About eight years ago, I was talking to a fellow after church, and he suddenly said, "Hey, you're from Pittsburgh! You must be excited."
"Um, yes, I'm excited," I said blankly. Pittsburgh's a great place to be from, with its role in American history and the presence of great schools like Carnegie Mellon University, but it's not like I wake up every morning and run around the house, caught in the ecstasies of heaven and screaming "I'm from Pittsburgh! I'm from Pittsburgh!"
"What am I excited about?" I asked.
"The Steelers!" Tony said.
"Well sure, they're from Pittsburgh too," I said. When I was 8, our elementary school music teacher taught us the Pittsburgh Polka, which was the closest thing the Steelers had to a fight song. "What about them?"
"They're going to be in the Super Bowl!"
"Oh yes, yes," I said with all the relish someone might muster for washing the dishes. "When is that?"
"Today," he said. He groaned as he realized that my disinterest wasn't an act, and he turned away. "Never mind."
Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.
Showing posts with label sports. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sports. Show all posts
Saturday, February 04, 2017
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Team sports may have other uses besides bullying
So maybe there is something nice to be said for team sports after all.
I've heard a lot through the years about how great sports are for kids, not just because the activity helps them stay fit, but because sports teach valuable lessons on teamwork, sportsmanship, and taking direction, and social skills as well. None of this particularly matched my own experiences in sports, which usually could be summarized as "survival of the fittest" or "culling the herd."
Still, however unpleasant my memories of baseball and soccer are, Evangeline seems to be having a good time with the recreation league softball team she's on here in Nova Bastille. We just had our fourth game of the season on Wednesday evening, and it's going well, even with the four straight losses we've had so far.
Here's what I've seen:
During the first game, the team started to connect during the second or third inning, with a few rudimentary cheers. They were pretty simple, like "Let's go, Maria, let's go!" or "MEL-O-DY! MEL-O-DY!" but they actually started cheering one another on. You could feel the sense of a group identity starting to set in, and you could see how it energized the girls at bat to hear their whole team cheering them on.
Last night, we really had team spirit going. Previously we've had a number of girls trying to wander off to sit with their parents when they weren't in the field, but on Wednesday, only one girl actually left the bench, and she came back right away when I asked her to.
They were there for their teammates, and they were into it. I started off a few silly chants, like "We are happy, we are merry / We've got a rhyming dictionary," but the rest of the time, the girls were gung-ho with cheers they had heard other teams use, and they cheered for everyone who went to bat, and for everyone who made it onto base.
They weren't just a collection of fourteen girls at a softball field, they were a team.
Two, I'm seeing actual teamwork happen. In earlier games, we'd have three girls running into the field to catch the ball, leaving their posts unmanned. Wednesday night, the girls were covering their spots, throwing the ball to one another, and completing some basic plays that require seeing yourself not as the star of the story, but as one piece of a larger machine. (There were one or two exceptions, but heck, most of them are only 7 years old.)
Three, I'm seeing greater skill. We had only three practices before the season started. That was maybe enough to explain to the girls how to throw the ball, how to catch, and how to swing the bat. (Not time enough for them actually to understand those skills, but time enough for them to be told.) Now they're catching the ball in the air, throwing it farther and better than ever before, and more of them are hitting the ball and getting on base.
Speaking as a father and as an assistant coach, I was so proud of Evangeline on Wednesday night that my shirt would have burst its buttons if it had had buttons to burst. She's been working on her hand-eye coordination in the back yard with a tetherball and racket she got last summer, and it's been paying off.
After two strikes, she hit the ball into the infield and made it all the way to first base. When the next two batters also got singles, she made it as far as third. She was disappointed not to have made it to home plate again, but this is remarkable improvement from just two weeks ago.
As she gets older, softball and other team sports will have just as much potential for ugliness that Boy Scouts had when I was younger, but right now Evangeline's not only learning the game, she's enjoying the social aspects of being part of a team, and I couldn't be happier for her.
Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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I've heard a lot through the years about how great sports are for kids, not just because the activity helps them stay fit, but because sports teach valuable lessons on teamwork, sportsmanship, and taking direction, and social skills as well. None of this particularly matched my own experiences in sports, which usually could be summarized as "survival of the fittest" or "culling the herd."
