The new high school football season is underway, and my son is playing on the varsity, which has won its first two games. That's the good news.
The bad news, for him, is he isn't playing as much as he had expected he would.
Since the team is winning, he can't complain. And he hasn't. My wife asked him a couple times if he's happy with how much playing time he's been getting, and he admitted he'd like to play more, but said he understands what's going on. I do too, and I view this as yet another life lesson that football teaches: Sometimes in sports -- and in life -- an individual is going to have to make sacrifices in order help the team.
I should point out that my son, a junior, has played roughly half of the defensive snaps over the first two games, so don't feel too sorry for him. He hasn't played yet on offense, though, and that is where the disappointment is. Our high school is a small school, and the best players usually play both offense and defense.
Sometimes it's different when you're a quarterback, however. In junior football one year, the coaches wouldn't let him play in the "A'' games because they didn't want to take a chance he might get hurt, and then they wouldn't have anyone to play quarterback in the "B'' games. Then, in the B games, they wouldn't let him play defense for the same reason.
This year, my son had hoped to play receiver, but because he played quarterback on the JV team last season, the coaches had him competing for the starting quarterback position rather than a starting receiver position. Ultimately, he didn't win the quarterback job (he was always a longshot), and by the time he finally got moved to receiver, the receiver rotation was set -- without him in it.
There's a chance that if he'd been playing receiver all summer, he'd be in the playing rotation now. But by playing quarterback -- and playing well enough to extend the competition the entire summer -- he pushed his competitor to lift his own game in order to earn the starting job. And because he played well enough to earn the coaches' confidence, it's given them the freedom to allow the starting quarterback to play defense, too, which makes the defense better, as well.
Of course, my son would prefer to be on the field. But in this case, his being a backup quarterback is still a significant contribution to the team. It's as the poet John Milton explained so perfectly with the last line of his poem, On His Blindness: "They also serve who only stand and wait.''
