The Stories In Between

One of my student-athletes got some upsetting news.  She has injured a tendon in her ankle and will be out of basketball for about a month.  I know some are thinking, it's only a month.  These people have never worked with or coached a very determined junior high girl.  She returned from her doctor's appointment and signed in with a walking boot and tears in her eyes.  She's a good kid and it's hard to see a student struggle.

As the day went on, my dad brain kicked in and I called her down to the office.  I could tell she was still upset and the day had not gone well for her.  As I began my words of encouragement, I happened to look up and see a picture of my daughter from a golf match her senior year.  I decided to share a story with my student.

Before her freshman year began, my daughter was hitting golf balls with me.  I was preparing for the one time of year I play golf at the Redbird Scramble.  She was new to golf clubs and clumsily hitting balls next to me, but I was not really paying attention to her as I was razor focused on my incredibly poor golf game.  Somewhere during that visit to the driving range, she hurt her right shoulder.  More specifically, her AC joint that connects the collar bone to the shoulder blade.  She was getting ready for freshman volleyball and it was uncertain how this would affect her serving.  She was treated by a fantastic physical therapist and was back on the floor in no time.  Returning to her usual level of play would prove to be difficult.  She was suffering a big setback just like the student I was telling the story to.

As fate would have it, she did not return to volleyball and joined the golf team.  This was the very sport that was the source of her despair.  She worked really hard.  She enjoyed competing and the grind of the game.  She saw her scores drop in each of her last three years of high school and was an all-conference golfer her senior year and played in the IHSA sectionals.  That honor doesn't make this a success story.  Her willingness to try something new after a setback and push herself to be successful is the story.  These stories need to be accessible to other budding athletes.

I'm not sure if the story helped.  I know that she listened and thanked me before she left.  I even offered to set her up with the same fantastic physical therapist that my daughter saw.  

I like winning as much as anyone.  I think trophy cases are fascinating and I'm always looking at gym banners wherever I go.  Those stories should be told, but the stories in between them can be far better.  Many familiar names in sports have incredible back stories that make their success seem inspiring to me.  NBA star Serge Ibaka was born in the war torn Congo as one of 18 children and lost his mother and father.  Basketball was an escape from poverty and despair.   MLB pitcher Jim Abbott threw a no-hitter with only one arm.  Olympic gymnast, Kieran Behan, overcame 15 months in a wheelchair, then suffered a head injury and several broken bones before qualifying for the Olympics in 2012.

Almost anyone can tell a kid that Micheal Jordan won six championships despite being cut from his high school team, but that story is not that inspirational and is not accessible.  I'm pretty sure he will not visit your practice to tell your players about how awful that was.  All kidding aside, if we want to motivate young players we have to tell the stories that happen in between the successes.  Invite real kids to speak and tell their story.  Give your kids a person that they can relate to and have a relationship with.  That's how we motivate kids to have a growth mindset and push through the tough stuff.  It makes them better players and people.

Always Eat Last

I was walking down the hallway to my office when a fourth grader decided to walk with me.  He noticed that I had a white Styrofoam container with me and some napkins.

"Are you just now eating lunch?" he asked.

I replied, "This is when I always eat lunch."

"It's like 1:30." he said with confusion.  He added, "Isn't it cold?"

"Sometimes it is."

He pressed on with, "What if there's no food left?"

"Then I don't get to eat."

He said with a look of disappointment, "Well that's stupid.  Have a good day Mr. Cass."

What my friend doesn't realize is that I always eat last.  It doesn't matter if it is lunch, a celebration or professional development meal I always go last.  I was once thrown a farewell celebration when I was moving on to a new district and they had to push me into the line.  I do this at home too.  To me, this small act of courtesy is important though it might puzzle others.  

I've done all the leadership courses and read a few books, but some of our best leadership examples just come from having a unique set of manners.  Letting everyone eat before me is a way of putting my people before me.   It is symbolic of their needs being at a higher priority than mine.  Sure I've eaten a lot of cold lunches over the years and sometimes had to take a trip down the street to a drive thru, but I take comfort in knowing that everyone else had been fed.  

As I look back, this comes from my mother.  She had to scrape to make sure we had enough so she would take what was left after we had all eaten.  For me, this is what the head of the household does and it has crossed over into my professional life.  I often hope my children take notice and that value can be transmitted and passed on.  I place a high value on servant leadership and I may not be able to teach my son how to rebuild a carburetor, but he can learn how to serve others.

What are some ways you serve others through small acts?  No act of kindness is small, but we all have our little things that others may not understand.  They make you unique and will help define your leadership style.  If you can't think of anything, always eat last.

