One of the toughest things to rectify in your mind, when you’re in high school, at least, is the notion that when things don’t go your way, you have every right to walk away.
You probably do. In fact, anyone on the outside looking in, with a clear view of your situation, would probably agree with you. There’s nothing to be gained by riding out a miserable situation when there are so many options to go elsewhere.
Or is there?
I used to hear all these platitudes from my father when I was a kid, but they all basically boiled down to the same thing: the easy way isn’t always the best way.
How absurd, I used to think. Why do something the hard way when there are so many other less stressful, and more enjoyable, alternatives? Buy the CliffsNotes instead of reading the book, for crying out loud. Don’t read the book the professor has never mentioned once during the entire semester (even though it’s there, plain as day, on the syllabus).
My father’s gone now, but like a lot of fathers from the World War II generation, he was right. About all of it. Only once in my entire life did he actually make me quit a sports team, and that was because if I didn’t quit, I’d have flunked off. That’s how much I struggled the first quarter of my freshman year of high school.
But through all the different methods coaches had back then of torturing us (and I guarantee anybody that it was way worse then than it is now), my dad refused to let me quit. If you start something, he always said, you finish it. I can remember one day in my sophomore season I messed up in practice and the coach made me run two extra laps afterward. It was only supposed to be one, but I tripped and fell halfway through it, and all the coach saw was me getting up. He thought I was dogging it, and made me run the other one.
Flushed with indignation, I ranted to my father all the way home. Since he would have preferred I not play, he reminded me of that, and said, “You’re not going to quit, so get that idea out of your head.”
I stuck it out, and all these years later, some of the guys on that team have become my closest friends.
There’s a situation in Saugus where the football coach has been terminated (his request for an injunction seeking reinstatement was denied Tuesday) and a new group has had to hit the decks running, with no preseason planning, and learn about these kids on the fly. Some of the players, unhappy about what has transpired, have talked about walking off the team.
The high school kid me would be right there with them. The grandfatherly me asks that they take it back 10 paces and think this through.
The 65-year-old me says you only get four years, whether it’s Bill Belichick on the sidelines or the worst coach in history. When you walk off the stage after getting that diploma, you leave high school sports behind. And do you know the ratio of kids who play high school football to the ones who end up playing in college? It’s not that impressive.
Stick it out. Give these guys a chance. If you’ve been blindsided by all this, so have they. I doubt Mike Mabee, in July, had any idea he’d be coaching Saugus varsity football.
It may remain a miserable experience, but in 30 years some of these players may end up in jobs they’re not thrilled with, and surviving this high school football season could be just the thing that sees them through.
And to the coaches, please consider the boys who may have, in a fit of indignation, walked away. Consider the circumstances. And if they reconsider, and ask to be let back on the team, make an allowance and say OK. These haven’t exactly been the best of circumstances.
It’s time for cooler heads to take over, and it’s time for everybody to pitch in so that the rest of this season will be the stuff of memories and not nightmares.
Steve Krause can be reached a [email protected].