Will Chandler play football?

There’s an ongoing debate in our house about Chandler’s future. We know this is a long ways off, but Ashley and I are still hashing out the details now. One detail is whether or not Chandler will play football when he is older.

Ashley (and her mother) has taken the very cliche, normal, and understandable position of “I don’t want my little baby to get hurt.” I of course get that. At times I will act tough and then when I see Chandler bump his head and cry I rush to his aid immediately. But I have always been very stern about the fact that we are not going to raise our son to live a sheltered life. Ashley agrees with me on this stance, although there are times when she needs my reinforcement. Because let’s face it, it’s hard to watch your little baby endure pain and hardship.

Most fathers would take cliche postition of “My son is going to be a big, tough, athletic, all american, star.” They’d want their son to play football because it’s what boys do. Just watch the movie Varsity Blues and you’ll have some idea of what I’m talking about. (Also, that James Van Der Beek is so dreamy)

I however, have a slightly different line of reasoning. Looking back on my childhood, it was all about sports and competition. I played every sport I could get into. Baseball, Basketball, Soccer (indoor and outdoor), and even Racquetball. Sports were my life.

Then the fall of my 7th grade year my dad got the crazy notion that I should take on yet another sport. Football.

Football?

Something my father always taught me was that you can’t let fear control you. Fear can never be a factor in your decision making. When Dad first asked me if I wanted to try playing Football, it scared me. So I said okay. For the next six years I played football and experienced a lot of pain and even more fear. I can honestly say now that of all the life lessons I learned from sports and competition, I learned the greatest ones from my time playing Football.

I wasn’t great at Football. I eventually got good at aspects of the game, but my high school coach summed it up best when he told me, “Nate, you’re small…but you’re slow.” He made a really good point. Anyone else on the field who was as small as me was known for being lighting fast. The only thing I really had going for me was I had great hands. I could catch any pass thrown anywhere near me. But then I was pretty much dead in the water. Sometimes it looked like I was actually running in water.

Needless to say, I got hit. A lot. And it hurt. I remember on one particularly cold day getting hit so hard that snot splattered all over the inside of my face mask. I thought to myself, “So that’s what it’s like to get the snot knocked out of you!”

Every practice was riddled with fear. I was kind of the team tackling dummy. It wasn’t until my fourth season of playing football that I started to conquer this fear. It still took a mental effort to prepare myself for the beating I was about to receive, but now I could handle it. I was still afraid, but rather than flinch and avoid the contact, I ran right at my opponents. I faced my fears head on.

This was the most valuable lesson I could have ever learned. I also learned how to fold my body like an origami bird. Then in my senior year I learned the second most valuable lesson of my sports career. During sports camp I had a knee injury that was supposed to keep me off the field the entire season.

This injury rocked my world. I went from thinking I was invincible to feeling fragile. In all my years playing Football and every other sport, I never once was injured. I took hard hits and big falls but I always bounced right back up. On the Football field I played my own little game, trying to make sure I always got up before the guy who hit me. No matter how brutal the hit was I wanted it to look like nothing had happened at all.

This time I couldn’t get up.

Now all that fear that I had spent so much time conquering came swarming back into my head. Nevertheless, I fought back. The doctor said I wouldn’t be able to play by the end of the season. He didn’t think I’d even be walking before our last game. I didn’t listen to that. I was back on the field and fully game ready halfway through the season.

Since then I have re-injured that same knee five times. Each time while playing a sport. Each time I healed faster than before and refused to let it deter me from getting back on the field.

And that is why I want Chandler to play Football. It actually doesn’t have to be Football. But I want him to do something in his life that scares him. I want him to feel that fear and then feel what it is like to overcome it.