Every scar tells a story

I wish I looked as good as this guy, though I could do without the foot-long leg scar.

You might have read today's headline and assumed I was referring to emotional scars. While it's true those types of non-visible scars always have a story, today I'm talking about actual physical scars.

I have four of them on my body, and on those rare occasions when I notice and think about them, they take me back to different times of my life.

There is, for example, the gash on the side of my right leg I got when I was 10 and we were jumping over the bushes at Mike Ostack's house.

As I leapt over those bushes and landed, I grazed against the jagged edge of a rusty old metal garbage can on the other side. It was enough to tear my jeans and the skin underneath, resulting in my first set of stitches (five of them). I think there was also a tetanus shot involved, or at least I hope there was.

Mike was one of my best friends in the world, but within a year he and his family would pack up and move to Stone Mountain, Georgia. I've seen him only a few times since. Nowadays our only communication comes in the form of LinkedIn messages exchanged once a year on his birthday in February.

Life goes on. We all have people who come in and out of our little spheres.

There's also the cut on my chin I got playing football.

Well, to be honest, I wasn't "playing" football. It was during pregame warm-ups my junior year. I was on the scout defensive team as a cornerback. On one play, Dave Engeman, a strong, talented senior guard, pulled around my side and gave me a stiff forearm to the chin strap.

I walked back to the sideline, unbuckled my helmet and felt my chin, only to pull back my hand and see it was covered in blood.

That was a four-stitch cut sewed up by our team doctor in the locker room. He used a topical anesthetic that lasted for maybe two of the four stitches.

I'm not going to lie: It hurt. And later the cut got infected and smelled funky for days.

On the top of my left foot is a gnarly scar I picked up in my friend Matt's basement, sometime between the garbage can and football cuts. We were playing hide and seek in the pitch dark, as we often did, and I somehow managed to rake that bare foot across the sharp metal corner of a dehumidifier unit.

You have to understand, kids: In the 60s, 70s and 80s, consumer products were often made with only functionality in mind and not necessarily safety.

My mom took me to the hospital, and amazingly the staff there decided not to stitch the cut but instead just bandaged it. It eventually healed after several weeks, but I always thought that was the wrong call.

Anyway, the only other prominent physical scar I have is actually two scars, and I don't remember a thing about how I got them.

They were the result of a hernia surgery I underwent at 18 months of age. I've heard stories of how I would cry and cry at night, and no matter what my mom or sisters tried, they couldn't comfort me.

Turns out I had a bilateral hernia. One day they dropped me off at the hospital for the surgery and I had to stay there overnight. My sister Debbie always says it was the saddest thing to see me in a crib in my little cowboy-themed hospital gown as they waved goodbye and left me alone.

All's well that ends well, though, and I'm happy to report I've had no issues since.

I was thinking of leading today's post with a photo of one of my scars. I didn't ultimately do that, but rest assured that if I had, it wouldn't have been the hernia scars...

What I didn't tell the kids I spoke to at football camp

Photo credit: Kathy Rypinski

Last month, I had the privilege of briefly addressing a group of young boys getting ready to participate in the Wickliffe Football Camp.

When I say "briefly addressing," I mean it. This was a collection of nearly 40 kids from kindergarten through 6th grade who just wanted to run around, learn a thing or two about football, and generally have fun. They couldn't have been especially interested in what some middle-aged guy who hadn't played the sport in nearly four decades had to say.

So I kept my remarks very brief, as you might imagine.

I talked about my own experiences playing in Wickliffe. I talked about the city's great football tradition. I talked about my role as an announcer for Blue Devil football games and how I couldn't wait to announce their names on Friday nights in just a few years.

That kind of thing.

I was looking to motivate them a little and get them even more excited for what they would be doing at camp.

What I didn't want to tell them was that they had chosen a fiercely difficult sport...one that could be frustrating and even dangerous at times.

I didn't tell them how, in the middle of my sophomore season, seeing no clear path to ever becoming a starter at the varsity level, I wanted to quit football.

I didn't tell them how my forearms, every year from August through October, were bruised various shades of purple and yellow from all of the blocking and hitting we did in practices and games.

I didn't tell them there were times I got hit so hard I saw stars.

Or about the practice when I took a handoff, got tackled low by one of my teammates, and found both knees swollen and full of fluid just an hour later.

