YOUTH SPORTS, THE FIRST IMPRESSION LASTS A LIFETIME

If the question is ever asked, “Why bother with youth sports,” there’s an easy answer.

When you overhear someone slamming organized athletics, do you have a response?

If not, why not? Try this on for size.

From kindergarten to senior year, kids live a scheduled life. With school, family, and friends, their days are busy.

Too busy for youth sports? If they are, then they’re missing an opportunity to grow. And so are their parents.

I’ll go out on a limb here and say most parents have had some exposure to sports. Whether it was good or bad depends on their outcome.

The dad who was always picked last for every team probably won’t be as big a fan as the mom who embraced the sports challenge and learned how to win and play fair.

Play fair? Call it sportsmanship, which is when you get smoked in competition, take the loss, thank the other side for playing, then use the hurt as motivation to get better.

Youth Sports Lesson On BoomerPdx

I was an injured high school football player one year and decided to change up my life. Instead of basketball in the winter like I’d done since fourth grade, I went the other direction. It was the path to the wrestling room pre-season workouts.

The learning began in earnest right away when an assistant instructed me on the fine art of the single leg takedown.

He lifted his leg forward showed me how to grip it securely.

“Put your head in my crotch,” he said.

Huh?

“Hold my leg and use your head as a lever,” he said.

What?

This is where reluctant new guys leave the room, never to return. I was almost that guy right there.

Instead, the coach jammed my head into his crotch, thrust his arm behind one of mine gripping his leg. Yikes. Then he sprawled, which was unexpected, and bounced my head off the mat and sort of crushed me.

And I was hooked. I’m not always a ‘get even’ kind of guy, but this called for getting even.

“That’s called a sprawl,” he said. “It’s the defense against a single. The way I hooked your arm is called a whizzer.”

So I just had my head jammed into someone’s crotch and I got whizzered? I didn’t like the sound of things, but I understood how it worked after the slam.

“Show me again,” I said.

I was probably fifteen at the time.

He lifted his leg, I got a good hold on it. He sunk in a whizzer and said go. And I ran straight at him while hanging onto his leg, ran him right off the mat and into a wall.

Instead of a reprimand, I heard, “That was good driving force. Let’s go again.”

From that beginning I turned into a district champion, an Oregon Greco-Roman champ, and high school all-American. After high school I added a year of college wrestling and a tryout for the All-Army Wrestling Team after I joined the service.

It was a thumping good run while it lasted.

Rec-League Youth Sports

Rec-League is short for recreational league, where little kids play until they’re old enough for school league sports. It’s also available to students all the way through. I had a basketball team full of juniors and seniors my last year. I started by coaching first grade soccer.

What did I know about soccer? Not much, but it’s not a steep learning curve for the beautiful game.

Did sports make a difference to kids? Only if you value learning to be on time, making new friends, and planning which sports to embrace for a lifetime.

Those are the basics. Play the game right and the winning and losing takes care of itself.

At some point this happens in youth sports, and it’s wonderful.

State Championship From The Stands

My kid made it to the quarterfinals of Oregon State High School Wrestling Meet. I needed a better seat to watch and one of my fellow wrestling dads found us a pair.

The seats were away from the other team parents and I listened to the chatter around my new seat. It was all about a senior kid who had been to multiple camps, had a good year, and planned on coming in second place to the other senior on his team in the same weight.

The moms and dads were excited while I sat apprehensively. That’s when I realized they were talking about my kid’s opponent.

More chatter about wrestling camps ended when my buddy turned and said their kid was wrestling my kid. I was surrounded. One mom apologized for the inevitable win her kid was about to notch.

The match started, the boys did their dance. I was clinching like a stage parent when my kid locked in a front whizzer, the over/under hooks for a big throw. He hit his arch, threw the guy to his back, and pinned him.

On the way back to my original seat, my pal turned to the mom and said, “I guess you didn’t send him to Stay Off Your Back Camp.”

I don’t remember if I apologized like she did.