My Twitter Safe Space has been Violated

I only take advantage of two social media outlets, Facebook and Twitter.  They are very different spaces for me and have their own unique ecosystem.  My Facebook friends are people that I actually know and have had some type of speaking relationship with.  I'm very choosy with these people.  I use Twitter as a place to connect with educators and admins as well as fellow baseball card collectors.  My Facebook feed is full of those who like drama and fights (which leads to unfollows and hides) and my Twitter feed is peaceful and full of people that love to lead and teach.  I finally had drama in my Twitter world and I did not like it one bit.

I saw a Tweet a couple of nights ago that resonated with me so I liked it and replied.  It was supportive and innocent and I felt good about it.

After a few likes and some new followers, I began to see these replies and it shocked me.  This is new territory so I had to read them twice.  Both of these folks are teachers and were calling out another teacher for refusing to bias her civics students towards one party over the other.  Or, that any position is always a political position.  Neither of these folks truly understand the struggle of the social studies teacher these days.

I had an angry parent call me about some comments made in their child's history class.  He alleged that the teacher told the students that the KKK was founded by people that would be considered Democrats and that now their membership is mostly made up of conservative extremists.

The parent said he had no problem with the first part of this statement and Democrats did start the KKK.  He was upset that the teacher claimed that mostly conservative extremists are members now.  He was obviously a Trump  conservative based on the comments he made towards me personally and the HIS-story that he was providing.  Somewhere in my politeness I managed not to tell him his child's teacher was correct and he was wrong, although it was tempting.

While left leaning Twitter users like the ones above have an unrealistic view of civics education, the real trouble for teachers is that the poor logic and ideology comes from home and we have to try to steer it to the middle of the road just to be able to teach the content.  This is difficult and unfair to expect of us.  Maybe if I would have become a math teacher, I would not have to worry about parents polluting my content. Sarcasm obviously inserted.  Find me a math teacher that hasn't heard the phrase, "That's not how I learned it in school."

I was a new teacher 21 years ago and this was a problem then.  I had a student tell me that Catholics were not Christians.  When I asked her why she thought that way, she told me her dad told her that.  As the years have passed on, we are seeing a huge movement towards people taking political ideology to the extreme and teaching young kids the difference between the Democratic and Republican parties is no longer a simple task.  

While I agree with the commenters that we hold the key to setting these things right, the landscape makes it nearly impossible.  We have a large portion of families (especially after COVID) that believe that schools are the government and because the government is stupid, we cannot tell them what to do.  This makes teaching civics very difficult not to mention enforcing general school policies.  Not long ago I had a parent contact a state legislator to talk to me about her daughter's lunch detention.  Yes, I said lunch detention and yes, I said state legislator.

So for anyone who thinks they have great ideas for teaching civics and government, stop violating my safe Twitter space and write a book or something.  Write a curriculum.  Get your hands dirty, because the people that have doing this for years have their hands full and we could use the help.    

What's It Worth?

 As an older guy getting back into the card collecting hobby, I struggle with some of the nuances that were not customary when I was a  kid.  A big one is the struggle to know how much a card is worth.  I see this question asked time and time again on card Twitter.  I see people disagreeing over the price of a card when it was sold in Facebook groups.  There seems to be no good way to value a card these days.

When I was a kid, it was simple.  You bought a Beckett, looked it up and got excited when you saw those little arrows going up for your card.  The matter was solved and there were no arguments.  The internet had complicated this to a fault.  A great example is the curious case of Jose Uribe.  There was a time that his 1990 Fleer error card (wrong birth date) was listed on eBay for thousands of dollars.  There are a ton of conspiracy theories around why, but the hard reality is that this is a common player.  I even got in on the act and put one up that I pulled on a YouTube video to see what kind of attention it might get.  As you can see, it got next to none.  And yes, my cynical listing title did not help I'm sure.

As much as I chuckled at this, it seemed to happen again with a Todd Zeile rated rookie card.   It was listed on eBay for thousands of dollars noting a very small error.  This doesn't make a card valuable and I often wonder if this is like many other internet scams where the scammer might list lots of these hoping to get one or two interested fools that might pay the money.  Cards are hot these days and the internet is a way to make some quick money by duping people.

