This spring marks the end of an era at the Lewter household.
Our youngest is wrapping up her youth sports career. She is on to high school next year so all softball games from here on out will be with school coaches. She is our last eighth grader. The others have already made the transition to high school.
While we are excited to see them all move on, it’s somewhat bittersweet.
I’ve coached their youth sports teams for several years. It started with basketball in the second grade. I was recruited to coach, not because I was the most qualified, but because I was available. In fact, my coaching knowledge of the game was very limited— almost as limited as my athletic experience, for that matter.
Aside from two years of sub-varsity athletics when I was in school, my youth sports days were spent playing soccer and a season of sixth-grade basketball. I played some football early on, but I gravitated to the band hall and found success there.
I went to college on a music scholarship and then gravitated to the student newspaper. The rest, as they say, is history. Point being, I was never a star athlete.
I did, however, become a decent sportswriter and developed an understanding of how games play out.
When Grace signed up for second-grade basketball, they needed a coach, and I was asked to take up the mantle. I told them I’d do it until someone more qualified came along. Five years later, I retired my whistle at the conclusion of her sixth-grade season. She took up softball in the third grade and I was asked to be score keeper. This was a task I could handle— being a sportswriter and all.
Though I’d written about softball for years, I never really studied the sport. I spent that year doing just that. I kept the counts, tracked the RBIs and learned the rule book.
The following year, I was asked to coach softball and I fell in love with it.
We have three girls— two freshmen and an eighth grader (soon two sophomores and a freshman) and they all three play the sport. Sometimes they’d all be on the same team. Sometimes not. When they weren’t together, I always coached the younger team and helped with the older girls.
There were busy weeks when we had softball seemingly every night. There were times Jennifer and I would only see each other on the road— her delivering kids to one game and me to another. We played spring ball, summer ball and fall ball in different rec leagues across North Texas. I always coached in some form or fashion.
We finished our last regular season of youth softball Saturday when we went 1-1 in the end of season tournament. We scrimmaged a few teams Monday and have an all-star tournament next week, but — all-in-all — our youth rec league softball days are coming to an end.
Our youngest is off to high school and I’m off to chew sunflower seeds in the bleachers with other dads who— like me— have been replaced by trained, educated professionals.
And that’s okay. But, like I said, it’s bittersweet.
It has been an absolute pleasure— more so than any of the girls I’ve coached will ever know. I came to both sports not knowing very much about how to coach them, but I learned as I went along. The bulk of what I learned, though, had little to do with the actual sports themselves but, rather, about their application in life.
I learned how to lower my voice. Early on, I made the mistake that many volunteer coaches do. I hollered a lot. We often reason that raising our voice will help us be heard though, most times, the opposite occurs. We raise our voice and people close their ears. Coaching youth sports taught me to measure my words and bring it down a notch.
I learned that 90% of winning is convincing kids that they are winners. Attitude is everything. To succeed in life, we must first believe we are capable of being successful.
I learned that umpires have an impossible job.
I learned that sometimes even the most well-intended parents can be their kids’ own worst enemy.
I learned how to apologize to kids for my shortcomings. I learned that children forgive far more readily than most adults.
And I learned that, no matter what the old Tom Hanks movie says, there sometimes is crying in the dugout. And that’s okay too.
Grace and I were driving home from a double-header on Monday when she said, “Hey, wanna stop and get a chocolate milk? Since that’s kind our thing.” She was referring to all the nights after practice we’d stop for something refreshing.
A national ad campaign tells us that chocolate milk is great for athletic recovery.
I’m not sure how much science supports that claim, but she’s right. It has been our thing.
We’d leave practice— usually just the two of us together. We’d hit a gas station. She’d grab a chocolate milk and I’d get a Gatorade— all in the name of “athletic recovery.”
That’s what we did Monday night, because “it’s kinda our thing.”
And I hope it always is.
Source: Vecteezy.com