and band president as well as a class officer, and is generally one of the funniest and fun-to-talk-with people I know.

It is, as they say, all good.

Yet there's something about the finality of it that is only just now starting to hit me. For a long time there was always more to come. A Tennant kid graduates? Yay! We'll do it again with the next one. Year after year, we had kids in Wickliffe sports and band.

But this is the final lap. And it's starting to smack me right in the feels.

We've had kids in Wickliffe Schools continuously since 1999. Before that, Terry and I were Wickliffe students ourselves. And before us, our siblings were also Blue Devils, stretching all the way back to 1963 in my family's case.

When Jack walks across that stage and picks up his diploma next May, it all comes to an end. It's not a tragedy or anything, of course, but it is bittersweet.

And I didn't necessarily expect that.

Terry and I are enjoying the semi-empty-nest life, believe me. We've put in much time and effort over the years ensuring that our kids' various activities provided the best experience possible, and that they themselves learned what they needed to learn to become independent, accomplished adults. You never "stop" being a parent, but the idea of moving into the next phase of our lives is alluring.

Yet...as I said, there are seriously mixed feelings.

If I were someone trying to make me feel better about this whole thing, I would say something like, "Hey, you have to enjoy it! No need dwelling on the negative side. Celebrate it! Live in the moment!" Which is spot on, though it doesn't remove the specter of every event, every accomplishment and every experience being the last of its kind for our family.

It's all about attitude, I suppose. And I'm going to do my best to embrace individual moments as they come. "The end" is really more a transition than a full stop. It's inevitable, and it doesn't have to be a bad thing.

It just got here a little faster than I anticipated, is all.

I still say cross country is a delightfully crazy activity

It's Friday and it's September, which means Terry and I will be at a high school football game tonight. It's just what we do (and have done for years) on late-summer/early-fall Fridays, given our involvement with the Wickliffe Swing Band.

We also have a routine on Saturday mornings this time of year, and it involves driving to random schools and watching large groups of thin young people run 3.1 miles so quickly you're sure some of them are going to collapse.

Welcome to the insane world of cross country!

Four years ago when my son Jack first got into this sport, I immediately recognized that cross country runners are some of the toughest people on Earth. I still say this is true as Jack, a high school junior, participates in his fifth season as a "cross" runner.

Because that's what the cool kids call it: "cross." Not "cross country," just "cross."

These athletes run in all conditions: dry or wet, hot or cold, light or dark. They have been training all summer and continue to train throughout the season, so there's very little that deters them. They are machines.

And they take pride in their toughness, by the way, just as they should. You hear all the time how tough football players are, but few of them could endure a season of cross country training (and I say that as a former footballer).

The cross country family – which includes not only the runners themselves but also their parents and siblings – is a close-knit one. We cheer for our own kids and for each others' kids. We stand outside in those changing fall weather conditions and yell for everyone wearing our school colors.

Actually, we show support for any kid willing to subject himself or herself to the trials of long-distance running, regardless of which uniform they're wearing. They all deserve our encouragement.

For years we were a soccer household, as all of our kids played it and I coached it, but I'm so proud to have joined the cross community. Everyone there, kids and families alike, is lovably insane.

Good or bad, the list of people in your life constantly changes

A couple of weeks ago I dropped off my son Jack for the first summer practice of the upcoming high school cross country season.

As I looked around at the assembled team members, the first thing I noticed wasn't so much who was there, but who wasn't there.

Last year's seniors were, of course, conspicuously absent. These kids whose names and faces I had come to see as inextricably linked to the program had moved on, as they prepare to go to college or whatever it is that post-high school life holds for them.

That is the nature of scholastic sports. It is a constantly changing cast of characters. At most, a kid is going to be a member of a particular team for four quick years.

The same is true of work life. If you've been at your job for any length of time, you've seen various people come and go. There are veterans who have been with the organization longer than you and newbies who consider you to be one of the vets.

Thankfully, we all have people who are enduring parts of our circle. These can be relatives, friends, longtime co-workers, teammates, etc. Whoever they are, they represent some semblance of permanence in what is otherwise a chaotically shifting landscape of personalities.

I used to be sad when, for example, I left a job and lost touch with the people I had gotten to know well. But now I'm inclined to see change more as an opportunity than a sad reality. New people = new connections = new ideas and perspectives = new growth for each of us.

Jack is going into his junior year of high school. I've always thought of him as one of the younglings of the cross country team, because he was. But now he is an upperclassman, and there are incoming freshman who will get to know him, like him, and maybe even look up to him.

And in two years, those ninth-graders will show up for a summer practice and Jack won't be there. And the constancy of change will begin to dawn on them.

May they (and we) always make the best of it.

What we did right with each of our kids - Part V - Jack

(NOTE: Parents are forever lamenting the things they wish they had done differently with their children. "I should have been more strict about this" or "I wish I had let her participate in that." That type of stuff. I see nothing productive there, so instead I choose to celebrate the things that Terry and I appear to have done well with our children. Plus, it's a good way to fill five days of blog posts. So there's that.)

