Yesterday I talked about the memory of youth sports. Today I’m going to spend ten minutes reflecting on the next step. My youngest turns 13 soon, and will be sliding into his 8th grade year come fall. We’ve officially ended his youth tackle career. So, now what? He has goals of his own. He wants to develop into a star hurdler and not only win the district, but hit the top of the world as #1 in the US in 75m hurdles. He has a shot as he’s a top 15 guy right now and he sucked (his words). What we’ve long talked about is this gap year being designed as a transition to High School level athleticism. That means designing a full-year plan to transition him to a player who can be starter at the next level. The bad news is: We are already behind schedule.
The first chance he gets to show his stuff is in the spring program, which starts basically at the beginning of April. This brings everything to a head at once. He runs the conference championship in hurdles two weeks after the program begins. So, I have 11 months left to get this kid right. So, that means that my last true gesture to his sports life as a coach/contributor is to get him trained up in the next 11. As we speak he’s at a camp with the Cardinals staff and the local high school staff trying to see where he is at in the larger pecking order.
So, what is the plan? I don’t know. I’ll be developing that plan over the next few weeks. All I know for sure is that it starts soon. Should be fun developing it as well.