Winning The Game
On the iPod, “All I Do Is Win feat. T-Pain, Ludacris, Snoop Dogg and Rick Ross” by: DJ Khaled
When Levi was in kinder he played hockey. It started out as just a fun sport to try when he turned 4. I would say that by nature, I’ve always been one to choose a different road rather than jumping on the band wagon so while everyone else was at the soccer field, we were at the ice rink. It was going great until I realized how hard it was to manage 3 hockey practices a week by myself with a 5 year old in full gear, a 3 year old tornado child and a newborn. Socially, Levi was good in school, but we were missing out on the camaraderie that happens at weekday practices and weekend games. I think we both felt pretty alone and isolated at the hockey rink.
But here I was completely naive about elementary school boys sports. I had no idea that informal tryouts 🤮were happening at the Cub Scout and adventure guides campouts. It’s a shame really because Mike and I both work a lot of weekends making those two events something my kid would never be at...not that I wanted my 5 year old judged on his athletic abilities on a frigging campout but I digress... So you should have seen the other moms faces when I said almost half way into kinder year that I was looking for some teams for my kid to play on. It was a mix between good luck and complete horror. 😱😳😵One mom, who has an older son, talked me off the bridge when I thought that there might be no hope. So I decided to pitch the idea of a basketball team and offered to coach it myself. Before I knew it we had a team of 8 little boys and a co-coach. Our season was terrible but they were 5 and 6 years old, I was happy when they didn’t have their hands inside their jerseys or when they weren’t playing with their balls on the sidelines... 🤪it’s the little things! I remember hearing comments like well the “super” team is winning their games...the “super” team??? I quickly found out that there was a group of boys that were hand picked by a few dads to become the varsity team of our kindergarten class... pretty sure they were picked at the camp out. Like seriously I can’t make this shit up. What started out as an innocent funny comment among parents has turned into something so much bigger. The reason I’m writing this blog is not to ruffle feathers it’s because at the kindergarten moms mimosa brunch I heard a new kinder mom use the same “super” team phrase and I actually stopped her and said wait let’s not talk like that because I think or I hope we can do better this year. The little innocent comment about the so called “super” team has now in third grade created a divide among our boys and among us. I actually had a 3rd grader tell me last week that he played on the “good” teams. See the problem is that when you start labeling 5 year olds you only set them up for hurt feelings and disappointment. And at the end of the day our labeling is creating limits that we can’t even see right now... and every person child or adult should have the right to grow and change!! Every child should have the right to become a better athlete just like every athletic kid should have the right to not always be the fastest and the best because the kind of pressure those kids are under is going to break them come junior high. I know I’ve seen it.
The reality is that we don’t really know which kids are really going to be the athletes just like we don’t know which one will be the valedictorian because guess what the kid who isn’t the fastest today might want it enough to fight for it more than the kid who is fast right now. Maybe what we should really be concerned with is what makes them happy. And how about we don’t judge each other for trying to figure that out. If they just want to play to have fun than by all means there are teams for that and if your kids wants to really learn skill and technique then they should able to do that also without making them feel like traitors. We, as these kids parents and as adults who should know better, should be lifting up EVERY single kid in this community because the happier every single kid in this community is the happier and safer our school and community is going to be. Those are just the facts of life today in this world that we live in. I’m not going to discuss all of the drama that has happened with our boys and sports over the last three years instead I’m only going to say that the problem is not our boys...at least not yet. The problem is with us. We are all so afraid. Afraid of failing them, not giving them the opportunity that might change their life, not putting them in the right circle of friends, not getting them into the “right” school 8 years from now, and I also think some of us, myself included, are worried that it will affect the relationships that we have built with other parents. It is extremely hard not to get caught up in all of it. I once had a mom, who I love by the way, tell me that the reason another kids parents were so concerned about being on a winning team was because they were really depending on a college sports scholarship for their 8 year old. I’m sorry but I call bullshit! See the thing is that they would be better off keeping their kid in rec sports and putting the $8000-$10000 dollars a year (that’s a lowball figure) for club sports in a savings account for college because guess what they are going to be real pissed when their 15 year old decides that he wants to be the lead in the school play instead of playing high school football and by all means if that is what he decides he wants we should support him.
