Turn The Page

The calendar imposes upon nature an artificial sense of renewal every thirty days or so, and on a much grander scale every 365 days.  By the fortuity of a flip of the calendar page, January is the month when everything starts over, fresh and new.

Poppycock.

January 1^st charms, with its parades and football games.  The day is lit less by its own brilliance, though, than by the leftover glow of Christmas, glad tidings and good will to all family who don’t see each other often enough and thank God for these few days off.  New Year’s Day stands against shadow, because it marks the end of the seemingly interminable holiday season, which sputters to a start with tykes in costumes, picks of steam through the feasts of Thanksgiving and lumbers to its happy crescendo at Christmas.  After a month of office work slowing down, vacation plans consummated, gifts purchased and given and idle time rediscovering the people we believe we really are when not tearing around trying to meet the unstoppable demands of the daily routine, the gleaming newness of New Year’s Day is a mirage.  It is not a day that looks forward to the shine of the year to come, it is a day that reflects all that came before it.

Because January, truth be told, is a miserable month.  February is not worse only because there is simply less of it.  January is dark, cold and wet, and treats December like a houseguest who has overstayed his welcome.  Business that slows over the last six weeks of the preceding year in deference to the holidays snaps to warp speed to pack the work of eight weeks into four.  Many students must endure finals in January, after spending the Christmas break trying to ignore the building dread that they really should be studying during all that time off.   Christmas seems nearer in June than on January 3^rd.   

So the weather has generally been sunny for the early part of this year, Michael has made us all proud by earning a spot on the travel baseball team and proving by his play that he belongs there, and Kelly survived finals to turn in excellent grades in a full load of terribly demanding classes.  That’s about the best that can be said for the month this year.   I am only now (literally, today) finally digging out from under what has been the most burdensome, stressful eight week period of work in my career.  And when the month starts like this, it is not destined to go down in history as one of my top-ten favorites:

Unscheduled airbag test -- yep, they work

And yet, while I have no desire to live these last couple of months over again, I can’t help but be content with all we do have, even in this deepest of winters:  our health, our family, our faith, our jobs, and our friends. 

Still, March is just hours away.

Called Up To The Show

January means baseball, right?  Our youth league begins its practices in February in preparation for the March-to-June season, so the evaluation day to give the coaches a look at the players they will pick for their teams always happens in mid-January.  This year, the evaluations were last weekend, under clear blue but very cold skies.

The evaluation for Michael was a little different than in years past.  The division Michael has moved into is no longer limited to teams playing other teams from within our league.  Three teams will compete against each other and teams from the two immediately adjacent towns.  Two additional teams, divided by age, will compete as travel teams against leagues from a broader local area.  The players trying out for those teams had to attend two days of evaluations rather than one.  They also knew that the rosters for those teams were largely set before the evaluations even started, based on the All-Star teams from last summer.  For 11U new team, it was widely known that one of the star players had decided to play in a different league this season, freeing up one roster spot for the team.  Every other player was planning to come back.  The 10 or so kids trying out who had not already played on the All-Star team last year were essentially competing for a single spot on the team.

Michael was apprehensive going into the evaluations, as he usually is.  He had a good first day, though, simply playing the way he knows how to play.  His pitching, in particular, caught the attention of a lot of the dads and coaches.  A number of them came up to me to say that they noticed how well Michael was playing.  Some of the boys who clearly would be on the team told Michael the same thing, offering their opinion that he had taken the available spot on the team.

After the first evaluation session, Michael was flying high.  He knew he had done well and was rightfully proud of himself.  He returned to the field in the afternoon with me to help administer the rest of the evaluations; I could hardly keep him off the field.  Michael's coach from fall ball made a point of telling me that he had spoken with the 11U coach about Michael, and that in his opinion.  Michael was a lock to make the team.   

It was only after the good first evaluation that Michael allowed himself to want to make the team.  I assured him he had done well, but that was always on the bubble.  I told him that even if he didn't make the travel team, he would have a great time on the house league teams, one of which would be coached by his fall ball coach.  He was fine with that, but knowing that he stood a good chance of making the top squad made him want it more.  After second day of evaluations which consisted mostly of hitting, Michael was nervous that he had not hit with enough power to wow the coaches.  What he didn't see was that a lot of the power hitters performed very poorly against the soft-toss pitching at the evaluation, while he always made solid contact.  All he could think about was the roster announcement Wednesday evening.

