Sports Meant So Much to Me. Why Wouldn’t My Son Play?

My father signed me up for sports as a youngster — soccer, football, and basketball. I was never any good.

I remember being annoyed that the coaches never actually taught me the rules — they just assumed everyone already knew how to play. I made plenty of dumb mistakes during practices. Instead of telling me what I did wrong and giving me another chance, the coaches just yelled at me and made me run laps.

Once when a teammate got hit and was on the ground trying to hold back tears, one of the coaches towered over him and got in his face, berating him. Here was a grown man, red-faced in anger, yelling at a child.

I stood alongside the coach and, mimicking his posture and voice, bellowed down at the kid, “What do you think this is, a GAME?”

This made my teammate snort out a laugh.

It would have been a nice story if the coach had punished us by making us both run laps and we eventually became best friends and maybe joined the track team together, but no, my teammate got up and went back out onto the field and I ran the punishment laps alone.

Here’s a touching story about a loving father who struggles to find some other way to connect with a son who’s just not into sports.