The Season: Part Four

I'm never really prepared for the crazy cruise control of the spring. In the classroom, projects are rushed in to be done by the end of May, students are done being students from Spring Break on, and I find myself itching to move on. We've started taking a vacation right after school let's out, going to Florida, and that represents kind of like a goal for me.

Actually, a good way to describe the spring is like a new baby beginning to walk. My son Gideon is ten and a half months old and able to stand, just starting to try walking. What he does is stand up and identify his target destination, then looks at other parts of the room to see how he can get there. See, he can only take like two or three falling steps at a time, then he has to grab onto something or he will fall. So, he'll start grabbing onto the couch, then fall forward and grab onto my knee, then work his way around me and lunge for our chair, then finally gets to his goal and picks up the little play giraffe and stuffs the head in his mouth. I don't exactly have the same goals, but I take the same stumbling steps. My week off is one of those things that I stumble towards, and spring is always my time of stumbling.

As a team, we were going in so many different directions. Jeremy, Johnny, Mikey, Russell, Kyle were all playing and focusing on baseball. Jared, Jonny, Luke, Matthew and Daniel were eitehr taking lessons or at least trying to play a lot. JV guys were starting to come out and play more, as Austin, Ben and Seth became more dedicated. We were changing lots of things, giving Austin and Ben new service motions, working on Jonny's passing shots, trying to get Jared to stay positive and move his feet, trying not to lose too badly to Luke.

But with not having a consistent day on our courts because of girl's practice, trying to run middle school open gyms for soccer, tennis, and basketball, and trying to schedule times for us to run and lift weights; the spring seemed really scattered. I thought we were coming apart at the seams. I just wanted to get to my Florida trip and regroup for the summer.

It's amazing to me that we came out of this time without disillusionment. That unraveling feeling is hard to fight, so it is unbelievable that it didn't overtake everything. But I think that speaks back to the security that we all found in the vision. It wasn't short term, and their was a definite end point. Just like my son tripping and bumbling his way over to his favorite toy, the spring was a season of small, scattered steps. But we were able to reestablish ourselves at the end of that frenzied time, and look forward to the final goal we all had in mind.