(Host) Winning might not be everything, but it sure beats losing.
Commentator Rich Nadworny remembers the times he and his friends put
their parents to the test.
(Nadworny) Kids soccer is finally
over. Maybe it’s because the kids are getting older and the leagues more
competitive, but this year was a tough one for my family. Usually the
teams are pretty even and the kids win as much as they lose. But this
season was mostly losses.
As a parent, I love sitting on the
sidelines and voicing my encouragement. But when you see the shoulders
slumping and the steps slowing in the second half, I find myself looking
at my watch, instead, hoping the game will end soon.
It makes
me realize the suffering put our own parents through. When I was growing
up in Burlington, we had something called the Church League, a
basketball league for boys 14 and under at the YMCA. We were nine when
my friends and I at Ohavi Zedek synagogue decided to put together a team
and enter the league. Playing against kids 5 years older and a foot
taller, we lost our first game 75-2. Only David Solomon’s desperate
heave from the corner saved us from a shutout. We were promptly dropped
from the league.
We were back the next year though. And over the
next few years, we set a record for futility, losing one game after
another. Our poor dads, and a few moms, showed up every week to watch
their sons get creamed by teams twice our size. They cheered, yelled,
and argued with the refs. When they couldn’t take it anymore, they made
up songs about our team that they set to Jewish melodies. Their favorite
was this, set to hatikvah:
"Take it down the court boys, don’t forget the ball. Put it in the hoops boys, forget they are so tall."
For
three years, our dads kept singing, and we kept losing until, until the
impossible happened. Down by one with time running out against St.
Johns Vianney, I picked up a loose ball and chucked it up the court to a
teammate. Coming out of nowhere, he hit Louie Hershberg with a perfect
pass and, just as the buzzer rang, Louie laid the ball in the basket.
After what seemed like 40 years of wandering around that barren court,
we had finally arrived in our promised land.
I don’t think
you’ve ever seen a happier bunch of kids as we ran and whooped it up
around the whole court. Unless it was our moms and dads who leaped up,
hugging each other, with a few tears rolling down some cheeks.
In
our last year, we were actually pretty good. Three of us made our
junior high school all-star team and one of our younger mates went on to
star in high school and college.
So this year, after a
particularly tough match on the pitch, I’d tell my kids the story of our
hapless basketball team. They’d listen, relax, smile and finally say
"Well Dad, at least we aren’t THAT bad."