San Francisco's weather is always something of a puzzle to outsiders, but even those of us who live here marvel at what a spectacular month September can be. On another sunny day, in our new twice-a-week routine, my 15-year-old and I shared another soccer game.
His team won again, 6-0; they're tied for first place (4-0); and he played well, once again starting and playing all 90 minutes as a freshman. I'm seeing him mature as a player game by game, and enjoying that immensely.
Meeting some of the other soccer parents (and the school principal, who attends the games) is a treat for me. Without sports, I might never get to feel at home at a big urban high school. I never really felt comfortable at my older kids' schools, knowing few other parents and having little reason to get involved on any substantive level.
This school is different; not long ago it had a very rough reputation, but like most local public schools, it has been working hard to improve, and the results are starting to impress people around the city.
He's the kind of kid who honesty likes diversity and people from different backgrounds and cultures. He is friendly, and already has made friends. And here is something any parent of a kid entering high school should consider if (s)he (or you) are on the fence about playing sports:
He now has friends who are freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors. How cool is that! Without sports, he would be confined to one-fourth of the school's population, essentially.
I've always been a big booster of sports for kids. Some of my most impressive students at Stanford were student athletes, often times very successful ones, but they also excelled in the classroom.
There's a lot to learn from sports -- the value of hard work, discipline, teamwork, how to become resilient, how to channel your emotions, how to set and achieve stretch goals.
These qualities are the reason so many former athletes also succeed in business. If you know how to work hard to accomplish something important to you, you are going to have an advantage over others who simply feel entitled to success.
Success has to be earned.
Practice, practice, practice. As Malcolm Gladwell proves in Outliers, anything special that you want badly enough in most fields of endeavor will require at least 10,000 hours of practice.
By the time a young athlete graduates from college, he or she will have hit that number of hours in most cases.
Think about that.
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