From Volume 3, Issue 8 of Scrimmage Play in April 2012 by Creative Director Bart Isley:
There were some tough, rugged coaches in my day. Demanding guys who would absolutely explode on you because of a simple mistake or missed assignment. Coaches who other people thought were master motivators.
But I’m not sure any of those coaches demanded as much—or got as much out of me—as my mother did the summer where she decided to become my personal speed and agility coach.
I’d brought home a workout regimen from a football camp my parents sent me to that detailed a number of plyomteric exercises intended to improve flexibility, balance and strength. My mother, an elementary school teacher who was a fine powderpuff football player apparently in high school but didn’t pursue her athletic ambitions beyond that, saw an opportunity.
She put me to work bounding, shuffling and jumping through small cones, jumping rope and running sprints at a park a few miles from our house. She made sure that the strides I’d made at the camp translated into fall’s football season. She timed everything, essentially putting me through a combine every day we went up there. It worked, as I started on both sides of the line for the first time in my career.
I think I responded to my mom’s less-experienced guidance because moms always seem to be in it with you. They can, at least with sons, instill confidence while letting you know how far you have to go. I’m seeing it at my own house right now.
My wife, Anna, is a highly competitive individual in her own right, though she didn’t play high school sports because of a medical issue. She was, according to her and her father, a sparkplug of a middle school basketball guard though and she’s doing her best to instill that attitude in our kids. While I play a significant role in their athletic development, Anna spends a lot of time on weekends working with our children on sports. She’s certainly instilled a lot of confidence in my 3-year old son who at an early spring baseball game over at Covenant between the Eagles and Western Albemarle ran a foul ball back to the dugout, squirted between a pair of assistant coaches and promptly launched it onto the field during the run of play.
Anna was heartbroken a few weeks before that when the four-year olds at our neighborhood park headed from the playground over to tee-ball practice and she had to run down our son who was convinced he was going to play with them even though he was too young. She clearly wants her boy — and our one-year old daughter for that matter who’s top interest after Mickey Mouse’s television show is basketball — to be able to compete and show off what he’s worked hard on.
Moms feel with us while dads, we have a tendency to feel at our kids. Moms are rarely, if ever, objective, but they almost always find a way to speak the truth when nobody else is around and that makes sense. They know your weaknesses better than anyone because that’s the best way to be able to protect you. I’m not saying that doesn’t make them irrational at times, it does. But that comes with the territory.
My mom knew being slow was chief among my weaknesses as an athlete. So she did her best to try and drill it out of me. She wanted to make my goals possible, and sometimes it takes a little tough love — not in front of other folks, the best moms wouldn’t dare do that. They do it at a public park in a baseball outfield while jumping and bounding through cones.
That’s why we need moms who are always in our corner but smart enough to know what we need to work on. Moms who believe in us when we doubt ourselves. Moms who want to give us every opportunity to compete and then, in turn, live that moment with us.
I was lucky enough to have that, and I’m glad my kids clearly already do too.
