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

One of the great things about working in a place like All Sport Academy is working with kids. I was talking to a bunch of the guys that came in today from North Brunswick for their rec evaluations and I commented to someone how much fun it is working with young kids. He says to me, “You have to love kids to work in a place like this…” I spent the better part of the morning wandering around chatting with the guys (they were between 7 and 12 years old) about their positions, how exciting it was that baseball is here, what their favorite teams are, who their favorite players are, etc.

So, I’ve had a few conversations today about kids and what’s important to them, how they think, what they like and then I read this article:

Connecticut Boy Applies for WVU Football Job

You have to read the article to appreciate what this kid did. It’s really amazing and I hope I can keep track of him to see where he ends up coaching. That’s a young man with a future…

Hats off to the Mike Garrison, President at West Virginia University, for responding to him. It was a simple gesture, but that one simple gesture made a kid that was already a fan, a fan for life. Nice work Mr. Garrison, for a University President to take those couple of minutes to respond to Joshua was a really amazing thing.

Don’t you just love stories like this? Sure beats steroids, robberies, forged birth certificates, parents fighting officials and coaches and teams spying on other teams doesn’t it?

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…