As a kid, the name of nearly every
player on the sports teams I followed was imprinted in my brain. Yet the
relationship with those players was, with few blessed exceptions, entirely
remote. Meeting a Chicago Bear at a promotional meet and greet at a Sears
in the western suburbs was worth every minute of the interminable wait.
My cousins and I would spend hours standing outside a chain link fence in a
parking lot at Jack Murphy just for the chance to get Mark Parent’s signature
on a baseball.
As I’ve grown older, the distance
between fan and athlete has narrowed. But I still feel an intense sense
of privilege at being able to meet, however briefly, an athlete I root for as a
spectator.
I doubt it will be the same for my
daughters.
In the last week, our eldest
was at Maryland women’s basketball game on Sunday, a D.C. United season ticket
holder event on Tuesday, and a college gymnastics meet last night. At
each, the highlight for her was the chance to interact with players or coaches.
At RFK Tuesday night, our
four-year old found Coach Olsen mingling with fans before the questions and
answers session, peppering him with non sequiturs that Bennie looked eager to
escape. But before he did, she learned that the coach had a four-year old
kid and pondered when, exactly, it would be appropriate to share with him what
happened when the frog’s car broke down. A couple of days earlier at
Comcast, she shared her plans to celebrate her fifth birthday at Chuck E.
Cheese’s with Maryland’s Katie Rutan and Chloe Pavlech after the women’s impressive win over Boston College.
Last night was the best of the
week. Maryland’s gymnastics team has adopted the practice of granting
kids autographs from everyone on the roster after every home meet/match.
It is not a minor commitment. There are scores of children –
overwhelmingly girls – at Comcast for these events.
Attendance last night was announced at over a thousand.
And the gymnasts don’t just
sign autographs. They really seem to love interacting with the
kids. After walking through the line, our daughter has decided that maybe
gymnastics is something that she can do and she’s been practicing her tumbling
throughout the day. It was and is amazing.
Almost
as impressive for me were the number of football and basketball players at the
meet last night that came out to support the team. Watching Dez Wells
earnestly hand out flowers as the final scores were announced it seemed, to me,
as a genuine gesture of respect for fellow athletes. For our daughters,
we make a big deal out of going to see the men’s basketball team and the
football team play. Seeing Seth Allen and Dexter McDougle (among several
others) in the stands supporting the team signaled how big a deal the meet was
as well.
Not
that it was necessary. The event spoke
for itself. The perfect ten that Katy
Dodds netted from one judge followed an electrifying floor exercise. Stephanie Giameo's beam routine drew audible
gasps.
