Words from WW Blog

Yesterday morning about 75 boys tip-toed into the middle school gym before the opening bell to see if their names were listed on the two sheets of paper posted in the gym office window. The lists contained the names of 7th and 8th graders who had been selected to be on the school interscholastic basketball teams. Seventy-five boys whittled down to twenty-five; and on the other side of the equation, fifty boys disappointed in not seeing their names were in the print.

For most of these boys it was the first time they had experienced, as we said in the old days, “being cut”. We try to tone down the harshness of those words, but kids know. You can hear them say it. They don’t say, “I did not receive an invitation”, but “I didn’t make the team” and “I got cut!”

Since our school, and most of the middle schools around us, didn’t have interscholastic sports last year they had never been subjected to the anxious moments of scanning a list for the heart-throbbing revelation. It will be the first of many occasions in their lives where the risk of a crushing defeat will be situated on one end of the see-saw opposite jubilation. College admission letters, job decisions, and medical school rejections will come in the next decade.

At intramural practice yesterday I had to soften the blow as much as I could. “Don’t give up!” “Keep working!” “If you really love the game of basketball, let us help you develop those skills you need to strengthen.” We said all the words that sought to inspire and motivate boys feeling rejection to not quit their pursuit.

We noticed the few boys who weren’t there. Perhaps they were sick and not in school that day, but there will be others who stop showing up for intramural because, in their minds, they weren’t one of the chosen.

And the thing about Timberview Middle School is that the intramural program gives everyone a chance to play. Interscholastic players are involved in intramurals like everybody else. Intramural runs from 2:50-4:15 and interscholastic practice goes from 4:20-5:45. Most schools do not have an intramural program that gives all kids a chance to play. They have yielded that opportunity to the YMCA or club basketball teams, both who charge substantially more than the slight registration fee that our school charges.

The thing is, a year lost has resulted in stunted athletic development in most of these seventy-five boys. As a long-time basketball coach (25 years), I can see the deficiencies, the fundamental skills that haven’t been practiced or even learned.

My evaluation of players, therefore, covered more than athleticism and skills. Other criteria included academics, coach ability, intensity and hustle, and sportsmanship. Character counted just as much, and probably more, as a kid’s ability to dribble the basketball.

And so yesterday morning there were moans and groans, smiles and high-fives, and everybody went to their first class. No one needed to go see the school nurse to help alleviate an Excedrin headache and, as far as I know, there were no “cut players” who acted out in school that day. The verdict was given and everyone went on with their school days.

Over the years, I’ve applied for five different positions as head varsity basketball coach and not been chosen all five times. Two of the five times I was a finalist, but felt the sting of not being the final pick. As I look back at it now, however, I see the value of having been turned down. Other opportunities I have encountered would not have come my way if I had been the pick in those earlier situations.

Fifty middle school boys probably aren’t ready to hear this, but rejection sometimes leads us to new opportunities.

Last year our middle school didn’t have sports. Oh, we had sports camps amongst our own students that were valiant efforts, but fell short of accomplishing what we hoped for. Quarantines were more common than practices, and since we were in a hybrid class system for a good part of the year, students could come to a practice only on the two days they were actually in-person at the school.

And yesterday we saw one of the effects of that loss! It was the first day of boys’ basketball tryouts. For a number of the boys, they had only been playing hoops on their game systems. The 360 degree slam-jammas, no look passes, and having a deadly three-point shot on their PlayStation did not translate into success when they put an actual leather basketball in their hands. There were shots that hit the wall behind the backboard. Above the backboard, by the way!

I tried not to yell and say sarcastic things like, “Use your left hand! No, your other left hand!” and “We’re going to check for cracks in the backboards after practice today!”, but it was difficult. The other coaches and I had to keep reminding ourselves that we had a gym full of rookies. The eighth graders had never played in middle school, and the seventh graders were also experiencing their first basketball practice.