At the ripe old age of 11, my son Jack is still a work in progress. You can of course argue that ALL of us are works in progress, but what I mean is that, compared with my older kids, he's still fairly malleable in terms of how he sees the world and the values he absorbs from us, his parents.

Jack busts me up. I don't know if it's because he's so naturally funny (he really is) or if it's just because he's kid #5 and Terry and I are, in general, more laid back and relaxed in our approach to raising him vs. our older children.

I actually like to think we've been pretty laid back with all of the kids, since my wife and I are essentially laid back people. Maybe too laid back in some ways, though we've been trying to focus only on the positive in these "what we did right with each of our kids" posts, so I'll stay away from that.

So to wrap up the series, here are five things Terry and I may have actually done right when it comes to little Jack:

(1) We're letting him try a new family sport: cross country. Like everyone in the family at one point or another has done, Jack plays soccer. Like three of his siblings before him, he has done this since he was a kindergartner. But over the last couple of months he has started distance running through the Wickliffe Junior Olympics program, and it's obvious we've stumbled upon something for which he has talent and from which he derives enjoyment. Bingo. I have no idea what his sporting future holds, but I have a feeling that soccer and cross country will have a hard time co-existing in his life, and that he will eventually (maybe very soon) have to pick one or the other.

(2) We got him swimming lessons when he was a baby. A toddler, really, but still, he was much younger than any of the other kids were when they learned to swim. I think Terry started taking him to lessons when he was 2. I'm amazed at how well kids that age can do in the water, especially since I'm not exactly a fish myself. That was a good call.

(3) We exposed him to electronics fairly early. Like most in his generation, Jack is a technological native. He was proficient in all types of hardware and software from an early age. And while he often spends too much time on various devices, he at least has a sense that there's such a thing as "too much time on devices." He'll learn to balance it all out as he gets older.

(4) We taught him to be affectionate. This may be just Jack's personality, but to this day he still hugs us and tells us he loves us every day. I'll be interested to see how much of that goes away as he hits his teen years, but right now he has no problem showing the world he loves his mom and dad. It's sweet.

(5) We taught him to lose. Now understand, when he was really, really little, I would arrange it so that Jack would win most games of Candyland or Chutes and Ladders. You don't want to crush their dreams quite that early. But for the most part, when we play a family game and Jack wins, he wins on his own. There's a lot of losing in life, and I don't say that in an Eeyore, whoa-is-us manner. It's just the way things are. The sooner you learn that, and the sooner you learn to deal with it, even if it's just a seemingly unimportant card or board game, the better.

Cross country runners are among the toughest people on the planet

And so are wrestlers, but that's another blog post for another day.

My youngest son, Jack, is running cross country for the first time. Well, officially what he's doing is known as the Wickliffe Junior Olympics program, but for all intents and purposes it's Wickliffe Middle School's offseason cross country training program.

(NOTE: Apparently there are people who think the phrase "all intents and purposes" should actually be rendered as "for all intensive purposes." What? Why? Why would you think that? What is an "intensive purpose?" What makes it so much more intensive than other purposes? I don't understand human beings sometimes.)

Anyway, the boy is running cross country. He's still learning the ropes, but the program is clearly awesome and well tailored to someone of Jack's age (11) and temperament (mildly eccentric and easily distracted).

His coach is Coach Todd, a great guy with whom I ran track back in the late 1800s at Wickliffe High School. Or maybe it was the late 1980s. It just seems like it was a long time ago.

Todd was a distance runner way back when and is still in great shape. He pushes the kids, but he doesn't drive them until they throw up or anything. He understands they're at an age where an experience like that will turn them off of the sport forever.

Jack and I go out running together a couple of times a week, and I can see his endurance and focus improving every time we lace up our shoes. It's kind of fun to watch.

I was a Wickliffe track athlete for six years, but I was a sprinter. As I've mentioned before, I thought distance runners were nuts (they are). I didn't join their ranks until I was older and perhaps a little wiser.

Cross country was and is a fall sport. During the fall I played football. Every once in a while I would see the cross country team practicing, which is to say they were out running. You "practice" cross country by running. Lots and lots of running.

Occasionally one of my football teammates would say something about the cross country runners and how they wouldn't last five minutes on a football field. I would laugh and suggest that he wouldn't last five SECONDS in a cross country meet.

I ran with these people every day during track season in the spring, and I knew what they were capable of. I also knew how hard they worked to get better. By the time kids get to high school, you can push them a lot more, but most of the cross country runners I knew pushed themselves. They didn't need a coach with a whistle and a clipboard to motivate them.

Which is to say that cross country runners are, for my money, among the most disciplined, hardest-working athletes in all of sports. And having raised a family of kids who were mostly soccer players, I'm excited at the prospect of having a cross country warrior in our ranks (I think old-time sports writers used to call them "harriers," by the way.)

If you're looking for someone with mental toughness and a true drive to succeed, find a distance runner. You won't be disappointed.