Tag Archives: sports

After we’re done inflating your ego, can I play a computer game?

Fathers are inherently selfish. We want our kids to like the stuff we like.

Mothers also have inherent traits, but I won’t go into that because those fall outside of my personal experience. Also, I don’t want to sleep on the couch tonight.

To a father, delight is seeing your child excited about one of your interests. With my oldest, this has been a win some, lose some proposition. He’s always been interested in geography and history, but not so much in reading or sports.

For a boy anticipating the 1st grade, he has good reading skills. Still, he hasn’t ever shown much joy at the prospect of reading. He’s clung to the standard “Reading is boring.” ideology common among boys.

So he wouldn’t lose ground over summer vacation, my wife took him to the library and signed him up for the summer reading program. He showed me the books he checked out. They share a single theme. We began with Weapons of the Civil War. He will likely be the only 1st grader in his school with the word Howitzer in his lexicon.

The unspecified prizes from the library program are of limited motivational value. What does motivate him is that we allow him time playing computer games after he reads. This is a win-win, since some of his games teach him things, like reading graphs, and all of them keep him quiet for an hour.

He’s begun asking to read. He’s politically astute enough to claim he wants to read so he can improve his skills, but we all know it’s so he can earn computer time. Either way, I’ll take it.

Like with reading, the boy never showed much interest in football or basketball. I don’t know why, but this summer he has been asking to play basketball with me. I’ve been meaning to fix our driveway backboard since we bought the house in 2005. Meanwhile, we play on a plastic kids’ hoop. Under the plastic hoop rules, the boy needs only dribble the ball when convenient and Daddy must stand clear whenever the boy announces his intention to shoot.

 

lay up

“Get your defense out of the way, I’m about to shoot.”

I was pleasantly surprised last week when he asked if we could watch a basketball game on TV together. There aren’t many basketball games on TV in summer, so we settled for the replay of a college football game from 1981. When Mommy called to see what we were up to, he told her, “We’re just watching a football game from when Daddy was 14.” We bet on who would win the game. I had the advantage, having been alive at the first playing. I got to spend time sharing one of my interests with my son, so I guess I won.

There’s no guarantee that my son’s new-found interests will last. I’m making the most of them while they’re fresh. We’ve got a library down the street, and that basketball hoop I’ve meant to fix for the past nine years – I ordered a replacement backboard today.

face rebound

In basketball vernacular, this is known as a face rebound.

Let the game come to you

My son scored a goal at his last soccer game. I’m not sure how it happened, and neither is he, but we’ll take it.

You know that kid who dribbles the ball down the length of the field, trailing behind a comet tail of slower children, and boots in five goals per game? My boy is the one at the very back of the following pack, jogging along to see what all the hubbub is at the front.

soccer star

You know those athletes who fail because they try to do too much? He’s not falling into that trap.

He’s not a natural athlete, but that doesn’t bother his enjoyment of the game. Soccer isn’t so much a sport as a social activity to him anyway. He’s the kid who peels off from the action of his own game to wave down his friend who is playing on the adjacent field.

The propensity to get distracted from the game is not uncommon among kindergarteners. This is a good and natural thing. It also has the potential to be comical. During the last game, a child climbed up into a pine tree bordering the field and called the names of players. The players took turns ignoring the action to squint into the tree and try to identify the climber until adults ruined the fun by making him come down.

soccer distractions

“I think that tree just called my name.”

When it comes to style of play, my son is not a dribbler. He is not often very near the ball anyway, but when happenstance does nudge the ball close to him, he is likely to give it a good boot and let the other children chase it down. I am proud to say he almost always kicks it in the right direction.

I am thankful that I wasn’t trying to see the kid up in the tree during that glorious moment when my little superstar tallied his spectacular goal.

Somehow, his team had maneuvered the ball onto the offensive side of the field, which is rare enough in itself. My boy had very cleverly positioned himself on the periphery of the mob,  letting the other children endanger their shins. This wise strategy was bound to pay off eventually.

*Begin slow motion narration*

With six kids kicking it at once, the ball squirted randomly out of the crowd and rolled to my boy’s feet. Finding himself temporarily unable to locate any friends in nearby games, he happened to be watching his own game at that moment.

The ball was at his feet. It was time to give it his one good boot. Turing himself in the proper direction (his best soccer skill), he found himself staring into the empty goal.

He cocked his leg. The other children were almost upon him.

Just in time, my little sniper unleashed his mighty shoe and sent the ball rolling with pinpoint accuracy over those 10 feet and into the goal.

*Resume normal speed narration*

His teammates bounced around him as he launched the celebration. It was a moment of immense pride for me. The boy may not be a natural athlete, but he sure can dance.

Protect your parts

We’ve signed our kindergartener up for soccer this spring. It seemed like a good deal until we realized we had to buy him a jersey, a ball, spiked shoes, and shin guards. I don’t know if we were required to get the shoes, but everything came as a package at the sporting goods store. They saw us coming from miles away.

