The Pain of Caring

Last night, the boys watched Vanderbilt lose a heartbreaker to Nebraska, 74-72, in the NCAA Tournament.  A win would have put Vanderbilt in the Sweet 16 and capped off their best basketball season in well over a decade.

It was out last night of a spring vacations bookended by college visits for JP, so they watched the game on a big, flat screen television at our Airbnb in Central, SC, minutes away from Clemson University.  Jude and I were in bed, reading, but kept up with the game by listening to JP's and Joe's shouts of joy followed by groans when something didn't go Vanderbilt's way.  I peaked my head in a couple of times in the second half to see what was happening.

It was a heartbreaking, gut punch of a loss for Vanderbilt, as they pulled ahead by six points late in the second half after falling behind early and trailing all game.  Nebraska rallied, though, and took the lead on a late drive and layup by one of their several white guards.  Tyler Tanner, by far their best player,  missed a half court shot at the buzzer that would have won the game.  Reminiscent of Gordon Hayward in the 2010 NCAA final when Butler lost to Duke by two, Tanner's shot was on line, hit the backboard dead center but a little too hard.  The basketball started to go down, then popped up and out of the goal.  A couple of Nebraska players fell to the ground in shock and relief.  They thought it the shot was in.  I did, too.

The boys are at that age where every Vanderbilt basketball game is life and death, especially one like last night's, when a loss end the season.  It's the same with the Lakers (whom we watched beat Orlando earlier on a last second 3-pointer by Luke Kennard), the Dodgers, Belmont basketball, and the Predators.  It's that sweet spot for a boy who is a sports fan, age 11 - 23 or somewhere thereabouts, where every big game is life or death.  It matters so very much.  I know, because I've been there, too.

I hate to see JP and Joe down, although I'm glad they care so passionately.  When you care, you're move alive, I think.  As a father, I'll take passion over apathy every day of the week.  Passion equals vibrancy, memories, laughter, exultation, and quite often, a broken heart as a season ends.  I hurt for them this morning, as I sip my coffee at Jitters Brewing Company in Central, SC.  I arrive just as they opened at 7:30 a.m. for a quick cup of coffee before our 5 + hour drive home.

Somewhere along the way, it seems like I stopped caring quite as much about the outcome of games, even those involving my favorite teams.  The exception is the Dodgers, I think, because the MLB playoffs are a roller coaster for me every year.  The last two years, with back-to-back World Series titles have been tremendous, or course.  The Lakers still matter a lot, too, as evidenced by how excited I was - and the boys, too - when Kennard won the game for them last night. 

Still, I care less and less about Tennessee football and basketball.  While I want Tennessee to beat Virginia today and get to the Sweet 16, I won't be devastated if they lose.  I feel the same way about the Predators.  I've been apathetic about them for a few years now, after being a devoted fan for so long.  It's strange, really.

I think as I've gotten older I've become so focused on the boys' lives that I don't have as much energy left to worry about the outcome of a game involving one of my favorite teams.  Life happens, you know?  There is work, family, and so much else going on in our country and the world that's not good that I find it hard to get too worked up over a game that one of my boys isn't playing in, or so it seems.

As I've written in this space before, my mom passed her love of sports to Tracy and me.  For sure, we have passed it on to our children, too.  In a way, it's the tie the binds us together.  It was, then, before my mom died, and is still is, now.  

So, I'll pack up my laptop in this quite, quaint little coffee shop that I'll likely never visit again, in Central, SC, and head home.  First to my family in our Airbnb five minutes away, then to our home and our lives in Nashville, busy and on constantly on the move.

Unless I miss my guess, JP isn't going to Clemson University, but it was nice to be here and see the campus.  It was nice to see him together, too, with a couple of his high school friends who are freshman here, particularly Charlie Warner.  

Western Carolina

For the past few days, we've been staying in a house in Connestee Falls, NC, owned by my childhood friend, Greg Westfall.  We had hoped to see Greg and his wife, Cheryl, at the end of the week but that's not going to happen, unfortunately.  They just returned to their home in Hilton Head, SC, from a week-long sailing trip, so it would be difficult to get away again so quickly.  Cheryl is the primary caregiver for her adult sister and mother, so she has a lot on her plate. 

I hate that we won't get to see Greg and Cheryl this week because a lifetime ago, pre-kids, Jude and I stayed with them in New York City when we were in town for the U.S. Open.  Jude and Cheryl really hit it off during out stay.  Now, we find ourselves 20 years down the road without having spent any meaningful time with them.  It's funny how life works.  Before he (semi) retired, Greg traveled extensively for work.  He and Cheryl didn't have children and, of course, we did.  As a result, we lived very different lives and our paths didn't cross in the ways I had hoped they would.  

