18 years on Saturday’s fields
Jeff Nelligan • Jul 31, 2019
This autumn Saturday, more than 3,400 NCAA football, soccer and rugby teams will meet on fields throughout the nation. More than 846,000 high school soccer players will play this week, along with an even 1 million high school football players on approximately 13,800 teams.
Factor in 2.3 million youth soccer players and 1.2 million youth footballers – and then consider the tens of millions of total spectators.
These are staggering numbers of participation and competition – there is no voluntary endeavor like it in American society today.
I know these Saturdays well. Because for the past 18 years, I’ve spent every single one of them on a field. My three sons have played on various athletic teams - nearly three seasons every year - from the ages of 4 to 22. Indeed, many weekday afternoons I attended a practice or a game or drove to one or the other; then, there were the dozens of tournaments and college recruiting camps, from Maine to Florida. In this age of big data, I recently calculated that collectively, my kids played on approximately 147 teams, attended more than 8,700 practices, and played in more than 2,300 games.
But I’m hardly alone: Three out of four American families with school-aged children have at least one playing an organized sport — a total of about 45 million kids; 61 percent of boys’ ages 6 to 12 play a team sport. It’s even higher for females at 64 percent.
Certainly athletic participation occasions the usual tropes: discipline, personal satisfaction, alertness of mind. For example, as the Women’s Sports Foundation notes, female high school athletes are 92 percent less liked to get involved with drugs, 80 percent less likely to get pregnant, and 3 times more likely to graduate than non-athletes.
But there’s a deeper benefit. As a supercharged, 4th-grade lacrosse coach once lectured me and other parents sitting in bleachers on the eve of what he called “a make-or-break” season: “Folks, this field is the only place your Johnny puts himself out there to be judged by a bunch of strangers. And half of them want him to fail.” Coach Firebreather could have been talking about almost any young person on the fields today.
And amen to that. In an age of adolescent relativism and softness, on-field competition is where Johnny succeeds or fails, and he does so in direct relation to his preparation, resilience, and teamwork. No excuses. There’s no app for grinding.
Twenty-three hundred games later, what I recall most is the adversity: My kid in the soccer goal stopping 23 shots, but allowing another eight to get by; a kid fumbling near the goal line and losing a championship game. And oh yeah, a kid never leaving the bench, even in the fourth quarter of a blowout game. Kids choked up, parents dismayed, coaches in shock, the echoes of cheers from the winning team and crowd - all of it excruciating.
But I know that the recovery from disappointments made my boys much stronger than the elation of victories. And today, I bet few of the spectators today, except for parents, have even an idea of what it takes to play on an NCAA Division I team, even a Division III squad. As the NCAA notes, “Of the nearly 8 million students currently participating in high school athletics in the United States, only 480,000 of them will compete at NCAA schools.” What the NCAA left out was that maybe one fourth of those competing will get much playing time. I know. Firsthand.
Ultimately, rewarded by grinding, one son played four years of Division-III lacrosse on a team that twice had a Top 20 ranking in the ESPN/Nike College poll; another was cut from a Division I football team and played on a club lacrosse team that won a national championship. The third is the only one to break through to D-1, playing rugby, though he will be in that “three-fourth’s” participation category.
However, this Saturday will be the first time in 18 years in which I’m not on a field somewhere, enjoying the athleticism and sweat and rugged American competition. And, yes, the adversity. That’s because exactly one-half of the millions of young people on the fields today will be on the south side of the final score.
But that doesn’t really matter. They’re out there, being judged, even if it isn’t a make-or-break season.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Every Dad in America wants to raise a resilient kid.
Four Lessons from My Three Sons charts the course.
Written by a good-natured but unyielding father, this slim volume describes how his off-beat and yet powerful forms of encouragement helped his sons obtain the assurance, strength and integrity needed to achieve personal success and satisfaction. This book isn't 300 pages of pop child psychology or a fatherhood "journey" filled with jargon and equivocation. It's tough and hard and fast. It’s about how three boys made their way to the U.S. Naval Academy, Williams, and West Point – and beyond.
"The day of days,,,"
Prepare your kid for the path, not the path for the kid.
"Don't ever be like that jackass."
