Commitment

Tomorrow is my son's last conditioning work-out for Basketball this summer. Naturally this got me to thinking the valuable commitment lesson that student-athletes learn from the grind of summer work-outs. As a family, we have planned our time commitment around our kids activities at school. I know others feel this way but our family enacts the commitment. We do not take full-fledged vacations. I have heard parents talk about this and then their kids have missed for this vacation and this event and in the end the commitment to a team seems to get over-looked. I feel that this lesson goes a long way in assuring that young people learn to commit to a group effort and a understanding that outside your family, education and faith there is no other priority. Hopefully, this becomes prevalent amongst an entire team and then it creates a togetherness and commraderie that makes it much easier to trust team-mates and to count on them to do their job. Our daughter does not escape this philosophy either as we do the same for her cheerleading practices.

During all my years of coaching I would become extremely frustrated with parents who were constantly pulling their students from work-outs and activities for their own reasons. I tried tactfully as possible to get the point across that this was selfish and could not help a team. I know that as adults all of our jobs create an enormous amount of stress in our lives and we need some vacation time. I have the huge fortune of having a month off from my job in the summer, as well as, several days off and breaks throughout the year. I do not consider this a vacation from the most important job that I have of imparting and teaching values and work ethic to our kids. Thank the Good Lord that I am married to a woman who shares the same values. She is satisfied with our simple life of movies, eating out and doing things together as a family.

I hope that this writing does not come off as a this is the right way to do things and others are doing it wrong manual. Instead as parents, my wife and I choose to see summer work-outs and commitments to a team as an extension of our kids education. An education, that in all due respect, is much more valuable than anything learned in a classroom. Cindy and I try to model the same commitment in our professional lives for our children to see. We meet many work and professional commitments that might not be necessary, but model commitment. In the big picture, the time spent together as a family is the biggest stress-buster that there is.

In closing, I wish I got paid for every time that I have been told by a former player how many life-lessons that they have learned from these same values that I tried to impart on the young men who played for me. In fact, many over-zealous parents would not agree with me, I think the most valuable thing that coaches and scholastic athletics can provide are these life-long values. One of these values is commitment. So, next time you want to complain about not being able to do anything this summer because of hauling kids around, maybe you have done way more than you ever believed.