(Ryan Casey/CHSAANow.com)
This fall marks the start of my 40th season in high school sports and activities. The amazing thing about this milestone is that this season is every bit as exciting and exhilarating as the first one, as well as every year in between. It seems that the start of school and the fall season is always filled with optimism and hope.
Every team, coach, student athlete, parent and community gets to start with a clean slate, and has the ability to make this season better than last year. Everyone starts out with the intent to be better, do better, learn more, and in general make the most of the limited time high school sports programs have to make student athletes better people.
With those thoughts in mind, I wanted to take a minute to remind all of us to think in the long term, and to keep the perspective that the huge issues of today will be a distant memory tomorrow.
I am reminded that the first students I coached forty years ago are now in their fifties with kids and grandkids of their own. While I can remember many instances of tears, disappointment and trials of all sorts, for the life of me I have no idea what those were about.
I only hope that today’s students can look back with nothing but fond memories of their high school experiences. I can only hope that whether they know it or not, today’s high school experiences will contribute to make our students the good parents and citizens they will become tomorrow.