So many sports: Commentary

A mobile Helen Lee on the move against Coronado

Friday night. (Photo by Ed Piper)

It's really a pleasure to watch Helen Lee sprinting down the field again with the ball at full tilt, with no reservations, for La Jolla lacrosse (Fri., April 17) after all the time she spent in ACL rehabilitation last year.

Which leads me to another thought: You know, kids today have so many choices of sports to play, it's almost hard for them to choose which one to play.

For example, speaking of Helen, she chose to go out for basketball one winter and soccer the next. Bravo. I say, good for her.

But part of me also thinks of my brother and my playing days, when there was no lacrosse or soccer, and we played the "traditional" sports, basketball in winter, baseball in spring. I love the running and contact of boys lacrosse (a little more physical than girls lacrosse, though girls lacrosse is a good sport).

It would have been a hard choice when I was in high school four centuries ago between playing baseball or lacrosse in the spring. I played 10 years of baseball, beginning at age 8, and playing up through American Legion, as did my older brother Steve.

We also played basketball all the way through high school, even though it was a new sport for me beginning in the ninth grade.

I say bravo for choice. So many options for our young people. They deserve that element, in view of so much pressure to succeed academically as well as the almost-professionalization of youth and high school sports now, what with highlight videos, personal coaches, worldwide recruiting methods that bring a youth from far-off Belarus to a high school in Tennessee or some such. (How does this happen?)

But fewer options made choices for sports easier back in the day for my brother and me. We knew we were going to play those two sports each year of high school. There was no soul-searching, debate, considering who the coaches are, will I get to start, all of that stuff that goes on now.

Hey, we had some really good coaches in youth sports and high school, and we had some really bad coaches. In varsity baseball, it was throw out the balls and play: "Swing real hard." No one taught me to keep my weight back as I stepped forward on my swing. There wasn't nearly the science and analysis that are used today.

I guess part of me yearns for a simpler day. What makes this issue a point to discuss is that having watched lacrosse while taking photos of LJHS lacrosse (the past eight years) and doing some light reporting on it (the past two years), I've been fascinated by the elements of the sport I mentioned before--running and contact. Those were things I loved as an young athlete. You can whack the other guy over the head in lacrosse (boys, not girls)! It's not a foul if you're "going for the ball." Yippee! Watching Helen run last night over and over in the first half brought back to me the joy that running in basketball brought to me. We had to run some distances in training for community college basketball, and I finished first among the big men. I was motivated. I was a decent athlete.

More power to our young people. More power to our student-athletes. They are our future leaders, and they bring us joy in how they work hard and share it with all the rest of us.


Copyright 2015 Ed Piper