What a (Seventh Grade) Girl Really Wants

Chloe is now in the seventh grade. A generation ago, this would be the first year of Junior High School. Today it is the second of the three years of Middle School. Typically, the girls pull ahead of the boys in stature and reading skills while the boys pull ahead of the girls in math. Nearly all the girls are using bras and menstrual pads. Likewise, most of the boys are experiencing the effects of a significant increase in testosterone.

The Angry Divorced Father

In the Lacrosse Semi-Finals, Hermes faced Conquistador at the Cabrillo High School Stadium. Volunteers at the gate ensured there was a price for admission to keep up funding for the best high school stadium in the County.

I’m already looking forward to seeing Hermes face Conquistador next year. The team has a fantastic new coach as well as several great players who I once coached when they were tweens. Lastly, Philip’s friend Carson (who wasn’t eligible to play this season) will be back in gear as one of Conquistador’s top players. With this year’s game, we knew Hermes would slaughter Conquistador. Next year—with more than two thirds of the top players from Hermes graduating in a few weeks—will be a very different match-up.

A Good Captain Makes a Good Team

This Year Hermes High School’s Lacrosse Coach named four Seniors as Team Captains, including Conrad and Bruce. Over the years I have watched these boys on Philip’s Team grow up. It has been nice watching Bruce grow from being the star player to being a true leader. But the beacon of great leadership on the team this year is unquestionably Conrad.

The Lone Guy on the Cheer Squad

The role is satirized in popular movies like Easy A and Fired Up as well as in SNL skits featuring Will Ferrell. One victory of the feminist revolution is the gender integration of school sports. Not only can a girl join the Varsity Football Team, but a guy can join the Varsity Cheer Squad. After one football season as the Hermes High School mascot, Philip was invited to officially join the school’s Cheer Squad so the school could fully integrate Nestor Hawk into the Cheer program.

Popular Teens: How Do They Gain and Maintain Their Status?

Now that my formal education is long since over, works published in academic journals do not normally catch my attention. The February 2011 issue of the American Sociological Review proved a very interesting exception. In it Professors Robert Faris and Diane Felmlee of UC Davis empirically verified something we generally know about popular teenagers but also discovered some things we do not generally know.

Is anyone surprised to learn that popular teenagers are mean toward other teenagers? If we have somehow forgotten our own teen years, the entertainment industry is there to remind us with movies like Mean Girls, American Pie, The Clique and Odd Girl Out as well as television series like Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill, Pretty Little Liars, and Degrassi.

Faris and Felmlee use the word Aggression to describe three types of behaviors that increase among teens as they become progressively popular: physical aggression, direct verbal aggression and indirect verbal aggression (spreading gossip). These findings stand in sharp contrast to psychological research that attributes aggressive behavior to teens who are social outsiders, not social insiders. And then there is one finding that shatters the stereotype completely. Their research shows teens at the zenith of popularity (roughly the top 2%) are not mean or aggressive at all. If we think back hard to our own teen years, perhaps many of us can remember these kinder, gentler highly popular teens and anecdotally confirm what has only been recently documented empirically. I certainly can.

While I have not conducted any kind of study that would qualify as viable research, I believe my anecdotal observations can explain some of these findings, fill in some gaps, and paint a more complete picture. Most importantly, since being more popular in and of itself is desirable and as long as a teen does not attain his or her increased popularity through acts of cruelty or leverage his or her popularity for destructive ends, its pursuit should be encouraged.

While I agree that popular teens behave aggressively toward other teenagers according to the pattern Faris and Felmlee outline, it is not the first thing I have noticed about their social behavior. Instead what is most noticeable is how much effort they put into validating other teenagers. As teenagers become more popular, acts of validation become almost an obsession. They want to pair themselves off with nearly everyone in photographs. They post all kinds of warm, friendly messages to others on social networking sites like Facebook and Formspring. And regarding the school sports teams, they are the ones who provide constant praise to the high performers and constant encouragement to the under performers as both teammates and fans on the sidelines. When Philip’s birthday rolled around, the first two people to wish him “happy birthday” on Facebook were Noah (the most popular guy is his class) and Erica (the most popular girl in his class). Their posts both appeared before seven in the morning and were followed by scores of other birthday notes, most of which were from other very popular students. On the other side of the spectrum, when a man in the community died in a motorcycle accident, it was the popular kids like Noah who led the charge in showering his son (a junior at Hermes High School) with words and acts of love, kindness and support and who actively urged others to do likewise.

There are many factors that play into the equation to determine teenage popularity and obviously these differ between boys and girls. These include extroversion, mature youthful features, stature, muscular development, humor, friendliness, personal grooming, intelligence (but not actual academic performance), confidence, speaking skills, financial resources, athletic prowess, social ambition, and (perhaps not last) an adeptness at using aggressive behavior shrewdly.

Here in my mind is the difference between the aggressiveness popular teens exhibit and the aggressiveness marginal teens exhibit, and why Faris and Felmlee’s findings differ so radically from the findings of most psychological research. Put yourself in the shoes of an average teenager and ask yourself who’s aggression would make you feel more victimized: the crazy kid with no friends or the starting quarterback with a beautiful adoring girlfriend? A small public cutting remark from the quarterback would have far more impact than a tirade from the crazy kid.

In my observation, popular teens tend to use aggression with deliberate ends in mind more than they exhibit impulsive acts of aggression, though I have certainly observed the latter quite often. These deliberate ends include testing, self-defense, assertiveness, maintaining the social hierarchy, and (admittedly) entertainment. Here is one example of this kind of deliberateness that I observed from the bleachers. The Hermes lacrosse team was taking a water break. Philip had just finished drinking and was putting his gloves back on. A short distance from Philip, Conrad was holding one of those water bottles that let him squirt water into his mouth without needing to remove his helmet. After drinking up, Conrad aimed a quick squirt of water at Philip. Philip looked up, saw Conrad’s beaming confident smile, and gave Conrad a warm smile and quick laugh in response. Then Conrad squirted Philip a second time. Philip stared back at Conrad with an annoyed look of disapproval while Conrad continued to smile like the Cheshire Cat, and then squirted Philip a third time. Without hesitation, Philip used his lacrosse stick to knock the water bottle out of Conrad’s hand and deliver a few punishing jabs before Conrad got hold of his own stick and was able to successfully parry Philip’s stick-thrusts. Conrad made one attempt to jab Philip back and his attempt was likewise deflected before both smiled and halted their altercation.

