End of a season

End of a season

A few weeks ago, the recently deposed New York Yankees manager, Joe Torre, was on Dave Letterman’s TV show talking about fan expectations.

He told the story of how at spring training in 2002 a fan asked for an autograph and, after accepting it, told the manager in keep-your-chin-up style that “we’ll do better this year.”

The punchline is that the year before, the Yankees came within two outs of beating the Arizona Diamondbacks in the World Series.

How much better can you do? For some Yankee fans, the answer is obvious: if you don’t win the World Series, it ain’t that great of a season.

And maybe there are some Cardinal Mooney High School football fans who have started to feel the same way; the Cardinals have been making a habit of going to the big dance each year. But those fans, as few as they might number, reflect the origin of fan, fanatic: unreasonable enthusiastic, overly zealous. And they are missing the real beauty of the game.

As hard as it was for Cardinal Mooney’s players on Saturday — and the Ursuline Irish players as well on Friday — to accept defeat, they did so. And they did so with maturity beyond their years and class beyond anyone’s reasonable expectations.

It’s a new day

Scholastic sports has grown beyond what it was in the youth of our fathers and grandfathers (and mothers and grandmothers), but it is still capable of doing what it does best, building character.

The Mooney and Ursuline teams are the most high-profile examples, because they each went to the state championship game and they play in the sport that draws the most fans — students and alumni — to the games. But every team and every athlete playing in every sport earned the respect of their parents and peers every time they suited up.

The playoff teams earned their trophies and medallions and have had their day in the sun. But we’ll end this tribute to high school athletes with a story about a team that had a less than stellar season, as far as wins and losses go.

A couple of weeks ago, at the Youngstown District Scholastic Soccer Coaches Association honors banquet, the Warren Harding High School boys soccer team was presented the sportsmanship award. The presenter, who is a coach and a referee, told about a Harding game he had officiated at in mid-season, when the team hadn’t won a game. Before the game, as the boys stood at attention on the field waiting for the Star-Spangled Banner to begin over the PA system, it became apparent that there was a malfunction. So as a team, they reacted. They began singing the national anthem.

When parents and coaches and fans (fans in the best sense of the word) support their teams, win or lose, they’re doing what’s truly important on and off the field — building character.

Congratulations, of course, to Mooney and Ursuline for exceptional seasons. And congratulations, too, to all those other football players and the golfers, the runners and the soccer and volleyball players for their successful seasons — regardless of Ws and Ls.