What we did right with each of our kids - Part III - Jared

(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.)

My son Jared, now 18, was as tall as me when he was 12 or 13 years old. This isn't saying much as I'm of exceedingly average height (5-9½, thank you very much), but now that he has topped out at around 6-1, "tall" is one of his defining characteristics.

There are many people taller than Jared, of course, but for our family, he's a giant.

Speaking of which – true story – one time when was about 10, he was playing soccer and one of the players on the opposing team urged his teammates to "cover the giant," referring to Jared. Every once in a while, Terry or I will exclaim, "Cover the giant!" And the other one will chuckle appreciatively.

For many years, Jared was my Man Child. He looked older than he really was up until high school, at which point he looked like someone who was exactly where they should be. Now, as high school winds down for him, he looks to me like someone trying to figure out where he belongs next.

Which is perfect. That's what you should be doing when you're 18.

Here are five things I'd like to think Jared's mother and I did right for him:

(1) We let him be who he is. Jared is a quiet guy. He talks to people now more than he used to, but he is still widely known as The Quiet Tennant. And that's fine. Jared is who he is, and any attempt to make him seem more outgoing would have been disingenuous and ultimately unfair. (By the way, he and I have always talked a lot. If you know Jared only in passing, you might be surprised to learn he is one of the funniest people I know. He has a dry sense of humor that just kills me.)

(2) We encouraged him to kick a football. In the grand scheme of things, the three years Jared spent as a kicker for the Wickliffe High School football team may seem unimportant. And yes, he will undoubtedly do far more important things in his life. But the experience of putting on the shoulder pads and playing under the lights every Friday night was one he'll never forget, I'm sure. He got there largely on his own. No one sought him out to kick. As a freshman, he asked the coach what he needed to do to become a kicker. He found out where he needed to be and when, and he showed up. He found what he needed to learn, and he learned it. All on his own. No kicking coach or anything, just Jared. Let's hear it for personal initiative.

(3) We let him destroy our garage with hockey pucks. OK, we did't let him do this, but to Terry's credit, she has kept herself from killing Jared for putting a variety of dents in our garage door and gouges in our garage walls. Jared never played organized hockey, but I played living room and driveway hockey with him when he was a lot younger, and to this day his love of the sport continues to grow. When I think back to my own sports experiences with my dad, most of the memories revolve around attending Indians games and watching Friday night boxing matches together. I hope that one day for Jared, one of his memories of his dad will be watching, playing and talking about hockey. It's our thing, as is a shared love for Cleveland sports.

(4) We told him what he should do and watched when he chose to ignore our advice. The older he gets, the more The Boy seems to follow our teaching (sometimes grudgingly). But over the years, he has more than once gone his own direction, often with less-than-desirable results. I'll say it again: There is value in screwing up. Let it happen.

(5) We taught him he is loved. Jared is not an outwardly affectionate guy. He will occasionally hug his mother, but it's not an everyday thing. Still, in everything he has done, and in every decision he has made, we tried to make it clear that we loved him no matter what. I think he gets that concept in his head for now. Someday he'll understand it in his heart, too.

I like hearing my kids' names announced over public address systems

We've entered the fall sports season, which in my house means a whole lotta soccer and a weekly dose of high school football.

It also means driving hither and yon – though I continue to have no idea where "Yon" is – to various schools and parks, sitting on the sidelines and cheering my offspring on, sometimes to victory, sometimes not.

When you're in the middle of it, it seems like the season will never end. There's always another game on the schedule, sometimes two at once, in which case Terry and I will oftentimes employ a divide-and-conquer strategy.

But then comes late October and suddenly it does end. The air gets colder, the leaves go away, and you realize how fast it really went.

Which is why I'm trying to enjoy every second of the season that has just begun.

It started out in a bit of a rocky fashion this past week for my three middle kids, all of whom injured themselves in their first soccer games of the season. For Melanie it was a broken wrist that resulted in a cast, though she'll be off the field for far less time than we originally thought. For Jack it was an injured toe – a toe he had already injured once or twice before. And for Jared it was a ball to the face that resulted in cuts to his mouth and a momentary loss of consciousness.

Soccer is not for the faint of heart, no matter what anybody tells you.

I love soccer. I coached it for more than a decade, and all five of my children have played it to one degree or another. Our house has been full of shin guards and soccer socks and deflated soccer balls for several years now. I'll be so sad when our time with the sport finally comes to an end.

Honestly, though, it's football that excites me most. As I've chronicled here before, Jared serves as the kicker for my beloved Wickliffe High School Blue Devils. He's entering his third and final season in that role, and his second as the full-time placekicker (as a sophomore he was a kickoff specialist, which honestly isn't something you see a whole lot of on a Division V football team).