It was a very telling exchange. Both Conrad and Philip are popular. Conrad is perhaps half a notch above Philip in the social hierarchy. Conrad’s initial actions served multiple purposes. They were a test, a way to maintain his social position relative to Philip’s and a means of entertainment. Philip’s initial self-restraint and subsequent aggression first validated Conrad and then asserted Philip’s own social position. By the end of the exchange both Conrad and Philip looked impressive to all observers and perhaps their joint status within the overall social order had increased.

Teenagers have varying social ambitions and varying means to achieve their social ambitions. While some things (like height) are completely out of their control, other things (like behavior) are very much within their control to the degree that their maturity can override their impulsiveness. The best steps a parent can take to help their children enjoy the social aspects of their teen years are encouraging their teens to be friendly and validating of others while simultaneously teaching their teens to be shrewdly assertive. Both will normally take effort because most teens are socially cautious by nature. But the effort will be well worth it.

Inspired to Connect the Past to the Present

Back in September, I started a new job with a new company. I went from primarily working out of my home office in Hermes to working at my new company’s regional office in Riverdale. It is a fifty minute commute. The office building is walking distance from the shops and restaurants in historic downtown Riverdale and even closer to an office building where I worked for six years when Philip was a small child.

The other day I walked past that old office building during my lunch break. There was my former office’s window looking down at me: Second floor, second window from the left. I could see the shade was lowered about one third of the way. My former company had been sold to a larger corporation and operations had been scattered to other locations. Someone I probably did not even know now occupied my former abode. The art work that once occupied the walls inside that office was now hanging from the wall of my home office in Hermes. Still, the second window from the left on the second floor looked virtually unchanged. It was enough to fill me with a flood of memories from that time.

The old company had relocated me and my family from another state to San Geraldo in order for me to work there. That six year job stint took me from the days when Philip couldn’t even pronounce his own name to the first half of his second grade year of elementary school. It included Chloe’s birth and the first three years of her life as well as our move from San Geraldo to Hermes. So much had been packed into a little more than half a decade.

It is funny what memories take hold for us to cherish. For me, one such memory dates back to Philip’s early days in preschool. I had taken the train to work that day. Young Philip loved trains. “Twain – twain,” he would say pointing whenever he spotted one. Amelia had plans to have dinner with a friend in Oxford Hills. We decided she would take Philip to my office for me to bring home. It would be his first chance to actually ride on a train.

Philip and Amelia arrived in the late afternoon. The train home would arrive forty minutes later. I wanted to make Philip’s rare visits to my office special. On that day I began two rituals which I would repeat each time he visited my office for the rest of the time he was in preschool. First, I took him to the office kitchen for a can of root beer from the refrigerator. Going forward, “Rooph Beer” was all he would get to drink in my office and we refrained from serving it to him in any other venue. The other ritual was drawing a picture. With my green highlighter pen and copy paper, I would draw “Dexter the Dragon” which was a children’s ride at the San Geraldo Zoo. Those rituals played out on perhaps twenty visits to my office over the next two years, always at Philip’s request. During some of those visits, Philip would get to ride the twain again.

Walking through downtown Riverdale the other day was an experience somewhere between stepping through a time portal and getting a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past. Some things looked exactly the same. There was still the hair salon run by an extended Vietnamese family that provided a fantastic men’s haircut for a fantastic price. Two coffee shops, two Irish pubs, two Thai restaurants and an upscale deli were still thriving businesses. Other things had changed. The Microbrew had changed its name and ownership. My Hungarian tailor had retired and a tanning salon had replaced his little shop. My favorite Mexican restaurant had gone. And the Armenian shoe repair shop had expanded business to include luggage repair. A lot is the same and a lot has changed in some eight years. What can be said about downtown Riverdale can also be said about my family.

Tonight, our whole family along with Chloe’s friend Patty will spend the evening enjoying a New Year’s Eve Ball. Guys will be wearing blazers and ladies will be wearing dresses. Amelia and I plan to watch from a distance as Philip dances with one elegantly dressed, lovely teenage girl after another while Chloe and Patty share dances with younger boys. On Sunday, Philip will take part in a lacrosse scrimmage under the lights at Cabrillo High School involving the area’s high school and college players. I plan to plant myself in the bleachers and soak in the pleasure of watching Philip holding his own against MCLA lacrosse players.

So much time has gone by. The adolescent Philip who ballroom dances and plays varsity lacrosse seems so different from the little boy who drank rooph beer and wanted to see another highlighter drawing of Dexter the Dragon before riding home on the twain. But every so often, something as simple as the sight of a second story window brings all those great memories back and connects them to the great memories that are being formed in the present.

Rethinking Payback

Conrad is the top defensive player on the Hermes Varsity Lacrosse team. He has short cropped blond hair and a boyish face. He has joined Philip, Bruce and several other lacrosse players who are not playing football this Fall to play indoor lacrosse during the off-season.

Indoor lacrosse and other indoor sports tend to be more violent than their outdoor counter-parts. The wall is what makes the difference. The action tends to slam players into the wall. Sometimes it is a foul and sometime it is not a foul. But either way, athletes do not like being slammed into a wall. Fights almost never happen during outdoor lacrosse games. But they are reasonably common during indoor lacrosse games.

During the first weekend in October, we faced a team with one particularly aggressive player. Throughout the first period he surfed the edge of acceptable behavior. But at the beginning of the second period he crossed the line. With all his speed, strength and weight, he slammed his stick into Conrad’s torso, pushing him all the way into the wall while continuing to lean his weight into his stick. One of Conrad’s ribs cracked under the force and the blow to the wall knocked the wind out of him. The aggressive player was given a five minute penalty and it enabled our team to climb way ahead in points scored. But it was the end of the game for Conrad. The action got Bruce thinking. And Bruce’s thinking quickly developed into a quiet exchange with one of the other large and aggressive players on our team: Brad.