Wednesday evening, the call came.  Among eleven familiar names, his was the new one for the 11U team.  After three years of playing in this league, Michael has clawed his way to the top.  This is a very nice validation of all the extra work he has put in to improve.  He is a fun-loving kid, but there are not many out there who listen to coaches better or train as seriously as he does.  He could not be more happy, and we could not be more proud. 

It's official

Now, of course, the hard work starts.  He will get a uniform with his name on the back, but he will also be expected to play at a very high level.  It seems daunting, but I believe he's up for the challenge.  As I constantly tell him, if he simply plays the way he knows how to play, he will give the team what it needs.  Plus, with expert coaching and excellent teammates, he should make rapid progress in his own development.  I suspect games will be a bit more tense than they used to be, as the play transitions from purely recreational to largely competitive.  However, all these boys feed off of competition, no matter how nervous it may make them.  Whether I will survive the season is a different story entirely.  Thankfully, all I will have to do is go to games and take pictures.

Best of all, Michael's peers made it known at the evaluation how glad they were that it looked like he would make the team.  He drew more satisfaction from that than anything else.  We all yearn for a place to belong, and that place is almost always defined by who occupies that space with us.  Sports may be in many respects a world of artificial urgency and ad hoc camaraderie, but the bonds between peers are real.  Right now, before any strikeouts or errors, hits or wins, the joy of making the team matters most of all.

An Unusual Weekend Getaway: The U.S. Grand Prix

It escaped the attention of most American sports fans and nearly all other Americans, but Formula One returned to the United States in November.  Not only that, the F1 circus came to a brand-new, purpose-built track constructed for that very purpose just outside of Austin, Texas, something unprecedented in American sporting history.  In the motorsports world, this was a Big Deal.  Amazingly, I was able to be a part of the race weekend.

My friend Kevin was not only my baseball co-coach and Kelly's last soccer coach, he is also an auto enthusiast of the first order.  We first connected in a way that went beyond youth sports at one of Kelly's soccer games when he drove his race-prep Audi to game.  I noticed the track number decals on the car, struck up a conversation about it, and a friendship borne of a shared, unusual hobby began.

With the US Grand Prix scheduled for November, tickets for the event went on sale in April (when the track was still very much under construction).  Kevin alerted me to it and proposed that we both go to the race.  It was a no- brainer for me, pending approval from Cheryl.  She graciously gave me a hall pass for the weekend, recognizing how excited I was, even though, even after more than 20 years of being around me, does not understand the appeal of auto racing.  With that, we booked hotel rooms in San Antonio (Austin hotel rooms were scarce and pricey, and San Antonio was only an hour away), booked the flight with frequent flyer benefits, arranged for a rental car, and then sat back and waited for six months.  

I'm really going!

When the weekend finally arrived, we flew directly to Austin and stayed Thursday night with one of Kevin's colleagues and his wife, a sociology professor at the University of Texas.  Kevin obtained his masters degree at UT, so he and his friends had a lot in common to talk about and fun little haunts to show me around town.  We had a great evening in their home, and did our best to explain what the whole Formula One thing was all about.  The people of Austin have lived with the battles -- political, financial and otherwise -- to get the track built in their community, and the day of reckoning had finally arrived, bearing with it a sport and personalities about which the locals knew almost nothing.

After a very fun evening, we headed to the track Friday morning.  The track was built out of scrubby ranchland a few miles east of Austin.  The biggest fear for all who would be attending was access, as there are only two or three small rural roads that went to the venue.  The organizers arranged for hundreds of buses to run between the track and the city, which did an admirable job of alleviating traffic congestion over the course of the weekend.  We opted for a parking pass, and had no trouble getting to our assigned parking lot.