I didn't mention the fact that I opted not to lift weights in the offseason as so many guys did, and that this hurt my chances of getting more playing time (though I always thought this was fair...it was my decision, and there were rightful consequences for it).

I didn't bring up the time in a junior varsity game when I got speared in the groin and went down in intense pain, having to reveal to my coach that I stupidly wasn't wearing a cup because I thought it slowed me down.

I didn't talk about the sweat and pain of endless summer double session practices.

Yet maybe I should have brought up some or all of that. Because collectively, those experiences made playing football one of the best decisions of my life. I learned all of the cliched lessons about toughness, determination, persistence, teamwork, etc.

They were probably too young to realize how anything worth doing is probably going to come with some discomfort, and how there would be times they would question their decision to engage in it in the first place.

That will all come later. For now, they just needed to know that running, catching and throwing a football around is a heck of a lot of fun.

They'll learn the deeper lessons in time.

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.

Learning (finally) to appreciate the memories while you're still making them

Thank you, Ron Kotar, for one of my favorite shots of drum major Jack!

We are in the midst of a 10-week period during which Friday nights in our family can only be described as chaotic.

For many years now, our Friday evenings from late August through the end of October have revolved around high school football games and halftime band performances. All of our kids have been members of the Wickliffe Swing Band at one point or another, and my son Jared also kicked for the football team for three years.

At the very least, that has meant hastily consumed dinners, getting kids to the school on time before a game, and dressing up in our finest Blue Devil gear.

But this year the chaos—I can think of no other appropriate word—has ratcheted up by a factor of about 10. To wit:

• Jack, who is enjoying his senior year victory lap, is both co-drum major and band president. These roles encompass a lot, not the least of which is trotting out to the center of the field at halftime along with his fellow drum major Clare, flinging a baton high into the air, and trying to catch it when it comes back down. All with 90% of people in the stadium watching the two of them. I don't know how nerve-wracking it is for Clare and Jack, but it's terrifying for me.
  
  
• Terry, who has long volunteered her time to the Swing Band, has taken her involvement this year to a new and presumably unprecedented level ("unprecedented," at least, in Wickliffe band history). She is not only in her second year as Band Booster president and her ninth year as chair of the uniform committee, she also recently took on the official title of "assistant director." Like, she's now an official Wickliffe City Schools employee and everything. It is risking gross understatement to say she is invested in the success of this ensemble.
  
  
• My Friday night contributions pale in comparison with Jack's and Terry's, but I'm in my ninth year as the Swing Band announcer as well as my first year as the full-time Wickliffe football PA announcer. The poor people who come to our games cannot escape the reach of my voice without running to their cars and driving home.

So fall Fridays are a production. They're also fleeting. If Wickliffe doesn't make the state football playoffs this year, after tonight we only have six games to go. Then, just as suddenly as it began, it will be over.

This time next year, Jack will be in college. Terry may or may not continue her involvement with the band, but it will be at a scaled-back level if she does. And while I still plan to announce, it won't feel quite the same as it does this year.

All of which is why I'm enjoying every second of this season. You would think, with five children (four of whom are out of high school and in their 20s), I would have learned long ago how quickly it all passes and to appreciate it. But until this year, I really hadn’t.

For the past decade and a half, we've always had at least one child at the high school, with the promise of more to come. Even last year we knew Jack still had his senior season ahead. So I just jumped from one event to the next without ever stopping to take in the moments and savor each one.

Now, with something of a life transition staring us in the face, I find myself pausing on Friday nights and just looking around. I listen to the crowd. I watch Jack march. I observe Terry in her element, doing everything she can to make sure the band is put in the best position to succeed. And I smile at all of it. I take a breath and acknowledge what a special time this is for us.

And how, in no time at all, it will have passed us by.

As recently as a month ago, I dreaded the thought of it ending. But now I don't really mind that much. Just being present in the moment and knowing it's a memory in the making changes the whole dynamic. It will end, yes, but that's OK. It's special BECAUSE it's going to end.

At the beginning of every halftime show, I get to announce Jack's name as co-drum major and Terry's name as assistant director (she's only just now getting comfortable with me doing that...not much of a spotlight-seeker, that one). Even counting upcoming band festivals, there are fewer than 10 such opportunities remaining.

