Sports dad bids adieu to senior year

My long and satisfying career as a sports parent ended over the weekend with a disappointing 2-0 loss that was awash in icy rain and youthful tears.

Driving away from the soggy soccer field on Saturday, it dawned on me, as it must have dawned on the other parents of the high school senior girls who had played their hearts out for the last time, that autumn would never feel quite the same again. When the next year’s sports season rolled around again, we parents would no longer play the parts we had played so devotedly over so many seasons in the past. Our days of sitting on the sidelines of our kids’ athletic contests were finally over.

We had graduated, in a way, and leaving behind those familiar seasonal routines after so many years would take some getting used to. There would be no more gym bags crammed with muddy cleats and wet school uniforms to trip over as we walked into the kitchen. There would be no more frantic jockeying of family schedules so we could be sure to get to the games on time, no more carpooling arrangements, no more long hours in the cold wind and the sweltering heat to cheer the kids on to victory and to support them in defeat.

Suddenly, with a single, game-ending whistle, we no longer needed those canvas sideline chairs that every sports parent learns to regard as equipment nearly as important as the spare tire in the trunk.

If that long string of seasons were merely a measure of individual athletic prowess, a chronicle of the accomplishments of a family’s burgeoning all-star, only a small handful of parents would have enough memories at the end to fill a scrapbook. But it never really was about any one game, or any one season’s win-loss record, or even the accumulation of trophies over time. In the end, it was a chance for parents to witness the pageant of childhood unfolding with a flourish before their eyes.

Each new season in the bleachers marked the rapid passage of time as distinctly as any birthday or Christmas could, and in the process we got to revel in the ever-developing grace, speed, strength, agility, sportsmanship and maturity that our children displayed each time they ventured onto the fields or courts to play the games they loved.

The end of anything tends to make us recall its beginnings, too. As parents who had the pleasure of watching our kids play out their childhoods so enthusiastically, of sharing all the disappointment and joy that healthy competition doles out in equal measure, we are now left to wonder how all those seasons could have flown by so quickly. We come across a little fielder’s mitt while cleaning out the garage and instantly recall the small boy it used to fit so perfectly and the young man he turned into overnight. That child-size pair of cleats still tucked away in a corner of a closet reminds us of the little girl who grew out of them so fast, and who then just kept right on growing until she had raced into young adulthood and left her childhood games behind.

A few nights ago, as the final season was winding to a close, all of the senior soccer players met their parents on the field with hugs, red roses and written notes of gratitude. “Mom and Dad,” our daughter wrote, “It’s been 4 years and now it’s over. Thanks for freezing your butts off at my games.”

The truth is, we wouldn’t have missed it for the world. And as this veteran sports parent steps aside to give someone else a seat in the stands, allow me to pass along a bit of advice: The coldest object known to man is a metal bleacher on a fall day in Maine, so be sure to always keep a blanket in the trunk.