Did you know out of 57 MILLION school aged children in the US less than 1/2 million will be college athletes and only about 5000 will end up playing professionally. So realistically, you better hope the sports you’re in are teaching your son how to be a good man not just a mouthy self obsessed asshole because let’s just talk in truths here... your kid has a better chance of being an asshole than being a professional...actually scratch that even a college athlete.
Two years ago, I started taking Levi to basketball skills classes with a program called BDB champions at our local rec center with Coach Blake Davenport. Levi has loved basketball since he could first hold a ball. I didn’t take him to the skills class so that he could learn to be the best athlete, I took him so that he could gain confidence and be the best Levi and so that he could really understand the game. At the time, I remember feeling like I was somehow betraying everyone on the team by giving him the opportunity to learn skills from another coach. Within weeks, I started to see a change in him and it wasn’t what you are expecting me to say. He didn’t immediately become a star basketball player. But instead he came home telling me that when your teammate shoots a free throw you are supposed to high five him after the first shot even if he didn’t make it, it’s called good sportsmanship, mom. Over the next few weeks, I peeked into their workouts and watched him play with kids 3 and 4 years older than him. I watched him play an entire hour of basketball with a weighted ball. I looked on in awe when he ran full court sprints and did pushups with a huge smile on his face because one kid wasn’t paying attention and they all had to pay for it. He learned quickly that the game of basketball just like the game of life isn’t always fair, but that’s ok! You just have to brush it off and move on.
Over the last two years Levi has spent upwards of 385 hours playing basketball with Coach Blake. This is in addition to his rec sports teams that he plays on with friends. He has never once complained about going to basketball practice. I have never had to force him to go. Over the two years he has invited numerous friends to come to practice with him and with the exception of one friend the others have gone once and said it was too much work...even a couple of those “super” team athletes. 😉He has been begging me for a year now to tryout for one of Blake’s teams and I have always said, “let’s wait one more season.” That was until last week...
Last week Levi went to tryouts for the BDB Champions Basketball team. I stayed the entire hour and saw him play some of the best basketball of his life. He was nervous. But he was aggressive and fought for himself and at one point was even thrown to the ground while the coaches weren’t looking, but he picked himself right back up and carried on. He left tryouts pretty proud of himself and I was impressed to say the least.
We knew that we wouldn’t hear for a couple of days if he had made the team so I didn’t bring it up and we just kept on with our week. On Wednesday, I was looking through Levi’s binder and I found the paper above tucked in a folder in the back. As I read it my eyes teared up... my kid, the one who is an amazing team player so amazing in fact that he is usually more worried about how many goals and baskets he can help your kid make...finally sees his worth and he wants it...it’s important to him.
I got the most amazing message from Coach Blake welcoming Levi onto his fall 3rd grade BDB Champions basketball team today. But what makes Blake different is that he wrote to me about Levi’s heart, his drive, his work ethic and about how much the other players like and respect him. He is not just interested in teaching my kid how to play good basketball he is also invested in building up his character and teaching him how to be a good man on and off the court. And to me that is worth everything.
Levi has no plans to leave his brentfield winter basketball team. Even during this fall season, Levi will also be playing flag football with school friends for fun.
But I’m sitting here staring at this screen tonight asking you and our entire community to step up. I want us to focus on supporting each other’s kids while we all try and figure this out. Let’s try to be inclusive and kind and how about we let them reinvent themselves with our support until they find out what makes them happy. It might be something they are purely talented at but it also might be something they have to work their butts off for. That doesn’t mean that everybody has to play on the same team and sing “kumbaya” it just means we graciously let the kids find their truths in or out of the game.
Love, me
