Archive for the ‘youth sports’ Category
Monday, April 14th, 2008
If you're new here, and you're into sports and/or the Christian faith, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Good morning everyone, hope your weekend was better than you expected.
Wanted to give you all a heads up that I have an article on the front page of the Burnside Writers Collective this week. It’s a piece that started off as a blog post and turned into a chapter of the book I’m writing. It’s called Kicking and Screaming.
Hope you like.
Posted in youth sports | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008
Remember playing backyard football with an odd number of guys? Someone wound up being “Official QB” for both teams, and eventually he would get accused of trying harder for the team that was winning. This would lead to a shoving match or a fistfight, and then someone would get called home for dinner and you’d make plans to do it all over again the next day.
Michael Vick remembers that whole Official QB business too, because it happened to him last month.
What else do you remember about backyard football? Here’s what I remember:
- Yelling “No Takes!” when the kickoff (or throw off) was nonreturnable.
- Arguing about pass interference calls.
- Arguing about fumbles - “The ground can’t cause a fumble!”
- Arguing about intentional grounding. (man, there were lots of arguments)
- Whether your neighborhood counted 7-Miss (”1-Miss-2-Miss”) or 3-Mississippi (”1-Mississippi-2-Mississippi”)
- How often you could call “Blitz!” per series
- “My knee was never down!”
- If you only had one end zone you had the “suckers walk” rule.
- Did you play with running plays, or only passes?
- The “everybody go deep” play
- Did you have first downs? was it at midfield, or was it two completions for a first down?
- Arguments over whether a lateral was forward or not.
So, what did I miss?
UPDATE: Apparently Vick wasn’t playing organized games…yet.
Tags: Backyard Football
Posted in youth sports | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, November 14th, 2007
As Joe Posnanski pointed out in his blog on Tuesday, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays have officially changed their name to the Tampa Rays. Joe wonders if the people responsible for this were fans of the Devil, picketing outside Tampa Bay’s offices because the ball club was giving Satan a bad name.
Along with the new moniker comes some new duds too. (pictured below). The interwebs finest uniform critic, Paul Lukas, rendered his verdict on the new uniforms on his blog (Uni Watch), saying only this: zzzzzzzzzzz. I guess he’s not a fan.
I think the uniforms are an upgrade from those detestable forest green nightmares the Devil Rays have been wearing for the past few years. Then again, you could dress these guys up in bright red devil outfits, complete with horns, pitchfork, and cloven hooves, and it would still be an upgrade from last year.
As far as the name change goes, I’ve heard message board chatter claiming this change was pushed through in response to Christians who were opposed to the word “Devil” in the name. Seriously, I doubt that had anything to do with it. Clearly the team is desperate for a new identity, but the sad thing for them is, it’s going to take a lot more than a new name to make that happen. They’re still going to be finish a million games behind the yankees and/or red sox if they don’t spend more money on players.
This whole name change thing reminds me of when my younger brother Josh played youth soccer for a team that had black jerseys. They were called the Black Knights until a few of the soccer moms decided they didn’t particularly like that name. Under intense pressure (no more orange slices at halftime), they changed the name of the team to the Black Attackers. True story.
And for the record, if there are any Christians out there who spent more than 2 seconds caring about the word “devil” in the name of Tampa Bay’s baseball team, please shoot me an email so i can respond to you with a list of five hundred thousand more important things to care about.
Tags: devil rays, the devil
Posted in Christianity, MLB, youth sports | 1 Comment »
Thursday, October 25th, 2007
I posted this over on the Burnside Blog, but since it was sports-related, i thought i’d post it here too…
My daughter Kylie has been playing soccer this Fall, and it’s been a learning experience for both of us. She’s only 6 years old, and has never played any sport before, but she said she wanted to play soccer this year so we signed her up. The kids on her team, both boys and girls, are ages 6-7 and most of them played soccer last year, so she’s a bit behind the curve.
At the first practice i went to, i found myself being a little more vocal than i had intended to be. Kylie was having a great time out there, but she wasn’t ever where she was supposed to be. Additionally, she didn’t seem interested in taking the ball from anyone, which is very nice when you’re playing at home, but kinda defeats the purpose when you’re playing soccer. So naturally, i found myself “loudly encouraging” her with shouts of “KYLIE, GO GET THE BALL!” or “KYLIE GET BACK ON DEFENSE!” or “KYLIE, DONT BE AFRAID TO GRAB A LITTLE JERSEY AND TRIP HIM THE NEXT TIME HE GETS BY YOU, THAT PIECE OF DIRT!”
After the first practice I introduced myself to the coach, and I asked him if he had a problem with me helping to “coach” my daughter from the sidelines. “It’s your kid,” he said, “as long as you’re not contradicting what I’m saying, you can do what you want.”
