Dadblog

you go, girls

On Thursday night, shortly after our family returned home from our annual trip to Chicago, I took Andrew to see the UCONN women's basketball team play at nearby Villanova. (I'd bought three tickets, but Alex was too punked by her cold to come with us.)

I grew up in Connecticut, and some time after I left, the women's team from the University of Connecticut got really, really good. At the same time, Connecticut took notice because its only sports team, the Hartford Whalers, morphed into the Carolina Hurricanes and Connecticut Public Television began airing the previously neglected womens' games on free TV. My parents quickly got hooked. The Huskies became family members. They named their dog Lobo after the UCONN center "because she's perfect in every way", as my mother explained.

I started following along too, glad to have a reason to be proud of my home state. In 2000, UCONN beat their arch rival Tennessee here in Philadelphia for the NCAA championship. (It was Pat vs. Geno, which only that very small subset of my blog readership that is familiar with NCAA women's basketball and Philadelphia cheesesteak emporiums will recognize as a clever joke.) The Huskies won it all again in 2002, 2003 and 2004. One of those years I paid $40 for the privilege of watching UCONN womens basketball games streamed over the Internet. I told a friend, and his question was, "with their clothes on?"

Four years ago, my parents and I finally got to see them play when they came to Philadelphia's legendary basketball court, the Palestra at Penn. UCONN dismantled St. Joe's with ease, and the joy was not in watching a lion shred a zebra, but in seeing tremendous skill up close. Women's basketball is a lot like Russian ice hockey - there's a lot of passing. Players make foul shots. The score is low relative to the men's game, and there isn't as much dunking, but there's not as much slamming under the basket and there's just as much finesse.

This year, with Andrew, we again had great seats. He enjoyed the game, even as he struggled to catch on to the rules, and when we saw the Connecticut guard make a blind, behind-the-back pass to a teammate she saw only by instinct, he roared along with me and the rest of the crowd. (90% of the crowd at a UCONN basketball game is going to be nutmeg-staters.) I told the lady sitting next to Andrew that when I call home during the winter, and my dad reports "we're watching the girls", I know exactly who he's talking about. She replied "YES - they are our girls. They get us through the winter." There were quite a few father-son pairs in the crowd beside me and Andrew.

After the game, which UCONN won by 50 points, I saw in some media notes that UCONN is 290-8 all time on games televised by CPTV. That makes them kind of like the History channel. You can be pretty sure who's going to win at the end of the show.

On Sunday, UCONN had a rare, nationally televised game on CBS that I found some time to watch. Andrew wandered in and said - "oh basketball! Can I watch? Which one's Connecticut?" And to my delight, we sat and watched the game together, while I explained some of the subtler points, like the three-second rule and why some shots are more judicious than others.

A commercial came on during a time-out. It showed a teenaged girl anxiously examining her reflection in a shop window. The voice-over said, "Itch you can't scratch? Not feeling like yourself? Fortunately, there's Vagisil Wipes!"

Andrew asked me, "What does THAT mean? Not feeling like yourself?" I told him not to worry about it. I really like UCONN women's basketball, but there's only so far I can take my enthusiasm.

insidious soccer

Rachel and I were talking last night about signing Alex up for soccer again this Fall. Alex doesn't want to do it. I'm not that excited about it either, since Alex gets no joy from it and I end up dedicating my weekend to visiting fields on the other side of town. On the other hand, it does get my otherwise stationary daughter running.

I was no good at soccer as a boy, but I came to understand and appreciate the strategy behind it. I enjoyed the delicious if rare sensation of winning a game. In the Micron league of local youth soccer, every game ends magically in a tie score. This emphasizes development of skill over competition, but ends up just rewarding those girls whose skills are developed. The reasons to be glad you're on the team (you can win together) are muted.

Rachel points out that in our wealthy, high-achieving suburb, all kid activities are highly organized. Kids provide the effort, skilled adults provide the training and coaching, and parents provide the car-pooling and adjust their dinner hour/weekends to fit. Today your average middle schooler is probably better at his/her chosen activities than his 1980s counterpart, but the downside is that it might be difficult to take up an activity later on.

I want out of this stupid trend, but Rachel and I are deciding for Alex, not ourselves.

Alex also wants to jetison the dance class because it's boring. She would rather do swimming. This seems like a good trade to me, but Rachel points out that if all that barre time isn't getting Alex excited, then swimming endless laps up and down the pool won't lift her balloon either. We can just sample every activity at the buffet or have Alex dedicate herself to something and feel the elation that comes with improvement borne of hard work. And before you warn me in the comments, trust me, I know how unlikely it is to force that result.

I wanted to quit the clarinet when I was in elementary school and my parents didn't let me. I'm glad for it - playing in the band was a great experience, and travelling as a performer was a very precious opportunity that most kids don't get - but I expended only the minimum effort required to avoid the wrath of the band director.

