My Athlete's Better Than Yours

I've been working in the sports department of an Erie newspaper for a couple of months now, and it's a pretty great job. I've always loved sports, and all I do here is watch, talk and document things that pertain to sporting events. It's great.

Since working here, though, I've been re-exposed to something that I'd hoped I would never have to deal with again, at least not anytime soon.

This would be the overbearing and clinically insane parent of a youth or high school athlete.

If you've been around sports as long as I have, or even for just a short amount of time, you know exactly who I'm talking about: the guardian who, for some reason or another, believes that their child is better than any other kid in the school, county, state or country, and that they should be treated accordingly.

Every once in a while, a parent will call into the paper and ask a question about why their child wasn't considered this, or not selected for that.

For instance, last week the paper ran a fall sports photo album in their weekly high school sports section, called Varsity. It just consisted of some of the more memorable pictures of kids from the year: a girl wearing street clothes and a knee brace performing for her school's colorguard, a kid crying after getting spanked in the football state playoffs, a group of morbidly obese high school football linemen screaming with shaved heads and faces painted like Mel Gibson's in Braveheart,and I guess a few others that I would actually want to look at sometime. (Sidenote: I did not have anything to do with selecting these pictures of fat, flag-waving, or blubbering children.) Parents have written letters to the sports editors pissed out of their minds and ranting like they're Bill O'Reilly at a U2 concert because their children were not included in a five page long photo album.

It really annoys me, the way that these parents seem to believe that even though "their little Ronnie" is short, fat, slow and white (characteristics they apparently cannot see), he will someday make it to the big leagues, and they will ride his coattails to wealth health and happiness, and then they will be their to mourn with him when he meets his downfall after a long and drawn out rape, murder, assault, drug or steroid abuse case.

This will, no doubt happen. These kids are going to be big time, but a paper in Erie might jeopardize that if they don't include the budding star in a newspaper photo album that, quite honestly, nobody gives a fucking peg leg about except the people that are in it and like, there families. It's not that big of a deal to have your picture in the paper. Maybe your grandma will call, or your History teacher will hang it in the bulletin board towards the back of the room right next to his map of Greenland, but it's not going to do you any good.

A couple of the guys I work with were discussing it just this evening at work, and one of them said, "You know what's weird about this? These people are adults. I mean, grow up," he said. "I'd understand if maybe a kid wrote us something, but you never hear from the kids."

Maybe because most of them don't get too hung up about it. Maybe because you don't get blown for having your picture in the paper dribbling a ball. Kids have more important things to worry about, like the next dance or that Saturday night when they can smuggle three of their dad's beers to their room and watch reruns of South Park until the sun comes up.

I've known kids that have had parents who were so worried about their athletics that it kind of messed up their lives. I was friends with a guy whose father had him transfer to a different public high school because of his basketball career. He got busted--because this is an illegal thing to do--and he had to sit out a year. This kid may have been a long shot division I recruit, but when he returned the following year he played terribly. Now he plays at a school that has one of the worst division II basketball teams I have ever lain eyes on.

Other kids have had fathers that held them back a year in school, so that they could have that extra year as an advantage for sports reasons. These same kind of guys will try and coach their kids any time that they can, and they preach a me-first attitude that doesn't really help them with what will actually get them recognition in the first place: winning.

Sports are awesome, and I love them. They're such a great passtime, and I spent a great deal of my life playing them, especially basketball. I wanted to win, and I liked having my picture in the paper, but never once did my parents get angry whenever someone else on my team got their action shot in over me, and neither did I. It was, and never really should be, about that.

And it shouldn't be about your parents. The worst thing for many of these kids may be that their parents are running their lives, and they will continue to forever. If they put your sporting career on such a high pedestal and attempt to intervene in it with such vigor, what will happen when it ends? They'll do the same with your professional career (which probably won't have anything to do with a sport), and they'll try to control you forever.

Whenever I got to college last year and fell under the tutelage of a coach that was kind of like a facist dictator, I stopped having fun. (I wasn't allowed to wear earrings or have my hair semi- long or express myself in any personal manner, and that was just off of the court. I still, to this day, don't know what his deal is/was.) I was very fortunate, because when I discussed "retiring" with my parents they were understanding and allowed it to be exclusively my decision. When I did definitely decide to leave the sport in a competitive sense, it was hard because I've always loved winning, and it was difficult to comprehend why it wasn't fun anymore. I realized after a while that I was lucky to have had fun the entire time I was in high school, because a lot of kids are pressured so heavily by their overly proud nutcase parents that it's difficult to even have any fun as a child.

It's not fair to a kid to have a parent that badgers them about sports all the time, and it's not fair to the people who cover sports to get letters concerning the lack of coverage their kid or team is getting. If it's deserved, it will come, I think.

So, next time you see a soccer mom with a cooler full of human growth hormone, whey protein, and a phone book with a list of agents, set her straight.

In high school, it's just a game. Not a media circus, and it should be viewed that way.