This Week Brings Hope, Renewal
August 2, 2017 at 3:17 p.m.
By Roger Grossman-
Girls golf teams started playing matches and tournaments on Monday, which is the same day all the other fall sports teams are allowed to start official practices.
They’re back!
With it comes the optimism and the hope that this season will be that special season each coach and player has been dreaming about. For seniors, it’s the beginning of what they know will be their last year of high school sports competition. For most of those seniors, they understand it will be their last season of sports competition of any kind.
For me, it’s a time to look back and look ahead. As I begin to wade into my 27th sports season at the radio stations in Warsaw, I get emotional thinking about where I have been, where I am and where this season will take me.
I realize that I have a more romantic view of covering high school sports than many of the people I sit and stand next to in gyms and press boxes during the fall and winter months. When you overcome childhood speech impediments to live out your dream, you are more likely to hold it a little closer than others.
I grew up never believing there was anything I could ever want to do more than broadcast games.
Being a dad proved me wrong.
So like teams that I have been covering, I had to make adjustments. I had figure out where the new balance is, and that is a work in progress. It comes down to a simple question: “Who am I … now?”
As I was working through this in my own heart and mind late this summer, I realized that we all have to make those same adjustments on a frequent, if not daily, basis.
There are parents who will send their kids to kindergarten instead of daycare in a couple of weeks. Many others will deal with their kids moving up a school – from elementary to middle school, for example. Others will put their kids’ stuff in a truck and haul it to a college … and then leave them there.
That will be hard to do, but that simply means their kids are moving on to the next step in their lives, which means the parents have done their job at least moderately well.
When that happens, it changes the entire dynamic of a family. Maybe it’s just a minor shift from one school to another, but it’s new and different and it will take some getting used to for everyone involved.
It is part of growing up, and it is part of what “family” is all about.
Coaches understand what this is all about. They go through this every year. Every team they coach is different than the year before. Kids graduate. There is no re-signing anyone to contract extensions or anything like that. It’s the athletic version of “The Circle of Life.”
When practice started Monday for those coaches, change most likely did not sneak up on them. They have spent the whole summer contemplating what this season might look like and how to make the most of the young people who will be on their rosters.
Sure, there is the occasional player who decided not to go out for the team for this reason or another to throw a surprise into the mix. But mostly, they know what’s coming.
And now it’s here, so let it begin.
Girls golf teams started playing matches and tournaments on Monday, which is the same day all the other fall sports teams are allowed to start official practices.
They’re back!
With it comes the optimism and the hope that this season will be that special season each coach and player has been dreaming about. For seniors, it’s the beginning of what they know will be their last year of high school sports competition. For most of those seniors, they understand it will be their last season of sports competition of any kind.
For me, it’s a time to look back and look ahead. As I begin to wade into my 27th sports season at the radio stations in Warsaw, I get emotional thinking about where I have been, where I am and where this season will take me.
I realize that I have a more romantic view of covering high school sports than many of the people I sit and stand next to in gyms and press boxes during the fall and winter months. When you overcome childhood speech impediments to live out your dream, you are more likely to hold it a little closer than others.
I grew up never believing there was anything I could ever want to do more than broadcast games.
Being a dad proved me wrong.
So like teams that I have been covering, I had to make adjustments. I had figure out where the new balance is, and that is a work in progress. It comes down to a simple question: “Who am I … now?”
As I was working through this in my own heart and mind late this summer, I realized that we all have to make those same adjustments on a frequent, if not daily, basis.
There are parents who will send their kids to kindergarten instead of daycare in a couple of weeks. Many others will deal with their kids moving up a school – from elementary to middle school, for example. Others will put their kids’ stuff in a truck and haul it to a college … and then leave them there.
That will be hard to do, but that simply means their kids are moving on to the next step in their lives, which means the parents have done their job at least moderately well.
When that happens, it changes the entire dynamic of a family. Maybe it’s just a minor shift from one school to another, but it’s new and different and it will take some getting used to for everyone involved.
It is part of growing up, and it is part of what “family” is all about.
Coaches understand what this is all about. They go through this every year. Every team they coach is different than the year before. Kids graduate. There is no re-signing anyone to contract extensions or anything like that. It’s the athletic version of “The Circle of Life.”
When practice started Monday for those coaches, change most likely did not sneak up on them. They have spent the whole summer contemplating what this season might look like and how to make the most of the young people who will be on their rosters.
Sure, there is the occasional player who decided not to go out for the team for this reason or another to throw a surprise into the mix. But mostly, they know what’s coming.
And now it’s here, so let it begin.
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