Tag Archives: sports

Winter dreams

These are the first winter Olympics that my eldest son will be old enough to understand. I hope we can have some fun watching them together. I predict that his favorite sport will be bobsled because the Germans traditionally succeed in it. He’s a big fan of Germany right now.

First time on skis

My son’s first time on skis – two years ago. He was representing the country of Spiderman that day.

Having owned a pair of cross country skis since childhood, I’ve always preferred the winter Olympics. They inspired my youth like no other sporting event. I loved baseball and basketball, but was a mediocre player. As a skier, I had no peers for comparison; for all I knew, I was pretty good.

I was 12 during the Lake Placid Olympics. They were happening just a few hours away from where I lived. Most Americans remember Lake Placid (if they remember it) for the Miracle on Ice. I remember it as the time when “skating” became a controversial new technique in Nordic skiing. (It’s called Nordic skiing because that makes it sound Norwegian, and nothing is cooler to a cross country skier than pretending to be Norwegian.)

There was a corn field behind my house. Every day I would put on my skis and my wristwatch and do laps around that field. The winter Olympics and the growing season don’t conflict, so I didn’t have to slalom through any stalks. Every day I would mark my time. The next day I would try to beat it.

Corn fields aren’t the most professional of courses, but it didn’t matter. It also didn’t matter that I was routinely followed by a German Shepherd who made his own sport of stepping on the back of my skis as I went. What mattered was that I got faster. For a few minutes every day, I could dream of becoming the first American to win gold in any Nordic event.

Ski brigade

Hard as it is to believe, these guys didn’t win any gold medals either. (Image: Detroit Publishing Co.)

It was a forlorn dream. By the time I caught my breath I realized that. I had no friends who skied. My school didn’t even have a football team. The idea of a ski team would have sent the community into fits of hysteria. This corn field was the best training ground I would ever have. Being in the same state as Lake Placid was as close to the Olympics as I would ever get. I always knew that, but I still raced myself, because sometimes just having a dream is enough.

I hope my son and I can catch some of the Nordic skiing on TV this year. It’s kind of hard to do, between the non-stop figure skating and the novelty of a few hours of curling – a sport that allows us to scratch our heads and say, “Really, Canada? You thought this would be a good sequel to hockey? WTF?”

Maybe after we watch, I’ll take him outside with his skis. Maybe he’ll be inspired to dream a little dream. If not, that’s okay. I’ll dream one for him. I’ll dream I’m skiing alongside the first American ever to win Olympic gold in a cross country race.

 

Baby steps toward superstardom

Last spring I expressed my desire to use the summer to expose our five-year-old to playing sports. I didn’t put him into organized leagues because I wanted him to have more time to be a disorganized kid and figure out what he likes. Also, leagues cost money, and I’ve been in a cheapskate mood for the last 30 years.

Now that summer is over, it’s time for an update on his progress as an athlete. All of these wonderful advancements were accomplished under the tutelage of only his tepidly athletic dad.

Baseball

I’m not sure this is one of his favorites, as he never asked to play catch. I am happy to boast that he did successfully get all of his fingers into his baseball glove one time. This was not because he wanted to throw the ball with me, but because his friends found a ball and some bats in the garage and wanted to play. I can also proudly report that despite there being three Kindergarteners in the yard with a ball and bats, no windows were broken. Those are the kinds of fundamentals a dad can really appreciate.

Archery

We only tried this once, but he showed promising talent at sticking a foam skunk. This is a twist, since he spent all last year pretending to be a skunk.

in pursuit of the foam skunk

Skunks used to be the coolest animal. Now, they’re the coolest animal target.

Football

Now this is real progress. He no longer runs away when I toss the football in his direction. He might turn his back and layer his arms over his head, but keep in mind we’re not using helmets or pads yet. He is completely unprotected from the injury that Nerf sponge could cause him. Occasionally he will actually stretch his arms out toward the ball, but this usually ends with him swatting the dangerous missile away.

Basketball

He can now dribble a basketball up to three consecutive times with one hand. He has yet to fully comprehend that he needs to push the ball with his hand rather than just slap at it. This leads to diminishing returns after each dribble. By the fourth one, he is squatting down, slapping a ball that is resting on the ground. I may be a rulebook stickler, but I don’t count beating a dead ball as dribbling.

baby slam

Little Brother is a natural athlete. Here he is at six months, perfecting his dunk.

Soccer

He’s pretty good at soccer. When he kicks the ball he doesn’t usually miss the target by more than 75˚ to either side. He still likes to kick the ball with his toe, like he’s playing kickball, but he rarely misses it anymore. He only uses his hands as an absolute last resort, even less so after that time he got his finger kicked. It’s amazing how much a little pain keeps one mindful of the rules.

All in all, it’s been a productive summer. Sure, the little man displays lots of natural talent, but raw talent needs to be molded. Hence, much of the credit for his blossoming as a superstar athlete must be assigned to his awesome coach.