I have to be a little crotchety. After three days of tryouts I have to post a 12 boy interscholastic roster. Four practices after that we have our first game!!! Forty-five seventh graders’s knees will be shaking as they come into the gym Thursday morning to see if their name is on the list. Yesterday I realized that almost half of them I don’t know by name. I need a pictorial directory to figure out who is who. Whether a kid can dribble with his left hand is one thing, but I can’t put “the boy with red hair and the I Love Basketball t-shirt” on the roster. I need to know little Jimmy’s name.

Some of the boys haven’t gained their coordination yet. Walking and chewing gum is still a challenge for them. Other boys haven’t grown. They are visible memories of my middle school days when I sat on the end of the front row in our South Zanesville 8th Grade basketball team picture. I looked about two feet shorter than the other guys. Actually, I was four feet ten inches, but you get the idea. Why I looked out of place even more by putting me on the end of the row I’ll never know. There are a few boys dribbling the basketball this week who are tugging on my heartstrings because I see myself in them. The last name of one of them begins with a “W” and he wears glasses, just like I did.

Yesterday, I told all of the prospects and the suspects that our objectives are to teach them the fundamentals of the game of basketball and to teach them the game of basketball. Part of the discovery for them will be to learn how we got to the game as it is today. How has the game evolved and why did it evolve? What was it like back at the beginning of its creation? Some of them may not believe me, but for them to understand the game of basketball will necessitate that they know its history.

Bottom line, I have the awesome privilege of teaching the great game of basketball to a bunch of boys who have been missing out. They don’t know what they’ve been missing, but they’re going to receive a new education…and discover their left hand in the process!

I’m sitting in a St. Louis hotel room reflecting and chuckling about what once was and how it binds us in a sort of way. For most of the last two days I’ve sat in the living room of Jim and Lynn Fay, along with four other graying guys and their spouses, talking about our days as Judson College (now University) cross country teammates back in the mid-70’s.

I hadn’t seen most of the guys since college, or shortly after. Stan Brown was one of my groomsmen, but each other in a good three and a half decades. Jim Fay and I reconnected last March when he and Lynn were in Colorado for a few days of skiing. Our old coach, Don Kraus, is a Facebook friend but we hadn’t seen each other since 1976. Randy Moore was the grizzled veteran on our team, mostly because he was the only one married, worked maintenance and security for the college, and went to school full-time. he could kiss his wife without being written up for public display of affection. The rest of us could only dream about such a thing. Mike Neisler was the floppy-haired kid with the great laugh.

And so we came together and reminisced about team trips and retreats, our lack of funds that always had us camping out instead of staying in hotel rooms, the fun runs, and failed romances, the deaths of Marc Didier and Donna Shotwell that motivated us to look deep inside ourselves for more heart and effort as the way we could honor their memories.

We talked about, and had our own celebration of life service, for Dr. Stuart Ryder, who was our team training-in-training and also our coach. Most of all, though, we realized how much we appreciated one another and the impact of our team experiences had upon our lives. It wasn’t so much about running, but about relationships. We remembered the pains of our journey together, but even more, we treasured the personableness of being a part of a small college team.

As I sit here pondering I’m experiencing, if it’s possible, a strange mixture of joy and sadness. The joy sprays out of my soul in the realization of how blessed I am to have been a part of such a team, the camaraderie, the brotherhood. The sadness echoes within my spirit because of the reality of having to say farewell to one another. The richness of our experience this weekend made the last hugs on one another this afternoon even more difficult. Sometimes that’s how it is. The preciousness of our friendships has a way of causing the sorrow to be more intense.

But we wouldn’t change it for anything!

It’s been a strange couple of weeks. Although fully vaccinated, I tested positive for COVID and have been isolated from this, that, and the other. No Starbucks stool to sit on to craft my Words From W.W., no teaching gigs, no in-person church.

