Jeff Hajny

    Ladies and gentlemen, there is something in this world that I cannot understand.
     I got to thinking about it and I just don't understand why a stupid game is so important. It's strange that so much emphasis is put on sports in this world.
     All the time, I talk to my former teammates from college, and it's weird how something like a game can weigh so heavily on their mind. It isn't just there either.
     When I was going to college, I used to ref peewee basketball games and it was amazing how intense parents would get. I would see parents chewing their six-year-old kids out after games and I would just think to myself about how when I was that age, I didn't care how I played in games. All I cared about was going to Pizza Hut afterwards.
     When I was in high school and college, I thought the game of basketball was everything. It's all I wanted to do. It's all I thought about.
     Every time I would have a bad game or play bad at practice, I would just lock myself away and hide from the world for the rest of the day. I felt like the world was ashamed of me.
     It never occurred to me that no matter how I played, my friends who mattered would still be my friends, my enemies would still be my enemies and my family would still love me. I'm just starting to realize that now, nearly a year after my sports career ended.
     I think people put way too much emphasis on the sports they play, especially at the youth level.
     When I was growing up, sports were meant to be a social outlet. My parents had me play soccer and youth basketball just to get me out of the house and to get me around other kids so I wouldn't be hanging around them all the time.
     Nowadays, I am seeing kids in youth basketball games and youth sports who are getting force-fed the sport from the time they are little.
     I'm always hearing about 10-year-olds who are starting to lift weights and who don't drink pop "because it cuts their vertical leap" or whatever that old wives'-tale is. I never realized that by fourth grade, people are supposed to be able to dunk and run a 4.0 40-yard dash.
     If you ask me, it's almost disgusting. People are taking sports way too seriously.
     A basketball player who went by the name of Michael Jordan once said, "People always ask me for tips for their kids who are starting to play the game and I always tell them to just let their kids enjoy it. If they don't love what they're doing, then what's the point?"
     I think His Airness was a genius for that one.
     What's sad is high school sports are becoming as much of a year-round business as college sports.
     I always hear about high school coaches having year-round weight programs for their players. Isn't high school a time for teenagers to try different things to discover what they love instead of having something force-fed down their throat year-round?
     What really annoys me is when high-school coaches have to recruit players from other schools.
     I went to high school in western Colorado. One of our big rivals was Aspen High School. We were a small, poor school in a ranching community and they were well.....Aspen. Being a rich, snobby community, they could afford to recruit players from throughout the world. Pretty much every year, they would miraculously have a 6-foot 10-inch exchange student come over from Germany to play basketball. Go figure.
     Youth and high school sports shouldn't be that important.
     Sports really aren't about having fun and getting to know one's peers anymore. Everyone saw athletes like LeBron James and now they all want their kids to be sports phenoms. We all need to realize that athletes like LeBron James are one in a billion.
     I used to love the game of basketball, but after a while, it became more of a job than a game to play. I think it was because near the end of college, I started to discover other things in the world.
     Though I think every kid should participate in sports of some type, I think that they should be allowed to enjoy themselves when they play.
     Remember, football, basketball, soccer, baseball, hockey and volleyball are all called games, not jobs.