Let me throw a little compassion at you

Our one-year-old is developing a couple of traits that seem like an odd pair of characteristics for a little boy to form simultaneously. He loves to throw things, which seems quite normal. What is less usual is the level of compassion he shows when someone in his family is hurt or sad.

The boy loves playing catch, minus the part where he catches anything. He has quite a limber arm and throws a ball, or any other convenient object, with a healthy velocity. He is not picky about the projectile or the target.

Meanwhile, he is always ready with a hug whenever his big brother is upset, no matter how ridiculous the cause. But big boys never cry over silly things anyway, right? Toddler Boy kisses boo-boos to make them all better and is never stingy with a pat on the back when he has run through his repertoire of hugs and kisses.

mini catcher

Only one of these children came dressed to play with the likes of my little boy. For the rest, he would have only sympathy.

At first blush, these two traits seem as though they would have little overlap in daily life. That is, unless the boy grows to become a baseball pitcher who rushes to the plate to console batters he’s struck out, or a football quarterback who passes out hand-written thank-you notes to receivers who catch his passes.

In reality, these traits are just two sides of the same coin for an indiscriminate living room hurler. Like the other day, when he beaned me, point-blank, with plastic balloon pump. I still have the red mark on my temple to attest to his marksmanship. The moment he realized he’d hurt me, he was all over me with hugs and kisses. It really made for a sweet scene, or I’m assuming it did; my vision was still a little blurry.

He appears to be right-handed, although when he gets on the playground, he throws mulch equally well with both arms. I hope he quits throwing mulch soon, because mulch scatters like birdshot and he might wing kids other than the one he’s aiming for. As an upstanding parent, I’m all for minimizing collateral damage.

everything's a missle

When we run out of balloons to blow up, we use this handy device as a projectile to keep Daddy looking sharp.

The responsible adult in me wants to discourage him from throwing things so much, but the sports-fan father in me wants him to keep his arm loose. You can’t warm up by throwing air. We’ll try to steer him toward tossing various types of balls and away from chucking random bits of nature. We’ll also encourage him to throw toward folks who are ready and willing to catch what he’s pitching. This may take some time.

As he learns to blindside fewer people with heaved objects, he will have less cause to call upon his vast compassion for the injured. I hope this won’t make that trait fade from his character. I admire his compassion and hope he keeps it always, so long as it doesn’t prevent him striking out batters with heartless precision.

Nothing lime can stay

Kids today have lots of stuff we never had. More options might make life easier. More options don’t make life simpler. I don’t know where the prefect balance between easy and simple lies, but there are simple pleasures from my childhood I hope my boys can still experience:

Healthy competition:

When I played Little League, we won some and we lost some. Consequently, we felt happy after some games and dejected after others. Either way, a pat on the head, a soft ice cream cone, and an hour of swimming it off put the game into perspective as a minor piece of our lives.

Today, we seem to have taken competition to extremes. In one corner we have Ma and Pa Jockstrap. They can’t keep their spittle out of the umpire’s face because they will not allow anyone to stand in the way of Little Jimmy Jockstrap’s ascent into the Hall of Fame, regardless of Jimmy’s average skills or even his lukewarm desire to play the game.

In the other corner, handing out trophies to every kid in their zip code, are Mr. and Mrs. Overprotective, who fear that the loss of a T-ball game will rob their four-year-old of the confidence he needs to be just exactly as successful in life as all of his peers.

Nobody else can make you better than you are; nor will life allow you to be a winner every single day.

Arithmetic:

Rise of the machines

How do you insert the graph paper?

Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like it is no longer necessary to learn arithmetic in order to do math. I’ve never owned a graphic calculator; I don’t even know what they do. But I once was real friendly with graph paper, also with protractors and compasses. We didn’t have any math beyond basic calculus in my high school, but we could handle this (+) and this (-) and these (x), (÷) with pencil and paper, or on our bony little Hillbilly fingers. We didn’t need Excel to add columns for us.

Nowadays, if a kid can do basic addition in his head, they put him on Good Morning America so everybody can gawk at his freakish talent. I hope my sons learn basic arithmetic because I want to hang out on the set of The Today Show. Besides, (and I’m just doing the math here in my head) there may not be enough money in the back to school fund for graphic calculators.

Lime flavored stuff:

An all time classic

You can never go home again.

Back in the day, green lollipops were to die for. Whenever you put some kind of green candy into your mouth, you knew you would be rewarded with a robust lime flavor. There used to be things you could count on, and one of those was that green equaled lime.

Lime is the Latin of flavors now, a rare novelty to the tongues of the modern world. Some companies (I’m looking at you, Starburst) have cut green pieces out of their original lineups altogether. Others have replaced lime with off-green flavors like sour apple and watermelon – flavors that make a mockery of the color. I go out of my way to find popsicles that include lime among their flavors. I do it for my boys. Because a world without lime might as well be a world doused in strawberry syrup.

What things from your youth do you hope your children will experience?