Final post, part 2, Montaigne, friendship, teammates, and the loser's award

"Oh, friends, there are no friends" -- but there are teammates, just as there are citizens, neighbors, and colleagues. Try for friends, of course. But the ideal is so hard to reach. Citizenship, neighborliness, collegiality, teamwork -- those are achievable and just require work. Everyone can contribute.

Montaigne did not play youth soccer or, at least, soccer as we know it. But he would have liked it. Playing youth soccer provides the opportunity to learn what I learned playing basketball, American football, hockey, and baseball as a kid. I hope my daughter learns what I learned -- I am recording it here in part for that purpose. Maybe she will read it one day:)

But I hope, too, she doesn't forget what she has learned and has to, as I am doing in adulthood, relearn those lessons.

As an academic you can get snotty and distance yourself from basic life lessons. You develop a particular distaste for cliches about "team". And you develop a particular distaste for middle American life and values (if it weren't for football Ann Arbor and the rest of the State of Michigan would be in a civil war). Consequently, as a young adulthood I distanced myself from much of my youth to pursue "higher" endeavors and this meant distancing myself from my earlier life in sports. Only when my daughter started running around -- rather quickly, I noticed, with remarkable endurance -- did I return to sports as a soccer dad (of course, the one team sport I knew nothing about).

It has been a (skeptical) pleasure. I devoted too much time to athletics as a kid, but there was much good I had forgotten.

I learned long ago, for example, how to be a teammate. I just forgot it. That is, I learned how to work in a supportive fashion with a group even if members of that group were not my friends or my family. Indeed, I learned how to work in a supportive fashion with a group even when I downright disliked some of that group (and vice versa). Those lessons, I realize now, are helping now be a better neighbor, citizen, and colleague. Teammates find a way to help each other be better as a group. They compete with one another certainly -- but only to make the group better. It is that simple. And it is a wonderful idea and anyone can follow it. Coaches sometimes have to criticize, make tough decisions, etc. -- but teammates? Find a way to make the group better. One task. Don't like somebody? Who cares? Think you are better than others? May be you are. So what? Make the team better.

As a kid I was a good team mate, but not a great one. I could have been much better. Unfortunately, in retrospect, as I got to be a better player I probably became a worse teammate. As a team captain in football I recall (only recently) yelling at another player to work harder. The coach said, "That is my job. I yell at them if needed. Your job is to make them feel better and play after I yell at them. 'Say something like, come on, go show the SOB he is wrong about you.'"