But the most intriguing aspect of the experience has been my lost of taste and smell. I can’t smell the roses and I can’t taste potato chips. I’ve stopped putting sugar in my morning coffee, because..what’s the point! I’ve minimized the dressing on my salad, because…what’s the point! I’ve taken to drinking more water and less soda, because…you guessed it…what’s the point! I’ve lost six pounds on my trail to blandness, and I’m looking at any can of food in our cupboard that I despise and considering its consummation because I won’t be able to taste it.

I hadn’t considered how my sense of taste has been so ingrained into my life experience. It’s just always been! Carol and I had hamburgers the other night because I had a hankering for one and…nothing. I popped popcorn and put so much salt on it you’d think I had stock in Morton and…nothing.

Taste draws us into the sweetness of life and the salt that hints of a seasoned existence. One doesn’t appreciate its value until it’s not there. The Food Channel loses its meaning. The mailings from Omaha Steak are inviting to the eyes, but then the reality of what is sets back in.

There’s a verse in the Bible that says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in Him” (Psalm 34:8).

The loss of my taste buds has brought me to a new appreciation of my taste for the Lord. On the way to dullness I’ve encountered scriptural stories such as the lame beggar laying by the Gate called Beautiful who is looking at Peter and John for a coin and the two apostles tell him that they don’t have silver or gold, but in the name of Jesus get up and walk. It was a redirection, a new beginning, that led him to a new way of looking at life, from a standing position.

This loss of taste has led me to a new longing to taste that the Lord is good and the realization that I have an appetite for a lot of things that are pseudo-tasty, the sweetness of what the world has told me is what I need. My loss of taste has made me realize the deceptions of my wantings and the urgency of my needs.

Oh, don’t kid yourself! I still have a longing for a PayDay candy bar, but then I think to myself…yes, one more time…what’s the point!

I was brought up right, born into a Southern Baptist family in eastern Kentucky. We were “three-peats”! That is, we were in church Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night. Once in a while, I’d fake a cough so I could stay home on Sunday night and watch Walt Disney…back in the day when it was wholesome with Hayley Mills, Old Yeller, and Mary Poppins.

My parents never used swear words. The worst we’d hear them say would be, “Shoot!”, but having no connection to firearms. So I didn’t cuss either! Swearing was a sign of our fallen nature, and even though I was fallen I had reached and grabbed hold of the branch of purified speech on my descent.

I’m still that way. It doesn’t mean I don’t think thoughts that would resemble the words of a sailor, I just don’t say them.

However, I’ve noticed that I’m developing a toolbox of ways that I non-verbally swear at others. They’ve come as a result of driving on the same roads as NASCAR wanna-be’s and people who have come to believe that the world revolves around themselves.

For example, when that BMW sedan buzzed by me and cuts in front, I extend my left hand forward as if I’m outside the supermarket entrance and telling someone “You go ahead.” If the BMW motorist happens to look in his rearview mirror, he will see my hand extended. Outside Safeway it would be a gesture of politeness, but on Research Parkway a few blocks from our house it’s my way of silently shouting profanity. Forgive me, Lord!

Another way I’ve entered into the land of quiet expletives is when someone doesn’t stop at a four-way stop. For that transgression I extend both hands heavenward, like a Sunday morning praiser, to express my disbelief. Once in a while, the sinner whispers an apology. Other times it looks like he whispers something a bit more “earthly”!

Finally, I sometimes use the confused shaking of my head to convey ridicule. I see it quite often on the faces of Detroit Lions fans during televised games on Sundays. Their expressions of disbelief in player and coaching decisions need no words attached to them. You can read their cussing minds! I use this non-verbal swearing technique most when I’m on the sidelines coaching a basketball game. I get the eye of one of the officials and pierce him with my frown and head-shaking.

I guess you could say my lips are pure, but my mind is tainted. I have, however, stooped to the low level of saying the word “crap”!

Forgive me, Lord!

I am 55 years removed from my year as a seventh-grader at Williamstown (WV) Junior High. That means I could get the senior citizen discount simply from the time I’ve lived SINCE seventh grade. Things were different back in 1966…and yet they weren’t much different at all.

