It’s evident today that a lot of growing up for any child is done outside the classroom or even the school building. Don’t misunderstand me, schooling is essential for every child, but there is no better teacher than life and experience. It’s apparent to me that most of the wisdom and common sense that I possess are definitely due to the efforts of my mother, my family members and the school teachers that I had the privilege to learn from. However, some of the greatest lessons that I ever learned were during fall afternoons on the football field, or summer nights on the baseball diamond. As the only child of a single mother, I didn't learn most of the lessons from my father that most young men learned from theirs. That's when sports stepped in.
At a very young age, I acquired a strong interest in sports. At a certain point though, sports were no longer just something that I took part in. Rather, it became a part of me altogether. It was my domain. It was my escape from the world. It was my passion. I poured my heart and soul into it every time I had the opportunity. The games of football and baseball, in particular, became my first loves. The fields became my home.
For a time, that’s exactly what sports were for me: home. At a certain point, maturing took place, and I began to realize that sports would not always be there for me in the ways they had growing up. It was at that exact point, however, that I began to realize that my lifelong involvement in sports had become more than I had even realized. I began to realize that much of the person that I had become was due to the lessons that I learned on the field. The absence of my father left a void that sports had filled. My football and baseball coaches had become life coaches.
Sports taught me that to be successful, your mistakes must motivate you, not defeat you. I learned that you do not need recognition in order to do your job. The unsung heroes are sometimes the most valuable to the team. I learned that it only takes one person not giving 100 percent to hurt the entire team. You cannot afford to be lazy if you want to be successful. Perhaps the most important lesson that I learned, however, is that sometimes you do everything right and things still just don’t go your way, but you cannot allow yourself to be stopped there. All you can do is pick yourself up, dust yourself off and keep giving it everything that you have.
These are the lessons that young athletes are being taught when playing and because of it, sports become far more than just games or activities. They become life-changing events. In a world full of brokenness and pain, sports, on all levels, have become an escape for many people, and a way for people of all different walks of life to connect and grow together. For young athletes, sports have become a teaching mechanism that many young men and women do not have in any other area of life. We must embrace this opportunity, and use it to train these young people to become mature adults and to do their part to improve their communities. We must train young athletes to be humble and respectful, rather than arrogant and selfish.
As a society, we cannot allow youth sports to simply become a miniature version of what we see in the professional sports arena, where the goal is simply to win games and be the best team at your respective sport. There is so much more potential there for young athletes if we will commit to pursuing it. The goal of youth sports should be teaching and training young men and women to be respectable and responsible members of society, each doing their part to make the world the best that it can be.
There is still no statement from my amateur athletic career that has rung truer even to this day than what my high school football coach told me on a rainy fall afternoon during my sophomore year. At a point that he could tell I was struggling to be confident and he told me this: “All you can do is your part. Do your part, and trust that everyone else will do theirs. That is all I ask of you. But don’t ever stop striving to be the best in the world at doing your job.”
A challenge like that is what made me the man that I am today, and what consistently molds young athletes into the men and women of tomorrow. A challenge like that makes it all more than just a game.