Really, that's true of most of my close friends from high school and college, too.  Because Jude and I had children relatively late in life, our world never lined up with my friends' worlds in the sense that their children were older, then out of the house, while ours were still young.  I wouldn't change my life for anything, though.  JP and Joe have enriched my life - our lives - more than I could have possibly imagined. 

JP had a nice visit at Furman University.  The official tour he and Jude went on was informative.  I was glad he got have lunch with Jack Wallace, a former cross country and track teammate who is a freshman at Furman and a member of the cross country and track team.  While Jack and JP haven't been particularly close, I think it was helpful for JP to talk with someone he knows who is running in college.  

JP also visited with an assistant coach for the cross country and track team, which was helpful and informative, as well.  Jude and I talked with him briefly.  Nice and personable young man.

We stayed overnight in Spartanburg, SC, too, so JP could visit Wofford College, since we were in the area.  Our Airbnb in Spartanburg, SC, was great.  We even worked in a trip to the YMCA, so JP could get a workout in.  His first treadmill run in a while was a success.  Joe played 2-on-2 (or 2 v. 2, as the kids call it) basketball with some guys.  I saw him drain a couple of shots, including a nice 3-pointer from the left side.

I think JP enjoyed his tour and visit at Wofford College.  He and Jude took a tour there, as well.  I like the fact that JP is having an opportunity to see a few smaller, Division 1 colleges.  Clemson, on Saturday, will be completely different.  

It's funny, he never heard back from the coach at Wofford.  No response at all to his e-mail to let him know he would be in town and would like to meet.  It boggles my mind how a coach at a smaller school, like Wofford, could ignore an e-mail from an accomplished high school runner, like JP, who has posted times in races that indicate he is a potential Division 1 college runner.  Sure, I am biased, but not even a "thank you" for reaching out.  It's amazing how responsive some college coaches (and schools) are and how non-responsive other coaches and schools are.  I guess that's just part of college recruiting.  

Greg's place has been great, particularly since we figured out there is an exercise room in the clubhouse.  Apparently, the development (Connestee) Falls upgraded it a couple of years ago.  It's quite nice and has everything JP needs.  Treadmills, ellipticals, etc.  Perfect for him (and me) to get his runs and workouts in every day.

We've had great meals out every night in Brevard, NC, a town we've quickly fallen in love with.  Square Root, the Bohemian, and Quixote all were bit hits.  Jude has hiked to Connestee Falls the last two days.  Yesterday, she and Joe played tennis.  I've worked some, run on the treadmill, and generally tried to recharge my batteries.  

Tomorrow, we're off to Clemson University, where JP will visit with his friend and former cross country teammate, Charlie Warner.

A Different Kind of Spring Break

Tomorrow morning, we're loading up and heading to Greenville, SC, where we'll stay tomorrow night.  

Monday morning, JP is going to take a look at Furman University.  There, he's going to have lunch with his former track and cross country teammate, Jack Wallace, meet and talk to one of the cross country/track coaches, and tour the campus.  

Strangely enough, I visited Furman many, many years ago, on one of the only college trips my mom and I took together.  I can't recall who stayed with Tracy and Alice.  If memory serves, over the Thanksgiving holiday my senior year (November 1983), my mom and drove to Winston-Salem, NC (Wake Forest), Greenville, SC (Furman), and Boone, NC (Appalachian State).  Odd combination of schools.

If all goes according to plan, on Monday evening or Tuesday morning, we'll drive to Spartanburg, SC, so JP can visit Wofford University.  He's scheduled a tour there, too, although I don't think he's heard back from any of the coaches.  

If it works out, we're going to try to stay in Brevard, NC, during the middle of the week.  An old high school friend of mine owns a house in the mountains in Brevard, and I'm trying to see if we can work out a visit there.  It's not a week at 30A and the beach, I know, but it would give all of us two or three well earned days to relax and unwind.

On Saturday, JP is going to visit Clemson.  Charlie Warner, a friend a former cross country teammate, is a freshman there, along with another boy from MBA.  I'm not sure how interested JP is in going to school at Clemson but I think he's looking forward to seeing Charlie and taking a look at the campus.  Truthfully, I'm looking forward to seeing Clemson, too, as I've only seen it on television during football games.  It's supposed to be a pretty campus.

Earlier in the school year, Jude and JP visited the University of Texas and Rice University.  A month or so ago, they did a mid-west tour and visited the Indiana University, University of Illinois, Notre Dame, and Butler University.  He took a side trip to Wake Forest after NXR in the fall.  

