A prominent cultural critic of the modern youth sports scene, with whom I have happily become a regular correspondent, lamented to me in a dark winter month that there’s more going on in the world than youth sports—I think Minneapolis ICE shootings were happening at the time—and confessed she sometimes wonders if she ought to be casting her critical gaze upon more vital vistas.
I told her that depends on how she looks at it. Surely there are more important issues than youth sports. But there’s no more important question than raising children in America at a moment when our values seem pretty far afield to what our nation’s founders were thinking about, 250 years ago and what so many of our nation’s heroes have demonstrated ever since. And youth sports is a dramatic and relatively apolitical prism through which to view what we are teaching our kids about life.
I wrote, “You must know that when you talk about youth sports—especially on the spirit level you talk about it—you’re talking about American values, you’re talking about raising kids, you’re talking about love and the meaning of life.” I told my correspondent, who has been participating in this youth sports dialogue much longer than I have, to consider my email a pep talk. “Consider me pepped!” she replied.
Thinking about that exchange now, as I consider how long and how deeply I’ll want to be part of this conversation, assuming Soccer Dad has strong soccer legs, I’m reminded of one of my favorite speeches, an RFK stump speech from his presidential campaign in 1968. As Kennedy’s speechwriter emotionally explains in this classic clip from a podcast, Kennedy was annoyed by LBJ’s frequent citing of the growth in the Gross National Product as evidence of the health of the nation.
Why?
… the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
In the series of conversations about Soccer Dad that are beginning to drop into my calendar over this summer and into the fall and for however long after that, I hope I’m not talking too specifically about travel sports. I hope I’m ultimately talking about the health of our children, the quality of their education and the joy of their play. I hope I’m talking about the strength of our marriages and the integrity of the parents and coaches who people our kids’ childhoods: Our wit and our courage, our wisdom and our learning, our compassion and our devotion—if not to our country, specifically, to one another, at least.
If I can manage to be talking about that, I don’t think I’ll get tired of it anytime soon.