Alex did surprise me by saying that she wants to return to softball in the spring. By the end of the season this year she was making contact with the ball at least once a game. (The games themselves were less of a burden to attend when they dropped the no-strike-out rule and ended in less than 2½ hours.) She has also talked about drama, which is interesting because she has always had an aversion to being noticed/photographed/on stage. If we explore that route I know it will requires daily participation, which I suppose our family can support, but it will come at a cost. I seem to remember too that the plum roles come with seniority, so you have to spend a lot of years in the chorus to get a speaking part, assuming Alex would want one.

So - Alex needs something to keep her muscles moving, perhaps an activity to grow with. It must be mentally engaging at all times, and have some reward even for nonathletes. Preferably one that will not dominate our limited quantity of family time.

softball followup

A reader responds to the softball post:

Although it can make someone who is a high acheiver at everything else realize that she doesn't or can't excel at everything, being bad at sports carries almost no social stigma for a girl, which is what you're fighting here.  Unless she's consistantly causing her team to lose (not likely in the outfield), she's not going to suffer in Girl World for her lack of catching/throwing/hitting skills.  She doesn't have the social pressure to improve that a boy would have - what are the kids going to say to her?  "You throw like a girl?"   (What would stigmatize her would be if Rachel were The Mom who Yells at the Ump.  Or if you were the Dad Who is Always Yelling Hitting Suggestions.)   There's an unconscious calculation going on here: why invest time and effort at practicing something that is unlikely to pay off with anything other than small incremental improvements.  She knows she'll never pitch or play first base, so lacking peer pressure for improvement, what's the point?  Especially when there's a good book in your bag waiting for you?

Although some girls love sports for the same reason guys love sports - the thrill of competition and mastery, an awful lot of others just like the social interaction that goes with hanging out with "the team", wearing the uniform, cheering for whoever is at bat, and going to Dairy Queen after the game.  Being good is less the point that being With The Team.

And yes, on my softball team at that age, I was the one making the dandilion chains in the outfield. 

Yes ma'am, you've described the situation exactly. If it makes you feel any better, Rachel and I haven't shared any of our feelings about this with Alex. We observe and don't comment. (We did lean on her to quit carping and get on the bike, and when it paid off she was so happy with herself.)

It's really not the sports success that matters to us anyway. What concerns me is Alex expending energy on making excuses instead of trying. And it only bothers me because it's a crystal-clear view into my own past that's so embarrassing it makes my stomach knot up. 

fly balls, ants

Here's a picture (click to enlarge) from Alex's softball game this week. Note Alex in shortfield, searching the basepath for ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs during the game. This behavior induces odd feelings in me and Rachel. Foremost, we are definitely concerned about the possibility of a head-bonking, although that's a modest risk since most of the girls don't swat the ball that hard in this league. Next, we wonder why exactly the whole family is trotted out to the field two or three times a week if Alex herself isn't paying attention. Finally, we wonder if Alex is being irresponsible. Should we expect a 7½-year-old non-athlete to act like a team player?

Why exactly do we sign her up for these things?

Alex says she likes playing on a team. I know that she wishes she was a stronger player, but she doesn't yet see the connection between practice and improvement, and she is reluctant to put herself in a position where she will fail. These behaviors are all very forgivably human.

This is not a case where organized sports are ruining the spontaneous fun of generations past. Alex would be exactly the same in a world where grownups didn't organize the games with uniforms and schedules.

My mother has just bought a batting tee and an aluminum bat for Alex. Hopefully Alex will go along with our home study program. She would definitely be happier with herself if she was good at softball, so it's worth pursuing.

football and dad time

Alex asked me how I learned the rules of football. I explained that I'd been oblivious to the game until my fifth grade teacher, who ran the pool for Middle Gate Elementary School, included us in a free class pool, competing for a king size chocolate bar every week. We had to pick four winners plus a Monday Night tiebreaker. I won it once, with my New England Patriots winning the clincher, and I was hooked ever after. My mom picked it up at the same time and we've all enjoyed watching together ever since.

Alex snuggled on the couch with me on Saturday evening and watched the Patriots win again. She kept asking for explanations, and I think she's getting a sense of the different ways a team can score. I let her stay up past her bed time, partly because she'd been with Myrtle for most of the past 24 hours and felt like a prodigal daughter, and partly because I really, really want to have sports as a bond with at least one of the kids. I have this happy future vision of season tickets to some Philadelphia sport and I need someone to put in the other seat.

I watched the Bengals game yesterday with Andrew and Lizzie. Andrew kept asking about the guy with tremendous hands, as identified by the announcer. "Is that the guy with the weally big hands?"

"Is that him? Does he have big hands?"

"Which team is the Phillies?"

