Fun with friends along the rails of competition
Fun along the fence - I worked the rails at Wednesday night’s field hockey game at the University of Delaware’s Rullo Stadium versus Tower Hill. There are many Tower Hill connections, from coach Robin Adair’s mom to Butch Emmert, who is goalie Ellie Wakefield’s grandfather. And Kiva Walsh who plays field hockey and lacrosse for Tower Hill is just the greatest kid, and I was OK with her dad Mike repeatedly screaming her name “Kiva Walsh” because that’s what he should do. I told Ellie Wakefield’s mom in the second half, “I am rooting for your goalie child to play well, and I‘m rooting for Cape to win for a million reasons.” She said, "I’ll just be glad when it’s over and my daughter’s not the goalie anymore.” I felt the same way when my son’s played quarterback like, “I don’t know how much more of this fun I can stand.” I am becoming my mother, who never went to games, just stayed home and prayed that no one got hurt. Even way back then she knew obsession with the result was unhealthy, that it’s more important to enjoy the people along the way.
Identity crisis - A Temple freshman basketball game on the third floor at South Hall on North Broad Street in February 1965. I was a scholarship basketball player back in action three months after invasive knee surgery. I was popping deltoid and pectoral muscles, looking more like a football guy but looking good, make no mistake about that. The game was against St. Joe’s, my mother was in the stands, and I was on the bench the entire game into overtime. My roommate Johnny Kerr threw the ball right to a St. Joe’s guy at the buzzer and the guy “blew the bunny,” or missed the layup, for the easily offended mothers of Facebook. I turned to the nameless not nearly as good as me person next to me and said, ”John escaped the goat farm on that one.” Coach Skippy Wilson was in my face and he was raging. “You think this is funny, Fredericks?” I stayed quiet, but he hurt my feelings. My mother saw I was devastated. After the gym cleared, I shot baskets for an hour then rode the Broad Street subway up and down for a couple hours. I was alone, despondent and morose, my entire identity tied up in being a star athlete. I had to adjust, to reach a higher plane, and know if something is funny then I’m laughing and not making excuses.
I know where I stand - Song written and sung by Lowen & Navarro after Eric Lowen was stricken with ALS: “I know where I stand, I’m learning to fall.” My philosophy on my own writings is “I stand behind nothing I write, but rather stand in front of it.” Any alpha primate will tell you stare it down - own it - because when you turn tail and run, the yippy-yappy dogs will give chase. Devin Bennett wrote two words on a short sheet that threatened to bring down the Cape empire by implication of proximity, but he owned it and so did his parents. I admire that. As I told his dad, Bob, "The real-world parents fronting real families with imperfect children will surround and support you in whatever you need.”
Cool Runnings - Yes, the movie about the Jamaican bobsled team featuring John Candy as their coach. I remember a line from the movie when they failed to medal, “If you were nothing without it, then you’ll be nothing with it.” I stretch that to include all-conference and all-state teams. It's great stuff when it falls in your favor, but it makes you mad when you feel your athlete got hosed. I’m the same with writing awards, realizing that the accolades received by another in no way change what it is I do, whatever that is; I’m not really sure.
Snippets -The Sixers have lost 12 straight games to start the season and 22 straight over the last two seasons. I say “keep it going” because really bad is way more fun than “We’re just bad.” They had 31 turnovers versus Indiana Nov. 18, tying a 15-year-old record.
There is no sports story I’m writing that I don’t have a hundred of my own, and often mine are better and I’ll be the judge of that. Grand Mom Rose: “It’s not about you while it’s all about you. Best advice is to stay quiet.” I look at young coaches in their 20s and say to myself, “Spare them the Fredman stories and yourself the awareness that they ain’t tryin’ to hear it, yo.”
Go on now, git!
