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

I remember the first day of baseball practice after we moved to New Jersey like it was yesterday (it was 13 years ago). My oldest son Matt was put on a team coached by three guys that were firm, but fair, very knowledgeable and all-in-all, good guys. After the first practice I told them all that I was happy they were his coaches as I appreciated the fact that even though they were young, they should be taught that being disrespectful isn’t tolerated and discipline is important on a team. Over the years he’s played on a wide variety of teams with a huge range of coaching styles and knowledge and has had a pretty solid “career”. As he grew older we knew the day would come that he’d finish High School and we’d be dealing with college and hopefully college that included baseball, but we knew he’d be off on his own and we probably wouldn’t be there.

We enjoyed the journey, enjoyed watching games, enjoyed the travel, enjoyed the friends we made and enjoyed the joy throwing a baseball brought our son. There were plenty of bumps in the road on that journey, but those are distant memories and we have moved forward and are excited about the prospects of Matthew playing for Rutgers-Newark. He has a new love for the game, he’s excited about the season (he got his number back finally) and he has great respect for his new coaches. For us, we are happy to see him smiling and happy about playing baseball again.

Today marked a new chapter in Matt’s baseball career as he boarded a plane and headed to San Antonio, Texas for a three-game series with Trinity University. It’s killing us to not be there, especially since we found out he’s scheduled as a reliever in Sunday’s game. Fortunately, Trinity will be broadcasting the game over the Internet so we’ll get to see it… (hey dad, that big monitor is certainly going to come in handy now! <g>).

Anyway, parents, enjoy the games you can and cherish every one of them because soon they are going to be done playing or are flying off to areas that you can’t get to and you’re going to be sitting by your phone waiting for the call to tell you how they did. I know Sunday is going to be tough on us and I know Matt’s going to do what he always does, look for us sitting someplace. We’ll be watching, but he won’t see us. It was only a matter of time and it’s hitting me pretty hard today…

It’s happened twice in the last four days and numerous times this school year, scheduled events being started early… Monday, my son had a basketball game, we arrived about 7 minutes after the scheduled start time so we knew we’d miss most of the first quarter, but when we walked in they were almost done with the second quarter. When asked, we were told that the officials wanted to get started since both teams were ready. If anyone is ever in this situation, I beg you, understand that a 4pm start time means that parents are leaving work so they can get to a field or court or whatever for that start time. It’s hard enough to get to a 4pm event and we want to see all of the game. If we are late, that’s our problem, if you start early, it’s a huge problem. It used to happen to us last year and his coach played the guys in groups, so if Derek started the game and it started 10 minutes early, I missed his first rotation.

The bigger problem was this weekend though. My wife, son and I drove down to Toms River to watch one of our jumpers jump. We were told that the Group III girls would jump first, then Group IV, so we figured we’d get there around 4pm and be in plenty of time. Then we were told they were jumping the guys first. All of a sudden the meet directors decided to jump the girls first and put both groups together. We pulled into the parking lot as she jumped her last attempt… We knew we’d be close, but we figured we’d at least get to see a jump or two and more importantly we would be there to support her, unfortunately the decisions of someone not thinking about how it would affect others cost us seeing anything. The problem with track meets is they are all day affairs and if your son or daughter (or friend or athlete) is doing an event, you want to have an idea when you should be there. When they change things up, it screws up everything…

OK, I feel better…

Just about anyone that’s been in our gym knows that I have a small group of young high jumpers that I work with. There are three freshmen and a sophomore, all very talented, all with huge potential as jumpers. As I’ve written before, my son, one of those jumpers, has already had a lot of success and is the “experienced” one of the group with his two years of school and AAU/USATF experience. The rest have no more than two years experience and are working hard to improve their jumping skills with me and their leaping ability with our strength coach, J.R. Papernik. I like to tell them that I’ll get them to the bar, JR will get them over the bar…

Anyway, this weekend we had another one of our jumpers move up the ranks as Brooke Sassman (South Brunswick freshman) finished tied for second place in the Central Group IV Sectional in Toms River. Brooke has worked with us now for almost a year and I can’t even begin to express the transformation this young woman has had as a jumper in that short period of time. By finishing second in the Sectional meet she qualified for the Group IV State meet this weekend, again in Toms River, and I think she’s got a great shot at finishing in the top six there which would send her to the Meet of Champions.

As I told Brooke yesterday, the months of hard work will all be worthwhile when she steps on the track on Saturday to compete. So was seeing her name on the Jumbotron at the Bennett Center!

Speaking of the Bennett Center, if you have any interest in track, you have to see this place. Toms River Regional Schools built a bubbled track complex between and Elementary School and a Middle School that is just unbelievable. I’m trying to comprehend how and why they built it since it doesn’t look like they’ll be able to use it for winter workouts for baseball, softball, etc., but I could be wrong (I’m not guessing they are going to let baseballs fly around in there with that Jumbotron positioned where it is…). It had to have cost a small fortune to build it and to keep the bubble up and heat the place can’t be cheap. It’s amazing and I’m glad they have it, I just hope it’s successful.