<p>For those of you who never had a kid who played sports in high school and then decided/chose not to play that sport in college I know you won’t relate easily to this . Or maybe you can . Maybe they dropped something as exciting to you, although I have zero idea what that could be. LOL.</p>
<p>It’s the start of high school/college/pro basketball season and college and pro ball just can’t hold a candle to watching your own kid play. It’s the difference between adding “gung-” or “-hum” to the root word “ho”.</p>
<p>Gee. Why do they have to give kids “free will”? Somebody really sca-rewed that up. ;)</p>
<p>Anybody else having sports withdrawals? I’m getting desperate. I’m thinking about a basketball season long adoption process myself. Kid doesn’t have to be great - just smart, reasonably athletic, and ready to learn. Oh, yeah- and say “y’all” and “fixing to”. Maybe I should call Madonna. She might know of somebody who could help. </p>
<p>(Note: I am sorry to report that my D has been corrupted by the forces of evil and has chosen to get her athletic and competitive jollies through something called an “Ultimate Frisbee Club Team”. They are in Fayetteville, Arkansas as we speak. They played club teams from UT, Arkansas, Ole Miss, somebody else. Hmmmmm. I wonder what air service to Fayetteville would be? )</p>
<p>I can sort of relate… just keep going to games. I think you might actually enjoy the game more if your D is not playing. I am a big fan of HS bball and attended many of our local games even though my 2 sons did not play on the team. The players’ parents are usually totally stressed out and overly focused on what their own kid is doing to actually enjoy the game. There were a couple of moms that are very good friends that I stopped sitting with because they would scream too much, especially at the refs! Meanwhile, I am wondering how I will justify attending cross country meets next year - a sport that attracts very few nonparental spectators - after my S graduates.</p>
<p>Oooh. I’ve been right where you are. My advice: Learn to embrace Ultimate. It’s fun, you can go to the games/tournaments and cheer for your progeny, and it’s just what some of them decide to do after having done it all in HS. The travel in college sports is absolutely awful (I did it myself) and although I was disappointed, I supported my high-octane daughter’s decision to focus on her studies and enjoying her college years as a non-varsity player. Ultimate is fun, I tell you. You’ll get used to it.</p>
<p>Well, curmudgeon, you could always devote your efforts to cheering for my red team son…he’s all of those things you mentioned, and then some! And you have THAT on the word of his <em>very</em> UNBIASED mama! ;)</p>
<p>I <em>do</em> understand and feel your pain, though. My oldest S played school basketball for four years before shifting his priorities during his junior year. The “withdrawal” <em>was</em> felt. </p>
<p>Hope the ol’ frisbee goes well–sounds like fun!</p>
<p>Curm, I also feel your pain! DD played softball for EIGHT YEARS beginning with 1st grade until she hit high school…now she only swims in the winter (ever been to a swim meet…yawn! And I swam competitively!) I really miss those wonderful spring days outside on my folding chair…or was it nasty, windy rainy days inside the car straining to see the action on the field!</p>
<p>Curmudgeon, I can relate. My son, after 13 or 14 years is giving up soccer. He was told by a division 1 coach that he could play at the top of level of college soccer. (Of course, he would have to practice 5 hours a day for most of the year). I was told that he would be the best player on a very good division 3 team.</p>
<p>He also played and moved in his own style and with a bag over his head you would still know it was him in 2 seconds. A teammate (and a potential division 1 player himself) said my kid played with an “attacking flair”.</p>
<p>Yet, my kid is probably making the best decision for himself. What do I do? I show up at the games and enjoy myself. I’m not the one who has to work hard to keep in shape, give up other activites, and give up time with my friends because I have to go to practice. I’m not the one who gets kicked in the ankles and achilles tendons, elbowed in the face and has his private parts held in unfavorable ways.</p>
<p>So, yes, I loved watching him play, but it is time to move on. </p>
<p>He says he is not going to miss the game. He wants to do other things. Like your daughter, he is very bright and I look forward to seeing how his life unfolds. </p>
<p>My brother uploaded a few clips of my son playing soccer on Youtube. So my son will always be playing and running somewhere in cyberspace. He’s just a few clicks away.</p>
<p>Hopefully, you have some video of your daughter.</p>
