Then the hammer drops in the form of a sheet of paper produced by Team Mom. Football Banquet it says in cheery letters.

A typical sports banquet pot luck buffet.

Your stomach knots. A tear forms in the corner of one eye. You smile politely and thank Team Mom for her hard work whilst inside you whine like a child. “No!!! Not another sports banquet! I won’t go. You can’t make me. No. No. No.”

Before all of you gung-ho Team Moms join forces to hunt me down and stone me as a sports-parent heretic, please realize that I was you. I’ve been behind the pot luck, ice cream social, spaghetti buffet, what-will-it-be-this-year whirl. I was a Team Mom, and I was on the board, and I helped organize dinners, and I ordered trophies, and I did all that crap. I’m no longer leading the charge but I do my parental duty in 50/50 ticket sales and concession stand shifts. Heck, this week I helped decorate our local American Legion with green tablecloths and streamers so guys who can bench press more than my car weighs feel the love.

“It’s for the kids,” the better, more devoted moms say in hushed tones. In my childish tantrum, I am thinking that the twenty games I’ve been to were for the kids. Thousands of miles driven for preseason conditioning that started in January and the four or five practices a week that started in July were for the kids and…I want a vacation. I want tonight off. I’m sure the coaches want tonight off, too. Admit it, the players are just going to huddle around the teenager tables and play finger football with the confetti. They’d rather the girls soccer team be invited instead of their own parents. They’ll guffaw at private jokes between them and their coaches that they won’t explain on the car ride home.

And the coaches will talk about every player. Every blessed one.

And the Team Mom will talk about every volunteer. Every blessed one.

And I will jam the tines of a plastic fork under my fingernail to try to distract myself from the voice in my head saying “I wanna go home I wanna go home I wanna go home.”

Not really. Because I’ll see my son recognized, along with all the friends he’s been playing this sport with for years. They’ve all worked hard and they deserve this closing moment of glory. I’ll have a chance to chat with some of the other long-suffering parents who I’ve cheered next to for the last ten weeks.

Plus, I know if I can get through this banquet, the light on the horizon will be here. Rest and relaxation await, just 24 hours from now. My evenings will be mine for what I want to do.  I’ll be free to…to…oh, dangit, the holidays are only two weeks away.

(To see what I really thought of this year’s banquet, read Passion and Pride.)

I had planned to write a cynical post today complaining about the curse of sports banquets. Having just been to one that brought tears to my eyes, I didn’t have the heart for that…yet. Maybe I’ll be able to share those whining complaints next week, but not now when the sentimentality is fresh.

What is it about football? I asked that question to the group of moms who decorated the American Legion banquet room in preparation for the big night. What makes us willing to let our sons go out there and play a game where no one is surprised by an injury? What makes teenage boys willing to work their butts off for ten months of the year for the glory of ten hours worth of game?

“It’s a sport a player has to feel passionate about,” was the quick and excellent answer I got from a mother who had obviously wondered the same thing.

Passion –  the non-sexual kind.

It can be a precious commodity in youngsters, and even in some schools and communities. But our small group of players and coaches had passion for the game, evidenced by their very presence on the gridiron.

Pride, on the other hand, had been missing and missed. A few years ago the athletic facilities in our district were an embarrassment. A group of local community members took on the seemingly undoable task of fundraising to pay for improvements to our pool, repairs to tennis courts, installation of an all-weather track, creation of a softball field, and the addition of irrigation and a new concession stand to the stadium. The people and businesses in our rural district had stepped up during a terrible economy to show they believed our youth were worth the investment. We now had competition areas we could be proud of for all our sports.

But how do you change a culture of failure on a program? How do you convince a team that was 0-10 last year that they can be winners? Our coach talked about the return of pride at the banquet I was so resentful of going to. Talked about how he had told the team at the beginning of the season that they had to start to feel pride in everything they do.

It took a group of coaches willing to give the boys permission to feel proud. It took a group of players prepared to work for the right to that pride. It took a group of community members committed to making our facilities safe and enjoyable for our athletes and guests.

What that trifecta led to was magic. Our team not only earned the right to be proud with a 4-6 season, they brought Friday night pride back to a school and a community who hadn’t had much to cheer about on the football front since the mid-90s. After two losses, we won the third game on our schedule, away. Fans turned up in droves to the home game the next Friday night, joining the parents and die-hards who had been in our stadium for eighteen winless and nearly winless seasons. When our team won that game, you would have thought we’d won the Superbowl.