With each one, I lean into "Jaaaaaaaaaack Tennaaaaaaant!!!" and "assistant director MRS. Terry Tennant!" just a little bit more.

What an incredible blessing this has been. And still is. And always will be.

This time of year used to mean hot, sweaty double-session football practices

I played football for five years, from eighth grade through senior year. It was not my main sport (that was track), but in retrospect, I've always been glad I went through the experience. It taught me a lot about myself, hard work, and all of those other things sports are supposed to teach you.

We always started evening conditioning practices around the first of July, but the real work began in early August when we would commence two-a-day practices. These were three-hour sessions held twice each day for about 2 1/2 weeks in advance of the first game.

"Doubles," as we called them, were designed to accomplish a number of things:

• To install and perfect our offensive and defensive schemes
• To build a sense of team unity and shared hard work
• To condition us physically (we wore full uniforms for almost every practice, no matter how hot it was)
• Perhaps most importantly, to condition us mentally

By the end of the first week of double sessions, most of us were dragging. The heat, the running, the hitting, the brain work expended to learn the playbook...everything came together to break you down a little and, ultimately, become a better player and better teammate.

The hitting was a little worse for those who, like me, were running backs. One way or another, we got popped on every play. Looking back on it, I'm proud of how much punishment those of us who toted the ball took.

There was some sort of conditioning work at the end of every practice. Sometimes it was sprints, sometimes it was a longer run, sometimes it was up-downs, sometimes it was bear crawls, etc. All of this strenuous activity was the reason we were never, ever out-conditioned by our opponents in the fourth quarter of games.

The conditioning ramped up several notches at the end of the afternoon practice on the last Thursday of double sessions. "Bloody Thursday" is what the players called it, though Coach Smith, who oversaw the team's conditioning work, liked to refer to it as "Celebration Thursday."

Either way, it was rough. It was endless running, movement, calisthenics, and whatever other evil activity Coach Smith could think of. It lasted a long, long time, and sometimes guys simply couldn't make it to the end. Your lungs burned, your muscles were awash in lactic acid, and everything in your brain screamed "Stop, stop, stop, stop!"

But when that final whistle blew, the feeling of accomplishment and elation was unmatched. I can't even describe it.

If I miss anything, it's that feeling. But honestly, I'll take being 51 years old now over going back to those brutal double-session practices any day.

When I was a freshman in high school, the seniors seemed like adults to me

What I must have looked like in the Fall of 1984 when I entered high school and got to rub shoulders with all of the seniors.

My high school housed grades 9 through 12, which meant that, at the beginning of every school year, you had 14-year-olds barely starting puberty sharing the building with nearly 18-year-olds who looked like they probably dropped their kids off at daycare that morning before coming to class.

When I was one of those 14-year-old freshmen (who admittedly was almost finished with puberty by that point), I idolized those seniors in the Class of 1985. To me, they looked, talked, and acted like they were adults.

Names from that class that come immediately to mind include Vince Federico, Lisa Strmac, and Kevin Horten, among many others. These were grown-ups to me, and it always made me feel that much smaller, younger, and immature.

In retrospect, this is silly. I look back now and realize these people were essentially just slightly older children. But at the time, the difference in age, experience, and demeanor seemed huge.

When I played football, there was a tradition in which, at one practice a year, the freshman team offense would go up against the varsity defense, and vice-versa. This was full-go, full-contact football, and I always assumed the intention was to allow ninth-graders the chance to experience what getting hit by a varsity player felt like.

I was on that freshmen offense, and I was a running back, which meant I was fair game for these 12th-grade adults to basically maul as they pleased. I took a handoff and ran right into Vince Federico, who I believe was a linebacker and had the ability to break full-size cars in two with his bare hands.

Vince smashed me to the ground, but then he popped up, offered his hand, pulled me to my feet and said something like, "Good job, big boy."

I will never forget that. The hit stung for a moment, but his encouraging words stayed with me.

Which makes me wish that, by the time I was a senior, I had taken the whole job of being a leader and role model more seriously.

I was captain of the track team, for instance. I worked hard and like to think I set a good example that way, but I wish I had interacted more directly with the underclassmen to help them improve. I wasn't mature enough at that point to do it, to my own loss.

