Parents, we don’t know. We just can’t. It is beyond our range of comprehension, empathy and experience. We have no answers for our adolescent athletes who have been prisoners of inactivity for a year.
“Hang in there. It’ll get better.”
We could say “Gargle with kitty litter” and we would get the same blank, vacant response.
“Be patient. This time is so short in comparison to the 60, 70 years you’ll be living.”
When was the last time a teenager thought about being a grandfather or grandmother? In fact, when was the first time any teenager anywhere had that thought?
“You’ll understand when you get older.”
Any sentence that has “old” or “mature” or the implied “perspective” in it might as well have never been spoken at all. At that moment of attempted understanding, better to offer a chocolate doughnut and see what happens next.
“There’s a reason this is called an unprecedented event,” said Dr. Lauren Morimoto, a Sonoma State University professor with an emphasis on sports psychology.
Our children have been robbed of time. Some people might snicker at that loss, for they have lost their jobs, their homes, the means in which to feed themselves. The loss of life, half a million now, shadows everything. COVID-19 has marked all of us. The virus has caused the eruption of every possible negative emotion. It is a tragedy all to itself, to dive deep into melancholy, to compare distress, for no one wins at misery, other than those truly committed to whining and gloom.
Into this muck a burst of sunlight emerges.
High school sports are scheduled to return. Let the sweat begin! The clouds have parted. Birds are singing. No need for those chocolate doughnuts now. Adolescent enthusiasm is on a cool breeze and is easily transmitted to the adults.
Of course, things could change. The infectious case rate could climb above 14 every 100,000 people. A variant in our county could emerge. Still yet another new study could find aerosol spray easier to transmit than originally thought. Or someone might claim they have seen football teams practicing in pads and wouldn’t that compromise health and violate some sort of ethical standard and what da heck was that all about?
But RIGHT NOW, the moment is pure, the news genuine, the expectation uplifting.
And, we, as parents, can only imagine what our teenagers are experiencing. Just as we once couldn’t imagine 500,000 people dying from a virus and wearing masks for a year, and yet here we are.
But this is a good place to start. . .
“I’m 67 and I can still remember sports being the most fun I had in high school,” said Tom Bonfigli, who played football and basketball at Cardinal Newman. “I was a good student, but sports was my No. 1 motivation to do well in class. The people I hung with, were my teammates.”
But if Bonfigli had sat out a year. . .
“Like what it might have been to go through the Depression?”
Who knows? Who wants to know? Instead, how do we express the relief, the handcuffs coming off? High school football in the 1930s wasn’t quite the sport it is today. There’s no reference to compare, but an unleashed adolescent full of pent-up anxiety and frustration is a wonder to watch but also a caution to observe.
“They are weighing self-regulation,” Dr. Morimoto said. “Where are the boundaries? They are motivated to take risks. How far do you take it?”
The popular trope is teenagers feel bulletproof, that they are fearless, can get away with anything without consequences. Scholarly research suggest something a bit more complex.
They don’t understand the complex nature of their risk. The male brain is not fully developed in a way that allows them to appreciate the consequences of their actions. So preoccupied in the present, the future is fuzzy, non-existent.
The phrase I heard as a kid has stuck with me all these years: “Don’t trust anyone over the age of 30.” How would some old dart know what it’s like to be me? Because a teenager’s life is so immediate and present, so all-consuming, a long view is limited to what’s happening next weekend.
“I teach history,” said Bonfigli, now at St. Vincent in Petaluma after decades of being an iconic basketball coach at Cardinal Newman. “One thing historians say is that to evaluate the impact and legacy of a president wait until 20 years has passed. The impact this pandemic has had on kids could very well last for years. We don’t know because we have never been through anything like this before.”
Further, the fear that the-horse-is-out-of-the-barn enthusiasm will drive teenagers to push their bodies to unhealthy limits after waiting a year to compete.
“Football is a contact sport,” Bonfigli said. “There are different muscles used than in other sports. They need to be developed through practice.”
Just as the projected football season is expected to be shortened — five games is the early estimate — so are the practices to get the body ready for full-blown contact. With April 17 as the shutdown date, teams won’t have as many practices as typical. When football is played at the desired pitch, it’s not a contact sport. It’s a collision sport.
For the teenage athlete, the thirst for competition is not just a physical outlet but an emotional one as well. It’s quite common the first love for a boy is not a girl but a sport. To have that love released now after a year of shifting uneasily from foot-to-foot waiting for the starting gate to fall, let’s put it this way: It’s a heavy snort.
“I can’t imagine,” Bonfigli said, “what it would be for a graduating senior worried about missing his last year. For those seniors, this is it. To have that taken away, well, it’s not like you can redshirt like you do in college. This is it.”
The starting gate is about to drop. You can hear the snorting, you’d think there’s bulls ready to run down the street. You can hear the shuffling of feet, like they are trying to get traction for a sprint. You can hear “that’s my spot . . . Stop pushing ... Damn, when was the last time you showered, you malodorous cretin.”
And the parents watch, relieved.
“It must feel good,” they might say. Please don’t. You won’t like the response. The kids will look at you like you’re over 30.
To comment write to bobpadecky@gmail.com.