{"id":197,"date":"1996-10-31T14:09:12","date_gmt":"1996-10-31T19:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jackswriting.com\/?p=197"},"modified":"2007-05-01T14:20:09","modified_gmt":"2007-05-01T19:20:09","slug":"football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jackswriting.com\/?p=197","title":{"rendered":"Football"},"content":{"rendered":"

To the 1996 Hastings Saxons Varsity Football Team and Coaches<\/strong><\/p>\n

from A Parent (Speaking for all parents)<\/p>\n

To the coaches:
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 What else can we say but thank you.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve taken our boys and helped turn them into young men.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve taught them discipline and teamwork.\u00c2\u00a0 You seem to genuinely care about each of the players on the team.\u00c2\u00a0 You take the time to check on players after they’ve been hurt or had a bad game to see if they are O.K.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s obvious that you don’t just do it for the pay. Wait a minute!\u00c2\u00a0 Didn’t at least two of the coaches build new homes this year?\u00c2\u00a0 Hmmmm!<\/p>\n

I just have two questions.\u00c2\u00a0 One, have you ever thought about having the parents call the plays from the stands.\u00c2\u00a0 We always seem to know what play would have worked after your call doesn’t?\u00c2\u00a0 Two, why don’t you play my son every play of every game?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s obvious he’s the best player out there!<\/p>\n

To the Seniors:
\nWell, this is the last football game of the season.\u00c2\u00a0 For many of you, this is the last competitive football game you will ever play.\u00c2\u00a0 Believe it or not, there is life after football.\u00c2\u00a0 However, impressing women will be a little more difficult.<\/p>\n

To all the players:
\nThis season didn’t turn out as any of us had hoped or expected.\u00c2\u00a0 They say that losing builds character.\u00c2\u00a0 If I hear that one more time, I think I’ll scream.\u00c2\u00a0 Losing sucks.\u00c2\u00a0 Winning is great.\u00c2\u00a0 But we wouldn’t be any more proud of you if you had won every game because you are our sons.<\/p>\n

You have been our fall social lives for the past several years.\u00c2\u00a0 Many of us started several years ago at the Saturday HYAA football games.\u00c2\u00a0 We met other parents at those football games, and developed friendships that have lasted through the years.\u00c2\u00a0 We know that you have developed friendships through football too.\u00c2\u00a0 Hang onto them as long as you can.\u00c2\u00a0 Good friends are hard to come by.<\/p>\n

When you started playing freshman football, many times we parents were the only people in the stands.\u00c2\u00a0 We always knew where we would be on Thursday evenings. As JV football players, you played a little later, but still we came (after we set the VCR to record Seinfeld).<\/p>\n

Then you came to the “Big Show”.\u00c2\u00a0 Friday night football games with the band playing and the stands full.\u00c2\u00a0 At the away games we were often the only people in the visitors stands.\u00c2\u00a0 Remember the drive to Hillsdale (88 miles one way).\u00c2\u00a0 This year we complained about Zeeland, and it was only 44 miles one way.<\/p>\n

Throughout the years, as we watched you play, we felt every hit you made (or received).\u00c2\u00a0 When you made a good play, we could hardly contain our pride.\u00c2\u00a0 When you made mistakes, we knew how you felt and wished we could take your place.\u00c2\u00a0 When you got hurt, we shared your pain.<\/p>\n

You never lost hope.\u00c2\u00a0 Every week we asked you how you thought you would do, and every week you told us you had a good chance to win the game. \u00c2\u00a0You had faith in yourselves and we had faith in you.\u00c2\u00a0 People would ask us how you were able to get “up” for each game knowing that the losses were mounting up.\u00c2\u00a0 Our answer was always that “This isn’t the Ladies Aid Society.\u00c2\u00a0 This is football and these guys are football players”.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ll never understand unless they live with football players.<\/p>\n

So go out and play your last game with your heads held high.\u00c2\u00a0 Someday when you have kids, you will know how proud we are of you.\u00c2\u00a0 To borrow a phrase from Bob Hope, “thanks for the memories”.\u00c2\u00a0 Hit hard but hit clean, and know that the only reason that you and I have made these friends and treasure these memories is that “YOU HAD THE BALLS TO PLAY THE GAME”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To the 1996 Hastings Saxons Varsity Football Team and Coaches from A Parent (Speaking for all parents) To the coaches: \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 What else can we say but thank you.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve taken our boys and helped turn them into young men.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve taught them discipline and teamwork.\u00c2\u00a0 You seem to genuinely care about each of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jackswriting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jackswriting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jackswriting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jackswriting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jackswriting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.jackswriting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jackswriting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jackswriting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jackswriting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}