It had been years since I had been to a professional auto race, and I was as giddy as a five-year-old pulling into the parking lot at Disneyland.  We arrived just as the first Friday morning practice session for the Formula One cars was coming to an end.  Grinning like an idiot, I rolled my window down as we parked just to hear the scream of the race cars' engines.  Those engines, incidentally, are mind-bogglingly loud.  Ear protection makes the whole thing easily tolerable, but being around those cars driven in anger with my ear buds out made me very glad I had them.

We spent the entire day at the track, exploring nearly all of the grounds for the best vantage points.  All the while, the track was filled either with Formula One cars, or cars from the supporting races, including the Ferrari 458 Challenge series, a Porsche Cup series, and vintage (1965-1983) Formula 1 cars.  After the last practice session in the afternoon, we drove to our hotel in San Antonio using the brand-new 85 mph toll road, which took us about halfway to San Antonio.  The road was a marvel: gentle curves through low rolling hills, no billboards, the strip malls, and no traffic.  Oh, and an 85 mph speed limit.

 

In San Antonio, we stayed along the Riverwalk.  That may be a cliché, but it was fun to be among tons of other race fans.  The tire manufacturer Pirelli posted an enormous contingent of their personnel in our hotel, and many other fans were in evidence, sporting various automotive and racing-affiliated gear.  We fielded questions from several people who were trying to figure out what all the fuss was about.

Saturday morning the hightailed it back to the track to spend the day watching more practice sessions and the qualifying session for the races.  The race was next to last on the calendar for the season, and the battle for the driver’s championship was close but could be determined at Austin, so there was a lot of intensity surrounding the Formula One qualifying session.  Surprisingly, even though the live experience at an auto race is much different than the televised experience, in that there is no commentary and it is difficult to know what is going on out the far reaches of the track, the many video boards and rentable real-time telemetry gadgets did a good job of keeping us informed of each new development as the best drivers topped each other to reach pole position.

After another full day (and a pretty pronounced facial sunburn), we stayed in Austin for dinner and to explore the fan events that took over downtown Austin.  We also had a chance to walk around the legendary Sixth Street, where live music tumbled out of nearly every doorway.

Race day dawned just as every other day had: comfortably warm with not a cloud in the sky.  Attendance at the track increased each day, and peaked on Sunday at about 117,000 spectators.  We encountered some traffic entering the track, and there were many more people that found our chosen seating area on a large slope overlooking turns 19 in 20, but overall the crowds were not a problem.  

The race itself was tense and dramatic, as the championship leader was unable to hold off a strong challenge from a rival, guaranteeing that the championship would not be resolved until the next race.  All told, the racing all weekend was excellent; the venue, while barely finished, was terrific for the drivers and spectators alike, and even the feared traffic hassles failed to materialize in any significant way.

Although the event was the United States Grand Prix, held at the Circuit of the Americus, it might as well have been the Grand Prix of Texas.  Half of the food concessions were Texas barbecue, the national anthem was sung with the twangiest of country twangs, and instead of traditional baseball caps emblazoned with the sponsor's logo, the podium finishers received massive cowboy hats … emblazoned with the sponsor's logo.  The drivers and teams, by all accounts, had a great time, enjoyed the region and the festivities, and loved the new track.  It all bodes well for the future, although it remains to be seen whether races over the next coming years will draw as well as this year's did.  I expect many people were like me, looking to fulfill a long-time dream of attending a Formula One race.  Having done so, I and many people like me will probably not go back every year.  It would be a shame if attendance declined, because the event is well run, the track is a great venue and the overall experience is that of a top-notch sporting event.

For those who like this sort of thing, the opportunity to see vintage old racers like these take the track at speed was an unexpected and welcome pleasure:

 Of course, we were all there to see these guys:

These short clips do not begin to convey the noise these things put out, nor does it transmit the excitement that comes from experiencing these beasts rip into view and hammer away into the distance, but it is at least a sample of some of what we saw:

Historic Racers:

 The Race:

Boring?  Not a chance. Anyone who has been enthusiastic about anything knows that the enjoyment comes from knowing and understanding the details.  By the end of the weekend, we could identify several teams just by the sound their cars made (and, knowing those teams, where they probably were in the running order).   It was a spectacularly fun weekend for me, partly because I enjoy this sport, and partly because it was the first “boys’ weekend out” I’d had in about a dozen years.  Other than trashing my phone the morning we were to leave (there’s another story), it was an absolutely perfect trip.

