The Unknown Parent is a series of musings for Sports360AZ.com from an anonymous parent of athletes. The parent is an Arizona high school sports fan from their time involved in education, coaching and athletics. Want to have your questions or comments featured in future articles? Email TheUnknownParentAZ@gmail.com.
Are high school sports worth the toll that injuries take?
Before my kids started playing sports, I never fully understood the toll of an injury. I’ve been around sports for most of my life, and seen countless injuries- back in my days playing sports at an Arizona high school, I saw opposing players and teammates tear ACLs, break bones, have ankle wraps as thick as their thighs- and once, at a game of a classmate that I was attending, I saw a player get beaned in the face with fastball so hard that it changed the shape of the kid’s nose for the rest of high school.
Outside of a couple of concussions, I was never injured in any of the sports I played, and I never missed a game, match, or meet specifically due to an injury- so maybe that’s where I failed to develop the proper empathy for what people go through.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been sympathetic. Just never fully empathetic until the last couple of years.
One of my high school athletes is earning the designation of “injury prone.” It’s three completely separate injuries over the course of 30 months, but it has greatly affected their progress as an athlete, their standing within the hierarchy of their team, and their mental health.
I’ve watched the same person I was able to lovingly guide through their ABC’s, first steps, first bonk on the head, first scraped knee- have to re-learn how to use one of their joints, move through a weeks-long fog of a concussion while trying to balance academic responsibilities, and stay up nights questioning their worth as a person when a third injury cost them almost an entire season of play.
And that’s all outside of how it has affected my partner and I as parents. I know we’re not the main characters here, but the purpose of this column is to express thoughts and feelings from a parent perspective that go otherwise unspoken, so I’m going to do exactly that.
Here is the honest truth about how a sports injury affects the dynamics of a home.
- It’s expensive.
Money is not the main thing. But it is a thing. Rehabilitation co-pays, family insurance plan out of pocket costs- these things will have you asking yourself the question “is this all worth it?”
The answer is yes. Of course it’s yes. But we’ve been in a situation where we’re moving money around just to make sure we can cover the week’s orthopedic bills, with no guarantee of progress or healing, or protection against future injury, and it’s natural for the question to come up! Our family has four core values, and we try to look at everything that comes our way through the lens of those four values. One of those is resilience- that every effort is a choice. If our child can make the attempt to be physically resilient, we can model financial resilience.
- It’s humbling.
Nothing will bring a sports family back down to earth like an injury. One moment, your child is holding the ball in the end zone, surrounded by celebrating teammates, and you’re on top of the world. The next, they’re not getting up after a tackle and you’re asking the security guard for permission to go through the gate so you can observe their answers to a concussion test.
All injuries do is remind you that, in many ways, you’re powerless. You can’t make your child feel better. You can’t make your child heal quicker. You can’t protect them from their inner voice introducing doubt, and shame, and regret, and anger. You can’t even stop yourself from having the same emotions!
The physical injury often pales in comparison to injured pride and self-worth.
But the hidden blessing when it comes to being humbled is having to set your intention day-by-day, hour-by-hour.
I will not snap at my spouse because we both feel helpless.
I will count my blessings to combat the obvious elephant of discontent that is in the room.
I will count and cling to the small victories that happen in front of a physical therapist.
I will not focus on what is lost.
An assistant coach at a prominent Arizona high school often says “more is caught than taught.” In dealing with sports injuries, I’ve found that how we act as parents significantly influences the healing process- and not necessarily in speeding it up, but in setting our kids up to deal with the adversity they’ll encounter in life after high school.
- It’s disruptive.
We don’t just have one kid. We have a few. And they’re all involved in athletics in some capacity. In order to make being a family of athletes work, we have to be a well-oiled machine. Injuries burn that oil until we’re just… a clanky, creaky, smoky machine.
Imagine spending a year excitedly looking forward to having a kid that is old enough to drive themselves home from practice because you’re already at maximum soccer mom/dad capacity… and then all of the sudden they can’t drive at all. Plus, you now have to find room in the schedule to get them to physical therapy. And you have to budget time for accountability in the rehabilitation process. No one ever talks about the energy it takes to make sure that your young athlete does the things that are necessary to aid the healing process. Then again, it’s probably my fault for not realizing that the same kids that need a daily reminder to brush their teeth, or to not leave their shoes in walkways, or to wash any dishes they use if they expect to not be eating out of their own hands, would also need constant reminders to rest, ice, compress and elevate.
It’s frustrating, because most parents that aren’t micromanagers long for the day of relationships with their kids that are less accountability-based, and more guidance-based.
I will say this about the disruption that injuries cause- in the same way that a physical injury forces compensation by other limbs and muscle groups, injuries also force you to lean into your community. Some of the best bonds I’ve forged with other sports parents have come from a place of having an unmet need that the natural helpers amongst us have stepped into. And once someone drives my kid home from a practice because I’m stuck at a doctor’s office- it reminds me of the joy of team sports. Getting picked up when you’re down- having the chance to do it for others when they’re down. Having people ask about our child’s progress and openly root for them, and knowing that they value these kids as more than what they can do on the field. Injuries actually create opportunities for community, and I’m grateful to have experienced that.
Back to the question that started this week’s column off- Are high school sports worth the toll that injuries take?
In some cases, that answer is no. Objectively, a head injury could change everything for your child in a very permanent way… and it’s hard to find the value in paying that kind of price for precious children to play organized sports at the same place where they learn algebra.
If I could take my children’s injuries away, I would. I’m not going to sit here and say I wouldn’t have them take a magic pill. If the choice is healthy, or not healthy- healthy is the choice. But that’s not how this works.
An injury is just an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to draw near as a family. It’s an opportunity to be resilient. It’s an opportunity to lean on your community. And it’s an opportunity to slow down, narrow your focus, and measure successes in a new way.
- The Unknown Parent
The post The Unknown Parent – Are high school sports worth the toll that injuries take? first appeared on Sports360AZ.
