a true sports parent Die twice. Death awaits us at the end of our lives, whether it be through illness, misfortune, fire, falling objects, hydroplaning cars, train derailments, etc. But there’s also the death that comes in the midst of life, the purgatory-like purposelessness that ensues on the sidelines and bleachers of the final season, when a young athlete hangs up his skates, cleats and cleats after his final game.
The passage of time is a scary thing, and for parents, realizing their dreams through the progress of their offspring is as inevitable as the rotation of the earth. But sports parents live the experience in a focused way. This is a more intense version of a common predicament. It must be extinguished, abandoning the alternative hope of major league glory. If your child was serious about pursuing his or her passion, away games and early morning practices, hours of traveling in the car, and hot cold hands watching the sun rise over an icy wonderland meant You have to break free from the routine of drinking coffee. , Bridgeport, CT. Ice Arena in Brewster, New York. Ice Vault in Wayne, New Jersey. Home of the Hitman, whose logo is a pinstriped gangster holding a hockey stick. And suddenly you find yourself watching the Stanley Cup Playoffs not as a civilian, but with the frustration of knowing that your child will never be included in the upper echelons of the game.
One recent morning, I came across an old photo of my son from his senior year of high school, courtesy of Facebook Memories. His son recently announced his decision to quit hockey, or retire. This photo was taken by a teammate after the win in Lake Placid, New York. Sweaty and in the arms of his friend, smiling like a thief, he was as ecstatic as Mike Eruzione after he and his team won Olympic gold in the same stadium in 1980. Looked.
And, I? I was an old man at Eruzione, waiting outside the locker room with the other parents, experiencing a moment of greater satisfaction than any I had ever known, both as a player and as a fan. I was in a parking lot with the gas pedal pressed to the floor. I was a wall bathed in sunlight. This win was better than the Illinois State Championship I won with the Deerfield Falcons in 1977. It was better than the Bears’ 1986 Super Bowl victory.
This end has begun Something like this: One evening, after the last game of the high school season, I asked my son if he was thinking of trying out for spring league. For a young hockey boy, playing in the spring league is the same as a minor league pitcher playing in a winter ballpark in Mexico, and giving it up is very necessary as a statement of intent and a means of improvement. is equivalent to abandoning the “way.” As I expected, instead of a simple nod, she said, “I’ll think about it.” Would you like to think about it? To me, this was the same as my girlfriend saying, “I want to talk to you.”
It wasn’t until later that I realized that those words were the first movement of a carefully choreographed sequence. My son wanted to quit, but he did it in a way that wouldn’t break my heart. He also didn’t want me to lash out, lash out, or try to talk him out of it.
We had our roles reversed. he was an adult. I was that kid.
He knew he wouldn’t be able to play college hockey even if he could. With that in mind, he decided to spend his last year of high school meeting people other than hockey players and spending time outside of the hockey rink. As he approaches the age of 35 and his knee condition is unstable, he decided to retire on his own accord. He wasn’t worried about losing his identity as a player or losing his locker room camaraderie. he was worried about me. Hockey has been our father and son’s life all eras. As a sports parent, I was guided through my 30s, through his 40s, and into his 50s.
My son started playing hockey in 2012. At the age of five, he was part of a group of children enrolled in his Ice Mice. He worked his way up the ranks from there, going from Might to Squirt, Squirt to Pee-wee, Pee-wee to Bantam, and Bantam to Midget. He had no innate athletic genius, but he loved it, and that love was his talent, and his desire to spend every free moment in the facility, the life of a link rat, as an extra. It was jumping onto the ice every time. He was a much-needed player, shooting tape balls in the lobby and making him a force. Kids have all kinds of skills, speed, size, shots, but if they don’t want to be there, if they don’t love the game, it’s not going to work.
It was the passion that propelled him to the top team (Tier 2 and Tier 3 hockey in Fairfield County, Conn.), and it planted the seeds of what would eventually become a bittersweet plant for me. His love for the game has propelled him into the highly competitive and goal-oriented ranks. It’s always about the next tryout and the next season, who will make it through, and more importantly, who will be left behind. Irony: His love for the game has taken him to a level where love is impossible.
When people accuse sports parents of living at the expense of their children, it means that the parents want their children to achieve in a way that they themselves were unable to achieve. But that’s only part of the story. For most of us, the reward is in the present, not the past. When a child scores, they are treated better. Your status will increase. It seems like so many people in my world believe that having your child in the first team puts you, or so many people in my world, in a higher echelon as a parent. When your child is demoted, dropped from the AA team to the A team, or (oh my!) demoted from A to B, your status and social life declines. It’s like experiencing an economic reversal.
As a human being, I tend to blame entities, systems, or others for things that I perceive to be unfair. As my son grew up, I had wonderful, deceptive moments of glimpses into the life he (we, I) would never live. That led to sports stardom in high school, then championships in college, and maybe even a career in professional hockey.I knew this was an illusion, but he never was. that It was good. The power never diminished. In it, I experienced my life as an NHL fan with a new intensity. I wasn’t just watching the Blackhawks. I was a scout and found a trick that I can pass on to my glory-bound son. This was a dream I was too embarrassed to tell anyone, even my wife. I thought of this like how members of the Free France viewed the liberation of Paris. Always think about it. Never talk about it.
In short, I got lost. Instead of letting him enjoy the fact of this moment and season; was I was constantly planning his next move, his next opportunity, his next shot at a big time, rather than his preparation or his career path.
Here’s the worst part. I knew exactly what I was doing. I was trying to replace my child’s will with my own. I knew it was wrong, and worse, counterproductive. The more I pushed, the less he enjoyed the game. He became so bad at playing that he stopped enjoying the game. The worse he played, the more pressure I put on him. Economists call this a negative feedback loop. I knew it, but I couldn’t stop. It was mental illness.
Perhaps parents of the most notorious sports suffer from a common psychological condition. Sports dads like LaVar Ball, Emmanuel Agassi, and Earl Woods all had abusive obsessions. I’d like to think that’s not the case. But while our children have varying degrees of success, our predicament is the same. At some point, even after 20 years of professional life, the set will be taken away and our true whereabouts will be revealed. Link parking lot. A battered vehicle. alone. Even child prodigies retire.
I told my wife I was worried that my son would realize too late that he missed the game. He plans to spend the rest of his life fooling around. This was his last chance to be on the field instead of on the sidelines and mix it up. But I mostly felt insecure about myself. How was he going to survive an endless winter without hockey? And what about the fantasy of a TV cutout where an NHL announcer says, “Here’s the guy who taught him to skate!” My son was acting like a parent saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” by getting into my fever dreams and pointing him out the way. There are many things to live for. It’s time to move on. ”
It’s over for me and my kids, but I don’t want to minimize this experience. It was almost wonderful. He played for 12 years from age 5 to 17. That was his career in the game. During that time, he accumulated so many statistics, including goals, assists, and penalty minutes, that he needed reading glasses to see the print on the back of his hockey card. He learned how to play on a team, support his linemates, stand up to bad coaches and learn from good coaches. He said that getting hit, even laid out, is not the worst thing, that scoring is better revenge than fighting back, that there is more to learn from losing than winning. , but that losing too much is soul-destroying, that the joy of victory is fleeting, and that physical sensations like the feel of a skate blade cutting through fresh ice, or the weight of a puck on a stick, will remain in my heart forever.