Leave it to the eminent psychologist Ron “Jaws” Jaworski, B.A., Youngstown State, 1973, to define the essence of a confident worldview: “Facemask up!” It was his signature comment when talking about a pro quarterback leaving the pocket and instead of keeping his eyes up field to find the open receiver, was looking down at his feet as he ran. It’s a plain tale in a cluttered age and the meaning is simple: Be alert. Pay attention. Take in your surroundings. Examine and understand the landscape in front of you. Here’s one for the modern-age kid: Get your eyes off the glowing rectangle and absorb the world. The more one absorbs the world, the more confident one becomes. Because I have spent many years as an operative in the political realm, I’ve become skilled at helping principals navigate through individuals - five, fifty, five hundred - and I was keen on situational awareness. “SA” as the boys and I called it means eyes and ears focused; it’s about getting a feel for the dynamics of the people whom you are around, and the places in which you find yourself. I wanted them to have active minds that eschewed taking anything at face value, minds that really tried to understand the behavior and temperaments of their peers and the converse, total strangers. I wanted them to know how to handle themselves in the real world, in routine and unfamiliar circumstances. Here’s how the instruction began: When they were young – the eldest only nine-years old, the four of us were in a crowded department store where I had gone to buy a blazer. Standing here amidst the press of people, looking for a salesman, I told them in a whisper, which got their immediate attention, “Guys, I want you to watch this closely.” I carefully walked by several salespeople in the men’s clothing area, glancing back at the boys each time, then circled back past the fourth to a third guy. I got the answer and I help needed from him and came back to the boys. “OK boys, tell me what you saw.” They talked over each other about my walking around and passing by different clerks and then the middle kid spoke for all. “Why did you go to that guy? He wasn’t even next to the jackets.” “Here’s why, and pay attention. Everywhere you go, in every situation, you gotta look at people and figure them out fast.” Blank stares. I doggedly continued: “If you need some-thing, like I needed this blazer, you need to decide who is the best person to help you. I looked at the four sales guys – their clothes, the way they were standing, if they looked nice and smart, if they were smiling. Then I made my decision and chose that one man because I thought he would help me the most. Gents, you gotta read the crowd.” There was a faint glimmer of understanding, but there was a ways to go. How did I drive it home? Simple. I made them do it. Not long after, we were in the corridors of a big indoor mall. I took three $5 bills out of my wallet and handed one to each kid. “Here’s the deal. I want each of you to go into one of the stores along here and get change for the fiver. This isn’t a race. You have to go alone and then come back tell me about what you did.” Of course, I had their total attention. This was action on their part and they were excited. Yeah, I kept an eye on them, the youngest being five. Each one took off, navigating through shoppers, going into various stores, two striking out and coming back out and into other stores. They were overjoyed, to share their stories when they got back. We did this change-the-five deal often. There were other stunts. I’d have the 9-year-old go into a convenience store with cash – and some of these were rough-and-tumble places - to get beef jerky and Doritos. I’d pull into the parking lot of a carry-out restaurant and instruct the 8-year-old take our order, memorize it, and then go into the place and get it and pay for it. At airports, I put the eldest, then later the middle kid, in charge of getting boarding passes, either from a kiosk or handling everything with an agent while the rest of us stood by. At ages 11 and 10. All three sons soon became accustomed to this independence. They’d become totally engaged in these “tests” and after they’d be thrilled, as only young boys can be, to talk about their treks. By making it a game, I immediately won the boys’ participation. Fast forward: The eldest at age 15 is at big train station in New Jersey, confused about schedules and noise and surging people. He gets himself calmed down and starts looking around him and sees a kid carrying an orange duffle bag emblazoned with “McDonogh School Athletics.” My son has played against this school and thus feels comfortable in introducing himself to the kid and asking advice. It turns out the guy knows all about schedules and points s my son to the right train. The middle kid, not quite eight-years-old, is at a bowling alley and an arcade machine eats his money. He doesn’t lose his cool, loiters around, waits for the same thing to happen to an older kid and then discovers, by watching the older kid, who the attendant is in charge of fiddling with the machine and refunding the money. Virtually everywhere we went, from the most pedestrian places to the most exciting, we’d play the game. What do you see? Who is doing what? Who is hot and who is not? “Take in all the folks around you, measure them. Which one would you trust? Who is sketchy?” You need to impress upon your son these opportunities in the arena all around us. The youngest son, six-years old, is at a kids’ party at a big shopping mall, with a pair of hopelessly disorganized parents who drift away with a group of youngsters, leaving my boy and two other kids in the midst of a huge food court. You’re a Dad - you can only imagine the initial panic the kids felt when they realized they were alone. But aha, Nelligan Junior knows what to do. He recalls what I told him and his brothers once when we were in the surging crowds at a local college football stadium. “You guys are small so if you get lost somewhere in a bunch of people, look for that guy with a stripe running down their pants. That’s a policeman or a soldier and they’ll help out.” At the mall, my kid tells that to the two other kids and they stand for a few minutes, intently staring at passing legs.They see a mall security officer, who eventually links them up with the irresponsible parents. Self-assurance just doesn’t happen, it’s gained through encounters of all kinds. Whether it’s a group of four or a mob of several hundred, get them reading the crowd. Here’s a challenge to parents: Undertake one of the examples noted above – gently push your kid into a situation where he or she has to be alert and think on their feet in this everyday world around us all. You’ll be giving your child an inestimable lesson on the independence that creates a resilient kid.
"For goodness sake, I don't want the heel. "
"Yeah, it's the end of the world."
Prepare your kid for the path, not the path for your kid.
"Just get the ball to Louie!"
"I'll be waiting outside."
"If you're five minutes early, you're late!"