Lizzie was more interested in the outfits ("Hats! Biiiiggg hats!") and the tiger in the middle of the field ("Grrrrrrrrr!!!")

Weekends in the van

I began to fuss about organized youth soccer this month. Until the season ended this past weekend, we would take Alex to a game on Saturday and Andrew to his game on Sunday. That's a lot to puzzle our weekend schedule around, but there's also ballet practice (Saturday, Sunday or both, depending on how close we draw to Nutcracker season) and Lizzie's naps.

The annoying thing about going to soccer is that I am not sure Alex even likes it. I know she enjoys being on a team, with the uniform and the cool name (Pirates! Arrrgghh!) but she has never wanted to go kick the ball around with me. She doesn't have a strong sense of the game, or position on the field. In other words, if neighborhood kids ever got together and played a spontaneous game in a vacant lot (atavistic nostalgia, I realize) I doubt Alex would participate. She'd be the first one in the mix if they were playing Narnia in the vacant lot, but sports do not draw her out.

So for the past eight or nine weeks, Rachel and I have stomped our feet and demanded that Alex put the book down and get her cleats because it's time to leave we're going to be late it's your game we need to leave NOW!! Then we get to the field - dragging a sibling who may have had better things to do - and Alex runs around for sixty minutes. This in the end is the trump. Alex is getting excercise, and despite my carping I'm glad to partition my weekend into 30-minute blocks to accomodate that. It's not my weekend anyway; it belongs to my children.

In her last game on Saturday, I saw Alex dribble past a defender and shoot a perfect acute angle goal past the confused goalie. I was incredulous. The mom sitting next to me said "I've never seen Alex drive the ball like that before."

As proud as I felt for her, Alex seemed nonplussed and not interested in reliving it. This struck me as strange. I can still recall, in stop-motion detail, the exact circumstances of the first of two goals I scored in my youth soccer career (the field behind the middle school, Spring 1981, Kevin Keller in goal.) I think my parents took me out to dinner afterwards and I wasn't exactly modest about it.

good sport

Alex had her first soccer game this past weekend. Both Rachel and I were amazed by how hard she played, and how eagerly she ran up and down the field.

Alex has been jazzed by being on a local rec league team, but I attributed her interest to the snazzy uniform and cool cleats. Her gross motor skills have never been so great and at least until recently, she was still watching her feet while she ran. Somewhere that got tuned up because she kept going and going and going on Saturday.

Also amazing was that she didn't complain afterwards of fatigue or soreness. Alex catalogs and recalls past scrapes and scratches the same way that some Southerners recall the civil war. She will tell you all about them if only you ask. Rachel and I have had to institute a "no talking about old booboos" rule.

Six-year-old soccer is still dominated by a scrum of little girls surrounding the ball. They have yet to learn about playing positions. But, in an improvement over the F-division soccer of my youth, the LMSC Microns play with four kids plus a goalie on each team.

Root Root Root for the Phillies

I took Alex to see a Phillies game at the new ballpark on Saturday. The Phils won, 5-3, in a fun game that featured four Philadelphia home runs, which along with the best mascot in baseball, is what Alex likes best. At the Vet, a liberty bell replica would light up for a homer. At the Bank, a liberty bell the size of my house turns red, white and blue while it rings and swings. "Ring the bell!" Alex shrieked at Bobby Abreu right before he socked one into the stands.

Alex is still learning most of the important rules of the game, like each side gets three outs and then it's the other team's turn to bat. But you don't have to master those arcana to enjoy a trip to the ballpark.

In addition to the sweet sightlines of the new stadium, my favorite part of the outing was Alex reading all the signs. She decoded all the posters on the train, including the difficult-to-explain "What do a beagle and a toaster have in common" ad for the antivivisection society. "Oh, it's a riddle!" Alex said.

I read in the Inquirer this morning that Saturday was the last day that fans were allowed to peer into the visitors bullpen. Looking down at the Montreal Expos relievers was a lot like watching the bear at the Philadelphia Zoo, except that zoo patrons generally do less taunting. Now the pen is blocked off during games.

Huskymania

Connecticut-born or resident members of my family are ecstatic over UCONN's unprecedented sweep of the men's and women's NCAA basketball tourneys. Following last night's victory over Tennessee, my parents in Newtown backed the Camry out of their garage and overturned it in the driveway, then went inside to go to bed.

Members of my household born in other, less fortunate locations are growing weary of my celebration. By the way, did you see that Diana Taurasi went 138-9 over her career at Connecticut? That's almost 94%! Yes, I transferred the wash to the dryer.

Rachel and Elizabeth went with me to a friend's house to see last night's game on ESPN (we don't have cable at home). I am not allowed to hold the baby while watching sports on TV because Rachel thinks I squeeze her too hard when something exciting happens.