As the coach of our US Army high school team here in Seoul, I found myself recently getting uber-competitive feeling towards the other US schools we play around Korea.....but in a way that was not real positive. I wanted to crush them, mercy them, and I was looking upon them as a 'thing' to be destroyed on the field rather than as individual human beings that I'm sure I would really love knowing and coaching were I at one of their schools. Then I thought, ya know what, a lot of these kids are over here with just one parent while the other works back home. And many of these kids have parents in Iraq right now -- flying missions, patrolling Baghdad......all of it. And those soldier-airman-parents will probably be hoping for a phone call or an e-mail later on so their sons can share how their games went.......avoiding IEDs on patrol and killing the time wondering how your son is doing on a ballfield thousands of miles away....
These thoughts gave me an entirely new perspective on our games today (DH).....we will have fun and we'll make sure the two visiting teams have fun as well.
PLAY BALL!!
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