my daughter Molly Part 3

Molly Stanley

I've always considered myself to be more of a country girl at heart.
The city, with it's loud noises and constant disquiet, has never compelled me to stay.

People say we each have two homes.
One is your actual home, the one where you were born and raised.
The other is your spiritual home, the birthplace of your soul.
My actual home is here in the city of Rochester, barely a mile from where we are now.
I have lived in that house my whole life, and I can't imagine living anywhere else.
But my spiritual home? The Adirondacks.

My mother was raised there, and that is where most of her family currently lives.
It was here that I learned how to find my inner quiet.
This is the place that inspired me to become an observer, and learn about my surroundings.
This is the place that taught me how to listen, really listen, and learn the language of nature and her inhabitants.
It was here that I found my inner peace, and when I leave, I bring it with me.

People often wonder why I am so quiet, why I don't prefer to talk.
If you wanted to know what nature was saying, wouldn't you?
If you wanted to know what goes on with the people most important to you, your classmates and sisters, wouldn't you?

My family and I go to the Adirondacks usually twice a year, and every year, the sight of those majestic mountains takes my breath away.
The gentle flowing and bubbling of the Cedar River behind my grandmother's house is my lullaby.
The sigh of the wind as it whispers through the trees is my blanket, wrapping me up in its embrace, holding me gently.
The peace the mountains bring me is cherished, incalculable, incomparable, priceless.

Home is where the heart is.
If you are looking for my heart, I left it in the Adirondacks.

My daughter Molly Part 2

Molly Stanley

Inventory of Being

I am full of contradictions

I am made up of wishes and truths, sadness and joy

Anger and calm, kindness and cynicism

Fire and ice, dark and light

Hopes and despairs

I know what I like and don’t like

I love my family and friends, animals and imagination

I dislike the cold and carbonated drinks

I love music and dancing, warmth and laughter

I dislike math homework and early mornings

I know what I believe in, and I stand strong behind those beliefs

I believe being different doesn’t make you a lesser human being

I believe all things are entitled to life

I believe corruption and injustice are unacceptable

I know who I am

I am a beloved daughter, sister, and friend

Granddaughter, Goddaughter, and fairy Godmother

I am a classmate, teammate, and trusted leader

I am an advisor, a joker, and the quiet one

I love watching people with a passion for life.

I hope to be the best wife, mother, and grandmother I can be

I want to make my family proud to call me one of theirs

I wish common sense would make a comeback.

I want the best in life for my friends, family, and classmates.

I hope all their dreams come true

I wish them never to be lonely.

I want them to know in all things they are loved

I hope they look in the mirror and see what I see

I wish them a lifetime of laughter, love, family, and health.

I want them to know as much joy as their lives will hold

I hope they find someone who loves them exactly as they are

I wish them contentment through all their days

What do I want?

I want to be in the wings, watching it all unfold.

Seeing the light of joy and love shining in their eyes

Smiling, the moment they see what I’ve always seen:

They are beautiful, unique, role models the world is privileged to have

Who I am is not just me

I am part of a whole, a piece of a puzzle

You asked me who I am.

I am the product of years of love and joy and great family.

I am blessed to be surrounded by over 140 sisters

I am gifted with a passion for animals.

I am stubborn, loyal, and gentle

I am music

Inside of me flows the rhythms of life

Each beat of my heart, each breath I pull into my lungs

Creates the melody that is me.

I am independent

Asking for help is the same as admitting I can’t

But “I” shouldn’t ever be better than “we”

I am curious

Nature is filled with thousands of unanswered questions

My head is filled with just as many

Asking why is the key that opens the door.

I am living in a world of shadows.
I surround myself in darkness, allowing the shadows to swallow me.
I watch and observe, listen and learn
Unraveling the mystery of humanity.

I am Molly Evelyn Stanley.

And I am proud to be me.

my daughter Molly part 1

Molly Stanley

It usually starts with something.

An event, a trigger, a starting point.

One moment that replays in your mind like a broken record, the one moment you wish you were able banish to the recesses of your mind, never to be seen or heard from again.

I’ve searched for it, sifting through the few things I remember from childhood, recounting the stories my parents have told me about myself, the times in my life I no longer remember.

My insufficient memory took those from me, the memories of my carefree days, when joy was limitless, love was everywhere, and innocence shielded me from the harsher side of reality. Even many of my more recent memories are fading, being replaced with dates, terms, people; information my brain deems to be of a higher priority.

And even after looking through all of that, I can find no evidence of that trigger moment.

The one I could blame for starting it.

For starting the fear.

Some fears are derived from a primal, instinctual knowledge, passed down through the ages as one of the few things time hasn’t taken away from us.

Yet others evolve from a worry of what may or might be. We fret over the possibilities, the hypothetical outcomes, the ways it could end in disaster, until we’ve convinced ourselves that what was far-fetched in the daytime is now the only probable outcome in the darkness and solitude of the nighttime, the enveloping terror of her thoughts.

