In it to win it <3
Whenever I am asked what my favorite sport is, my answer is always, “The one someone I love is playing.” I am more of a selective athlete fan than an actual sports fan. But this week I was reacquainted with the emotional pull that Track and Field/Cross Country sports have had on me for many a year.
I do not personally care to run. The only 5K’s I have done are with family to support a cause. But watching young people participate in foot race events does something to my heart.
The first breaking through into this place I didn’t know existed occurred at one of the local grade schools one fall when John was a young elementary aged kid. Cross Country was something I had never heard of, but our school offered it and so of course our kids were all in.
At our first meet, the “track” ran around the perimeter of the park that was adjacent to the school. His age group gathered on the start line, a herd of wiggling little bodies in t-shirts and whatever tennis shoes they had worn to school that day with numbers attached by safety pins to wherever the coach could get them to hold still.
They took off and I chatted with friends around me who had children also running. Eventually we noticed the volunteers kicking into action and knew the first runners must be approaching the finish line. This particular course had one final hill that led up to the completion line.
The landscape blocked our view as it was a rather steep incline, so we scanned the crest of the rise for the return of our children. Something akin to the surprise and joy and delight I felt on viewing each one of our children as the doctor held them up in the delivery room burst open in my deepest parts as John came flying over the top of that summit in first place.
I still get choked up even as I type remembering his face and that strong, slender body and long legs stretching for the finish line.
I found myself wiping many tears as our two oldest grandsons completed in their first Track and Field events this year. We attended their first events this week and I found myself screaming at the top of my lungs as they pumped arms and legs around two different football fields.
There is something about this sport that is different. In baseball, soccer, basketball, football…a lot depends on the efforts of others to score. In both Cross Country and Track, it’s all you, little man or woman.
It’s you digging down and pushing through. It’s you, keeping on when you know you are dead last. It’s you, when the cramp or the pull comes but you press on. It’s you, when you drop the baton and reach down to pick it up or when you trip and fall and have to walk back as you excuse yourself from the race. It’s you, with your eyes on the clock at the finish line hoping you beat your last record.
And then there is the crowd. Because while everyone wants their kid or teammate to win, for some reason in this sport…everyone cheers for everyone. There’s no booing of a runner or high jumper. There’s no arguing with a ref or umpire. People who don’t even know your kid are yelling to encourage them to keep on. And the one who brings up the rear of the pack usually gets as much cheering as the first place runner that lapped him.
So while my favorite sport will always and forever be the one in which someone I love is participating, I have to say that this sport is a beautiful metaphor for life.
Paul tells us to run our race as if to win. We are to live our life as if we are running alongside everyone else, focused on the end prize…cheering one another on. It doesn’t matter if we come in first or last, we ran our race to the best of our ability. That’s the goal. That’s the plan.
Beautiful <3