Exploring possibilities, asking questions, discovering life day by day.

The Superbowl is behind us, and with March coming, Madness will soon keep us near the flat-screens. Shortly after that we’ll have The Opener.

All American sports… football, basketball, baseball… soccer, track, volleyball.

Great fun… but are sports good for life beyond the game? Can learning to play sports teach kids how to live life?

Tiger Ellison the Coach, Handing off a Legacy for Life Painting is framed, 34x40 inches, and hangs in the Glenn Tiger Ellison Sports Complex, Middletown, Ohio

I was raised in a football family

with a dad who taught life through his coaching and his teaching.

Tiger Ellison taught English, from writing to reading the classics, to self-expression through poetry and story, to learning about and developing unique creative ideas when they were needed.

And he coached football. No, more than that… he met young boys where they were, with their emerging manliness and guttural speech and raging energy, and he suited them up to learn how to play life.

So, first in the classroom; then on the gridiron.

He taught team work, memorizing play strategies, learning to think on their feet, creating ways to make it work when all hell threatened, getting up when knocked down, focusing on the goal instead of on the opponents who wanted to trounce them into oblivion. Making decisions for the good of the squad. Believing in the possibilities when the odds said impossible. Running the unexpected… these are what he taught.

Life lessons?

Yep. He used to ask: “When the chips are down and the jig is up and there’s hell to pay — will you pay it?”*

*Editing note* This was asked rhetorically in speeches he gave on leadership, on the field and off. Explained, it meant: When circumstances threaten, and there seems no way up and out of them, will you change directions and figure out another way to make it work and dig down to find the courage to do it?

Halfway through the football season my senior year our team had not scored a win. Four losses and one tie does not make a good season .

When the players walked the school halls with their heads down…

When those players were no longer having fun on the field, feeling defeated…

Tiger Ellison drove the long road home one night after practice and stopped to watch a bunch of grade-schoolers playing  their own brand of football.

As he watched them run and throw wherever the defenders were not, a new offense began to take shape. With these youngsters’ very basic principle:

Line up non-traditionally, run several potential receivers down the field, and throw the ball where the defenders are not.

Was this possible within the accepted rules of high school football? They had nothing to lose by trying it, and everything to gain if they embraced it and made it work.

Which it did!

The new offense started life with ‘The Lonesome Polecat”  play — named thus when one of the other coaches said it ’stank.’ Well, stink it might, but it thrilled those kids… and they scored big their last 5 games against teams who didn’t know what hit them.

Our kids didn’t buckle under the ‘chips’ — they restacked them! And won!*

This year’s SuperBowl was a beautifully executed game — by both teams. I enjoyed every play. (Well, being a Colts fan, not the interception so much. But both teams were stellar, in my opinion. And, you gotta’ love a good passing game.)

I look forward to March Madness as well — our family get quite involved in dollar pools amongst ourselves. And we have so many athletes among our kids and grandkids.

I believe — because I have lived with it all my life — that sports can play a major roll in teaching our kids how to live.

What’s your sport or game? How has it taught you to live?

Coffee’s hot… fill a mug and add whatever goodies make it yummy for you, and share your thoughts.

Thank you for coming by…

Barb

P.S. Patty Bechtold, a story-teller and blogger, tells a fun story about her Superbowl Sunday. And draws inferences to the contradictions of us humans. A very enjoyable read.

*Future teams refined the offense which became known as the Run and Shoot Football offense — now widely used in high schools, colleges, and the NFL.

In future posts, I’ll tell you where some of those players are now, and how their lives were affected by having had Tiger Ellison as a teacher and coach.

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