Confessions of A Newtown Sports Parent

So, my kid graduated from Newtown High School last month.

My last kid.

I have another one, but she already graduated two years ago.

But this last one, this was the final kid. I mean, another kid just isn't happening for us unless we adopt some orphan from the Balkans or they introduce some magic elixir into the water supply that makes you want to go through the whole diapers/wubby/bottles/preschool/puberty thing all over again while at the same time dealing with all that other crap you have to deal with yourself when you’re in your 50's.

And like I said, while I have loved every minute I have ever spent with my kids, that just isn't happening.

This was the last kid, this last one, and when he walked off that stage in Danbury in June, the door slammed shut with a loud and declarative thud on a life that I had once thought would never end.

I frankly never saw this coming. This being the end of our Newtown sporting life.

I can close my eyes now, and there they are, little kindergarten-ish bugs in blue and gold shirts, buzzing around the middle school field chasing a soccer ball while wide-eyed young-ish parents sit on blankets and folding chairs, beginning the process of convincing themselves that their kid is really good, that he or she could maybe even be great, that this little Sunday afternoon diversion could make he or she popular in high school, that it could even (gasp) pay for their college at Yale or Harvard, because he or she is also what you call your basic gifted genius type.

The beauty of it is that the little bugs themselves could care less about that stuff, and regardless of what their parents think, whether they're on grass or cinders or hardwood or thrashing around in a pool, they just love the running and the sliding and the tackling and the hitting and the shooting and the splashing.

But the parents of our generation -- well, we are like no others before us. We, my friends, are a bunch of addicts.  We get so loopy on our kids and their sports, not even Doctor Drew can talk us down off of our high.

"Hi, my name is Woody, and I am a kids' sports addict."

So as the last of my children move out of the school system here in our town, I slide sickeningly and sentimentally downwards, settling into what will soon become fragile eggshell memories. All those games and practices. All the intensity and the energy and emotion I put into all of those years. I really have to stop and wonder about why it had to be that way.

Was I suffering from the ultimate parental cliché, "living my life vicariously" through my kids, trying to make up for my own youthful inadequacies and athletic shortcomings? Or was I just trying to get closer to my kids?

Everybody's different, and some people may be into it for those reasons, but as I take a deeper dive into those memories, a simple truth reveals itself that convinces me that none of the above were my motivations.

Like many of you, I’m a complete sap, a total pushover for my kids. I absolutely live through them, but not vicariously -- I just want to be with them when they're having so much goll-danged FUN.

The truth is I was always going to be pretty close to my kids regardless of my involvement in their sports. I wasn't making up for any lost sense of accomplishment or unfulfilled quest for athletic glory. My youth -- athletic and otherwise -- was filled with enough achievement to satisfy me.

Nope, I can honestly say now that my intentions in being this involved were born of the utmost nobility.

I simply love sports - and I love that my kids love sports.  And I love when other kids love sports. And I mostly love watching my kids have a blast with other kids while they all love sports together.

From little kid stuff all the way through middle school and varsity, it's been fourteen years of dusty fields and smelly gyms, and carpools, and emails, and schedules, and orange sections, and waterbottles, and wins and losses, and tears, and arms raised in glorious triumph.

And I have adored every blessed minute of it.

I'm not unique. In fact, you can't swing a dead cat in most communities like ours without hitting some idiot like me. Some dad or mom who has immersed themselves so deeply into the fabric of youth and high school sports that extricating themselves when it's all over seems to be an impossible and useless task, like pulling a tick out of your hip when the bull’s-eye rash is already there.

So here it comes, Newtown. Get ready.

I was asked to write a sports blog and I will write a sports blog. And all my thoughts and ideas and opinions and suggestions about sports in this town are going to come flooding out because I no longer have a horse in the race. I have no more skin in this game.

I'm no longer worried about playing time or field space or whether my kids will be ostracized or if my wife will leave me. Well, okay - there's always a chance on that last one, and she's way too cool for me to blow it now after 26 years of wedded bliss just because of some goofy sports blog, so I may still have to pull it back a little every now and then.

But I sure as heck don't care about what the baseball people think about lacrosse or what the hockey people think about basketball or what the football people think about cheerleading or what the soccer people think about every other sport because soccer is, apparently, a year round WAY OF LIFE that every athlete and family needs to subscribe to exclusively and expensively if you want your kid to see any meaningful playing time.

See? I told you, I think I may need to pull it back a little every now and then.

You may like what I say or you may hate it – but you will likely feel something.

And that's good, because in my book, the visceral always outweighs the ambivalent - that’s what makes it all so much FUN.

And that's why they play the games to begin with.