Supportive parents can go overboard

Jason GallicOpinions in Paradise

Pull the book off the shelf and dust through the pages.

You’ll need to,

because this story is older than Pop Warner football or the AYSO. Stretches a

lot further than that, actually, to the dawn of man, the initiation of a race.

Pride, that’s the theme here. And the quizzical question about exactly how

much is too much with regard to one of the seven deadly sins.

The reason

for the controversy — one that has raged on a lot bigger scale than our

island, by the way — is because it involves parents and their kids.

Undoubtedly the most sacred human bond in the universe, yes, but also providing

the kind of adhesive that allows a parent to come unhinged over sport.

It

is striking, really, the degree of disdain that can erupt in a parent who feels

their child has been cheated at a game. Or that their child has not been

properly represented in the newspaper.

But it is not the vileness that

necessarily grabs my attention, but the pleading and the utter emptiness that

can well in a parent whose kid is not recognized for their achievements on the

athletic field.

More than once in my three-year career in journalism has a

mother called in tears — yes, sentence-interrupting sobs — and wondered why

her boy or girl wasn’t mentioned in the newspaper for their sporting

efforts.

And every time, the question is begged, What is the point of the

competition? Is it an outlet for athletic desire? A lesson in sportsmanship,

cohesion, teamwork and work ethic? A chance for the kid to grow in a healthy,

organized setting? Or is it about recognition in the media, letting everybody

else in the community know how good that boy or girl is — regardless of true

skill in relation to the other competing players?

Why do parents call the

newspaper crying? Why do grown men come out of the stands — this has become a

national epidemic — and pummel each other at little league baseball games

while their 12 year olds stand by and watch?

That, as yet, has not

happened in my four months on Kaua’i, but much of the pride has. And in greater

degree than in my last journalistic home — Florida. I’m not saying I’ve got

all the answers, but a few things are quite clear.

One, there exists an

incredible sense of lineage here, of the proliferation of the family name

through sport. I don’t think I’d attribute it to parental desire to live

vicariously through their children, because many of these parents were, in

fact, outstanding athletes themselves.

So, it’s just pride in the desire

that the family name stretch long on the island.

Additionally, something

nearly impossible to ignore is the pedestal onto which these young athletes are

thrust here. It’s hardly their faults; there’s really nowhere else to turn. A

high school athlete on Kaua’i is looked at more reverently than any of the

sportsmen I knew at the NAIA college in St. Augustine, FL.

The names of

even Kaua’i’s average high school talent are better known than the upper

echelon of prep players in other places I’ve been. That’s okay, these kids are

providing a product, an outlet of entertainment. But the unceasing need for

recognition brings to a head questions about when it all becomes unhealthy.

When does that sense of pride begin to overwhelm reality?

Pummeling

and crying, that’s when.