I am surprised I haven't talked about this already. I guess it hadn't affected me much until now. We have entered into the era of specialized training for kids that want to go all the way. Since birth, my sister and brother in law have been training their boys to be athletes in one way or another. Honestly, plenty of parents do this, it is not a niche thing, most parents want to have a superstar kid, if not for the money, then for the fame or just to say that "I knew what I was doing."
I hadn't had many thoughts like that. To become a star athlete you need more than a good pitch or a fast 40yd dash. Who knows, this year's star can be next year's newest drug addict with a small injury and the strength of opiate drugs given so easily to satiate a hungry "hurting" population. People quickly go from Vicadin to oxycontin, to worse to feel better. Boy was never athletic and his interests were and still are in building and engineering. His interests have not changed much and we have allowed him as much breadth and trust with power tools and even chemicals like fiberglass and the necessary solvents for a long time, at least since high school.
All this could easily be found at Home Depot, just a swipe of the old credit card to help Mijo back in his high school days. Along comes my Javelina. He was not allowed to play football all through the pee-wee years because he was a jumbo shrimp, so I thought he might be behind the curve when it came time to play in organized sports at school. Turns out, he loves it and because there were only a handful of Big-'uns, he got to start on the line immediately.
Along with being a behemoth lineman, he also has a huge ego and considers himself one of the strongest kids on the team. To that end, he joined track and field to try and throw discuss and shotput. Although he was only an alternate on discuss, he did good enough to earn 1 of 3 starting spots in the shot put. He closed out the season very upset because first, he started late, because he is in an advanced group of students academically, he must maintain an 80 or above and he had a 79 in math. After the slow start however, he did improve and by the time the city tournament came around, he threw solidly for 7th out of like 30 boys with his longest throw in the 27 feet range. He had then been bragging to me that he was throwing to 30feet for the last meet and even as I got excited because that is where the top boys were throwing, but then the last meet was cancelled.
Enter finally Amazon, apparently, you can order anything, including shotputs, of which Javalina is now the proud owner of a 4kg shot (official for 8th grade) and a 12pound shot (official weight for high school. We just need to make a ring in the greenbelt behind our house and he can become the Best that he can be. Thank you, Amazon, once again.
No comments:
Post a Comment