Three things have been running through my head overnight, and it started with some 6th graders yesterday getting their first North Shore uniform. Middle School games start this week. And one of the fun moments for me is to see these kids faces as they put their first jersey on. There were big smiles especially among the students who had come up through our lower school, gone to the Homecoming Pep rally for years, attended Basketball Bash and through those experiences could not wait to be fully a Raider now as 6th grade member of our teams. They are excited to play for their school.
As I got home last night I thought, how do we keep that joy going for the next seven years. The reality is kids can lose that joy and excitement. There all sorts of things that can go wrong over the next seven years as they work towards graduation -- injuries, losses, distractions, new priorities... I could go on. Overall, I think we are doing pretty well with keeping the joy in sports at North Shore. But we have our ups and downs. So I thought what would I tell 6th graders about the challenges ahead for them, and how they can keep that joy!
Which made me think about Roberta Vinci's post match interview. Maybe you have seen it. It's been shared on Twitter and Facebook for reasons I will get to in a moment. But for those of you not following tennis in the last week, this is what happened. Italian tennis pro Roberta Vinci was a 300-1 shot to defeat Serena Williams in the semi-final of the US Open last Friday, and she did. The result of this match may have been sad for Williams who had won the last three US Opens and only needed this US Open title to complete a record setting Grand Slam (victories in the Major -- Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and US Open). But with Serena's defeat it instead became as Vinci said "the best day of her life."
Here was Vinci's answer to the question post match of how she approached the match given she was such a long shot. It has lots of good advice for all athletes facing challenges but I especially thought for these 6th graders about to start I hope a seven year long Raider athletic career. Here is what she said she told herself the morning before the match and during the match.
"Enjoy"
"Don't think about Serena"
"Put the ball on the court"
"Don't think that Serena is on the other court run .... Don't think and run"
Which brings me to my third thought which started early this morning when I saw a person posted some race results on a Facebook group I am in called Baltimore/ Maryland Running History Glory Days 1950-1990. I lived in Baltimore from 1975-1985. My parents still live there. It was where I started to run, and I took part in a number of races that the Baltimore Road Runners Club (BRRC) offered. This morning in that group the results from BRRC Club Championship 5 Miler that took place on February 2nd 1980 were posted. Baltimore typically has much milder winter weather than Chicago but that morning the wind chill at race time made it feel like -10 and of the 225 entries only 26 people actually seem to have shown up and finished the race. On the Facebook page there was a lot of discussion about how the winner in those conditions still ran close to 25 minutes for 5 miles -- a very respectable time under any conditions.
And there was a lesson in that too. Here were a bunch of guys -- many like me now between the ages of 40 and 60 -- probably not running much anymore and certainly not as quickly reminiscing about a day they ran a race in absolutely terrible conditions -- conditions that led to almost 90% of the field not show up.
So 6th graders, I hope you keep your joy. To do that just focus on enjoying each day, keep the ball in play, don't worry about your opponent and run -- even when the weather is -10 outside. If you can keep that in mind, maybe 35-40 years from now, you will be sharing your memories at a North Shore reunion about the great times you had.
Here is the Roberta Vinci interview for those of you who have not heard it yet
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