On the other side of the playing area, parents were watching the game. I was quietly talking to the grandmother of one of the players on the opposing team. She was a bit taken aback by the aggressive play and I was remarking on the violent nature of indoor sports when both Philip and her grandson Jeremy stepped onto the arena. As it turned out the two were lined up to cover one another. Philip and Jeremy proved a good match to challenge one another. At that point the final period of play was well under way.

Not long afterward, the aggressive player from the other team joined the action. Jeremy got hold of the ball but Philip came right at him to challenge Jeremy’s control. With the aggressive player open, Jeremy passed the ball. In less than a second Brad and Bruce collided into the aggressive player from either side and knocked the aggressive player to the floor. Bruce and Brad held their opponent down on the floor and stripped him of his stick and helmet while delivering punch after punch to his face, chest and stomach. Not a single teammate came to the aggressive player's aid. The referee roared, but didn’t dare touch the brawl taking place on the floor. Philip and Jeremy each took a knee as did the majority of other players. Jeremy’s grandmother gulped, regained her composure and then said, “I am so glad your son and my grandson are not involved in that fight. How terrible they are doing that.”

I generally find such fighting repugnant. The system has ways to deal with such behavior but those ways are not fully preventative. Brad and Bruce were ejected from the game. Conrad left the bench and joined them, limping and holding his gut as he walked. A single five minute penalty was awarded to our team with no particular player specified. Between being a man down and missing some of our best players, the opposing team racked up several points in the final minutes of the game. In the end we only won by a single point. But the truth was nobody was thinking about the score or who won. The fight had taken the joy out of seeing a winner to the contest. Jeremy’s grandmother was still saying, “I am so glad your son and my grandson were not involved in that fight” when the final buzzer went off.

In the car ride home, Philip explained to me just how much Conrad had been hurt. And while I still did not like the decision Bruce and Brad had made, I began to see it in a different light. At roughly one hundred, fifteen pounds, Philip has been the team’s penalty magnet. But Philip has never taken a serious hit the way Conrad did that day. And while some look down on it, the threat of a payback from players like Bruce and Brad is a deterrent that ensures Philip is at least reasonably safe from the worst of indoor sports violence.

A Friend from Another Generation

I had not spoken with Raul in over a year. But suddenly he was standing next to me saying, “Hey Coach.”

Raul was Philip’s first friend in Hermes. In 2002, before moving from San Geraldo to Hermes, we signed up Philip for Little League Baseball in Hermes. We figured Philip would meet a bunch of kids on the team, and that one of them would almost certainly be in the same first grade class on Philip’s first day at a new school more than half way through the school year. When Philip started at his new elementary school in Hermes, he found Raul there waving him into the same class. The two shared a great season of Little League. For second grade and third grade, I coached the soccer teams on which Philip and Raul played together. To the degree that an adult and a child from different families can be friends, Raul and I have been friends for many years now.

This Fall, Philip has been practicing lacrosse twice a week at Hermes with the other players who are not presently absorbed by football. The off-season lacrosse players have a small patch of fenced-in artificial turf for two hours on Mondays and Wednesdays while the Freshman, JV and Varsity football teams dominate the wide open athletic fields on the Hermes High School campus for the entire week. I arrived on campus from my now fifty minute commute home about fifteen minutes before the lacrosse coach ended practice.

To keep the locker room from being over-crowded, the football coaches release the teams in reverse order of seniority half an hour apart. Raul has been playing on the JV squad this year. While the rest of the sophomore and junior players on the JV team walked by the artificial turf without even slowing to watch, Raul took the opportunity to catch up with me. Like Philip, Raul is lean and now taller than me. I asked him about football and told him I intended to see at least part of the upcoming JV game. He asked about Philip’s lacrosse team and for help identifying Philip from behind the helmets and light body armor. When I asked him how his younger sister was adjusting to high school, he sounded like his father. “She’s adjusting well. If anything, she’s adjusting a little too well in my opinion.” The conversation lasted a little over five minutes.

Like Philip, Raul looked ever so close to adulthood. Our conversation was not far from what would be said between two adults watching the scrimmage at the end of a high school lacrosse practice. I was proud of the boy I had coached and had under my home on multiple occasions. And I was proud of the young man he was today. Raul was healthy and confident. And he was completely comfortable engaging an adult as an equal.

Among Philip’s peers, some have always stood out as special to me. Many of these were ones I had coached along the way. Raul has always been one of the special ones. Coaches, family friends, teachers and others who work with youth in extracurricular activities get to play a minor role in a child’s upbringing for a brief window of life. There is a special satisfaction at the time. There is a special satisfaction that endures. And that enduring satisfaction comes to the surface whenever I get to speak with a kid I had once coached. For the special ones like Raul, the feeling of satisfaction is particularly enjoyable.

The last of the JV players walked just after I told Raul I was planning to catch at least part of his game. He smiled and said, “That would be great.” He then seemed to notice he was going to be the last into the locker room. “I should go get changed so I my dad doesn’t have to wait.” He turned and disappeared into the small current of JV football practice jerseys. And I couldn’t help smiling as I turned my attention back to the lacrosse scrimmage.

Some day Raul will be a full adult. If he and I still live in Hermes ten years from now, I suspect Raul and I will still be friends, and we will enjoy the kind of friendships older adults share with younger adults who are not from the same family.

Sustaining the Connection

For me, my sophomore year in high school was the turning point. Suddenly, I could feel adulthood looming on the horizon. Now nearly thirty years later, Philip is a sophomore in high school and I suddenly sense the ticking calendar. He loves me. But he needs me less than he has ever needed me. At the same time, he craves autonomy more than ever before. At unexpected times, Philip wants to fully engage. Most of the time, however, he prefers to be alone in his room with just the computer and his own musings to keep him company. But there are two exceptions to his unpredictable willingness to interact.