What is it about football?  If you’ve had the privilege to experience first hand a season like this one, then you already understand. On the other hand, if you’ve never experienced four quarters when your underdog team earns their first win, you’ll just have to take my word for it that it is football’s wild mix of passion and violence and skill and teamwork and pride and community that sets it apart.

The lesson here is pretty obvious. Find something you feel passionate about and perform the tasks related to it with pride, expecting that success, or whatever your goal is, will come. We can only hope that this is a lesson our team members have learned and will apply to every endeavor of their lives.

You can crush me now, but if you hit me three seconds from now, after the whistle is blown, you’ll get thrown out of the game. (Our team wore pink last Friday in support of breast cancer awareness and research.)

1. Hitting your teammate after a play is over is supportive while hitting an opposing player is a personal foul. We saw a player from another team whack our running back on the helmet. It was definitely not intended as supportive. He got ejected from the game. I’m not sure our guy even noticed but the fans in the stands sure did, and so did the referee. If one of our players had whacked him on the helmet, or chest bumped him hard enough to knock him over, or smacked him on the butt, that would be ok.

2. Make noise when the other team has the ball. This is somewhat counter-intuitive, but the idea is essentially to deafen the offense. Our new band director is struggling with this, and is probably mystified when parents start yelling “SHUT UP” as she directs the band when we are in possession of the ball, and then urge her to play when the other team is in the red zone.

3. Anything cheerleaders promise to do to celebrate a score is a social contract. For example, our cheerleaders do pushups equal to our total score every time we score. During one particularly successful game they tried to substitute jumping jacks. The crowd booed until the pushups were produced. On a side note, junior high cheerleaders do better pushups than varsity cheerleaders.

4. A coach randomly chosen by the players must submit to the drinking water bath after a victory. Sorry, we know it’s cold. Wear a raincoat for the fourth quarter if you don’t like it.

5. Home team: keep your insulting nasty little urchins away from the visitor’s side.  If you choose to let them run wild, and they choose to yell mean things at our players on the sidelines, our dads WILL chase them off.  ’nuff said.

6. The spectator in front of you will stand up during exciting plays.  6a. The stands will start to vibrate on 4th down, when the other team has the ball (see rule #2). You and your video camera will have to deal with it.

7. Do not try to talk to a player’s parents about random crap during a game. They will ignore you and you can’t get miffed about it. Try to apply this rule in other areas of life, including dance recitals, band concerts, and graduation ceremonies.

Seven is an odd number to stop at, but it is exactly the number of points we needed to win our varsity game last week, so I’ll consider it lucky. Junior high didn’t fare so well, but we have our final games coming up, against our local rival no less! Our hopes are as high coming down the home stretch as they were on week one!

I had to miss the varsity football game on Friday night due to a rehearsal for a Sunday performance in which I sang a Handel aria and a Vivaldi duet. I felt bad about missing the game though I’m pretty sure my son didn’t care. Turns out, it was a terrible game to miss and it was a good thing I wasn’t there. I say the first part because our wide receiver son had a stellar night, with three receptions for 126 yards and three touchdowns. I say it was a good thing I wasn’t there because I would have been screaming my head off, and, as we established in last week’s cowbell post, yelling is very bad for singers.

I didn’t know about his personal success in the game as it was happening. All I knew was that our team was losing by roughly one touchdown for the whole second half. When I wasn’t singing, I was trying to unobtrusively refresh my smart-phone’s browser to keep up with the score, continuing to do so on my laptop when I got home. I’ll admit I succumbed to cheering to the empty house when the score again ratcheted up. Unfortunately, our team lost 32-40, but their continued elevation of performance made it feel like success to us.

Did I feel horribly guilty, not being there for his triumphs and to support the team in their continued struggle?

Not really. My rehearsal was important, too. I’ve been training my voice for eight years and this was an opportunity to reach a new audience in a somewhat higher caliber event than I’d been in before.

It was also a new kind of exciting to follow the barest data of the game from a distance. Of course I had a burst of disappointment when I saw the final score. Then hubbie called to say that, despite that score, our son and his QB had had a breakout passing game. Then I got to hear more detail from the wide receiver himself! Quite frankly, I enjoyed the separation in time and space because I find it very stressful to watch both boys’ games, as though I bear some kind of responsibility for the outcome. (NOT!) I also find performing in public stressful, so deleting the Friday night game was probably a good call for my nerves.

