The Don and his loyal sidekick, Sancho Panza. (Where is my Sancho?) They seek great deeds, and charge against windmills… (from Wikipedia)
[4-minute read]
[This was originally posted on May 27/26 under the “It’s All About Sports!” rubric.]
I really must read Don Quixote. Many say it’s the first great novel in Western Literature, written in Spain while Shakespeare ruled English theatre. Early 17th-century work of genius, fully titled The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, by Miguel de Cervantes. Maybe you’ve heard of it. I’m amazed I’ve never gotten ‘round to it. And no, this isn’t English class, and yes, we WILL be talking about sports. Metaphor alert! Hang on tight now!
(Look, never mind my career as a high school English teacher and alleged lit-wit. Ignore the pretensions, the haunting of Writers Festivals (pre-eminently my Ottawa local) and poetry-adjacent mooning (and jooning) and my long affection for being among readers even less accomplished than me. (Hello, Room 2011! Hello, ENG 3A1!) Pretend, you and I, that we barely notice all the faux-brave resolutions and horse-wishes about finding myself, thorough-going small-town balls-for-brains that I was and remain, in the art of writing, and maybe even finding the artist in me. Yeah, Don Quixote is a substantial hole in my reading resume, and likely yours, too. Call yourself a READER? Et cetera.)
But even that cliché shame doesn’t quite cover it, since I know myself to be more than a little “quixotic, i.e., /kwɪkˈsɒtɪk/, defined by Merriam-Webster as the foolishly impractical pursuit of ideals, typically marked by rash and lofty romanticism” (Wikipedia). Furthermore the expression “tilting at windmills describes an act of attacking imaginary enemies (or an act of extreme idealism), [which] derives from an iconic scene in the book.” (This was also Wikipedia.) Don Quixote was so buzzed out on his reading of romances that he charged into noble battle against, yes, windmills, which he mistook for the kind of fearsome monsters that noble knights slew and saved the day in books. Rash romanticism? Extreme idealism? Me? Heck, I spent the bulk of my professional life as a high school teacher in a couple of southern Ontario towns. I loved baseball and hockey, football and basketball, and have long coached the latter as if world peace and climate justice depended on it, as I like to say. Is that the biography of a crazy idealist undertaking missions ridiculous?
‘Fraid so. I have charged, on an overloaded donkey, sporting a rusty sword and a lance not much longer than my left arm, numerous windmills of my fevered athletic imagination. (Ask Cap’n Gord about my vision of new lights, a large grandstand and the hundreds-nay-thousands watching the Mount Hope A’s play Senior Men’s fastball. I played shortstop, batted leadoff, wasn’t bad, but in my mind was headed for the Olympics in a sport the IOC barely considered.) (Ask Coach Donny, who shared – though less scarred by ‘rash and lofty romanticism’ – my vision of challenging the great high school hoops teams of Toronto from the banks of the Grand River in a small hockey-mad town. I played the role of a less accomplished Chip Hilton turning into a Coach John Wooden Of The Western Niagara Peninsula. But we never quite made it to small-school provincials.)
The most recent evidence of this quixotic strain, this passion for the unlikely, comes at a French Catholic high school where I find myself coaching, deep into retirement from teaching, a junior varsity basketball team. I’m in a good-sized city this time, working alongside a fine young coach, but again as if world peace…etc. (And as if my remaining hair was on fire.) I still love it. Kids get fine things from it. I feel useful and engaged. And for a couple of years now, realizing how much high school ballers would benefit from such cross-training, a Phys. Ed. teacher and I have tried to develop a track ‘n’ field program, une équipe d’Athlètisme.
I must be nuts. Another windmill? A big-city championship in school basketball, in a time when AAU clubs and alleged “prep schools” are ascendant, isn’t improbable enough?
I convinced, Mighty Persuader that I am, two of my kids (and not ONE varsity ballplayer) to make their fairly half-arse efforts at being tracksters. They weren’t really feeling it. But still I fell, rookie coach and raging romantic fool that I am, in athletic love with a group of new kids who initially came out for my back-hall Speed’n’Power training in March. Not gonna lie, as the kiddies say: it was such a pleasure to get to know and coach a number of girls, mostly in grades 9 and 10, who are regularly more pleasant and grateful and funny than their male peers. Some of the school’s best athletes made occasional appearances, wanting to get a few days off school for this year’s more ambitious slate of meets. Times went down and measurements rose.
Still, unlike Don Q, the “man of La Mancha”, reality does eventually register with me. Few kids were able to sustain much commitment to this new adventure of building a track and field team. “Coach, I train on my own for my soccer (or football, or hockey, or basketball, or improv) team…” As coaches, we tip-toed in setting expectations; predictably, most showed up for the bare minimum of events and, after a month, for way less than that. Sheesh, we had two kids take a pair of days off school for the City of Ottawa championship meet without having been to ANY of the previous ten practices. Good athletes, nice kids. Not my idea of team- and culture-building. Reality bites. Dreams grow mouldy.
The tabs of my laptop are littered with videos on the arm mechanics of hurdlers and the footwork of triple-jumpers; meanwhile, our school has a cruddy gravel track, no starting blocks, the most embarrassingly cobbled-together imitation hurdles, and one weedy jumping pit. But never fear! I see provincial championships and NCAA scholarships and genuinely strong and fit basketball boys in our future. Well, I did sustain that dream for a month or so. Athlètisme might even have a lower social media Q-score than hoops in my city, but there’s this: the best track and field athletes in Ottawa were all at the City championship meet. The best of them are members of the Ottawa Lions TFC, and are FAR out in front of the field. I’ve picked out a handful of names to watch for in future Olympics. And hey, we did have two athletes, admittedly inexperienced but in non-marquis events, win Novice (girls javelin) and Junior (boys 300m hurdles) titles. Eight more kids qualified top-five to go to Regionals tomorrow and Friday. (So did I!)
But as the chief coach, acknowledging my excellent general knowledge about track and field (Olympic Games quadrennial appointment television!) and my rudimentary technical skills in teaching events I never participated in, I can’t help reflecting that this “team” practised substantially less often and far less hard than my middle of the road JV basketball team. Still, I habitually think, Okay, it’s a start. We’re building something that could be meaningful, that kids would care about for more than just a barely-earned day (or six!) off school. From tiny acorns mighty oaks do grow. If you build it, they will come. And so on.
Right this minute, I’m not convinced. The kids sure aren’t buying it! I don’t like admitting defeat, but the alternative feels suspiciously like slaying monsters that don’t exist.
Windmills, man oh man. Windmills.