Oh, yes, there weren’t the “devices” that kids have today. I watched an episode of The Andy Griffith Show last night where Floyd, Barney, and Andy were bemoaning all the new devices that were invading their lives. Opie walked by about that time holding a transistor radio next two his ear. “See, what did I tell ya!”, said Barney.

I wonder what they’d say today as Johnny comes to school “all hooked up” with his ear AirPds and iPhone? What would they say about the $1,000 he is displaying in order to listen to some group I’ve never heard, whose name could also be an assault on the advancement of correct spelling?

Anyway…as I survey the hallways, classrooms, and athletic fields of Timberview Middle School, I see the faint image of myself leaking through the personalities and insecurities of the students. Back in the day I was a 4’8″ skinny kid who wore eyeglasses and had a buzz haircut. That year I had been the quarterback on the Williamstown “B” Squad that was the equivalent of today’s Pop Warner competition. I was so short I couldn’t see over the offensive line. If we did a pass play, I pitched it back to Tommy Station, my fullback, who then threw the pass. My voice resembled a baby robin squealing to his mama for a worm. But I was fast!

In other words, I was a mixture of uncertainty, self-doubts, potential, and constantly being misjudged by others. You know…the kid on the playground who gets picked last when teams are chosen, but then zooming by the competition.

I walk by kids at TMS who are present-day carbon copies of that. They’d been doubted for so long by their peers and instructors that some of them have come to believe they have no talent or any possibilities for success. They’ve come to believe they are mediocre, destined to be labeled as “C” students in the classroom and standing on the sidelines of the athletic field.

I can remember my own “settling”, being convinced of the impossibilities of possibilities. I don’t remember anyone at school telling me the importance behind the subjects we were learning. They were just “filler facts” and information to make sure our lives were occupied from 8 AM to 3 PM. School was what you did, not part of shaping what you were to become.

I was one of those students who tried to go to the restroom or get a drink of water in as many classes as possible, a hall-wanderer to gain a few moments of relief from the lesson of the day about dangling participles, latitude and longitude, and subtracting a negative number from a negative number.

And so I see myself now in the kids, unsure of who they are and, in some cases, frightened of who they might become.

In this era of masks and diminished hearing, it’s easy to reply in nonsensical ways to a comment or question directed at you. In my recent excursion into the world of seventh-grade language arts it happened to me quite often. A student would say something to me that got funneled through the translation colander on the way to my ears.

It was like this!

Student: Mr. Wolfe, can we get a little more time to work on the short story?

ME: That’s not my decision. If you want salad for lunch, go for it!

Student: Huh???

Yes, it’s probably a sign that my hearing has deteriorated a bit. Add to that a growing number of students masking up as they attend class. It always seems to be the ones who are as quiet as church mice who turn their volume down another level with their mask. It’s confusing to a senior citizen who sometimes wants to hear what he wants to hear.

That’s another angle on this communication confusion. We have a tendency to want to hear what we prefer to hear. There were a few times in my youthful years where I wanted to hear that a certain young lady was interested in me. I’d take any positive comment from her and sift it through the translation colander for what it meant. She said hello to me in the school hallway = “She’s interested!” She sat two seats over from me in chemistry class = “She wants to be close to me!” Our elbows touched in the crowded cafeteria = “Please call me!”

We have the need to hear what we’ve already decided is the right answer. It’s the ravenous hunger of our times, to not hear words correctly and rearrange the pieces accordingly.

My students would giggle and laugh as they listened to my distorted responses. I could translate “better” into “peanut butter” and “graded assignment” into “great climbing”.

Student: Mr. Wolfe, will that be our next graded assignment?

ME: I don’t know. I’ve done a climbing wall once, but I wouldn’t call it a great climb!”

Student: Huh???

And so it goes! Confused communication. Wrong ways to reword. Not hearing the truth and not wanting to hear the truth.

Now it makes me wonder what that young lady, a few decades ago, really DID say about me? Did she even know who I was? Was she saying hello to me or to a taller guy who happened to be walking behind me? All disturbing questions to ponder…so I’ll just keep thinking she was interested!