The shin guards were deemed essential. I suppose this is the way of the world, but it struck me as overkill. I played after-school soccer in elementary school, and we never entertained the idea of protecting our shins. Naked shins were part of the competition. If you couldn’t kick the ball, you compensated by nailing another kid in the shin. Likewise, you had to be aware of your surroundings, inasmuch as they contained other kids’ shoes. After limping home a few times, you learned to pay attention to the game.

I don’t think kids have changed. This smells like adults fearing liability. I’m confident my son will learn to hate wearing shin guards after 30 seconds. They will watch his soccer matches from the trunk of the car. He’ll get kicked in the shin, it will hurt, and maybe he’ll learn to move a little quicker when an expensive soccer shoe is sailing toward him. The thing for the courts to know is that his parents were warned to properly equip him.

putting on shin gaurds

This is how we put on our new shin guards.

shin kickin'

And this is why we put them on. Forget soccer, Daddy could use a pair of these for walking around the house.

I played a lot of baseball when I was young. I already had a glove when I started Little League, so the only thing my mother ever had to buy me was a jock strap. I was her fourth son, but the only one she ever had to buy a cup for. I wonder if she realized her good fortune.

For some reason, we didn’t need a cup to play our regular season. Around July, the coaches chose an All Star team from our town to play against neighboring towns. For this we needed to wear cups, because outsiders would certainly be less considerate of our collective loins than friends and neighbors were.

My mom was inexperienced at selecting such equipment. Consequently, she presented me, at age 10, with an adult cup. I didn’t know the difference; all I knew was that it was difficult to walk, let alone run, wearing that monster. This was not the problem it might have been as I was not much of an All Star. There was little call for me to do much running in the dugout. Through the games, I, and my man-sized bulge, kept company at the end of the bench. Thank goodness, I never had to waddle out into the light of day and play ball in that condition.

Paba Bear and Baby Bear

Size matters – when you’ve got to fit that thing in your pants.

By the next season, we figured out our mistake. I got the appropriate equipment and was able to ride the bench in relative comfort. So I guess the second cup was worth the money. I hope we get that much value out of my son’s shin guards.

You can compete for a gold medal as soon as family time is over

I made some predictions in a recent post. Prediction #1: My son and I would attempt to catch some Olympic cross-country skiing on TV. Prediction #2: Those races might inspire us to hit the trails together. Prediction #3: This would cause me to transfer the burden of my unfulfilled dreams of Olympic glory onto his shoulders, in an attempt to live vicariously through him, as fathers of my ilk are wont to do.

Skiing with Calvin

And after he won his gold medals, he’d be invited to the white house to meet the President and First Lady.

Skipping primetime coverage of the elegant and glamorous sports, we were able to catch some fleeting moments of our favorite gritty, ugly sports during the afternoon, better-than-dead-air, filler broadcasts. We enjoyed truncated depictions of random cross-country races. We even caught a biathlon event. We may have been the only two Americans who enjoyed it. I understand; biathlon is too slow for this country. Had it been developed here, it would be done on downhill skis, and with a machine gun. And I’d kind of like to watch that too (but not in person).

My prediction #1: CORRECT

Having ferreted out our favorite Olympic sports and taken inspiration from them, we went to the park to emulate the Olympians. We didn’t attempt biathlon practice, not because it wouldn’t have been fun for us and exciting for the other park patrons; rather, neither of us wanted to go chasing after the Nerf bullets.

My prediction #2: CORRECT

Boys playing in the park

Nothing livens up a Saturday afternoon in the park like seeing the boys at their biathlon practice. (Image: Bain News Service)

Though my son seems to like skiing, it takes more practice, and can become more frustrating than sports like, oh, say, sledding. Knowing this, I chose a park with a sledding hill and snuck a plastic sled into the trunk, just in case.

For a five-year-old, skiing means concentration, hard work, and falling down, especially when your dad needs to replace the short skis and poles you got when you were three. For a dad, skiing with a five-year-old means a lot of standing around, issuing encouragement, and getting cold. Together, we got through those frustrations.

Then, the great moment happened. The boy found his groove. It takes him time to get going because we don’t practice enough. But when he gets going, he has fun, and I get excited for him.

“You’re going so fast!” I told him. “I wish Mommy were here to see this!”

“Me too,” he replied. “It’s too bad she won’t go outside in winter.”

Too bad indeed, she doesn’t know what she’s missing.

At that point, things went off plan. I was supposed to envision him skiing across the finish line in the 2030 Olympics. I didn’t. Instead, I had visions of him skiing with me as an eight-year-old, a 12-year-old, a 16-year old, getting bigger and stronger, making me struggle to keep up. Along the way, his little brother joined us, then his other, soon-to-be little brother.

Mommy wouldn’t come out of the house. Even dreams have limits.

We went all the way around a big loop, the four of us, growing up the whole way. My old Olympic dream faded, replaced by a better one.

Then, we came to the sled hill. It was just me and my five-year-old again. We got our sled and put some icing on that cake.

My prediction #3: WRONG. So wonderfully WRONG.