The first exception is the television. Philip’s tastes range from action and science fiction to documentaries. During the school year, our family rule is that the television goes off at 4:30pm on weekday school nights. That leaves only the weekend for me to share watching television with Philip. We have found a number of television shows available on DVD to watch over time. On many weekend nights, it is the last thing Philip and I do before we each head off to bed. But occasionally I get lucky. At the end of a show, when his mother and sister have often gone to bed, Philip will sometimes leverage these private times to talk to me about what is on his mind.
The other exception is sports and exercise. Philip is very willing to include me when I can help. In this new school year, it has meant signing him up for off-season indoor lacrosse in San Geraldo and regularly serving as the driver for him and other players from the area playing on his team

Philip’s intense interest in exercise went to an even higher level some time in the summer. We had expected him to sleep as late as possible each morning. But instead Philip set his alarm to go off before the first signs of light. He began doing push-ups and various abdominal exercises. Philip’s morning exercise routine has given me the opportunity to take him on multiple shopping trips to the local sporting goods stores. We’ve purchased athletic shoes, dumbbells and ankle weights. Now, half an hour before my own alarm is scheduled to play a local radio station, I hear the siren of Philip’s alarm clock. It is followed by the sound of him climbing out of his bunk bed and then either the stomp of his lunges or the clink of his dumbbells.

On an outing to the grocery store, I took Philip alone and encouraged him to browse the men's magazines. He took no interest in the publications that focused on body-building, gaming, cars or fashion. But the more broad-based publication, Men's Health, appealed to him, so I added the five dollar newsstand price to that day's grocery bill. After Philip devoured the August issue, I invested around twenty dollars to get him an annual subscription. Now every so often, he emerges from his room to show me a new exercise he read about and wanted to try.

For a while, all of Philip's dawn exercises were a private affair. But he wanted to start running. I volunteered to manage his stopwatch while he worked to improve his time on a neighborhood run of roughly seven hundred meters. Now when I hear the alarm go off, I get out of bed myself. I throw on shorts, a tank top and a sweatshirt. I knock on his door and tell him to get me when he is ready to run. Five to twenty-five minutes go by while I cat nap. If my own alarm goes off, I know Philip won't be running. But normally he chooses to run. I leap up and join him downstairs. We lace our athletic shoes together and head outside. Philip may stretch or do some quick warm-ups, but he is normally ready to go almost immediately.

With Philip at the edge of our driveway, leaning forward ready to launch into a sprint, I speak a crisp "Ready … set … go!" He disappears into the darkness down the street. I turn the opposite direction and briskly walk to our meeting point at a nearby intersection. In the quiet of the morning, I never fully lose the sound of his feet slamming into the pavement with a rhythmic beat from somewhere in the neighborhood. Shortly after I arrive at our meeting point, the rhythm starts to get louder. He picks up the pace for the final stretch of his morning run. Soon he passes the finish mark and I tell him how much time elapsed. The sound of Philip's fast, heavy breathing replaces the first rhythm with a new one. Together we enjoy the short walk back to our house.

Over the past few weeks Philip's morning sprint has become a ritual that helps me relish what is left of the time I have with Philip under my roof. But whether it is the rhythm of his running or the rhythm of his breathing, it is still the sound of the ticking calendar to me.

When Teen Life Intersects Adult Life

Teresa has been a good friend to Philip. I first saw Teresa at an off-season lacrosse game under the lights in Oxford Hills during November of Philip’s freshman year. While Amelia and I watched the game, Chloe paired off with Teresa’s younger sister to keep one another company. As it turned out, Teresa had a “new” boyfriend named Steven and he was playing Goalie on Philip’s off-season team. Even though she was there for her boyfriend, Teresa still made sure to spend some of her time after the game chatting with Philip.

Taking it in from the Bleachers

There is a unique smell that permeates a high school campus in the springtime. The smell gets especially pungent in the afternoons on and around the athletic fields. It is as if a unique grass grows on high school athletic fields and nowhere else, yet the use of artificial turf does little to deter the emergence of that springtime high school campus aroma. It seems to hold the same on both rural campuses as well as urban campuses. And the afternoon pungency lingers well into evening for any event that draws in parents and other members of the community after hours.

The first day I picked up Philip after lacrosse practice, the smell of the campus and the athletic fields brought me back almost instantly to my own high school decades in the past in a completely different part of the country. It was nearly the same smell. I could hear the lacrosse coaches shouting commands targeted toward the young adolescent male athletic psyches. The inflections Philip’s coaches put into each word echoed the same authority and temperament of my own high school coaches.

I made it a point to attend as many lacrosse games as possible during Philip’s freshman season. To sit on the bleachers for home games, I had to ascend a steep incline that normal erosion would never permit, but earth-moving equipment had nonetheless established in order to ensure level ground for the football-soccer-lacrosse field below the equally level softball field above. For the first lacrosse game, I had to also endure not-yet-mowed thick grass and weeds that had grown up during the intense seasonal rainfall that had ended only a couple weeks before. A parent I recognized jokingly told me to check for ticks when I reached the foot of the bleachers.

I was not expecting to see Philip get much game time as a freshman. Instead I was expecting a token amount of time at the end of each game in which the score was not too close. Early in the season, my expectations were mostly true. Philip and his freshman peers did not see any field time until Hermes was ahead by double digits. But over the course of the season that slowly changed. The first freshmen to see significant game time were Walter and one other particularly large, aggressive football player. What they lacked in core skills, Walter and his freshman football comrade made up for with tenacity and raw determination. Walter was particularly and impressively aggressive. But for Philip in his fifth lacrosse season, seeing Walter regularly drop the ball was a source of some frustration.

Philip’s day came later in the season. The older, more experienced players began to notice Philip’s competence and consistency perhaps two or three weeks before the coaches did. Philip knew the plays, could keep the ball in his net even when double-teamed and had an eye for when to pass for a teammate to score. By the final games of the regular season and all the way to the championship game, Philip was part of the regular varsity line-up rotating into the midfield, normally as center.