Last year, JP and I visited Ohio State University on a cold, cold Saturday morning before the Vols played the Buckeyes in the CFP.  In past years at NXR, JP has visited Duke, North Carolina, and North Carolina State.

There's an aimlessness to it all that I find unsettling, which I guess is normal.  I'm told by friends that JP will know which college or university is right for him as soon as he steps on campus.  Maybe so, but since he wants to run in college, that adds an extra layer of complexity to the mix.  Academics, athletics, scholarships (academic or athletic), and most importantly, a place where JP wants to live and go to school for four or five years.

It's a lot.  At least, it feels like a lot to me right now.  On the one hand, picking a college is such an important decision.  I don't think I would trade my 4 + years in Knoxville, at UT, for anything.  I guess I would have had just as much fun, and learned as much, somewhere else, but it seems like my life would have turned out differently had I gone to Vanderbilt, for example.  It's the road not taken, I suppose.

On the other hand, JP is going to be the same great kid - young man, actually, as he turns 18 in two weeks - wherever he attends college.  That I know for sure.

Maybe what's unsettling to me, too, is that my time with JP is running out.  By that, of course, I mean our time together when we see and talk to each other every day.  My time with JP living in our house will soon be at an end.  Actually, that's more than unsettling, it's almost unfathomable.  Honestly, it's hard to think about or to conceptualize.  But I know it's coming, though.  I know it's coming.

It's funny.  You work so hard as a parent, to teach your child well.  To help him or her grow, mature, succeed, handle failure, and become an adult.  Then, they say goodbye and go off to college and it's never the same.  Not like it was.  

And your heart is forever broken by the inexorable march of time.

Getting Noticed

One of the challenging things for Joe about changing schools has been starting over.  While I knew this would be case, having been through it with JP, it's still hard for me, as a father, to watch him find his way at MBA.  

In my head, I know it's what is best for him.  The learning for Joe is in the struggle to be noticed.  To be seen.  To find where he fits and to assert himself.  To become confident, again, and comfortable in his own skin.

The easy thing for Joe would have been to stay at USN.  He was established there.  A leader.  Someone to whom the other students, boys and girls, looked to for approval and friendship.  He was popular among the other students and faculty.  He set the tone in his classes every day.  Mind you, this is not supposition on my part.  It's what I heard from his teachers, twice a year, in parent-teacher conferences, for the seven years he was there.

At MBA, we knew it would be different.  Almost all of the boys are highly intelligent, driven, and motivated to succeed.  As my friend, John Rowland, said to me at Don Smith's memorial service, "MBA challenges students academically, athletically, and socially every single day."  Truer words have never been spoken.

Joe has adjusted well, by and large.  His grades are very good.  He's succeeded, thus far, in soccer and basketball.  Still, he's finding his way, which is to be expected.  Baseball, his favorite sport, has been a bit of a challenge this spring.  It's been harder for him to get noticed.  Being one of the smartest, most instinctive players on the field is not enough any more because many of the other boys - at least at this point - are bigger and stronger.  That likely will change but it's the case for now.

Thus far, Joe has been relegated to playing right field, batting low in the order, and only getting one, maybe two, at bats per game.  He's had trouble getting noticed.  Obviously.

It's a new experience for me, as a parent, when it comes to baseball.  My boys have always been team leaders, middle infielders, and pitchers.  Leadership positions.  With the exception of JP's seventh grade year, when he made the "A" team of 8th graders because he could play catcher, that's always been the case.  It's different this year for Joe, so far, and that's been an adjustment.  For him and for me.

I've told him to keep working hard.  To be a good teammate.  Vocal and supportive.  The first one out of the dugout to congratulate other teammates.  To have a good attitude.  And, most importantly, to be ready to capitalize on any opportunities that come his way.  

Yesterday, in an intersquad scrimmage that was set up like a real game with an umpire, he pitched in relief of a starter who gave up 7 runs in the first inning.  When Joe came in, the bases were loaded with two outs.  After getting ahead of the first batter, 0-2, he aimed his pitches rather than just throwing.  As a result, he lost him and walked in a run.  He got the next batter out and got out of the inning, however.

The next inning, Joe still struggled a bit with his control but managed to get through the top of the order without allowing any runs.  He finished the game, an 8 - 4 loss, pitching 2 1/3 innings and allowing no runs (the runner he walked in would not have been charged to him).  One, maybe two, strikeouts and four walks.  Overall, he pitched well, although his control needs to improve.  He was rusty, which is to be expected.  I hope he gets another chance to pitch.

