COLUMN
My nephew, Brayson, lives two houses from me. Like many 7-year-old boys, this dude is full of energy, loves being outdoors, and has started to develop a love for sports. Seems like the Saturdays and Sundays are growing closer together when I get a knock at the front door from this rambunctious youngster. He always expresses an interest in going to the park, playing catch, shooting baskets, or just tossing the frisbee around. Kids like this remind me that although things have changed since I was that age, they really have remained the same.
Our children express the same desire to be active and athletic within their own abilities. But when we venture to a local park, he and I are often the only two people on these large expanses of land, and neighbors several streets over can hear the bouncing of the ball and the ripple of leather from a caught baseball entering a glove.
What has changed over time are young adults and young parents are not investing the time in using unorganized athletics with children of this age to help develop the child’s fine motor skills, help them become physically active, and help their own health in the process.
So many public facilities exist around town from basketball courts, to baseball fields and walking tracks, and horseshoe pits. Some of these athletic activities could require an investment. My nephew asked to go play tennis and thought that the rackets and balls would be provided for free. But most of these endeavors fall within just about anyone’s budget. The real investments are time and selflessness.
Thankfully, cities and counties throughout the Delta are about to embark upon baseball and softball season. But, these seasons for the children are often short, rushed due to impending adult league action, and diminished in the overall experience because of the small number of teams. Widespread youth engagement in organized sports and spontaneous play in my hometown has dwindled, to say the least. Just about all major professional sports leagues have some sort of initiative encouraging parents and communities to make the athletic activity a regular parent of youth engagement and multi-generational participation.
As the level of athletic interaction between children and communities has declined over the years, an appropriate word to describe the situation was apathy. These days apathy has declined into absence. And the absence of the rituals and rites of passage between generations in athletic interaction threatens our health, wealth, and safety.
Patrick Ervin has been writing about the happenings in the Delta for more than 25 years. He can be reached at ervinconsulting@gmail.com.