<p>I don’t relate to the sports thing, even though I’ve attended many a sporting event in my time. I enjoyed it at the time but didn’t miss THAT when s. went off to college. (Helped that d. was still home and had her own sports.) What I DID miss was hearing him practice his instrument - and sometimes when he’s home I’ll get to hear that. D. also plays, but of course they don’t sound the same.</p>
<p>I do commiserate with your wanting to make your d. do what you’d like her to, and have thought that the best way, as parents, for us to accomplish this is to grow kids with big slits in their backs. That way we can put our hands through into theirs and makes their arms move the way we want them to. (I hesitate to use the word ‘puppet’.) We’d have to rig up some way to control their speech, too, but I was just reading that fast food restaurants are now having off-site call centers handle their drive-through ordering, so I think the technology is there. You might look up from your desk at work, realize it’s time for basketball practice, and have to excuse yourself so you can go ‘fire up’ your kid - insert your remote hands and don the headset so you can control her speech. It’s just not believable to be controlling someone’s movements and not their speech, too. Not only would it ensure that your kid continued in the sport, but the bird’s eye view it affords the parent - priceless.</p>
<p>Failing that, you could do what you do so well - write about it.</p>
<p>I didn’t realize your daughter is not playing basketball in college as I assumed she was a die hard passionate player. I guess she she has moved onto something else and that can happen! </p>
<p>When our kids left for college, sure, there is a void in that we are not running to their events on a daily basis as we did for years and years. However, my kids are still involved in their passions in college and so while it is less frequent for US and way further to travel, we do still go to their events. In fact, tomorrow we leave to see D2 at her “game”. So, we’re still doing it. We were just at her school two weeks ago for an event. It is six hours away. A lot of D1’s sports events are in New England and so we travel on weekends to most of these which is a nice way to see her, though lots of travel involved but we can do it. The nice surprise was that so many other parents also travel to these events and I didn’t realize we’d have that experience in college with a crew of parents on the sidelines and we all organize pot luck lunches for the team, etc., a bit like in HS! </p>
<p>However, since the kids are NOT nearby and we aren’t going to events daily as before, sometimes we still go to these same events locally even without a kid in them. My husband, actually is diehard this way as I do not think he wants to let go that we don’t have kids in these local events anymore. So, he’ll go catch the soccer games and all the school concerts and events our kids used to be in. He even goes back to the elem school to see events. I go to some of these, but not as much as he does since my kids, nor their peers, are involved any longer. But you could do that…you could go back to your HS bball games. If you can travel to your D’s school or wherever she is competing to catch her in an ultimate frisbee tourney, that’s an option too.</p>
<p>I still occassionally go to the HS matches, to cheer on my D’s old team; I know a lot of the girls, who were freshmen and sophomores when my D played. Last time I went to a match, they told me how much they had been missing my loud cheering! </p>
<p>Its kind of a tradition in this town and with this team. When my D was still playing, the moms and dads of kids who had graduated would come out to watch her matches. It always made me feel good to see the old timer parents out there. It was like we were all a part of a team tradition-- something bigger than just our individual kids. </p>
<p>Well, I don’t have a clue. But since you came to my Pity Party last winter, and stayed well into the night, I’m happy to be invited to yours. You’ve heard all the winning strategies above - video, stress-free time in the bleachers when your D is not on the floor, … but I think lefthandofdog has the best answer: curmudgeon’s Great American Novel on the subject.</p>
<p>B - I hadn’t thought about a hairy-legged BOY!! That doubles my chances. Now , how do I handle that Kansas commute?</p>
<p>Driver, you can openly “spectate” Ultimate? I think my D is under the impression that no parents or coaches are allowed, or maybe it’s just her parents or coaches.:(</p>
<p>Dstark, D may have not been the best kid on the team , but she’d have played and made everyone else better. ;)</p>
<p>Everybody, thanks. I’m just wallowing in it. I know. But this is a fresh wound . She just decided about ten days ago not to play. I mean , how much studying does a kid want to do? Jeez. Where’s that ever going to get her? </p>