It was a slow change I witnessed while drinking in the familiar smells of a springtime high school campus. As Philip’s freshman season unfolded, I remembered knowing players who were like Philip. As freshman they slowly gained the respect of their coaches and teammates. Philip could not claim to be a star, but he was emerging. His position on next year’s varsity line-up was no longer in question.

To me taking it all in from the bleachers, it was the emergence that was so captivating. And when combined with the smell of the campus and my own high school memories it all evoked, I became keenly aware of the ticking clock. Philip has been under our roof for over fifteen years. But in the spring of his eighteenth year, Philip will graduate from Hermes High School and will soon after head off to pursue his adulthood. I want to savor every moment of what remains of Philip’s time under our roof. And somehow, the smell of the Hermes High School campus is part of that savor.

Slam Dancing With the Teen Reaper

For high school guys, especially the larger and more physically-oriented ones, high contact sports have huge appeal. They wear helmets and body armor. And they look forward not merely to out-scoring their rivals, but also to delivering some pain and humiliation in the process. Likewise, they are willing to risk some pain and humiliation in the process. The most manly-sounding exploits bragged about during morning and lunch breaks at Hermes High School happen in the high contact sports.

The most followed high-contact sport in high school is Football which is played during the Fall Season. In the Spring Season, the high-contact sport is Lacrosse. All but two of the Lacrosse players at Hermes High School are also Football players. Philip is one of those two exceptions. For a freshman guy, Philip is far above average in height at 5’8” but below average in weight at only 130 pounds. Philip knows Football would not work for him. But Lacrosse leverages his speed, wind and agility. And it doesn’t hurt that Philip has been playing Lacrosse since the fifth grade. Despite his above average height, Philip is one of the shortest players on the Hermes High School Lacrosse team. And he is certainly the lightest player by at least fifteen pounds.

Despite his size, Philip has quickly earned the respect and admiration of his teammates. During scrimmage time at one of early practices, Philip delivered more than one perfect assist to Bruce, the team’s star player and Erica’s ex-boyfriend. After scoring a second perfect goal from an assist by Philip, Bruce nick-named Philip The Boss and the name has stuck.

The game against Cabrillo High School was the first official Friday “under the lights” game of the season. We did not know any of the Cabrillo players or their names, but by the end of the game we knew who Jacques (Cabrillo’s #20) was. Early in the third quarter Philip had the ball at the Cabrillo goalie’s two o’clock about fifteen yards away. Two opposing players were headed in Philip’s direction. The first was Jacques who was coming to check him on the right. In a split second decision, Philip decided to take the check from Jacques rather than dodge it. He planted his left foot and leaned to the right. Their bodies slammed. Jacques helmet was low as they collided. The check was harder than Philip had expected and his left ankle seemed to absorb the energy in a way that strained some of the tissue. Philip then took on the cross-check of another opponent before passing the ball to a teammate who was uncovered due to the double-team on Philip. But then the referee blew his whistle hard to stop the action.

Jacques had fallen to the ground after checking Philip and was laying there not moving. As things went quiet, it sounded to Philip like Jacques was struggling to breathe. The referee ordered all players to take a knee and Jacques coach walked onto the field. Philip was kneeling closest to Jacques. From the bleachers I could hear the Hermes players saying “Philip” over and over in their conversation and I realized the Cabrillo player had gone down after colliding with Philip. At that moment I did not know if the rival player was paralyzed, dying or merely had the wind knocked out of him. But as Jacques continued to lie there not moving I began to fear the worst. Were we witnessing this year’s high school sports tragedy? Would my son have the paralysis or even death of another player weighing on his conscience for the rest of his life? Even if there had been not a foul that was a lot for me to carry, let alone a fifteen-year-old boy.

But soon the words reaching me sounded hopeful. People were saying Jacques was having a seizure, and that Jacques had to take medicine to manage his epilepsy. Nonetheless, an ambulance arrived and Jacques was carried off the field on a stretcher. The referees canceled the rest of the Junior Varsity game out of respect for Jacques and to ensure the Varsity game could be played and end at an appropriate time. Philip was visibly shaken by the experience and his left ankle was sore from Jacques’ extra-hard check, so I took him home. We qualified Jacques’ full name so we could call the local hospital and find out if Jacques was recovering well or not.

We were all fortunate that evening. Jacques was released from the hospital three hours later and went home. But it was a sobering reminder that high contact sports must be played with skill and with caution.

The Truly Best Performance in My Eyes

Business trips are a necessary evil in my life these days. They take me to a completely different world. And the longer the business trip is, the more I notice the contrast between those two worlds. I live alone as opposed to with my family. I sleep in a small hotel room in a palace-like urban setting as opposed to a medium-sized house in a suburban upper-middle class development. The people I socialize with are business contacts rather than friends. The food is different. The drinking water is different. The climate is different. The soap, shampoo and water pressure are different. The mattress, pillows and bedding are different. The vehicle is different. And it may be a taxi driver or a colleague at the wheel. I’m even wearing different clothes: The wrinkle resistant business attire.

On my most recent business trip, I was gone for three nights. It was the annual sales conference for my company’s largest business partner, a $500 million software company. The conference was at a large hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. I cannot think of a city that is more different than Hermes.

On the second night of the conference, my manager and I were given second row seats to the most beautiful, creative and opulent live performance I have ever had the privilege to witness. It was LOVE, Cirque du Soleil's celebration of the music and artistic themes of The Beatles. It featured a large cast of acrobats, dancers, mimes and stunt professionals from age eight to age sixty-eight. No expense was spared in props, costumes, lighting, giant-screen video and other live effects. Even the seating was first rate. The cast looked like they were having fun as they danced and pranced with seemingly reckless abandon. And they knew they were great, especially the kids. My eyes were moist during Yesterday and Hey Jude. All of us in the audience were mesmerized. Over the course of the evening we became the lovely audience the cast would love to take home with them.

