All Sport Academy - How Good Do You Want To Be Today?

It’s 7:45pm on Sunday here at ASA, we’ve got soccer games going on, I’m working on some marketing materials and watching the Packers-Giants game. Other than it being my 50th hour here since Friday night, it’s nothing special (gotta love winters in this business…), other than the fact that as I watch the game, I’m reminded that my wife and son are sitting at Lambeau in that cold.

I know a lot of sports fans and a lot of sports fanatics and my wife is right up there with them. When it comes to anything related to Wisconsin sports teams, college or professional, you can usually find her “watching” games on her phone or getting updates from her equally nutty brother. I have to give her credit, she’s stuck with the Packers, Brewers, Bucks and Badgers through thick and thin, good years and not so good years, never swaying in her love for her teams. I know this very well as I met her when she was 16 and I was 15. What made matters worse for me was that when I met her, I had just moved to the small Wisconsin farm community from a larger town in Southern Minnesota. Of course it made for constant battles with us from the day we met. It was good for me early on as the Vikings consistently beat the Packers, so good in fact that after a while I was banned from watching games with them at my sister-in-laws house. Not only did we sit on the opposite sides of the Minnesota-Wisconsin matches, I was a Los Angeles Lakers fan and she loved the Boston Celtics (Magic and Jabbar were my boys and she was madly in love with Larry Bird).

We went to high school together and after college we married and eventually had two boys. You’d think I’d be able to sway at least one of those boys to my side of the Mississippi, but nooooo, they are momma’s boys and follow all the Wisconsin teams (OK, the youngest was a Vikings fan for one season, he really liked Randy Moss for a while…). In fact, as they grew up she had them convinced that Paul Molitor (Brewers) and Brett Favre were their real fathers (I’m not so sure they don’t still believe it, they tell enough people…).

When we moved to New Jersey she went through a rough period of not being able to watch the Packers unless they were on National TV and she could never watch the Brewers or Badgers. We’d drive to NY or Philly to catch the Brewers as often as we could and it’s become a mother’s day activity every other year to see the Brewers play the Mets at Shea. Yeah, she’s a nut, but it’s one of those things I truly love about her.

Enter DirecTV into our lives… A few years ago I bought her the only present I think I’ve ever bought her (in like 25 years) that made any sense. I went to Best Buy and brought home a dish and four receivers and spent the better part of a weekend installing it. I remember getting up at 7am on a Sunday to get the thing working so she could watch the Packers at noon. I had one of my boys sitting in front of the tv with a walkie-talkie adjusting the dish and if I’m not mistaken, we got it working at 11:45am, just in time for kickoff. That’s when it started, I became a football widow…

My wife can’t watch just one game, she has to watch every game at once. Before a play in one game is finished, she’s already flipped the channel to see the next play, to the next game, back to the first game, take a call from her brother, flip the channel, throw a pillow at the tv, flip the channel, yell at the dog for moving and changing the mojo, change her shirt, call her sister, call waiting - it’s her brother, check the stats on her phone, flip the channel four times, yell at the tv… That’s just the first two minutes of the game, it goes on all day long. Fortunately for me, my office is in the basement on the other side of the house, not that I can’t still hear the stomping on the floor, but at least it’s not directly above me like it was before I installed the dish receiver on her tv in the bedroom. I’ve found that it’s just best if I stay away from her on Sundays.

Not only that, but she mets her sister in a different city every year to see the Packers play.

So today she is sitting in that -3 degree weather at Lambeau with our oldest son and I’m sitting at the gym watching the game on TV, she’s a true fan, I’m just a casual observer.

Yes, she loves her sports and I admire her for that more than she’ll ever know…

There are occasions (not very often, thankfully) that I find myself wondering if the ridiculous hours I put in here at the gym are worth it. I wonder if the efforts of our instructors are appreciated, if they are beneficial, if the athletes they are training appreciate what they do for them. I wonder if those that come in to work out are getting anything out of what they do here and I wonder if having All Sport Academy open is a good thing. Usually those thoughts last about 3 seconds and I realize that it’s probably just sleep deprivation… Then, something happens to remind me just why we do what we do, in the last couple of days, I was fortunate enough to have two such events.

On Sunday I was having a discussion with a young lady about her new helmet as she waited her turn to hit. If I’m not mistaken, she’s 11 playing on a 12u team. We were discussing some of the helmets I’ve seen lately that have been airbrushed by a local artist and a few other things. She called her mom over so I could tell her about it and she jumped in the cage. As I spoke to her mom, I watched her take 15 swings or so. When she finished she came bouncing up to her mom all excited about how well the round in the cage was, speaking about a thousand words a minute, smiling from ear to ear. She finished with mom and ran over to her friends still thrilled. So I said something to her mom about it being nice to see her so excited, to which she said her too since she’s had some rough times with softball and it seems like she’s finally starting to really enjoy it and things are coming together for her from all the hard work she’s put in. It’s funny how hitting a few softballs in a cage can make a young girl that excited, but it’s fun to see a young girl get so excited from just hitting a few softballs…

Yesterday my son had a basketball game at JP Stevens. We knew the track team was there as well and I had hoped to catch one of the girls that has been working out here with us. I figured they were outside and it wasn’t going to work, but as we were leaving I noticed a few girls walking into another gym. Knowing that only a couple of events are usually held in a gym I thought I’d see if she might be in there. Turns out they were just starting the high jump and she was about to take her first jump. As the event progressed I made a prediction as to what she was going to jump based on what I was seeing in her early jumps, a prediction that would have her beating her personal best by 4 inches. As she made consecutive jumps is was clear that this was going to be one of those days you remember for a long time as jump after jump she seemed to get more comfortable. When she cleared her first jump for a personal best, she flew off the pit and was met by a few teammates with the typical teenage girl screams and hugs. When she made the next height (the height I predicted), it was a mad house. The best part was that she actually cleared the next height but brushed the bar off with her heals on the way over, which tells me that she’s going to have an amazing 2008 on the track. As her coach, I was thrilled that I was able to be there to see the pay off from the year of incredibly hard work that this young woman has put in to improve her skills and physical strength. It was even better to see how excited she was after, to get her text messages and to get the phone call from her mom how excited they all were…

That why we do it. That’s why we put in the time and effort. That’s the pay off we get.