A couple of years ago I was filling in for our middle school art teacher one day. My last class of the day was a group of frenzied and squealy sixth-graders, their anticipation of the closing bell causing them to resemble a New Year’s Eve countdown party. One boy got my attention because of his shoes. His shoestrings flapped up and down like the trailing tails on a kite. I was surprised his shoes could actually stay on his feet.

I said to him, “Tie your shoes!”

“Why?” he responded. “They’re just going to come untied again!”

Telling the kid, whose hair hadn’t met up with a comb for a few days, that it was why he had shoestrings, was met with eyes glazed-over by the punishment of having to be in school for the last six hours of his life. I was unrelenting in my expectation and he finally kneeled down and tied the strings as loose as they could possibly be.

I remember that encounter vividly and have thought of it often in recent times as I’ve seen a shift as a part of our cultural philosophy. It is signified by the idea that offering a reward will change a person’s actions and decisions. It’s an idea that has been around in various ways for quite some time, but has now been recreated as a way to influence the hard-to-convinced and slow-to-come-around. I remember schools would use this technique in getting students to show up for the “official count day”, the day in October when their state funding was dependent on how many students were in the building to be educated that morning. There would be ice cream, pizza for lunch, balloons, trinkets, games, throwing pies at the principal, and any other creative activity that could entice Johnny and Janey to show up. Coming because education is important for their future success was not even in the ballpark.

Whatever your thinking is about vaccinations, it seems that the same philosophical roots have been seeded into the pressure for people to be vaccinated. From May until July, Colorado was drawing a weekly winner of a million dollars of those who were getting vaccinated. National polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that one-third of those who hadn’t been vaccinated would be more likely to be vaccinated if they were entered into a lottery with the chance to win a million dollars. Colorado’s officials had the mindset that dangling the possibility of becoming a millionaire would alter people’s decisions. It did not apply to those who had been the early adopters, receiving the vaccine shots back in the first few months of 2021. It only applied to those who had been hesitant, suspicious, and unconvinced. Like the long lines of people waiting to buy lottery tickets when the jackpot was around 700 million, the state thought being rewarded for being slow to come around would work. The findings were mixed as to whether it did, but the philosophy behind it was evident.

This week there was a story coming out of San Francisco, and being okayed by the California state government, of a program that rewards addicts with money, usually given in gift cards, for each week they stay clean. It’s seen as an incentive to get people clean and back on the right track.

I’ve got mixed feelings about both of the states’ initiatives. I’m just a little uneasy for trying to get people to change their minds or getting unconcerned folk to be concerned by rewarding them.

Back to the middle school culture for an analogy, when I give an assignment to a student and tell him the due date is two days from then but he doesn’t turn it in, I cringe at the thought of rewarding him if he turns the assignment in late.

I covered that sixth-grade boy’s health class a few weeks after I had him in class the first time. He came in with shoe strings flopping once again and the laces only going through one eyelet on each side of each shoe. The shoe tongues looked like they were trying to make a break for it. I told him to tie his shoes again and he offered the same resistance as he had before. The class was going outside for the period, so I told him he wouldn’t be going out until he had tied the laces. He was still fussing about my demand, when a classmate stepped up and said, “I’ll do it.” He knelt down at the boy’s feet and tied the kid’s shoes.

I’m a bit uneasy when our mindset becomes “If you stand close to me, I’ll not only tie your shoes for you, I’ll give you a new pair to slip on.”

This past week I had a great unplanned-for conversation with a friend of mine about the frustrations of being a moderate in regards to politics. In all the sludge that gets thrown back and forth between conservatives and progressives, it seems that those us positioned in the middle being observers at a tennis match, looking side-to-side at each shot that is volleyed.

