I ended up having some fun with it though - both writing my speech and delivering it - and I actually found it a little cathartic to let go of some of the failures and regrets from my athletic career. I've embellished or invented a few details to make my points. And I purposely de-emphasized a few of my successes as a high school wrestler. If any of these changes better enabled a middle school student to relate to my story, then the ends justify the means.
Everyone
knows that the most obvious way to divide a group of kids into two teams is to
assign two captains and to allow them to take turns picking players until every
kid has been chosen. Anyone who has ever participated in any type of informal
sporting competition between the ages of roughly six and fourteen knows this
method, as does every teacher, coach and camp counselor. This might be the
easiest way to pick teams, but to the last kid picked, it can be unbelievably
cruel. When I was nine years old, in the summer of 1991, my camp counselors
used this system every time they had to assemble two teams. Sometimes, they
used it multiple times per day. And every single time, I was one of the last to
be chosen. It made me feel completely worthless.
The only way
of sparing myself the embarrassment of being picked last was to be chosen as captain
myself – and this happened once in a while. But of course, it couldn’t happen
every time. And by August, I had been chosen last, or close to last, in just
about every competitive activity: soccer, volleyball, flag football, capture
the flag, even a competitive Connect Four tournament.
When I was
nine years old, my friends and I felt that athletic ability was the most
important way to measure a boy’s value as a person. I’m sure a lot of boys
still think this way. To the boys in my age group, nothing really mattered
except for speed, strength and the ability to put a ball in a basket or in the
back of a net. So for a long time, I believed that it didn’t matter if I was
funny, or artistic, or a really nice guy, or if during the school year, I was in
the advanced reading group. I believed that none of these things were important,
or worthy of respect, and certainly none of them would get me picked any sooner
for athletic competitions.
I remember
that during kickball one morning, my frustration and embarrassment reached its
peak. There was this kid Billy, who was pretty much my opposite. He was strong
and fast and coordinated, which meant that he was also unbelievably cool. He
was always picked first. In kickball games, he always batted first. And I
remember he led off this game by kicking a ball over the head of the deepest
outfielder, and racing around the bases before it could even be returned to the
infield. An inside the park home run. On this day, I had the unfortunate job of
hitting behind him in the batting order. As he crossed the plate, I held up my
hand for a high five – to prove to everyone else that I was cool by my
association with Billy. Without even looking at me, he held up his hand to meet
mine, and our fingertips barely grazed. My heart was already pounding. I knew
I’d never be able to follow up what he had just done.
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The bane of my existence during the summer of 1991. |
Sure enough,
I “swung” at the first offering, and the red rubber ball dribbled off the side
of my sneaker and down the third base line. I was thrown out easily – or at
least, I assume I was thrown out easily. I didn’t actually wait around to see.
Instead of running down to first base, I made a beeline in the other direction,
past my team mates and counselors, past the metal bleachers, and behind a tree
where I burst into tears. My weak kick was embarrassing enough. Crying in front
of everyone was twice as bad. But I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t fair. I was a
good kid: I didn’t talk back to my parents, I kept my room relatively clean, I
didn’t repeat those dirty jokes that the other boys sometimes tossed around.
And what did I have to show for it? I wasn’t any good at sports, so what did any
of the other stuff matter?
My counselor
Dave followed me to my tree. He was a good athlete himself, so I wasn’t sure if
he could relate to the deep shame and despair that I was feeling at that
moment. But he didn’t make me explain why I had run off or why I was crying. He
already knew. Instead, he knelt down to my level, put a hand on my shoulder and
told me firmly but not unkindly, “We can’t all be Billy.”
I don’t
think I fully understood until much later how important those words were to me.
“We can’t all be Billy.” In other words, we can’t all be natural athletes. Just
like we can’t all be tall. And we can’t all play the clarinet. And we can’t all
solve a Rubix Cube.
When I was
nine years old, and ten, and eleven, and twelve and all the way up through high
school, I lived under this mistaken assumption that because I was a mediocre
athlete, I was also a mediocre person. And so instead of feeling proud about
the things I was good at – like being a good writer, and a good musician, and
having a good sense of humor – I spent lots of time feeling sorry for myself.
I did have
at least a little success in one sport: wrestling. I started when I was in
third grade and continued all the way up through my senior year of high school.
Truthfully, my career was full of ups and downs. I probably lost my first
fifteen or twenty matches in a row, like a lot of wrestlers do, and I almost
ended up quitting. But by my second and third year, I had started to win a few
matches and even one tournament. When I got to high school, though, it was a
whole new ball game. I had trouble even cracking the school’s varsity lineup,
much less winning matches when I actually got opportunities. I earned a varsity
spot my junior year, but lost it halfway through the season. Obviously, that
was the kind of setback that would frustrate any athlete, but for me it went
deeper. Losing my varsity spot meant that I was a Failure with a capital F.
That same quarter, I made my school’s honor roll for the first time. It should
have been a proud accomplishment, but it barely mattered to me, because I had
been demoted from varsity. Kids in high school got respect for Varsity Letter
jackets, not for grades.
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On every remotely cold day between September 1998 and March 2000, I proudly wore my varsity jacket. And I would have continued to wear it in college, if it had been socially acceptable. |
I was named
the captain of the wrestling team my senior year, and I won a bunch of matches,
most of which I remember well. But what I remember best is my dad telling me
after a handful of victories that my high school athletic career had officially
surpassed his. I also remember the losses much more vividly than the victories.
I was up 4 to 2 in the second period of a match in the county tournament, when,
while trying to return my opponent to the mat, I tripped over my own feet and
brought him down on top of me. He pinned me, or rather I pinned myself. Rather
than just feeling the simple frustration that comes from defeat, I felt total
humiliation. No joke: at seventeen years old, I felt that I was and would never
be a man.
My high
school athletic career has been over for seventeen years now, and the truth is
that I sometimes wish I had been born a better athlete. I daydream sometimes about
what it would have been like to have my hand raised at the 2000 New Jersey
State Wrestling tournament. And I imagine myself back at camp, kicking a ball
that no one can catch, rounding the bases and then connecting with Billy for a
solid high-five.
You’ll never
hear me say that sports don’t matter. I get the passionate feelings that come
from playing, and coaching and just following a team. Some of my greatest heroes
in the world are Red Sox and Patriots players. And the performance of my teams
can be enough to change my mood for weeks at a time.
But in the seventeen
years that I’ve been out of high school, I’ve learned just how little my
athletic accomplishments or lack of accomplishments truly matter. These days I
aspire to be a good teacher to my students, a good son to my parents, a good
brother to my sister, a good husband to my wife – and as of one month ago, a
good father to my children. My ability to perform these roles has nothing to
with that match I lost at the Morris County tournament in my senior year, which
no one even remembers except for me.
Many of you
are already athletes. Many of you will continue to play sports when you high
school. Some of you will play in college. And some of you are already finished
with organized sports. If you are an athlete, then by all means, I hope you try
your hardest, and enjoy yourself. But whether you are the star of a varsity
team, or a J.V. benchwarmer, don’t ever make the mistake of thinking – as I
used to think – that your value to a sports team is the same thing as your
value as a human being.
Cherish the
skills you do have. Some of you are better at math than I will ever be. Some of
you are future debate team members. Some of you are just known for being really
good and honest friends. Don’t you ever think that athletic skills are
automatically more valuable than any of the skills I just listed.
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