The sharp contrast to the jewel of Las Vegas’ live performances came the following Saturday. I had to get out of bed early that morning because Chloe’s basketball game began at 9:00 AM and she needed to be there at least twenty minutes early to practice. Cold Hermes rain fell to deliberately remind me I was no longer in the Nevada desert. The basketball game was held in the gymnasium at Hermes Middles School. The roof was leaking above us as we sat on cold concrete indoor bleachers that were constructed with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal funding. Amelia and I brought a picnic blanket to put between ourselves and the ice cold concrete.

It was the second game of the season and Chloe was just beginning to remember all I had taught her the previous season. Additionally, she had learned plenty of new skills from the two coaches who were managing this year’s team. Chloe played in the second and third quarter. She handled the ball well, dribbling with focused caution and passing whenever there was either a serious threat or a promising opportunity. But the big moment came in the third quarter. Chloe managed to evade a less experienced defender and positioned herself perhaps five feet to the front and right of the net. Her teammate had the presence of mind to deliver a quick and perfect pass. Chloe caught the ball, took one step forward and shot.

The ball hit the back board and landed onto the rim where it began to orbit the net once, twice and almost a full third time before it finally delivered two points for Chloe. Cheers broke the breath-holding silence. The cold room full of parents was such a lovely audience I wanted to take them home with us as Goo-goo-gajoob repeated inside my head and I watched eight girls run like pigs from a gun to the other side of the court as the referee gave the other team control of the ball. My eyes were moist again as the song in my head reached the words, I’m crying complete with Paul McCartney’s famous Liverpool accent.

I have many vivid memories from the beautiful performance in Las Vegas. But none is as lucid as the pass, the step, the shot, the ball orbiting the net, and finally Chloe’s first score of the season. My ticket to the Las Vegas performance cost my business partner over one hundred fifty dollars. But there was no charge to watch Chloe’s basketball game. Despite the cold concrete, the best things in life really are free.

Perhaps This is Mayberry 2009

Hermes is a small, stable, low-crime, high-test-score community. We have two public elementary schools, one public middle school, one public high school and one private K-8 school. The student population at Hermes High School hovers around seven hundred. I tell friends who live far away that the town in which we chose to raise our children is a bit like Mayberry, the small town in the 1960s television show, Andy Griffith. But the analogy is really only an analogy. Hermes’ two main arteries are always clogged with traffic. There’s a McDonalds, a Taco Bell and plenty of the other trappings of more modern, prosperous, and fast-paced life to remind us we are living neither in Andy’s Mayberry nor in Dorothy’s Kansas.

Hermes is also home to a small private college. Santa Carla, which is just ten minutes south of us, is home to a state university. San Geraldo, a city of roughly one million, is just half an hour north over a mountain highway. Most of Hermes’ working population rides that mountain highway to and from work each weekday. Active religious affiliation is diverse and disproportionately high. Kids’ sports dominate the town’s two large parks. There is more than one ballet academy and more than one martial arts academy. The town’s community center hosts no shortage of additional children’s enrichment activities, including art and music.

Lacrosse is a fast growing sport in Hermes. Philip is now in his fourth season. He’s looking forward to playing Lacrosse for Hermes High School next year. So a late Friday afternoon home game early in the season was cause to take Philip to the High School early last month to witness High School Lacrosse first hand. And that is when my image of Mayberry was shattered.

The player was particularly tall and particularly fit. He had either a tight crew cut or the beginnings of growth on a recently shaved head. I could see he had at least one visible tattoo. In the first two minutes of the game, he received a penalty for a particularly nasty-looking foul. The player mouthed-off to the referee for calling the penalty before the player took his place in the penalty box with a huff. The player continued to acquire penalties throughout the game and each time spoke disrespectfully to the referee. Somewhere in the middle of the third quarter, the player acquired the penalty that booted him from the game. There was no hint of contrition. The player stalked off the field, removed his jersey, pulled the back of his uniform shorts down below his underwear and strutted defiantly on the sidelines, bad-mouthing the referees to his teammates on the sidelines. The production continued until the game was over. I didn’t care that Hermes had won the game.

As Philip and I walked back to the car, I asked him what he thought. His answer satisfied me, but I wanted to take the conversation at least one level deeper.

“Here’s the deal, Philip. You can play lacrosse at Hermes High School next year. But you need to understand something. The way the coaches were tolerating that player’s behavior and attitude leads me to conclude that those same coaches will tolerate what I would consider unacceptable behavior and a toxic attitude from a player if he is a strong athlete. That player was not even one of the top players on the team. And yet the coaches kept him in and let him continue to acquire penalties. When tolerated by the coaches, players like that poison the whole atmosphere on the team. It is an atmosphere you’ll probably need to deal with and accept if you want to play lacrosse at Hermes High School. I’ll understand and respect whatever decision you make about joining the team.” It was a sober ride home.

This past Friday there was another late afternoon home game. I invited Philip to join me to go watch the game, but he declined. When I arrived the coach asked me if I could man the game clock. I accepted and the job put me sitting at a table directly behind the penalty box. I was especially curious to watch the player who had been kicked out of the previous game I had attended. It was shortly after seven minutes when one of the referees gave the player a penalty. It was a foul, but the foul looked a whole lot more genuine than any of the fouls I had witnessed from him before. There was no back-talk this time. He jogged off the field at an appropriate speed and took a disciplined one-knee in the penalty box. He watched the game intently. “Ten seconds, son,” I said as his penalty approached its end. The player made eye contact with me and nodded. Then he turned his attention back to the game. At five I began counting down for him. He released at the buzzer and rejoined the game. “Very nice improvement,” I thought.

And my thought proved correct. The player had no more fouls for the remainder of the game. He played hard and he played well. Whatever the coaches had done to bring about the change in behavior and attitude had clearly been a success. His coaches had confronted and addressed the problem in a time and manner of their own choosing, not mine.

I was very pleased to bring the good report home to Philip. And as I related the story, my image of Mayberry was restored.

Nicknames and a Big Cheer

Winter break is over and basketball season has officially begun. This season I am coaching my third grade daughter Chloe's team, MONSOON. I picked up the girls' uniform tee-shirts at the Hermes Recreation Office and took them over with me to the first official practice of the year. Each girl wanted to be the first to pick her number—limited of course to the correct-sized tee-shirts. I used one of the practice drills as a contest to determine what order the girls would get to pick their numbers.

