“All you want to do is play sports,” my daughter says to me. “I don’t feel like it.”
“Okay,” I say. “Fine. You don’t want to. You don’t have to. I’ve got other things to do anyway. I was just seeing if you wanted to play. I was offering to play with you, if you wanted to.”
“I don’t want to,” she says.
Crushed, I walk back to my bedroom and lay down. I feel ninety years old suddenly. All day at work, I thought about going home and playing sports with my daughter, hitting softblls or dribbling in the road, or riding bikes. I even just purchased a new bike helmet because my daughter is wearing mine now. With the sports option dampened worse than a rain storm, I lay there checking work emails, reading about Corona, feeling like all the joy has been drained from the world.
About fifteen minutes later, I hear my masked wife call outt to my daughter. “Go play sports with your puppa now!”
A few minutes later my daughter stands in the doorway. “Dad, you want to play soccer with me?”
“Yeah, sure, I guess so,” I say. “Just give me a few minutes. Let me finish up here.”
We are the only ones kicking a ball back and forth across the field. Her leg has gotten much stronger, mine is weaker and I don’t move as well as I did last year. I punt a ball to her. She traps it with her chest, kicks it up in the air, and then turns and boots it as it comes back down. She drives the ball on a line twenty yards into the back of the net.
“Did you see that? Dad? Did you see that? Did you see that kick!”
“Yes, I did.”
“Are you sure you saw that? Wasn’t that excellent! That was an awesome kick!”
“Indeed.”
“Let’s get pizza tonight,” she says. “That was the greatest kick. Are you sure you saw that?”
“Pizza, it is,” I say.
On the way home, I tell her I don’t want to push her too much.
“I like playing, Dad, I just miss the competition.”
I miss it, too. Not a day seemed to go by that she didn’t have one game or another. This spring she was going to be on a town softball team, a town soccer team and an AAU basketball team that would travel most weekends for tournaments. Now she is stuck with playing with her sixty-one year old Dad.
They keep saying we will never be the same after Corona. I wish I knew what it would look like. I hope there are still competitive sports for youth (and for the parents who enjoy watching.). It seems to me they can find creative ways to let the games be played and still maintain safety.
I read an article on ESPN.com about how basketball has been shut down all over the country.
Coronavirus has stopped basketball across America
I am heartened that at least some places have made space for solo shooting while banning pickup games. I wish our town would put some of the hoops back up.
I am trying to find ways to keep my daughter’s competitive juices flowing beyond playing with her Dad, where she knows if she says let’s get pizza or ice cream, I will have to answer yes as a quid pro quo for her company.
Her AAU basketball team coaches tell us about a great app called Home Court where you can practice drills, including dribbling drills that can be done without a hoop. Her team has competitions to see who can score the highest. I took my basketball to work and practiced during down times. The drill is while you dribble, the screen shows green dots that you have to hit with your off hand. The faster you react the higher the points. You have a minute to score. I send her the results-- my best score. 135.
She texts back “I’m better.”
“Prove it,” I type.
“Ok dokie.”
When I get home, she meets me with a basketball.
First attempt. 192.
The competitive fire burns still.
“I win,” she says. "Ice cream. You're buying."
