AUGUST 2008 TRADITION OF THE MONTH

A Tiny Rant

For many of us, a cherished memory is the end of summer trip, when dad takes off the last week of August, and the season culminates with Labor Day weekend.  Pardon my rant, but the blissful end of summer is in danger of being sabotaged by youth sports programs. Even elementary school kids are called home for football and soccer practice in mid-August. One of my nephews, a fifth-grader, chose to miss a soccer game over Labor Day, asking his mother to explain to the coach about their family’s decades-old Labor Day weekend tradition of staying at a mountain camp that’s been in the family for three generations. The result? He was benched for the season, despite being a good player—a tacit punishment for missing that one game. Similarly, my nine-year-old nephew begged his father to cut short a fishing vacation on Cape Cod because he feared that if he missed football practice and a weigh-in during the third week in August he’d fall behind or be penalized. Nine . . . years . . . old.

It used to be that if you wanted to play sports, you grabbed a ball and found kids in the neighborhood. You didn’t need a uniform, or fancy equipment, or an organization; if kids were on vacation, your team was a little smaller. Now, no one’s playing in the backyard, and kids are on organized teams with demanding schedules, all too often run by coaches who care less about playing the game and having fun, and more about winning and getting ahead. It’s part of a trend of burdening kids with an overabundance of lessons, sports, and enrichment programs that leave them breathless, all in an effort to prepare them for the future, which, let’s face it, is a thinly veiled effort to give them a leg up so they can beat out the competition and get into a good college. I have nothing against good colleges (indeed, I went to one), but I don’t think the life of a nine-year-old should be centered on building a resume.  Holding onto traditions are a way to shift the center of gravity away from this mania, and bring the focus back to the point of summer when you’re a kid: having fun.