From Adolescents to Adultscents

I was walking back from supporting a basketball match and was off to the swimming pool where an afternoon water polo match was taking place, when I saw her sitting in her car next to the outdoor theatre reading a book.  She was the mother of one of the First Team water polo players.

‘What on earth are you doing here?’ I asked her in amazement.  ‘The water polo boys have already started their big game and it is going to be a real humdinger.’

She paused before replying. ‘My son has told me not to watch his matches.  He says it makes him play badly.’

‘Well, isn’t that just too bad,’ I said, ‘he will just have to learn to deal with it.’  I opened the car door and offered her my arm before gently guiding her up the hill towards the swimming pool. When her son left school at the end of the following year, she told all and sundry that I had ‘frogmarched’ her to the pool. I had done nothing of the sort – but I do remember being fairly adamant that she had every right as a mother to watch every minute of her son’s sport in the five years that he would be playing for Wynberg.

I have long since forgotten the result of the game, but I do remember making  a point of standing next to her when her son came up to her at the end of the match and grudgingly grunted a greeting to her. I decided to take no prisoners. 

‘Are you going to thank your mother for taking the time to come and watch you play?’ I asked provocatively, mischievously enjoying his discomfort.  He mumbled something unintelligible to some point to the left of her shoe.

I winked at his mother and breezily wished them a pleasant evening.  I would love to have heard the conversation in the car home afterwards.  But the point must have been made because she never missed a match after that.

I had been in a similar situation once and so I really can see the issue from an adolescent point of view.  I vividly recollect giving my father a similar instruction when I was playing U15 cricket. ‘No need to come and watch today,’ I said.  ‘It will just be another boring cricket match.’

He said nothing and just ignored me.  Shortly after the match started and we were fielding, I saw him arrive and stand under a tree.  There is no doubt that I was secretly pleased but I would never have released that classified information to anyone! Later in the match, I took one of those gentle looping catches at short leg – the type that it is easier to catch than to drop – and my immediate reaction was to look round to ensure that he had seen it. Just in case he was in any doubt who the catcher was, I tossed the ball casually from one hand to the other as the batsman walked out.

He made no sign and I didn’t dare ask him in front of the other boys later at the tea break.  By the time I arrived home, I was bursting with impatience. ‘Did you see my catch?’  I asked.

‘Of course,’ he said, kindly refraining from making any disparaging remark about the straightforwardness of the feat.  Tactfully, no mention was made by either of us that he had been given clear instructions not to attend.

No-one ever said that parenting was straightforward.  It is quite a balancing act.

There is no doubt that there is an art to being a worthy parent spectator.  Being there, with your son knowing you are watching, is all that is necessary.  He doesn’t want, or need, coaching from his father - or advice - or interference – or ‘suggestions’ to the referee. The chances of his playing representative sport or performing to a standing ovation at Carnegie Hall one day are statistically so remote that parents might as well just let their sons get on with enjoying the moment. The lessons of participation and the gratification he receives because he is playing and competing with his friends are the real reasons he is standing on the field of play.

I once worked under Peter Anderson who was Headmaster of Bishops Prep.  I was still at university with a career in teaching stretching ahead of me. ‘The trouble with teaching,’ he once said to me, ‘is that it is like a two-sided coin. The strengths of a teacher are in reality also his weaknesses.  The strength of a good teacher is the fact that he personalises the fact that little Johnny can’t read - and it becomes the focus of his life to rectify it.  However, on the other side of the coin, it is also his weakness in that he allows this to take precedence over the real world problems of divorce, poverty and crime. ‘

The same two-sided coin can be said to apply to parents when watching their own sons.  Like passionate teachers, they also may choose to ignore the bigger picture.

‘Sometimes the worst part of playing sport at school,’ Gary Kirsten once said in a seminar I attended, ‘is the journey home in the car.’ Certainly, he wasn’t referring to his own father who, in spite of being a provincial cricketer himself, always made a point of staying in the background.

