Are we ready for some football: Need you ask?
Published: 7/19/2012 4:58 PM
Last Modified: 7/19/2012 4:58 PM
Will Walton (top row, third from right) and his Bartlesville YMCA teammates wait for the kickoff of a past Indian Nations Conference game. Walton is the son of Tulsa World writer Rod Walton.
The collegiate and professional sports seasons interest me, but hardly excite me anymore. What I get fanatical about, going on more than decade, is my son’s YMCA football campaign, my daughter’s soccer or my other daughter’s tennis. Those are the major leagues for me.
And when I say fanatical, I don’t mean that I’m one of those kinds of parents. I admit to getting wound up when the game is tight, but I don’t berate my children when things go wrong nor run around rubbing it in the noses of opponents when we score a touchdown or a goal. I came. I saw. I cheered.
Like so many of you, the Waltons love participating in sports. I told my children long ago they had to have a sport or activity. I didn’t care if it was band or competitive choir or the gridiron or whatever. Belong to something and play your part in it.
I truly believe that having an activity, some sort of club, helps you in life. My kids were a little nervous going into their respective sports, but they love them now. They are not superstars but they are good enough and have fun doing it.
Am I living vicariously through them; yeah, maybe a little, you got a problem with that? I am proud when they achieve, sad but supportive when they fail. Every time someone drops a pass I tell them to keep their head up and wait for the next chance, because sure enough it’s probably going to come for them.
My love for sports, as well as my unfortunate penchant for picking up the phone when it rings, got me into coaching soccer 10 years ago. I didn’t know anything about the sport but learned from the bottom up with my Hayley, going from simple passing drills to combinations within a decade.
We had title-winning seasons and winless seasons. Being a competitive soul, I had some minor frustrations here and there, but most of all I had a whole lot of fun.
Now sport-hating readers will know that college football, NBA and mainly the NFL command way too much attention in our society. This sport-mad scalawag agrees. I like to tell my church friends that the most religious Sunday of the year in America is the Super Bowl. Those church friends smile sweetly and usually walk away quietly.
I’m proud of what sports has done for me and my children. I’m not talking about scholarships or newspaper clippings or any of that. I’m talking about great memories of last-second shots, some made and some not, of laughs and friendships formed. Trophies gather dust in a back room, but our parental bond is stronger for the experience of loving sports together.
And I look forward to the next kickoff, playing until the whistle blows and the buzzer sounds. Sports don’t pay the bills in my house but it does a heart, and a family, good.
Written by
Rod Walton
Staff Writer
1 comments displayed