2012 Fall Sports Report: Baseball Wrapup

Our boys only ended up with one win on the season.  They never stopped competing, though, and showed good spirit.  Some of the players, Michael among them, showed distinct improvement over the course of the abbreviated season as they all adjusted to the larger diamond.

Michael carried a hitting streak all the way through the season, ending up with hits in all ten games, hitting .500, stealing a bunch of bases, scoring a bunch of runs and driving in a few (I abandoned my hyper-aware stat keeping for the fall).  His defense, which was always strong, improved during the season.  As the regular shortstop, he struggled at times with runners leaving from second crossing in front of him as he prepared to stop the ball.  After we talked it through and analyzed how to handle that situation, he made several outs in that exact situation (they had a lot of runners get to second base against them) late in the season.  He made a point of mentioning that he worked hard mentally on that scenario and was pleased that his own work paid off. 

Michael's pitching was up and down over the course of the season.  It was never terrible, but some days he was a little too hittable because he doesn't yet have the fastball to make big kids swing and miss.  Still, the manager liked to use him as a closer because he was one of the pitchers least likely to issue a lot of walks. 

The case in point came in the final game of the season.  The game was played on the day daylight savings ended, so daylight was suddenly at a premium for a game that started as usual at 3 pm and was scheduled to run two hours and fifteen minutes.  Before the sixth inning started, the umpire called the managers together to discuss how much more of the game would be played, since the light was fading fast.  It was clear the game would not go a full seven innings, but our boys wanted a last chance to bat in the bottom of the inning (they were losing, but not by much), so the umpire agreed to play the sixth inning.  He asked the teams to keep things moving along, though.  After another pitcher got into some trouble, retiring only one batter and leaving a runner on second, the manager brought Michael in.  Michael had been frustrated by the umpire's wide strike zone as a hitter.  As you will see, though, he used that (and the umpire's impatience to get home before dark) to his advantage:

Two batters faced, eight pitches, six strikes, two strikeouts.  Pretty efficient work for less than two minutes of real time, and very smart pitching.  He explained afterward that he knew the umpire had a wide zone, and worked the first batter outside before striking him out with an inside pitch -- as intended.

All told, it was a pretty nice way to end the season, even one in which the team only won a single game.  Michael has a lot of development to do to be a strong player at this level, but he held his own for the most part against much bigger boys, and showed himself to be one of the best of his age group.  It will be very interesting to see how he measures up against the rest of the league when the full season gets underway next month.  He has always been in the midpack of his age group, but as he has developed strength to go with his generally good technique, he has crept up the leaderboard.  He still needs to work on some positioning instincts on defense, and arm strength will come as he grows, but going .500 for the fall season, with a double and a triple, is a major step forward for him. 

Astonishingly, evaluation day for the spring season is only a month away.  Time to start tossing the ball around again

2012 Fall Sports Report: Soccer

After what can only be described as a breakout dominant soccer season last year, Michael moved up a division to the fifth/sixth grade level.  In a little pre-season backroom maneuvering in which one team was disbanded and the players distributed to the two remaining teams, Michael was snagged by his coaches from two seasons ago.  They like him and appreciated his work ethic and talent, but I don't think they fully appreciated how far he had come as a player in the intervening year.  The only question was whether returning to the younger side of the division would slow him down.

The answer, emphatically, was “no.”  Reunited with several of his teammates from two seasons ago, Michael quickly found a place for himself as a top forward on the team.  Among younger players, strong players are marked by their ability to dribble through other teams.  At higher levels, the ability to see the field and make passes starts to become the hallmark of great teams and players.  Michael has the all-around game; he has a big leg and power with both feet, but he also has better passing instincts than most players his age.  Michael quickly fell into a rhythm with several of his teammates where they looked to pass to each other as they moved down the field, and all of them could finish with skill.  The fact that Michael was one of the younger players was no longer relevant.