I wonder how many boys have given up sport because of the unrealistic expectations and demands of an ambitious parent?  Earl Woods, father of Tiger, and Richard Williams, father of Venus and Serena, have done no favours to talented young sporting boys and girls. They have sent the message to parents around the world that successful sportspersons are created from a young age by relentless and aggressive parental pressure.

Fortunately this is still far removed from most of our boys who find it confusing when their parents step into other roles.  Teachers are teachers.  Coaches are coaches.  Refs are refs.  Parents cannot mix these responsibilities as it sends bewildering and conflicting messages to teenagers.  A basic premise for bringing up children must be that all adults speak with the same voice on matters of  sporting ethics and ethos.

Arguably the most motivating message a parent can give his son is: ‘I love to watch you play.’  Ironically that is why many boys prefer grandparents coming to watch them because they are uncritical in their spectating and unstinting in their unqualified support of their grandchild.

After a number of decades in teaching, I am now able to look back at the many boys who have gone on to make a success of their lives  - of which sport is, of course,  only one facet.  There is invariably  one common theme -  and that is good, balanced, sensible and supportive, parenting.   Good parents intuitively understand that the main role of schools like ours is not to create great sportsmen, but to create the environment in which great men (and sportsmen) – are able to grow.

This point is made by Mark Twain who tells the story in one of his books of a man who died and then met St Peter at the Pearly Gates. ‘Saint Peter, I have been interested in military history for many years. Who was the greatest general of all time?"

St Peter quickly responded, ‘Oh, that's a simple question.  It's that man right over there.’

‘You must be mistaken,’ responded the man, now very perplexed. ‘I knew that man on earth, and he was just a common labourer.’

‘That's right my friend,’ answered St Peter. ‘He would have been the greatest general of all time, if he had been a general.’

Finding those generals and encouraging their potential is our role in schools.

After a recent rugby game, a few of us were talking afterwards about some of amusing incidents we had seen on various sports fields over the years.  Someone recounted how, when once running the U10 100 metres many years ago, he had been overtaken by the local priest, cassock blowing in the breeze and loudly exhorting his son to greater efforts.  Clearly concerned that higher forces might be brought into play, the other runners hesitated, allowing the son of the priest to surge to victory.

The Times recently ran a story about a father who had intervened in a school rugby match by shoving out a restraining foot to trip up an opposition player (see picture). Amusing as  these incidents may seem in the re-telling, one feels the embarrassment of the sons because of the actions of their over-exuberant progenitors – ‘adultscents’ as I once heard them described.

"It's just not rugby as dad steps into the fray." The Times, Thursday 1 May 2014

My own story to the gathering concerned my much loved Latin colleague at Wynberg, Tom O’Reilly. Full of Irish tales and Gaelic bonhomie, he has inspired many legendary stories from his classes over the years.  One year he was officiating at the annual triangular between Paul Roos, Paarl Boys’ and Wynberg in the Coetzenburg Stadium and his role was to indicate to the runners how many laps they had completed.  All he had to do was flip over the number as the leading athlete went past.

The 3000 metres race was late in the afternoon and by this time the heat and exertions of the afternoon became too much for Tom who nodded off in his chair after a number of laps had been completed. Many laps had been completed when someone noticed that the numbers weren’t being changed and shook Tom awake. In a scene reminiscent of Herman Charles Bosman’s dominee in the Bekkersdal  Marathon, Tom awoke with a start and pronounced that the runners were entering the final  lap.  He then proceeded to ring the bell vigorously. 

Apart from a throwaway remark afterwards from Kallie Pretorius, master in charge of athletics, that the 3000 metres winning time was a little slow, no-one seemed to notice anything amiss.  The athletes ran their hearts out for their unexpected extra lap and the spectators cheered themselves hoarse as the athletes came down the final strait.  I doubt that there is anyone now who remembers the result of that race.

Isn’t that just what school sport should be about?