It is here where I think mine takes root.

But for the sake of complete honesty, I willingly acknowledge that my fear has other roots.

These roots are character flaws, cracks in my unsteady foundation.

The need to be in control, my loathing of feeling helpless, and my self-abhorrence when I fail to live up to the impossible, unrealistic standards I set for myself.

It is these chinks in my armor that combine with the despair of loneliness, the emptiness that is all I see when I look at death to create a fear so overwhelming, so paralyzing that it cuts off all thought and halts all motion.

Everything shuts down until the fear is all that’s left, and the voice inside my head, the one that tells me it will be alright, or that I messed up big time, is screaming at me to do something, to fix it, to save myself from the weight pressing on my limbs, to save myself from the end.

What is this fear, you may ask? What could possibly be so complex as to effectively shut me down and reduce me to nothing inside of a few minutes? What fear exists that could erase my identity and leave me with nothing but that fear? I’ll tell you exactly what it is. It is a simple thing, part of nature’s steady cycles. Four letters is all it takes, capturing an obliterating storm within, the one word that causes me more fear than is able to be described with mere words, the one word I’m left with when the fear destroys me and I’m reduced to nothing.

COLD.

English teacher with a chemistry major!

This is a story of a high school volleyball team. The players on the team were led by a coach and his staff who made it his philosophy to put team chemistry as a priority and a motivational model for his players. On the way to a state championship he vowed to make sure he got everyone of his players in a game, and he did just that, even the Junior Varsity players called up after their season was over.

 In one particular playoff game he put a boy in who had to serve. The young man blasted a serve that hit the far wall. Did he take the boy out, no? After the game, which they won, I was in the hallway the players had to go through to get to the locker-room. All of them were talking about this boy playing, and not the final score. When I mentioned it to the coach he smiled, said thank you for noticing, and stated it was all part of the plan to build the team togetherness. The victories would take care of themselves after the team chemistry was established.

His assistant coach said to me that the team is winning so they attract good character players. Possibly. But what really happened was the head coach instilled a philosophy of sportsmanship, fun, and playing a lot of kids. Players trying out for the team were aware of the chemistry on the team and tryouts were inclusive of all players. Everyone was made aware of this paradigm before during and after tryouts. This meant players that did not fit the mold he was forming normally did not go out for his team or left after they found out that selfishness was not tolerated. It’s a reciprocal truth so it works.

The WATCHING MYTH

The advantages of sitting on the bench and watching have been brought up to me on numerous occasions and I would like to address the issue. It is exponentially better to play than to sit on the bench. The example of Aaron Rodgers sitting on the bench learning from Brett Farve was used as an example. Let’s look at Aaron Rodgers stats from 2008 to 2011.

Year Team G Att Comp Pct Att/G Yds Avg Yds/G TD TD% Int Int% Lng 20+ 40+ Sck SckY Rate

 2011 Green Bay Packers 15 502 343 68.3 33.5 4,643 9.2 309.5 45 9.0 6 1.2 93T 64 13 36 219 122.5

2010 Green Bay Packers 15 475 312 65.7 31.7 3,922 8.3 261.5 28 5.9 11 2.3 86T 54 10 31 193 101.2

 2009 Green Bay Packers 16 541 350 64.7 33.8 4,434 8.2 277.1 30 5.5 7 1.3 83T 55 17 50 306 103.2

 2008 Green Bay Packers 16 536 341 63.6 33.5 4,038 7.5 252.4 28 5.2 13 2.4 71T 48 16 34 231 93.8

In the professional ranks there is a lot more to the game than just playing. There are many variables to consider for the athletes. They need to learn, where to live, where to avoid, where to bank, whether to buy or rent, where to eat, where to get dry cleaning, where to buy a car, endorsement opportunities, and who to hang around with, workout partners and schedules, grocery stores, etc. If married with kids what schools are available?  I think you get the picture.

            Now this has nothing to do with youth sports. A child sitting on the bench during a game gets bored, plain and simple. You could literally turn the child around and not face the field, send the child in to play and the child’s play would not be that different than if they watched the proceedings. Why? Children join a youth sports team to play not watch.

It was mentioned to me that they could learn while sitting on the bench. It is true that coaches will lecture players on the bench as to the mistakes the players are making on the field playing, but that just frustrates the players sitting on the bench. Why correct them, they are doing nothing wrong. At work would you want your boss coming to you complaining about another employee’s work and not let you get a crack at fixing the problem?

It was also brought up to me that coaches don’t put players in games because they don’t want them to fail and quit. Did the coach ask the players if that was the case? NO. Another comment by a coach was that if a player was too small and they put them in they might get hurt. Again, did you ask the player? Did the coach explain that paradigm to the player when they joined the team? No, of course the coach didn’t.

Does a coach ask the players who didn’t play much during the game what they learned after the game was over? Well. I have. Here are some of the answers.