The season had its ups and downs, and started particularly poorly because the first two games were against teams that, it turned out once the season is over, were by far the best teams in the league.  Once we started playing teams that were more evenly matched, our boys held their own.  They scored some high-scoring wins, some tight wins and losses, and two absolutely thrilling draws.  In one game, our boys played most of the match with their backs against their own goal, fending off a relentless attack and unable to break out to set up an attack of their own.  They went down 2-1 late in the game.  Somehow, though, in the last ten minutes, our squad started to dominate the run of play.  Michael and a couple of his cohorts had multiple open runs down the field and several shot opportunities.  Still, despite close plays, they could not manage to put the ball in the net.  With the referee glancing frequently at his watch, one of our guys delivered the ball to Michael on the left wing.  He sprinted down the field, cutting to a stop at the corner of the penalty area to clear the defender who was pursuing him.  Spying a teammate drifting toward the far post, Michael delivered the ball into the goal area.  The ball did not go exactly where he wanted, flying too close to the goal for his teammate to reach it.  However, in a happy accident, the ball was struck with enough pace and in just the right location to skip past the keeper and into the far corner of the net.  The players' (and parents’) joy was immediate and genuine.

The kid celebrates with style

The opposing team was only able to kick the ball off before the referee blew the final whistle.  That draw was every bit as good as a win.

(The end of that game saw a remarkable and disappointing bit of gamesmanship by the other team.  Having scored late to go up 2-1, a player on the other team delayed the kickoff by intentionally untying and re-tying his shoes to run the clock down.  It was what could be called a savvy move, but for youth sports, it was a bit over-the-top.  When Michael scored his game-tying strike, the same player sprinted into the goal to retrieve the ball and dashed back to the center circle to try to restart play before time ran out.  He was the other team's best player, and his behavior in the two post-goal moments showed clearly that he knew how to manipulate the game clock.)

The final game of the season was a wild, full-field affair, with close goals, long-range goals, near misses, dramatic saves, and good play all over the field for both teams.  They kept Michael bottled up for most of the game, but in the second half, his coach encouraged him to be more aggressive in making runs at the goal.  That was all he needed.  In one beautiful sequence, he retrieved the ball near the half line, deftly dribbled through the other team's best defender by deking him with the outside of his foot, then finished the play with a slick left footed pass to a trailing teammate who put the ball in the net as the keeper came out to challenge him.  That brought the team back to a 4-3 deficit.  Only minutes later, he was involved in a corner kick that saw one of our kids with the least raw talent getting a rare taste of life in the forward position poke the ball past the keeper for the game-tying goal, once again at the death. The game ended as Michael was on yet another run toward goal, using his head to pop the bouncing ball behind his defender where he chased it down to prepare for a cross just as the whistle sounded.

There is something pure about the natural drama of sport, whatever the level, that is a joy to those who are lucky enough to be there to see it.  The honest and unrestrained glee of little boys, whether they are five or 15 or anywhere in between, is worth the hours spent on cold, wet Saturday mornings.  There are no agents, media, Twitter accounts or performance-enhancing substances any stronger than Capri Sun to get in the way of the raw emotion that comes from the purity of achieving team goals through individual effort and talent. 

To cap off the season, Michael's coaches chose him to be one of three players from our team to play in the All-Star game.  He had the opportunity to play for men who had coached Kelly in volleyball several years ago, and they remembered Michael as the little brother who ran around playing pretty impressive volleyball for a second grader.  He proved his mettle, even as one of the few fifth-graders on the field in the All-Star game, by scoring a goal in his team's victory.

On the season, Michael scored seven goals, fully 25% of his team's output, with a like number of assists.  Although baseball remains his favorite sport in general, he loves playing soccer most of all.  He even turned down an opportunity to step in with the tournament baseball team for a weekend in the fall because it would have caused him to miss one of his soccer games. 

 
Any time you find something that gives your kids confidence in any area of their lives, you embrace it.  Soccer was essential to Kelly as the source of identity and confidence even as a young girl.  Michael tends to carry himself with more self-assurance in more areas than Kelly, but even for him, soccer holds a special place in his life.  We could not be happier for him.