Sheila Sims Iding
Like most of you I watched the sports unfold yesterday. I hoped for a big win in college football and an even bigger, more important win for the Tigers. I didn’t just hope during the game…I hoped most of the day…well until about the 7th inning. Then I let the thoughts and gratitude of a great season take the place of hope and I settled into “thanks for the memories” mode. It was a big sports day yesterday for sure.
Early this morning as I was scrolling through the home page of facebook I notice the comments about Spartan football, the concerns about Michigan football, the Lansing Catholic Girls’ Golf Championship and the condolences about the fallen Detroit Tigers.
Scroll….read…scroll…read…scroll….read…scroll…SNAP!...snap back to reality. There in the midst of all the sports comments was a prayer for a little girl who lost her battle to cancer. There among the comments, the tailgate pictures, some Halloween costume pictures, some family bonding pictures was a post for “Adalin to Rest in Peace”. A beautiful (and I mean BEAUTIFUL) little nine year old with amazing blue eyes who lost her battle to cancer this weekend. SNAP…back to reality.
Now I know we all get it. We know football and baseball and even playoff games are never more important than children…than health…than life. We all get it. We all get REAL life. But it has always been my wish…for a long, long time…for the athletes and coaches to get it. Ask my family…every time there is an interview with a coach or an athlete and they proclaim the sadness of a loss or the devastation of an injury. I just wish they would change their words. I wish they would change their perspective.
I was an athlete. I played competitive softball for years. I never competed for a national title or a world series trophy with the whole world watching but I know from championship games (to get to nationals) the thrill of victory. I know when a victorious athlete is before a camera and says “there are no words to describe this feeling”…I get precisely what he/she means. I have been to that pinnacle. I have also been to the depths of athletic despair. I have lost the big game…more than once. As a pitcher, I have been the cause of the loss of a big game. I truly get…and have lived…the agony of defeat. I never played in a game important enough to be interviewed by FOX sports or covered by an ESPN crew. But if I had been interviewed I hoped I would keep perspective.
I have the same hope for these athletes. Especially the down and out. I wish after the big loss of a game an athlete would say “we lost the big game…but somewhere there is father out there who lost his job and is desperately trying not to lose his house.”
I wish after the end of a losing season a coach wouldn’t lament about all that went wrong and how bad the season turned out to be. I wish he would say “It was a tough, horrible season but somewhere there is a mom with three kids who is going through chemo. Talk about tough. Talk about horrible.”
I wish just once a player who blew out a knee or suffered a season ending injury would say…”I have great doctors and great trainers. It will be a long recovery but somewhere a kid with cancer is just hoping to make any recovery.”
I love sports. I love the competition of it all. I love the game within the game. I love athletes. I know they don’t truly lose total perspective. But somewhere between the big pay check, the charter flights and the catered food...I think they forget. I know their families have faced devastation too. I just wish once they would say it during the interview after the loss, after the injury, after the devastation. There are many amazing athletes out there. Most of them have worked really hard to get where they are at. Most of them are epitome of hard work. But so was this darling, beautiful Adalin who I had never heard of before this morning’s coffee. She worked hard too. She worked hard to beat cancer. She lost. SNAP!...back to reality.
(May God bless His new angel, Adalin, and her special family.)