“Learned what?” “From who?” “No, I just want to go home.” “Yeah, a little, I guess.” One boy even told me, “Yes, this is no fun.” Go ahead and ask. Don’t frame the question though to predetermine the answer. Don’t ask leading questions like, “Did you see what Johnny did out there, what did you learn?”

Now ask the kids who played what they learned while they played. I have those answers also, but I think it’s best that you hear them for yourself. Sometimes they don’t even know they are learning when they are playing, and that is when they play the best.

Let’s look at the player’s sitting on the bench a little more closely. If they already played, they are probably tired and need a break. It’s called a break, not a sit and watch. If a player has not played at all his mind has wandered and he is trying to figure out when he will get a chance to play.

Here’s what h does learn by watching. Other players out there are not that much better than him. They are only better because they get to play more. They learn that being a teammate does not mean the same to each player on the team. They learn to get t frustrated and tense. When it is their turn to finally get in the game they realize they can’t make many mistakes for fear of getting pulled out of the game. They learn to be robots doing the coaches bidding. They learn that it is not fun to play youth sports.

TRIPLE "A"

TRIPLE A—Does that mean attitude, athleticism, and academics?  A recent conversation with some hockey players who were playing “Triple A” hockey at the Bantam level led me to this next blog. 

The children were adamant about both their ability to get a DI scholarship, and the proper path to take to receive the scholarship.  They would continue to play at their current level, which included not playing for their high school team, missing days of school to go to different tournaments, and playing as much as possible.

Let’s break it down.  First and foremost, just because it is “Triple A”, does that mean it has to be elite?  The very fact that these kids (families) are paying money to play certainly limits the pool of players.  What about the region of the country they are in?  Also, what about the players’ age group?  What time of the year are they born, versus the age cut off?  Is this group of kids, like in a high school demographic, a group of above average students for their graduating year, or as in a professional league, maybe in an off draft year?  Next, what happens when you are no longer one of the better players as you leave your little myopic corner of the sports world and venture out into the big pond? 

Now let’s look carefully at the team you are playing on.  How many kids from that team have gone on to DI scholarships?  Do you know the true amount?  Take the amount of money they are paying to play and compare it to what most athletic scholarships give, and you will find they could have saved money by not playing and paid for more college tuition.  I was told by these players that the odds are better if they play Triple A, then Juniors, and then college to get the DI grant.   Although true, it leaves out the very important fact that it is very hard to play Juniors in the first place.  Also how many Junior players get full scholarships?  I was told by one parent her son played on a Junior team and tuition was $9,000 a year.  The average DI scholarship is $8,700 a year.  What if they don’t make it?  All these great high school memories that most of them would have are lost.  Angst over not achieving their dream comes instead of those memories.  What is the long term fall out when they don’t make it?

I am the father of a 16 year old daughter.  She is wonderful and I love her very much.  She seems to have no interest in attending a convent to ease her father’s woes and gray hairs.  During my last talk to a youth sports group I brought up the name Megan Fox.  She seems to be incredibly popular with the teenage boys.  I have to confess I know nothing about the girl, but if millions of teenage boys are interested in her I certainly would not want her as my daughter, owing to the fact that I like to sleep at night.  I offered the following story to the young boys in attendance as an analogy to their youth sport’s journey. 

Let’s say Megan Fox is a parallel to a DI scholarship. Everyone kept telling you that Megan Fox wanted to go out with you and she thought you were really cute and great and wanted to spend time with you.  When you finally got to meet her, she said, “Who the heck are you?” and walked away.  Now, do you really think that when you went back to your friends and to the others who had told you that Megan Fox was going to date you, and you ended up with nothing, that you wouldn’t be constantly reminded and aggravated about what had happened as you journeyed on in life?

After I saw the look on the young boys’ faces and some of their heads hanging low, I offered this solution to their unrealistic dreams and desires for what ultimately is an unattainable goal.  Get a group of kids together, rent the ice, and play a pickup game.  Play for fun.  No coaches or parents, just one adult for safety.  Players pick the teams, make the rules, and have at it.

When talent level was broached to me and the kids didn’t want to play with players that weren’t as good as them, I answered, “What happens when you’re not the best and players want to exclude you?”  In life, just like sports, you will meet, socialize, play, and work with all difficult levels of personalities and talent.  This is an excellent way to nurture the life skills you need for later in life. 

Now let’s look at status.  Believe me, it plays a huge role.  As much as we want to be individuals and find our own path, we want to belong to something.  We want to brag to people about the organization we belong to or the team we play on- a natural social phenomenon.  It becomes a problem when we put too much value on it, when in actuality it has little value to you at all.  If you play youth sports for fun, you will get better.  If you get better, and by that I mean good enough for college level sports, you will be found. 

Finally, be very aware that the people telling you how good you are are in fact the same people profiting from your participation on their team or in their organization.  They may also be paid to bring you to other teams, in which you still have to pay a fee to participate.

If we really want to find out who is the best through competition, then we have to play for free, so all can be evaluated and grow.