The first two selected their tee-shirts quickly: 11 and 7. As I worked to get the tee-shirts to the rest of the team, the first two began chattering feverishly within my hearing, but not my attention. Suddenly number 11 spoke up. "Coach! Coach! I'm HOT DOG and she's BIG GULP! Get it? Seven-Eleven!"

Immediately the energy level and enthusiasm spiked to a new level. The remaining players all wanted a team nickname to match HOT DOG and BIG GULP. Chloe quickly claimed STARBURST and the whole team agreed by cheering her on by that name. So I gathered them up and gave them three simple rules for nicknames.
Rule #1: The player must want the nickname enthusiastically.
Rule #2: Her teammates must likewise enthusiastically accept her having that nickname.
Rule #3: I, the coach, must approve the nickname.

Throughout the rest of that day's practice nicknames were all the girls could talk about. I vetoed SHOOTER because it sounded too much like labeling one player as the star of the team. A talented but rather melancholic third grader requested CRANKY. I reluctantly approved only after her mother told me that it was the nickname her daughter had embraced in the previous soccer season. The rest struggled and I promised to help them all pick nicknames at the next practice.

I'd also promised we'd have a Team Cheer and many of the girls were ready with ideas. One girl presented some lines with a hip-hop beat. Another suggested making a howling wind sound while saying "Mooooooo-onsoon!" Others asked for references to their nicknames. Chloe wanted the cheer to end with "Let's go!" It was a little overwhelming to get all their ideas, but I promised to compile them and have a draft of the cheer ready for the next practice.

That was my homework the following evening. I compiled a list of pre-approved nicknames to help the girls who hadn't settled. The cheer was a little tougher to arrange. I went to bed still thinking about the cheer and woke up with it in an orderly enough state to put it in writing before the rest of the family was awake. On the same sheet of paper, I put the roster and the game schedule and printed seven copies for the afternoon's practice.

Practice was mainly about getting them ready for their first game, but I made certain to deal with the nicknames and cheer effectively. JAGUAR, ROCKET and PINTO were what the remaining players wanted for themselves from my list of recommendations and their teammates rapidly approved. I had to fend off several unwanted nicknames directed toward me, including HUBBA-BUBBA and DIESEL. In the end, AQUAMAN is what stuck. Finally, the cheer came together with a hip-hop beat to the full satisfaction of these third and fourth grade girls.

One, two, three!
We got names; we got names; we got names that strut our games!
We're loud; we're proud, like a storm from the Swelling Blue Deep!
We play, every day, and here's what we have to say!
Mooooooo-onsoon! Let's go!

Years from now HOT DOG, BIG GULP, STARBURST, CRANKY, JAGUAR, ROCKET and PINTO probably won't remember many details from their games and even less from their practices. But they'll almost certainly remember their nicknames and the MONSOON Team Cheer for the rest of their lives. I know AQUAMAN will.

The Joy of Coaching

I became a coach the way—no doubt—many, many parents have before me. I checked the box on the soccer registration form that volunteered me to be an assistant coach for my son’s second grade soccer team. Then one evening in August 2002, I came home to a voice mail message asking me to be the Coach of my son’s soccer team. Apparently, not enough parents had volunteered to coach. After a few cajoling sessions on the telephone, I had made the commitment. And so began my first of many seasons coaching. And while the first year was a little tough, I do not have any regrets. I’ve now coached three seasons of boys’ soccer and two seasons of girls’ soccer. I was the assistant coach for my son’s first lacrosse team and am now the coach of my daughter’s first basketball team.

I am particularly looking forward to this coming basketball season. I’ve got seven eager third and fourth grade girls, including my daughter Chloe. At least half of the parents are willing to get involved. But it is more than that. The game of basketball is what really appeals to me as a kids’ recreational sports coach. Between rebounds and the small number of players on the court, basketball ensures every player touches the ball many times throughout the game. And while there is still the opportunity for a strong athlete to develop into a star player, a star player is unlikely to develop into a ball hog. The double dribble rule keeps even the star players passing the ball.

We’ve now had just two practices. It is the first basketball season for all but one player. Most of my players still need to look at the ball in order to dribble it. Everyone favors dribbling with their right hand over their left hand. About half the players cannot throw the ball high enough to reach the standard height net in the gymnasium where the first two practices have been held. Fortunately, they’ll have a 9-foot basket set up for actual games for at least the first part of the season. As I look at them, the team has all the trappings for the plot of a made-for-TV movie.

I’ve found that coaching puts me in an interesting place. Each season, I get to be there for a ten to twenty week window of life for a handful of kids who are not my own. I end up playing a role in their development unique from teachers, parents and other family. I remember my coaches and how they spoke. Somehow they could get away yelling in a way nobody else could. Words that have no business being funny somehow sound hilarious when the coach wants them to sound that way. Words that would sound clichéd in any other context somehow serve as the greatest source of inspiration.

I love watching kids’ sports much more than college or professional sports. There’s just more of a chance for a sudden breakthrough or an unexpected error. And if I know one or more of the players on the field then the game becomes personal to me. With kids’ recreational sports, players who had been on the same team one season end up being rivals playing for different teams in another season. And when I coach consecutive years, the players I once coached remember me and I remember them.

While I treasure each game, my favorite part of every season is the awards ceremony. Some coaches are satisfied to give their players the trophies or medals provided by the league. Not me. The awards ceremony gives me the unique opportunity to create a customized award certificate for each player. Each season I have a Most Valuable Player, Team Captain, Most Improved Player and however many other unique titles are needed to fill out the team. Each certificate contains a few words of unique praise - “for her unsinkable determination …” - to memorialize each player’s season. I dress the certificates in a frame with team colors, a team logo, a gold seal, my signature as head coach and at least one other official signature.

My hope is that the framed certificates will be something from childhood my former players will retain far into adulthood to fondly remember the ten to twenty week window we shared together during which they knew me as Coach.