Still, however unpleasant my memories of baseball and soccer are, Evangeline seems to be having a good time with the recreation league softball team she's on here in Nova Bastille. We just had our fourth game of the season on Wednesday evening, and it's going well, even with the four straight losses we've had so far.
Here's what I've seen:
During the first game, the team started to connect during the second or third inning, with a few rudimentary cheers. They were pretty simple, like "Let's go, Maria, let's go!" or "MEL-O-DY! MEL-O-DY!" but they actually started cheering one another on. You could feel the sense of a group identity starting to set in, and you could see how it energized the girls at bat to hear their whole team cheering them on.
Last night, we really had team spirit going. Previously we've had a number of girls trying to wander off to sit with their parents when they weren't in the field, but on Wednesday, only one girl actually left the bench, and she came back right away when I asked her to.
They were there for their teammates, and they were into it. I started off a few silly chants, like "We are happy, we are merry / We've got a rhyming dictionary," but the rest of the time, the girls were gung-ho with cheers they had heard other teams use, and they cheered for everyone who went to bat, and for everyone who made it onto base.
They weren't just a collection of fourteen girls at a softball field, they were a team.
Two, I'm seeing actual teamwork happen. In earlier games, we'd have three girls running into the field to catch the ball, leaving their posts unmanned. Wednesday night, the girls were covering their spots, throwing the ball to one another, and completing some basic plays that require seeing yourself not as the star of the story, but as one piece of a larger machine. (There were one or two exceptions, but heck, most of them are only 7 years old.)
Three, I'm seeing greater skill. We had only three practices before the season started. That was maybe enough to explain to the girls how to throw the ball, how to catch, and how to swing the bat. (Not time enough for them actually to understand those skills, but time enough for them to be told.) Now they're catching the ball in the air, throwing it farther and better than ever before, and more of them are hitting the ball and getting on base.
Speaking as a father and as an assistant coach, I was so proud of Evangeline on Wednesday night that my shirt would have burst its buttons if it had had buttons to burst. She's been working on her hand-eye coordination in the back yard with a tetherball and racket she got last summer, and it's been paying off.
After two strikes, she hit the ball into the infield and made it all the way to first base. When the next two batters also got singles, she made it as far as third. She was disappointed not to have made it to home plate again, but this is remarkable improvement from just two weeks ago.
As she gets older, softball and other team sports will have just as much potential for ugliness that Boy Scouts had when I was younger, but right now Evangeline's not only learning the game, she's enjoying the social aspects of being part of a team, and I couldn't be happier for her.
Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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Saturday, February 02, 2002
anti-superbowl party
There are three kinds of people in the world:
- Those who play professional sports
- Those who watch professional sports
- Those who know that professional sports are nothing but a thinly disguised attempt by large corporations to subjugate the masses, but still enjoy watching the overpriced commercials and laughing at the frogs.
(There is a fourth type that desires nothing but to see Britney Spears in various stages of undress, but this type needs little discussion here.)
So if you can think of nothing better to do than to sprawl in your Lay-Z-Boy ("The New Look of Comfort") recliner, eating Doritos ("For the Bold and Daring"), guzzling Coca-Cola ("Enjoy Coca-Cola Classic"), and cheering as a bunch of multi-millionaires in ridiculously thick padding ("United We Stand") stretch sixty minutes of game time into three or four hours of nonstop ho-hum, then read no further.
BUT! If you're put off by pigskins and sick of Superbowl Sunday, then you need to organize an anti-Superbowl party. God knows we need more of them.
Monday, November 05, 2001
What do you do when the SuperBowl holds no appeal?
Ever heard of bread and circuses?
Watching the SuperBowl holds about as much interest for me as being lobotomized. I've noticed a marked similarity in the results, anyway, with the attention a number of my friends give to the game. I just don't get it. Bloody Americans take three hours to play a game that actually runs for only 60 minutes. Give me rugby any day.
I should add that my wife and I plan to hold an anti-Superbowl party this January for the benefit of people who haven't fallen prey to the game fever.
Watching the SuperBowl holds about as much interest for me as being lobotomized. I've noticed a marked similarity in the results, anyway, with the attention a number of my friends give to the game. I just don't get it. Bloody Americans take three hours to play a game that actually runs for only 60 minutes. Give me rugby any day.
I should add that my wife and I plan to hold an anti-Superbowl party this January for the benefit of people who haven't fallen prey to the game fever.
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