Sports
By Dennis Hatfield
One of the best things you can do for your children is to get them involved in sports. Profound lessons about life can be taught in the proper sports learning environment. Winning is important. Everyone sometime in his or her formative years should experience the thrill of victory and, just as important, learn to deal with agony of defeat. Sports should provide valuable lessons about teamwork, goal setting, self-discipline, humility, and health and fitness. Most important, qualified coaches should teach sound fundamentals and sportsmanship to our young athletes while striving to develop and instill a pure love and passion for their chosen sport.
There are some very disturbing goings on in the realm of youth sports these days. Several years ago I personally witnessed a prominent citizen coaching his daughter in the sport of swimming. This highly educated moron was pacing his 8-year-old daughter up and down our local pool and stopping her every few strokes to scream at her she was not performing the stroke correctly. The girl was crying her eyes out while trying her best to please her father. I was devastated and wanted to hug the child and rip dad’s lips off. She has gone on to set records in her sport and is quite a young phenom. The newspapers have printed many stories about this young lady and her significant local, regional, and national accomplishments, fine. They have also printed quotes from her parents about how they just can’t keep their young daughter out of the water, and how they don’t pressure her, and how loving and supporting they are of her endeavors. That makes me want to puke. They failed to print the fact that this young lady has belonged to nearly every year round swim program in this area (4) and has left each team because the teams would not allow them (mom and dad) to coach their daughter. These folks are fanatics who only care about their daughter being a star and winning at all costs. I predict she will end up hating the sport (and maybe all sports) and may end up hating her parents and life in general.
The recent cheating locally and nationally in little league baseball is another appalling example of the way sports should not be. What a rotten lesson to teach our children that winning is important enough to justify lying and cheating. The vile coaches who planned and implemented the win at all cost scheme should be tarred and feathered in public and never allowed to coach again.
Perhaps the best way to convey my feelings about the way sports should be is to tell you a story about my father. He coached my Babe Ruth baseball team when I was 13. I was the star pitcher and batter and a big part of the reason our team was successful. I was not good at baseball because he had coached me from a young age but because I had a true love for the sport and had played the game with a passion every chance I got since the age of 4. Our team practiced sound fundamentals and teamwork, and everyone played regardless of ability or the outcome of the game. We whipped everyone. During the league championship game we were winning a nail biter when my father made his usual coaching decision to play those that hadn’t played (not required in our league). I came off the mound and several of our other very good players were allocated to the bench. We proceeded to fall behind and parents who had previously thought he was the greatest little league coach ever began to call him vile names. One of the subs that came off the bench ended up being our last chance to score and win in the bottom of the last inning. This kid was about 30 lbs overweight, wore glasses as thick as coke bottles, and almost never hit the ball. As he walked up to the plate to face one of the fastest fastball Little League pitchers I have seen, the crowd groaned. We were doomed. Even I wanted to pull him and get someone up to the plate who had a chance to win the game and the championship for us. The kid somehow closed his eyes, and connected with a three run homer to win the game. This kid was the star, the crowd was in a frenzy, and my dad was once again the greatest coach ever. My father and I have laughed and talked about him and that experience many times since then and we always end up concluding that what we had seen was positive, life altering experience. We are sure that if he is alive somewhere he has never forgotten that moment. That folks, is what sports is all about.
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