I thought about that all week. It’s my kid…I’m her dad. And here I am auditioning for the “obnoxious parent yelling from the sideline” role. Between Kylie and my son Parker, I figure I’ve got another dozen years of sideline parenting ahead of me. Perhaps now was the time to decide what type of sideline parent I would be.
The next practice I tried a different approach. I just sat there and watched. When Kylie would run up to the ball and then not kick it, I said nothing. When she would wander all over the field, I said nothing. When she would be responsible for letting the other team score, I said nothing. Honestly, it felt so much better. When Kylie would come off the field, I’d always give her a high-five and tell her how good she was doing, and then maybe give her something to think about the next time she went out there.
But no yelling. No screaming and no yelling.
This weekend is the final saturday of the season. I’m coaching the team because her coach is going to be out of town. It should be a blast. Last week I helped coach practice and one of the girls had a breakaway all alone and suddenly realized her shoe was untied so she just stopped running and tied her shoe while a swarm of kids came over to take the ball. It was hilarious.
Oh and one last thing. During last saturday’s game Kylie actually kicked the ball near the other team’s goal. Towards the goal, in fact. And as it was rolling towards the net, i saw one of her teammates lining up to kick it right in. He was going to score instead of her. Only he completely whiffed. And the ball kept rolling…and rolling…until it rolled right into the goal! She scored! Her first goal of the season.
Her coach, knowing how far she had come since the beginning of the year, said he got chills when Kylie scored. I opted for tears and a big smile myself.
And yelling. Lots of screaming and lots of yelling.
Tags: soccer
Posted in parenting, youth sports | No Comments »
Thursday, October 11th, 2007
I gave my wife the night off yesterday, carting both the kids over to Kylie’s soccer practice. While Kylie dribbled around cones and played with her ponytail, Parker and I were 50 yards away playing baseball with the tennis balls and bat that we brought. As we were playing, a spastic 8-yr old kid came over and asked if he could play. I was annoyed at first, but decided the right thing to do was say “yes” and so i did.
He said his name was Eddie, and then he told me where we were all going to be positioned and what our roles would be (he was going to be the batter). I politely made it clear to Eddie that i was making the rules because i was here to play baseball with my son, so if he wanted to play, he would have to listen to me. Eddie seemed cool with that, and so we played on.
Five minutes later a 10-yr old kid wandered over with his dad, who was still dressed in his business casual work clothes. They had a soccer ball with them and they were kicking it around together. I could tell that neither was really athletic or coordinated, but i thought it was cool that they were goofing off like dads should with their kids. A few minutes later, the dad retreated to his chair by the soccer field and the boy, named Kyle, asked if he could play baseball with us. Why not? The more the merrier.
I let all the kids take turns batting and being the catcher. Parker was the best at hitting and throwing, which i took some sense of pride in, even though it’s probably a dumb thing to be proud about. (He is only 4 though). When it was Kyle’s turn to bat, it was pretty obvious that he didn’t have any experience playing baseball. He told me sheepishly that he wasn’t very good at baseball, and i told him it was okay, that i wasn’t very good either, which seemed to give him a sliver of his confidence back.
After a few hopeless flails, I adjusted his grip, stance, and posture and to his delight he began to foul pitches off. (Hey, sometimes you have to set the bar low, right?) When he finally hit one in the right direction, he was beaming with pride. He looked over at his dad, who was 50 yards away and out of earshot, and said, “I wish my dad could have seen that.”
I continued to help Kyle adjust his swing, and he actually had a few hits that flew by me in the air. “Wow, look at you!” I said, “Great hit.” I was feeling pretty good about myself. Look at me, the baseball coach! Moments later as i walked by him to retrieve a few of the balls he had missed he said to me, “You’re cool. I wish YOU were my dad.”
Ew. That kinda made me feel gross. Thankfully, his dad didn’t hear the comment, but man, if i had heard one of my kids say something like that to another guy, it would break my heart. I mean, all it took for this kid to disown his father was 3 minutes of one on one baseball instruction? Yikes.
Before Kyle ran over to his dad to tell him how well he had it, i tried to redeem the moment as best i could. “I might be cool to have as a friend,” i told the kid, “but your dad is the best person in the world to be your dad.” Not sure if he bought it or not, but it was all i had.
As we drove home i thought about the exchange and it reinforced my desire to be a great dad. I never want that thought to run through my kids’ heads. I want to do everything i can to be the best dad in the world to them, and i want them to know it in their hearts without even having to think about it. That way if someone else’ dad ever spends a couple minutes correcting their batting stance or offering them praise for a job well done, they’ll think to themselves, “this guy’s cool, but he’s not as cool as MY dad.”
Hey, sometimes you need to set the bar high, right?
Tags: baseball, parenting
Posted in parenting, youth sports | No Comments »
