This is one of those weird nights when i’m trying to get the blog done early so I can finally close my eyes…before 11 PM. It has been a week. Twilight broke me then I finally had occasion to go to the pool and even play some hoops with the kids. Turns out I have zero lung capacity and get winded considering whether or not to track down a rebound. Speaking of sports, I wanted to give further consideration to my piece on coaching. I think it bears saying that these coaches care. They work extremely hard for no money and put everything into making the kids successful. I cannot complain about that. All I can do is praise them. However, this isn’t going to be about them. This is about the idea of competition as a whole.
I’ve been thinking about the organized sports world all wrong. It is and should be highly competitive at each level. I say this because these aren’t a bunch of kids gathering on sunday for a pickup game at the temple. That right there is what rec sports ought to look like–kids who are not entirely about that life having fun. Once you slap on a uniform; once you play organized athletics you are signing up for competition. You are saying ‘I am here to represent something’ be it the team on your jersey, your teammates or what have you, the point of being on the team is to respectfully carry on the legacy and tradition of excellence. Nobody gets into sports to suck. People do however enter sports without caring.
That is what I get upset about. I don’t like it when it is clear that some kids are about it and others want to pet a butterfly. That mix of mentality brings the team down and turns the experience into something you could’ve gotten in the back yard, not something that you paid a bunch of money to see happen.