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Another year gone, although not without leaving impressions

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  • Another year gone, although not without leaving impressions

    Providence Journal , RI
    Dec 26 2004

    Bill Reynolds: Another year gone, although not without leaving
    impressions

    The Pats won another Super Bowl, and the Sox won their first World
    Series title in 86 years. But sometimes you remember the little
    things the most.

    Here are four:


    One night in May I was one of several former basketball players who
    went back to Worcester Academy to honor our old coach, Dee Rowe, then
    75 and recuperating from serious cancer surgery.

    It was a night full of memory, and later I kept thinking of how some
    lessons always stay with us, while so many others disappear through
    the mists of time.

    I had been 18 the year I spent at Worcester Academy, and it hadn't
    been a particularly easy time for me. I was homesick, lovesick, and
    viewed the world through the myopia of someone who thought he was
    going to be 18 forever. Suffice it to say I often clashed with Rowe,
    an intense coach who talked about things like sacrifice and
    commitment, dedication and tradition, words that often seemed to
    float by my head like missed shots.

    But for the past 40 years he's made me feel like the most special
    person in the world, even though I only played one year for him and
    wasn't the easiest kid in the world to coach back then. And I have
    come to know he's done that for so many who once played for him, and
    how that is his special gift.

    It's not the easiest time to be a coach, not in an age where
    entitlement and instant gratification always are on the roster. What
    used to be called coaching is now to often thought of as criticism.

    But I have come to know that I still carry Rowe's voice around in my
    head, know how much influence he had on all of us, even if I didn't
    always realize it at the time. It's now 40 years later, and I can't
    remember one thing any teacher taught me at Worcester Academy, but I
    remember lessons he taught me, even when I didn't think I was
    listening.

    For good coaches matter.

    Trust me.

    It was an early morning in June and I was at the Veterans Memorial
    Auditorium with a 26 year old named Sam Hajinyan.

    He had first come to this country 13 years earlier, leaving his
    native Armenia and all that was familiar, to be here in this new
    country with its new dreams. What were the odds that day that five
    years later he would be an All-State basketball player, his life
    changed by a game he knew nothing about?

    All he knew that first day at Park View Junior High School was that
    other kids were laughing at him.

    Nor did he like this new country. He had no friends. No real life he
    cared about here. He was 13 years old, and he felt lost and alone, a
    stranger in a strange land.

    Then he found basketball.

    It gave him something to do. It gave him something to care about. It
    gave him friends. It gave him an identity. In short, it did all the
    the things we like to think sports do. No small thing in a family
    trying to survive in a new country. More important, basketball became
    his language, his way of communicating, his passport to acceptance.

    "I never would have made it without basketball," he said.

    Sports can have no better epitath.

    For he has made it, has come so far from the scared, lonely kid who
    first went to a junior high where kids laughed at him.

    He went to junior college for two years, works two jobs, is planning
    to open a restaurant with his brother, and on that bright and
    beautiful morning in June he was one of of 600 people sworn in as
    United States citizens. The ceremony was a testimony to the enduring
    promise of America, this country that allows for people to dream of a
    better life, something that's often so easy for the rest of us to
    take for granted.

    "This is bigger than anything I can do," Hajinyan said. "This is a
    lovely day. This makes me complete."

    In truth, the Red Sox winning the pennant in 1967 was bigger for me
    than their winning the World Series this past October. I was more of
    a fan then. And that season had come out of nowhere, where this year
    didn't surprise me in the same way. Going into the the season I had
    thought this Red Sox team had the best pitching I had seen in my
    lifetime, and since I always had believed their longtime frustration
    title had more to do with lack of pitching and managerial blunders
    than curses, when they finally won it simply seemed it was about
    time. Call me jaded.

    Then a funny thing happened.

    In the weeks that followed there were innumerable stories about what
    it meant to the fans, all those reports of people going to cemetaries
    and leaving mementos on the graves of departed family members.
    Innumerable stories of how cathartic it was to so many people, an
    emotional journey that transcended baseball. People of all ages, all
    walks of life, all united by a baseball team that gave a region an
    incredible moment.

    So in the weeks since I've come to be reminded of the power of sports
    to bring people together, give them a shared experience, no small
    thing in a fractious society that too often seems disconnected by age
    and income, race and political beliefs. Have come to be reminded
    that, at their best, sports are always more important than what
    happens on the field. That, at their best, sports always are
    transformative, take us out of ourselves.

    Reason enough to keep watching them.

    The letter came in November from a woman whose son played on the
    South Kingstown High School football team. It said how there were
    only six seniors on the team and one of them was hurt. It said how
    the team was 1-8, but that every Monday the seniors would come to
    practice and start preparing for the next game, continuing to pour
    their hearts into what had become a dismal season, and she wanted to
    know why.

    It was a legitimate question.

    Why did these kids still care when so many kids these days have no
    stomach for any kind of failure, no patience for anything less than
    success? Why did they keep keeping on?

    I discovered there were two main reasons: a bunch of kids who liked
    each other, and had come to realize it's a privilege just to be able
    to play. And a coach who convinced them they all were going to do
    whatever they could to do the best they could, regardless of what the
    scoreboard said.

    "There are no guarantees that you're going to be successful," said
    Bruce Tardiff, the longtime South Kingstown coach. "It's a lot like
    life. No guarantees. The only guarantee is, can you look yourself in
    the mirror and like what you see? These kids can."

    Can you learn any better lesson playing high school football?

    I don't think so.

    Even if it came on the wrong end of the scoreboard.
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