There is probably a lesson in there for all of us as parents, aunts/uncles, managers, business professionals, etc. Someone is almost always looking to you to set the right tone or model correct behavior, whether you realize it or not.

Bottom line: Be Vince Federico and not me.

The one athletic skill I wish I had? Being a good ice skater.

In that brief time of my life during which I competed in scholastic sports (7th through 12th grades), I quickly became aware of my own limitations as an athlete.

I had speed. I was fast, which is useful in a variety of sports.

Until my freshman year of high school or thereabouts, I also had height. I reached my final adult height in 7th grade, then I just stopped growing. If you know me now, you will laugh at the fact that I played center on our middle school basketball teams.

I also had some small degree of power, as evidenced mainly in how far I could hit a baseball or softball, or run over a smaller defensive back in football.

And that was about it.

The list of the things I lacked athletically was far longer. I have never been particularly coordinated, I wasn't born with natural upper-body strength (and never had much desire to put in the work to develop it), and I wasn't blessed with the type of body positioning and spatial awareness that most sports stars have in abundance.

My 8th-grade football and basketball coach, the legendary Mr. Lowell Grimm, once said to me, "Tennant, you're an enigma."

And he was right. I am not only left-handed, I am very left-handed. To the point that I was far more comfortable as a running back carrying the ball on plays that ran to the left than those that ran to the right. In basketball, I could grab rebounds and occasionally block shots, but I was lucky to sink one out of every 10 free throws.

So when I stepped into a pair of ice skates for the first time in my life at the age of 22, I was kind of hoping it was something that would play to my strengths and cover up my weaknesses.

It was not.

Ice skating (and doing it well) is an amazingly impressive feat to me. I can get moving on skates and keep moving, and I can kind of do the snowplow stop if I'm not moving too fast and have sufficient distance in front of me.

But I cannot skate backwards, I cannot do crossovers, and I cannot do the sideways hockey stop. I have tried all of these things over and over and over, and I simply do not have the ability to pull them off.

I think that's why I like watching hockey so much. Even after 30 years of intently following the game, I can't get over how well those guys skate. They make it look effortless.

I make it look painful.

On the plus side, however, I'll bet none of them were ever as proud as I was to be called an "enigma."

My friends and I used to play Kill the Man all the time

I don't consider myself a particularly violent person, but I do enjoy watching hockey fights, and I'm glad I spent a good chunk of my childhood playing a game that goes by various names, but that my friends and I simply called "Kill the Man."

The game itself was simple, if not downright stupid. One kid had a football. He would run around and around someone's backyard while every other kid – it could have been two or three other kids or a dozen other kids...it always varied – tried to tackle him.

And these were not soft tackles, mind you. The game was Kill the Man, not Gently Dispatch the Man. Once you were tackled, you either gave the football to the guy who tackled you and he would then run around and eventually get smeared, or you threw the ball into the air and the guy who caught it would become The Man.

In either case, I'm so glad I spent hours playing this game because it taught me three things:

(1) How to avoid contact when I could and absorb it when I had to

(2) How to act like I wasn't in pain when in fact it felt like my leg had just been broken

(3) How to diffuse the type of tense situation that always arises when you're playing a contact sport and tempers flare

All of these skills have proven to be valuable in life, in football and otherwise.

Do kids still play Kill the Man? I'm not sure they do. They should.

Hey, you guys, high school football season starts tonight!

I have an unhealthy love for high school football.

In my life I have played it, written about it, and watched a whole lot of it. When I was a newspaper sports journalist, the vast majority of my attention from mid-August through the state championship games in late November was devoted to high school football.

And now, I am a parent of a player.

Well, sort of. I mean, I happen to think Jared is a high school football player, but some would disagree because he's "only" the kicker. He also plays soccer at Wickliffe High School, but beginning tonight and for the next several Fridays, he'll put on the shoulder pads and become a football player.

Jared has made one tackle in his career, and it was the last game of last season, when he only handled kickoffs for Wickliffe (and not placekicks). A kid on the other team fielded Jared's kickoff at about his own 15-yard line, darted up the middle, avoided three or four of our tacklers, cut to the right sideline and was off to the races.

Jared had been doing kickoffs all season, but he had yet to get involved in any meaningful contact. Until that moment.