My bigger hope, though, is that Joe got noticed yesterday.  He was much more upbeat, more himself, after the game, which made me happy.  He had contributed, which is what he wanted to do.  I wish he would have started the game because the outcome might have been different.  Still, progress.  

Getting noticed.

     

The Big Hurt

As Joe was taking the trash out Friday morning after breakfast, Jude pulled me aside and told me that she had just received an e-mail confirming that Joe had been cut after Stars' basketball tryouts on Monday and Wednesday nights.  My heart sank because I knew how disappointed Joe would be.  

I wasn't completely surprised based on a few things Joe and his best friend, Pike, had told me about how tryouts went, which court they were on, etc.  I had an uneasy feeling about it, too, that had settled in earlier in the week.  Still, I was hoping for good news but, unfortunately, it didn't work out for Joe like I wanted it to.

Jude and I agreed we needed to tell Joe before school because his friends who had tried out likely would be talking about who made it and who didn't.  As he walked back in and sat down, I told him about the e-mail and how sorry we were.  Joe's face fell and he sat for a minute in stunned silence, procession the news.  I could tell her was trying valiantly to keep his emotions in check at a moment when he was, well, devastated.  

I hated - absolutely hated - to give him the news, then send him off to school to deal with it on his own, but we didn't have a choice.  It would have been worse, I think, for him to hear the news from someone else or to spend the entire day thinking he had made one of the Stars' teams only to find out when he got home that he had been cut.  There was no easy way to handle it.

The hard part is Joe's basketball game does not translate well to a compressed tryout, when coaches are looking for players who have size, quickness, and score the basketball.  Joe's game is predicated on passing, running the offense, making the right play, playing sound defense, and leading.  The fundamentals.  

Last season is a perfect example.  Playing for Jared Street's 6th grade team, Joe wasn't the most athletic or the best shooter.  Still, a weekend or so into the tournament season, Joe was starting and playing the most minutes for a coach that knows basketball (Coach Street is the head coach at Page High School).  At one point, Coach Street, laughing, told me after a game that the only reason he ever took Joe out of a game was when he was tired, because he did everything right.  That's not the kind of thing that shows up in a tryout.

The same thing happened with Joe's seventh grade basketball team this winter, too.  By the second or third game, he started, ran the offense, passed the ball well, and held everything together.  Did the small things.  A glue guy, to be sure.

And that's where Lance let Joe down, I think.  Over lunch last season, he was incredulous that Joe hadn't made a Stars' team the previous season, so much so that he admitted they had missed the boat on Joe at tryouts.  Last season, however, he had seen what Joe could do and, obviously, had talked to Coach Street.  

"We just missed it with Joe," Lance told me at lunch last year.    

My obvious question, of course, is how do you miss it with Joe a year later, after he had a successful season with Coach Street, Lance?  How do you make the same mistake again? 

The answer is Lance didn't even take a look at Joe during tryouts, which he conceded in an e-mail to me after the fact.  

I would feel better about the outcome if Lance had watched Joe, even for a couple of minutes, and given me his assessment of where Joe is as a basketball player.  That didn't happen, though.  I'm disappointed in Lance for that reason. 

Look, I recognize this is the ultimate first world problem.  The rational part of my brain understands that. Still, as a father, it's so hard to see your son disappointed.  When Joe hurts, I hurt for him.  

On top of that, I feel responsible for teaching him how to play basketball the right way.  Unselfishly.  Fundamentally sound.  Find the open man.  Play defense.  Box someone out, even if it means your teammate gets the rebound.   

I spent most of Friday, at work, in a daze.  For once, I wasn't well equipped to listen to my clients tell me about their problems when I knew my 14-year old son was school trying to deal with the disappointment of something that, for him, is the biggest deal imaginable.  His friends made the Stars and he got cut.   

Over the weekend, I talked to him about the importance of keeping things in perspective.  I told him I understood how he felt, because I had been cut from the basketball team in seventh grade and the baseball team in eighth grade.  I wanted to take his hurt and pain and make it mine, even though I know that experiencing adversity like this, now, will make him stronger down the road.  I told him that, too.

Frankly, I am still hurting for him and trying my best to process my disappointment for Joe.  I know he is hurting, too.  

Sometimes it's hard to be a parent.  

_________________________________

POSTSCRIPT:  Monday morning, I got a text from Lance.  A spot on one of the teams had opened up and Joe could have it, if our family hadn't moved on.  I texted Lance back and told him it would make Joe's spring but I didn't want to put Lance, or anyone else, in a bad spot.  Nothing of the sort, according to Lance.  Joe was the last cut and a spot opened up.  Sometimes things work to the way you want them to, you know?