Passing Seasons

I tend to mark the passing of time with the start and end of something clearly defined: A school year, a college semester, a job, a travel vacation, a living situation or a kids' sports season. While experiencing those parts of life I have enjoyed the most, I would pause at times to concentrate deeply in an attempt to burn the memory in all its vividness upon my mind. I did this during overnight camp, college, and each of my coaching seasons. I also did it during the fall sports season of my eighth grade year.

Last weekend, both Philip and Chloe closed out their fall soccer seasons. On Saturday afternoon Philip’s team The Jokers was upstairs and Chloe’s team The Heartbreakers was downstairs at the same local pizzeria celebrating the end of a great season. With Philip being in the eighth grade, I have been thinking back to that time in my own life often. But when I reconnected with Ken online ten days ago, suddenly memories of my eighth grade fall football season came into greater focus.

Growing up with a single mom who was intimidated by most married parents, I spent my pre-adolescence uninvolved in kids’ sports. That ended abruptly when I went to a private school that required participation in after-school activities. I had a lot of catching up to do, but in the fall of eighth grade I heard words that meant more to me back at that time than perhaps anything.

“Great job, Scott! You’re our starting Left Tackle,” the coach pronounced with a shout during a practice before our first game. I’d just executed the fast pull behind the line and out in front of the ball carrying halfback on a quick pitch left to collide hard with the first defender to threaten our drive up field. With it, my coach was convinced he could count on me, and I wasn't going to let him down.

Starting was an honor that until then had eluded me. I was a below average athlete and it took significant effort both to gain my starting position and to keep it. Having my friend Ken as starting Right Tackle made the experience all the more enjoyable. I developed a deeper respect for each of my teammates and what it took for them to execute their various roles. That summer at my overnight sailing camp, I skippered a sailboat race for the first time and then went on to skipper in enough races to place in five. Stashed away somewhere, I still have my football trophies, five sailing pennants (a first, three seconds and a third) and virtually every scholastic award I ever earned.

For the kid who never plays, it is an achievement to play. For the kid who has never touched the ball, it is an achievement to touch the ball. For the kid who has never been on the first string, it is an achievement to make the first string. For the kid who has never scored, it is an achievement to score. And on it goes. Each new level of victory in life is enjoyed and celebrated. For nearly every kid, sports provide an especially good venue to experience victories worth remembering. But sports are not the only venue. Philip has a first place trophy from a chess tournament, and Chloe has DVDs from her ballet performances.

The 2008 fall soccer season is over. In a few weeks, I will begin coaching Chloe’s first season of basketball, and Philip will begin his fourth season of Lacrosse. My hope for the coming season is that Chloe and Philip will each enjoy at least one small victory, and that they and I will each enjoy at least one experience to mark the season with a great memory.

The Apprentice Helmsman’s Test

As a young teen I had the privilege of attending an overnight sailing camp. The camp had all the trappings of traditional summer camp: swimming, archery, tennis, wood shop, pottery, a trampoline, etc. But the main focus of the camp was sailing.

Over the years the camp had developed a sophisticated sailing program that even included training kids (who got to that level) how to steer a sailboat without a rudder. The training system was broken up into two sections: core skills and advanced skills.

To successfully complete the first of the five levels within the advanced skills section, one had to pass what was called The Apprentice Helmsman’s Test (AHT). The AHT was unlike any test I’d ever taken before because it was not a skills test. Anyone taking the AHT had already firmly proven his or her command of the skills required to pass the AHT by completing the core skills program. Instead, the AHT was a character test. Briefly, the AHT required the initiate to single-handedly sail a small two-sailed (main & jib) craft in heavy winds—defined by the frequent white caps that appear on the top of waves at wind speeds of 17 knots or more. The goal was for the initiate to demonstrate his or her confidence and presence of mind to execute the core skills alone and in adverse conditions.

My moment arrived late one July evening in 1980 and it was spiced up with particularly gusty, shifting winds. The test was an adventure. And when I had completed all the maneuvers required of me, the senior counselor and I took the opportunity to spend another fifteen minutes enjoying the thrill of an upwind ride in heavy weather. I arrived after lights out to a cabin full of my peers eager to hear me recount the evening’s exploits.

But the best moment of all came at breakfast. Before dismissal from breakfast, the campers were given the day’s announcements. The final announcement came from the senior sailing counselor. “Last night I took Scott Askins out for his Apprentice Helmsman’s Test and … He passed!” The dining hall erupted with cheers and applause. It was one of the most dignifying moments of my life.

Fast forward almost exactly twenty-eight years. My son was called back for the final try-out round for the Santa Carla Division III Soccer team for his age group. But on the day of the final try-out the left side of my son’s neck had seized up into a painful cramp. Having never made it onto a Division III team before, my son quickly became demoralized over his situation thinking he had no chance to make the team. I arrived home early to take him to the try-out and found him in his demoralized state.

I sat down across the table from my son and told him to look me in the eye. “OK Philip, here’s the deal. Coach Ralph is an extremely experienced soccer coach. He knows these things happen to kids from time to time. Coach Ralph has already seen your skill level and was satisfied with what he saw to bring you back for the final round. What he hasn’t seen is how you handle situations like the one you are in now.

“For you, today’s test is not going to be a skills test. It is going to be a character test. Do you know what I mean by a character test?” He said he didn’t. And that gave me the opportunity to tell him my story of the Apprentice Helmsman’s Test. That was enough to calm Philip down and allow him to plan out how he would conduct himself during the tryout.

In my humble father’s opinion Philip conducted himself brilliantly. We met Coach Ralph before the try-out and explained Philip’s situation. Philip joined the other candidates for the warm-up and stretches. Otherwise, he stood by the coach and thoughtfully watched the other candidates perform the various drills. We stayed until the final try-out drill was complete.

Later that week, the team parent called to inform us that Coach Ralph had not selected Philip for the team. Obviously, Philip was disappointed. I was a little disappointed too. But as far as I was concerned, Philip had accomplished something greater than getting onto a Division III soccer team. He had passed my Apprentice Helmsman’s Test.