As the returner sped down the sideline, I realized the only thing standing between him and a touchdown was my son, the kicker. Kickers aren't known as proficient tacklers, and truth be told, no one had ever taught Jared how to go about getting someone running full speed down to the ground.

But to my immense pride, The Boy took exactly the right angle, put his shoulder down, and knocked the returner out of bounds at the 6-yard line. True, the other team would go on to score a few plays later, but it wasn't because of my son. My son made a tackle and helped his team.

Which brings us to this season, when he is the clear #1 kicker, handling both kickoffs and placekicks for the Blue Devils, the same team for which I served as a running back almost 30 years ago.

I realize that in the grand scheme of things, the results of these games are meaningless. But this is my son, playing for my team, engaging in a sport with which he has only one season's experience. Every time they announce his name I honestly almost tear up, even if it's just when he's coming onto the field to execute one of the many squib kickoffs the Wickliffe coaching staff loves so much.

But beyond The Jared Factor, I also love high school football for the sights, the sounds, and even the smells (crisp fall air, greasy concession stand food, stinky shoulder pads, etc.) The deeper we get into the season, the colder it gets. But no matter how wintry it is, no matter how the team is performing, the Wickliffe faithful come out to watch their team, both at home and on the road.

And I'm one of those fans. I also serve as the PA announcer for the band, and it should be noted that Jared grabs his saxophone and plays with that band during every halftime, as does my trumpet-playing freshman daughter Melanie. If nothing else, Terry and I had a lot of kids to ensure that various Wickliffe teams and organizations would be well stocked into the immediate future...

Anyway, game #1 is tonight, as Wickliffe travels west to Rocky River, Ohio, to take on the Lutheran West High School Longhorns. I can't wait. Go Devils!

Everything I think is true about my past is apparently wrong

Not long ago, I found a plastic bin in our storage room filled with memorabilia from my high school and college years.

When this happens and you're in your mid-40s, you may as well block off the next couple of hours on your calendar, because you're going to have a grand old time rummaging through that bin and reliving what apparently passes for your glory years.

And it was fun. Among the items I came across was a spiral-bound booklet recapping my senior football season in the fall of 1987. I read through almost the entire thing.

Football was a funny thing for me. I was the only person I knew who played football mostly to stay in shape for track, which was my main sport. For most other guys, sports like track were used to stay in shape for football.

I was a running back, and a career back-up at that. This was partly because I had some excellent athletes playing ahead of me in Scott Martin (tailback) and Ron Szinte (fullback). I was faster than both of them, but they were both stronger than me and had much better football sense.

We also had a very good team overall, going 8-2 my senior year and losing to Youngstown Cardinal Mooney, the eventual Division III Ohio state champions, in our one and only playoff game.

As a result, I carried the ball on the varsity level fewer than 30 times through four seasons. I managed to score four touchdowns during that time, and I somehow averaged more than 10 yards a carry my senior year, but I was never much more than a third option when it came to running the ball in our Wing-T offense.

Which was actually fine with me. Like I said, football was there to keep me in shape in the months before indoor track started. And what I mostly liked about it was the contact and daily routine of our practices.

Anyway, as I read through that old booklet and relived those 11 games from my senior year, I realized that over time I have completely fabricated many memories about them.

Final scores I have in my head were wrong. Carries I thought I had were nowhere to be found in the stats. And details I was sure would never leave my brain were almost as inaccurate as they could be.

This leads me to believe that at some point when we reach our 20s, we create a narrative of our childhoods and our high school experiences that we take as gospel truth. And many times it is.

But in some cases, we either believe what we want to be true, or else we inadvertently change up the story in our heads and after awhile it becomes our own personal version of reality.

I can't tell you whether this is good or bad. Only that it is.

I'd like to think that my overall impression of high school is accurate. As I remember it, I had a ball. I have no desire to repeat that time of my life, really, but all in all, it was a fun time for me.

So now I'm scared to death that somehow these happy memories are going to get blown up the way my supposedly crystal-clear football memories were rocked by reality nearly 30 years after the fact.

Do me a favor: If I served time in prison or something when I was in high school and I've simply blocked it out, please don't tell me. I'm perfectly fine living in this Bubble of Happiness I've created for myself.