My Sunday performance went really well, and my son skipped it, so I guess we’re even.  I did watch the video of his game but he hasn’t watched the video of my aria. Go figure.

This week’s lesson from football is to give yourself permission to support your own joys and endeavors. Obviously, as a parent, our best efforts should be directed toward giving our children positive attention at every possible opportunity. Sometimes valid conflicts exist, and it is okay at those times to say “This hour or this day has to be for me.”

If you want to read through the other lessons I’ve learned from the ups and downs of our football season, you can start the blog series with Filling the Gaps.

Who would imagine that a cowbell could be illegal in one of the biggest dairy areas in Pennsylvania? Sad but true. According to the the rules of our state athletic association, spectators are not to bring noise-makers to high school games. I’ve owned a cowbell since our boys played midget football where cowbells, horns, and other instruments of loudness were welcomed. When the eldest son moved into school ball two years ago, I reluctantly tucked my green ringer away on a closet shelf.

However, this fall I was faced with a dilemma. One of the biggest joys of my life is singing as an amateur but well-trained classical soprano. You can imagine what screaming your head off in the stands does to your vocal cords.

I learned how devastating the effects can be at our first victory this season, an away game where we had no cheerleaders and no band. It was just us core fans, and as our boys started showing us how big their hearts are, we parents turned into an impromptu cheerleading squad. It was a tremendous, invigorating night. I participated wholeheartedly in every chant, and even led a few myself.

My voice was jacked up for three weeks. Where singing usually feels like stretching and relaxing an elastic band, it now felt like trying to manipulate a piece of dry grass. Normally, I’d say whatever, I’m cheering for my kids. However, on October 20 I am scheduled to sing at my biggest event ever, invited to present a duet with my professional teacher and also sing a challenging Handel aria. Irritated vocal cords are not a valid option, so out came the clandestine cowbell to act as my football-game voice.

Sometimes it is impossible to stop my automatic exclamations when we make a big play or the ref makes a horrible call. Adding insult to vocal injury, last Friday we sat in pouring rain. When I woke up on Saturday — eight days before the performance — my throat was sore, my nose was burning and running, and I thought, “Oh no.” After giving myself the weekend off and overdosing on vitamin C, I feel better.

In what might be considered good luck or bad luck, rehearsal this week overlaps with my son’s away game on Friday night. Because my Saturday is also fully booked with an author function, I’ve decided to take the wise course and just go home after rehearsal, so I can avoid the damp night air as I rest and prepare.

Talk about guilt.  I can count on one hand the number of games I’ve ever missed yet I still feel selfish doing it. My son could care less.

At least I won’t be flouting any regulations with my forbidden cowbell this week. I have yet to learn who enforces the ding-dong directive and hopefully I never will. It would be pretty embarrassing to have a referee come into the stands to collect my noise-making paraphernalia. I hope whoever the cowbell policeman is, he doesn’t have the authority to confiscate. That bell and I have a lot of history together.

We’ve been enjoying a roller-coaster season, and I truly mean enjoying because, in the past, we were always in the agony-of-defeat category. This year’s games that end as a win are still mind-blowingly sweet to our unspoiled community.

Last Friday we dominated, winning 35-6, and though I loved every minute of it, I also felt a twinge of empathy for the fans in the visitor’s stands across from us. Just the week before we were them, losing 28-6 at a nearby school’s Homecoming celebration and feeling heartbroken for our players who had been on a winning roll.

Now, seven days later, the Fates were smiling on us again. We cheered wildly at our every touchdown, and also every time our opponent fumbled and every time a referee’s call went our way.

As the game entered its final minutes, when victory was assured, I said to the couple sitting next to us, “I feel a little bad for them,” pointing over the gulf of green grass and white lines that separated the winners from the losers.

My husband and the other husband immediately retorted, “Why?”

“Because we know how it feels.”

Both the men pretty much said, “I don’t feel bad at all. Our boys have earned this win.”

I wholeheartedly agree with the earning part, but the other mom understood what I was saying.