As is now common at the high school level, Jared is not a full-time football player. His "day job" is soccer, and he plays that at the varsity level for Wickliffe. But on Friday nights he puts on the shoulder pads and kicks the oblong spheroid.

He's not on the field most of the time, but when he is, he tends to be the center of attention. Not because he's a superstar or anything, but because the kicker figures prominently in special teams play.

As such, Jared's name is announced several times over the course of a game, whether he's setting up for a kickoff or stepping onto the field to attempt an extra point. That's just the way it is. Kickers, even part-timers, get mentioned by the PA guy every time they're in the game.

And I love it. I'm not going to lie to you, I love it. We're only in Week #1 of the 2016 football season, and already I know how much I'm going to miss hearing, "Teeing up the ball for Wickliffe, number 19 Jared Tennant."

Most people in the stands don't even notice it, but I do. Because that's my boy. That's my son. I realize he's only the kicker, and the guys who are out there play after play work far harder than he does. But that's my boy, and there is only this little sliver of time when he's going to play on the same field I played on, and his name is going to be announced for anyone who cares to hear it.

He's a senior now, which means that come November, those days will end. I hear it from parents of former high school running backs and quarterbacks all the time. They dearly miss hearing the PA announcer intone, "<INSERT NAME HERE> the ball carrier."

So I'm trying to enjoy every minute of it that remains. And I'm doing the same in soccer, where I get to hear Jared's and Melanie's names announced all the time, whether they're starting the game or coming in as substitutes. I particularly like how Wickliffe teacher and alumnus Jim Fatica, who announces our girls soccer games, says, "For Wickliffe...Number 7....Melanie Tennant."

Anyway, yeah, I should be telling you how much I love the thrill of competition and the lessons my kids are learning from sports. And I do. But I wouldn't be honest with you if I didn't admit how much I enjoy hearing Jared's name announced for another kick.

By the way, the Blue Devils begin the 2016 football season this Friday, August 26, at home against the Longhorns of Lutheran West High School. Kickoff – potentially off the foot of my 18-year-old – is at 7 p.m. at Wickliffe Memorial Stadium.

Number 19, Jared Tennant, and all of the other seniors on the roster begin their farewell tour. And I don't plan to miss a second of it.

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!

Woe to you, parents of goalies, kickers and pitchers!

If you have a kid who participates in sports, you know how simultaneously wonderful and agonizing it can be to watch them play.

Wonderful, of course, when they succeed. You hope it teaches them the value of hard work, effort, being part of a team, etc. The joy on their faces is like nothing else.

And agonizing, of course, when they fail. However terrible they feel, you as the parent feel 10 times worse. There are also lessons to be learned from failure, but they're less apparent (and less welcome) in the moment.

All parents of athletes know these emotions. But the people who feel them most are the parents of kids who are soccer/hockey goalies, football kickers, and baseball pitchers.

That's because those are the positions in which success or failure are particularly amplified. These are the players who are out there by themselves, standing in the most glaring of spotlights.

The goalie who saves a penalty kick, the kicker who puts a game-winning field goal through the uprights, and the pitcher who leads his team to victory are all heroes. But the keeper who lets in a weak goal, the kicker who botches that field goal attempt, and the pitcher who gives up 10 runs in an inning are all anti-heroes. Not hated, exactly, but certainly the root cause of everyone's disappointment.

Regardless of how they perform, goalies, kickers and pitchers are all to be commended just for putting themselves out there in such high-profile situations. The very act of trotting onto the field to try and kick an oblong spheroid through two narrow goal posts from several yards away takes guts of a high degree.

But as in the world of work, athletes of all ages are ultimately judged on whether or not they get the job done. And eventually they all learn what failure in those circumstances is like.

I am the parent of a soccer goalie (Melanie, age 14) and a football kicker (Jared, age 17). In Melanie's case, even beyond success and failure is the very real specter of injury. Soccer goalies are tasked with diving on balls amidst a swirling sea of flailing legs and rock-hard cleats. They get hurt all the time, as Melanie's twice-broken fingers can attest.

As for Jared, he had it relatively easy last football season when he only handled kickoffs. There's not a lot of pressure there, though he did have his ups and downs. This season he's competing to be the placekicker and kickoff guy, so the pressure increases exponentially. Botch an extra point and you could lose a game. No kick in football is easy, but kicking when the game is on the line is one of the most pressure-packed situations in all of sports.

So hats off to the young athletes who willingly step into those positions. And hats off and prayers to their parents, who rejoice and suffer right along with them to a level the kids can't even comprehend until they one day become parents themselves. I share in your nervous stares and sweaty palms.