7 Lessons from High School Sports

You all know we've been a crazy sports family from the beginning.  Our kids are allowed to play one sport per season (no ice hockey or tackle football) and most of them make sure to take advantage of this.  Some of our kids are not as athletically inclined, and we don't push them into anything, but do encourage them to be active (ahem, Xander with ahem, swimming lessons).  Now that we have entered the world of high school sports, I was thinking about all the great life lessons that are being learned by my eldest son.  We all know the many physical and mental benefits of staying active, but there are some lessons I never considered would come from being a high school athlete, such as:

1)

Hygiene

Our kids take showers or baths every night (sometimes we skip every other day in the winter if they have dry skin or haven't played outside) because they get sweaty and dirty every day.  They either have gym class, play a sport, or just run around enough at recess and after school to need a shower each day.  So hygiene isn't something that needs to be taught in this house.  But, since high school sports have started, there's more of an urgency to shower each day (right upon coming home from practice/games), airing out cleats and shinguards instead of letting them sit in a sports bag, applying deodorant and bringing a change of socks and shoes if not going to be picked up right away, etc.  There's a good healthy dose of keeping oneself presentable and smellsentable, if you will.  

2)

Laundry

Guess what?  You have a game two days in a row?  Your uniform won't clean itself, and sometimes mom doesn't get to it in time.  What's a boy to do?  Laundry!!!  JP has to make sure he puts his dirty clothes in the hamper if he needs them again shortly, and if there's a rush, he needs to throw in a laundry on his own.  Laundry by necessity.

3)

Nutrition

Some days JP will mention that he cramped in his leg or a practice was especially hard, and I will lead him through the process of what he ate/drank that day.  We usually figure out that he didn't hydrate enough during the day or eat enough of the right foods (protein!) to keep him fueled.  He's learning to pack some pb crackers and an extra water bottle to help him have a better practice.  He's also learned that he can eat like a horse and stay in shape because of all these extra calories he's burning.

4)

Friendships

Starting high school is scary, and everyone wants to find a group to fit into.  Sports is great for that.  Teammates are instant friends, and even if you're not best of friends, at least you have people you can say hello to in the hall or sit with at lunch.  Since fall sports practice before school starts in August, JP got to meet new people early.

5)

Humility

Hey, we all need to ride the bench from time to time.  Starting out as a freshman, you quickly learn your place in the pecking order.  Also, I remember changing in the locker room after school, and the amount of humility that brought shy, modest me was incredible!  Let's just say I bloomed much later than everybody else.  At the beginning of the season, JP was wearing black shorts for his games because they were waiting for some white shorts to come in his size.  One day the coach gave them to him before a game, but JP had chosen that day to wear bright blue boxer shorts.  Haha, humility!  I did pick up a pair of these for all future games.

6)

Morals and Values

When I first asked JP how his teammates were, he replied, "Awesome.  Nice and funny, sometimes inappropriate."  Yup, they don't call it locker room talk for no reason!  I wish I could protect him from any kind of vulgar humor, but alas, this is real life and he needs to know how to handle it and himself when it happens.  I told him what my Dad told me "You can swear when you hear me or your mother swear."  And guess what, I never heard them swear, so neither do I.  It's made for good conversations about how we need to try and act better than others do because we want to be saints.  It's also really hard to try and fit in and stick out at the same time, so not everything heard is an opportunity to evangelize, mostly it's an opportunity to pray.

7)

Time Management

So just never be whelmed ;)

But really, leaving the house at 6:30 am and not coming home until 5:30pm or later, then having to shower and eat leaves not a lot of time for much else besides schoolwork.  He is learning to be more disciplined with his time and it's been a lot of hard work for him as organization does not come easy, but again, learning lessons!

Head over to Kelly's for more and better 7QT and have an awesome fall weekend everyone!!