You see, being in the middle is seen as being indecisive and indifferent. It’s as if we don’t really care, but the fact is that we care a whole lot. We wish there was someone who understood that. We wish there was someone who cared about the poor, and the military, and not making everything free, and helping the elderly, and not really caring an ounce about LeBron’s or Trump’s opinions, and willing to hold someone accountable for their decisions, and being wise and honorable, and more worried about our nation than reelection, and willing to put a pair of khaki shorts and a tee shirt on and pass out bottled of water to people who have just been devastated by a disaster, and willing to sit in the Bob Uecker seats at the baseball game. We wish there was someone who understood that he/she wasn’t always right and is sometimes unsure on what the right answer is, someone who would therefore be willing to listen to all sides of an issue and vote the way he believes, not just what is the flavor-of-the-month opinion.

But we’re middlers who, despite what people say about us, are more concerned about the communities we live in and the unity of the country. We don’t want anyone to be left behind mentally…physically…spiritually…economically…socially…and education-wise.

We want everyone to be able to vote, but we also want the right to vote to be valued and seen as a privilege to hold dear. We applaud sacrifice and cringe at entitlement. We appreciate passion and patriotism.

As a moderate, I believe I have the ability to hear different views and see the merit in both. And as a moderate, I believe there can be compromise, that bantering and belittling do little to bring resolution.

However, as a guy in the middle, our view doesn’t get much airtime. It doesn’t heighten the drama and raise the ratings.

It is, however, usually the place on the spectrum where common sense takes up residence!

The middle school cross country team I coach had its first meet this past week. What an experience! 6th, 7th, and 8th-grade boys and girls, many of them running their first race ever…if you don’t include their video games ventures. We had less than two weeks of practice beforehand to prepare us for the mess. All of our races are one and a half miles, a mire trot around the countryside, right? For some it was! Unfortunately, only a couple of those runners were wearing our team shirt.

We had gradually been increasing the mileage of the runners, running 2 miles and then 3 miles. The day after our race we challenged many of them to complete a 4-mile run, and next week we’ll throw a 5-miler into the mix. But on Wednesday our objective was to run the first race and learn from it.

Here’s the thing about middle school athletes! You have some who grit their teeth, have fire in their eyes, and resemble pint-size Marines giving it their all. The race is a battle for them, a personal battle to quiet the inner-doubts and voices and a battle for honor pitting them against their opponents. Grit in an athlete is a coach’s dream! On our team there is a small-sized fiery redheaded girl who fought off the doubts and all those who looked at her and hadn’t expected much. We expected a couple of other girls from our team to appear over the last ridge before her but she had that look that said she thought she was leading the charge on Iwo Jima.

And then there were others who let the struggle defeat them, turning a ten-minute race into a twenty-plus minute ordeal filled with whining and complaining. A few hobbled across as if they had just finished the Leadville 100-mile Ultra-marathon. Faces showed the agony, looking for sympathetic parents who might soothe their wounds with a post-race shaved ice treat from the Kona Ice Truck parted behind the stadium. One young lady turned her ankle and was helped across the finish line by one of her teammates in a scene resembling the Confederate retreat from Antietam.

I forgot to tell our runners that I had an instant cold pack in our first-aid bag. It may have been a good thing not to mention since I only had one. I’m envisioning a line of runners laid out in a makeshift triage area, moaning for ice to be applied to their ankle, knee, calf, thigh, head, lower back, finger, etc.

Middle school athletics reveals more about a student’s strengths and character than it does their athletic ability. Oh, yes, you have the male athletes who reached puberty about five years before anyone else. Chiseled biceps are a sign that they have probably reached their max. High school may be a disappointment for them since they’ve dominated all the pint-sized competitions all through middle school. Other than those deviations from the norm, middle school athletics reveal who has heart, who’s coachable, who will be a great teammate, and who understands what makes up sportsmanship. It shows who has the ingredients to be successful, not in athletics but rather in life. Who can be counted, who feels entitled, and who will disappear?

And so we’ll go at it again this coming Wednesday on a different course against the same teams of runners, looking for that grit and fire in our 11, 12, and 13-year-olds that will bring smiles to our faces about what they’ve discovered about themselves?