Last night around 9:30pm Mijo texted and asked if I could go get him, his Friday class was cancelled so he was done, and it was Spring Break time. I was half asleep laying around waiting for Wife to get home from a late activity at work. I told him it was late, and he should just hunker down one more day, I would get him in the morning. He gave me the "come on Dad, I'll talk all the way home and keep you awake." This is as close as Mijo will beg to come home, so he must really want to leave campus, which he even added that he was burnt out and just wanted to get out of there. That's about all it takes to rile me up, I don't like hearing my baby is uncomfortable. Wife got home just then, and she wanted to go with, so we went and picked him up. Our thought is that he quietly has been stressing about all the stuff going on with me and just wanted to come home to see that I was fine.
On the drive home, I filled him in on all the latest information, that I'll be taking some form of chemotherapy and it'll be a few months before the surgery, but the doctors seem to have everything under control. Once I finished talking, he slowly started going, even apologizing for kind of starting, but realizing I still had stuff I was saying. I do always ask him how it is going and how was your week, so he can get stuff off his chest, but I guess he figured I should go first this time.
Eventually, we got home, and this is when he finally took off. He said he mentioned to a friend on the team that so and so was not coming back next year. The guy casually said "Oh, that's a shame, he was our best freshman lineman." Mijo could just bite his tongue and ball up his fists because he was at some meeting where his advisor, professor, and several other faculty people he is working with were at, so he could not really argue the point without getting a couple of "Fuck that Shit!" out of his system. He said he understands that he won't ever be the greatest lineman, his height will always limit him, but when talking about his peers, he feels he should get a nod of recognition because he is always working his ass off to be at the top wherever he is at.
I told him that took me right back to high school, when in my junior year a new freshman came in that played the saxophone and everyone started saying he was the best and he would probably go to state, I swear even Wife was on that bandwagon. As it was, nobody spent more time practicing during and after school, between marching band, symphonic band, and jazz band, I was playing my sax 2-4 hours a day most of the year. Still, the audacity, it can sound offensive when random people who you respect and like don't place you at the top. All that did was drive me, the school had bought a brand-new baritone saxophone, those things run like $6000, and I kept is as mine until I graduated. Everyone else shared the school instruments, but I didn't play that shit, that was my instrument. I made it to state and that kid was never even that good that I remember, he never played alongside me, like in the jazz band or anything like that.
I told Mijo ultimately this kid that bothers you impressed people with his size, he came in looking the part standing 6ft 4in which in itself will impress, especially when Mijo is only 5ft 8in, but you've been there before. There were a couple of kids even in high school who were bigger, but they just didn't have his drive or work ethic. A person's output is not just the one metric, but the totality of his output. The bottom line is the kid quit, so he didn't have your passion for the game. Mijo said that kid lost an uncle or someone, so that had made him a little depressed, I said you lost your grandfather last semester, it was sad, but you hung in there.
Bottom line, like I told you in the summer, everyone is here playing D3 because there was something stopping them from being D1 level (I mentioned this when he was getting it in his head that he wouldn't be good enough). Your something was just height, and we wouldn't let you entertain schools outside the state, everything else you bring to the table is top quality. You will always carry that chip on your shoulder and that is good, it will drive your competitive side and make you work even harder. The other guys have noticed your work ethic in the weightroom, you've impressed a number of players with how strong you are, and you are already pushing other players in running the drills you're doing voluntarily right now in the offseason. People are inherently lazy, and unless there are more of you, than more of those that think I'm good enough as is, you will never get better as a team. You have to be one of the igniters in pushing the masses forward, that is what leaders do.
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