<p>There she was telling me to “talk her out of it” and I wouldn’t do it. Never thinking for a moment she’d really decide not to play. Who’d chose that? The little weasel pulled a fast one on me.</p>
<p>I absolutely subscribed to the rent-a-kid theory. Some people can’t just “watch” an event, they have to be “connected” to get the most out of it. So, as kids move on to other activities, I rent one of the other kids who for a year or two to transition. Take pictures and videos for them, cheer for them, buy those silly fundraising tickets from them, and occassionally provide a ride or two to an event when their own parents have conflicts. Not quite the same but it does help.</p>
<p>My S was an amazing soccer player - on a traveling team, and he was captain. I loved going to the games because there was always some dad on the other team who would figure out that S was my kid, and would come over and tell me all kinds of nice things. It was so much fun, and I was soooo proud. It was really hard when he gave it up for music, but it was the right decision for him, and one we supported. I still miss going to the games - even though I have plenty else to do! That was over 7 years ago. I finally threw out his cleats a month ago.</p>
<p>I sure can relate! Since WildChild missed his whole senior year of high school running due to injury, and his freshman cc season in college, so did H and I. As a result, I do what D says is “stalk” other college athletes. D started as a freshman at Rice with a young man who was the top high school miler in the country that year- and he was from the Houston area. I followed his career (S had seen him at some races) and it turned out he had the exact same birth date as my daughter! She exchanged some IMs with him, but was not nearly as “taken” by him as I was. He kept a public online running log with commentary to help other runners, and I just thought he was a wonderful boy. Well-D’s greatest fear was that we would run into him on the Rice campus and I would embarrass her. It happened! It is still a family legend. He (Steve Magness) wound up leaving Rice for running reasons, but I still follow his running.</p>
<p>It IS hard on parents when their athletically talented kids choose not to compete in college. One of the top freshmen recruits in a sport other than S’s at Penn quit before the season even started. He decided he hated the culture of the team and wanted to focus on his academics. The coach was disappointed, to say the least, as were the parents. </p>
<p>In other news- GO LANCE!! He broke 3 hours in the NY Marathon. Great job.</p>
<p>Oh, and I’ll be at all the high school girls games. Home and away. I calculate I can go to the games till our little point guard (youngest teammate to D)graduates without getting arrested as some sort of predator.</p>
I don’t know the culture at her particular school, but my guess is that she’s just being a newbie. We check in at the tournaments whenever we can, and there are always other parents. No, it’s not Notre Dame football, but yeah, bring your folding chair and your thermos and cheer and have fun. No coaches though. This thing is entirely student-run. Libertarian positivist nihilism. We attended the Williams College “Purple Valley Invitational” last month–about a dozen schools–and it was a blast.</p>
<p>curm,
I go and watch friends kids play high school ball. I’ve got nary an athlete in my brood which no one can believe since I would have been a Division I recruit if only I had been born 20+ years earlier. Many years ago I started going to girls Varsity BB games in another town because I’d heard about a particular player. I followed her for a couple of years until she graduated. She clearly had been brought up “playin’ with the boys.” Eventually she became the starting point guard at Duke.</p>
<p>I would be willing to loan you an 8th grade S. Sadly, he not only was not into playing sports but also attending pro sports games with his dear old dad.</p>
<p>He is a sci fi geek though. And funny as hell. </p>
<p>Here’s the worst thing. Well, maybe not the worst (that’s what her not playing does to ME). </p>
<p>She gave this as her reason -“Dad, I’m working as hard as everybody else but I’m not doing extra. My shot was off the other day and I didn’t want to stay in the gym late till I got it back right. I’ve never felt that way before. And I’m not willing to play that way.”</p>
<p>It’s the time commitment. I know that but gee-willikers, do you really need all that social stuff? And how important is that research crap to a pre-med anyway? Sheesh.</p>
Many years ago I started going to girls Varsity BB games in another town because I’d heard about a particular player. I followed her for a couple of years until she graduated. She clearly had been brought up “playin’ with the boys.” Eventually she became the starting point guard at Duke.</p>