I think my biggest frustration is not just people using the internet to over hype or over inflate a player's card, it is the notion that when a great card is pulled we have the moral dilemma to either sell it or keep it.  I heard a man say the other day that they have taken the hobby out of the hobby and this is a prime example.  Take the Tweet below.  If I had pulled a 1/1 card, I would keep it.  A true hobbyist would love to be the "one" that has the card.  Part of me thinks this is a fake, but if a 13 year old decided to sell this card, he had help from an adult that doesn't actually get it.  The hobby has become a business and does not seem like much fun anymore.  Unless you count big pulls turning into big money fun.  This is not a hobby, it is basically gambling and there are a lot of newcomers trying to cash in.

My therapy has come from moving away from today's hobby and trying to relive my own glory days.  I buy old cards from my day (Junk Wax) and enjoy them for the second time around.  To answer the question, "What's It Worth?"  The answer is uncertain.  I sold a Jordan card on eBay that booked for $100 and got way less than that for it.  I know that it is worth what people are willing to pay for it and there is no magical way to have all the right answers.  I have a binder of cards that I will never part with and that makes them invaluable to me.  If I tried to sell them, they might be worth $200 to the market.  That's what I get for deciding to live in the junk wax era.  Stick to the hobby and your cards will always be worth something to you.

My Favorite Player

I am pretty well known for telling my students' parents not to get so mushy over 8th grade nights, senior nights or graduations.  I always tell them that this is a beginning and not an ending.  I tell them to be excited for the next chapters in their children's lives.  I do believe that, but now I find myself in their shoes.  I will soon face an ending that I knew was coming, but I am not prepared for.  The time is quickly coming that I will not be able to watch my favorite player take the softball field any more.

Softball was our first thing together.  When she was tiny we would sit in the floor and roll a softball back and forth to each other.  It felt like only a minute went by when we started to play catch in the yard.  When she was four, she donned a pink uniform and played in her first games.  We played in Johnston City so we could start with coach pitch and not a tee.  This is the path you take when your dad was a coach and your mom was a college softball player.

I got to coach that little pink team and yes, I wore a pink shirt too.  It was strange going from being at a table for a senior's college signing to showing four year olds where first base was.  It was a challenge, but I got to spend time with my favorite player.  I got to be a part of her first little successes and it was rewarding beyond my imagination.  She was a spunky little player that never stopped smiling.  She was always having fun.  I'm sure the bows and polka dots helped with that.

She was a sponge.  She loved to learn new things.  We spent a lot time learning how to pitch and slap hit and even when I got frustrated, I was happy with her.  She worked hard at this and even though some of those skills were never fully utilized, she liked to put in the work.  A story she loves to tell is when I was pitching to her in a gym when she was very young and she swung at a pitch that was a little too inside.  I hit her thumbnail and caused it to come off.  She says I threw at her.  I say she needs to open up more on those inside pitches.  That is still a sore subject to this day.

She got a chance to play for a travel team and before the end of the year was up they were without a coach and I was asked to step in.  Although I wanted to be just a fan, I secretly was happy to do it.  This was a chance to play around in the dirt with her a little longer.  We spent a few good years together as Downstate Rippers with some good people, but the time came that we needed to let her be coached by someone else.  This is hard to do.  Its hard to give your kid to someone else, but I can tell you that it is necessary.

  

She got to play on a really good team with high expectations.  I wouldn't have wanted her to play for many people after me so I was happy to hand her over to Total Contact.  I finally got to be a fan and watch her play with some of the best kids around.  She learned some hard lessons and earned some medals and always played with that smile on her face.  She was finding success and still my favorite player on the field no matter what.

Being a multi-sport athlete is tough, but that was a path she was going to take.  We stepped away from travel ball and gave our springs to high school softball.  This is where the magic begins and you see what type of person your kid is going to be.  She wasn't just a player, she was a helper. Not just a helper but an organizer.  I would have called her a coach's dream if she was on my roster almost 20 years ago.  She was dependable as a player and a responsible teammate.  Most of all, she was competing and happy.  

She’s in her 14th year playing and it is almost time to hang them up.  These are the last chances I get to watch my favorite player.  On opening day I felt like a star struck fan during the game as I hung over the outfield fence.  I nervously watched every pitch go by and held my breath for every defensive chance she got.  She went two for four at the plate with a great defensive play.  Her team went to a walk off win in extra innings against Woodlawn.   I was happy for her when we left the field.  These are big moments that she has been able to add to her collection of memories over the years.

If we have done anything right as sports parents, we knew when to take the training wheels off and let her take over.  I am very proud of the player and young lady she has become, but I know it will help her be a better adult.  You know that next chapter I tell people I'm so excited for?  It will be here before you know it.  We will blink again and be telling these stories to her favorite players while she gets to experience the same pride that we have.  Enjoy this last season Makane!