In any contest like a football game, somebody has to win and somebody has to lose. We might, in our more humanitarian moments, wish it could be different, that every individual could leave every arena feeling like a winner. But when I step back, I think there is actually a good life lesson in wins versus losses. Our current version of society clings to the concept of every kid being a winner in some screwy hope of imposing self-confidence on children no matter what their level of performance.

It is a false notion. In fact, I think, with our society structured the way it is today, we do a disservice in creating such a sense of false entitlement. Success is not handed to most of us on a silver platter. In adulthood, you don’t get a trophy just for getting out of bed every day. Winning requires effort for those of us not blessed with incredible luck and child-prodigy talent or looks.

The fact is that, as soon as the everyone’s-a-winner child goes to get a job, someone is going to “win” the job and many people are going to “lose.” Competition doesn’t end there. The person willing to show up every day and work hard is, in most cases, going to at least retain that job and at most excel to higher and higher positions. Even in personal relationships, the person who is able to filter the losers (and by this I mean the parasite or the drug addict or pick-your-favorite-negative-energy-source) out of his or her sphere, and also work through the rough parts of a relationship with positive people is probably going to end up with higher quality friends, partners, or spouses.

Maybe it is “wrong” to look at life in such a competitive light, but I challenge you to argue that competitive is not an accurate descriptor for our current society. So, do we want our kids to be prepared for reality, or to enter adulthood with rainbow-pony ideas about themselves? I choose reality for mine.

However, understanding that our world thrives on competition doesn’t mean we have to be emotionless destructive machines. I’ll bet that the kid who is crying after a loss or win will do well in the future. There is drive and desire in those tears. There may be recognition of tasks that could have been done better, or the elation of efforts finally paying off. He or she obviously cares, has poured heart, body, and soul into the game, and will continue to approach life with commitment and passion.

I also think the emotional player will be the first to hold out a hand to help a “loser” to his/her feet, because, like those of us temporarily in the winner’s stands, we know how it feels to be on the other side of the scoreboard. There is empathy in football, and in life, when it is properly played.

If you enjoyed this post, read my other Life Lessons from High School Football entries from our roller coaster 2013 season.
Filling the Gaps 
How Badly Do You Want to Win?
Don’t Lose Sight Of Your Goal
Breaking Old Habits

I know it’s easy for me to shout “Get your heads up, boys! You are still in this game!” when I’m not the one getting tackled, and I don’t have referees making horrible calls on me and my teammates. (We have supposed holding and personal fouls on film and they are bogus – just saying’.)

The concern is that now, with the wind out of their sails, some of these young men won’t pick their heads back up, even though they lost to last year’s division champs, played a decent game, and have no reason to think they can’t win this week.

So what can I take away from this? What can I learn from a negative outcome? In this case, I think I can learn to break bad mental habits. I tend to feel guilty a lot. I feel like I should be doing something else, no matter how productive I am. There are times when other people in my life think I should be doing something else and that only adds to the guilt. But, in the end, only I know how to craft my own success.

Looking outward, I also have to realize that only you know how to craft your success, too. I’m getting better at that with my two football players. I’ve learned that they just don’t want to talk about a loss right after the game. In 18-24 hours, I can start asking, make some observations, but I no longer give advice (as if I was ever qualified to do that!) And then, this Wednesday and Friday, I simply give them room to do their best to succeed, in the way only they know how to do.

“I think this team is beatable. Have fun and be safe!”

Do you have a bad mental habit that is holding you back? Do you project it onto other people in your life, inadvertently holding them back?

Obviously the object in football is to score by getting the ball across the goal line. To do that, you have to keep that ball moving forward, down the field, again and again, until you make it or you run out of chances. This requires eleven guys to work together and each do his job while another eleven guys are trying to stop them.

Something new for me this year is my attempt to photograph the games. We inherited a wonderful digital camera from my mother-in-law. This has added an unexpected dimension to the post-game for me because, as I was reviewing the pictures and showing them to Owen, he was explaining to me what was happening, what he was thinking and doing and experiencing, which, if you’ve been around many 14-year-old boys, is a bonanza of information.

I really loved his description of what he was doing in the series of photos below, and he gives us a great example of knowing your goal and keeping things moving forward.

In the first picture, the ball carrier in white is about to be tackled from behind by a player in blue. My son is the kid in white on the right. His job is to maintain an open path for the ball carrier by blocking the blue player in front of him.