Interesting Stuff

Our kids, and many parents sometimes look at these "brainiacs" with a little snicker because they don't have an athletic twitch in their body. Funny thing is, in many cases those same kids are laughing at the "jocks" to and from the bank their whole professional career.

I'll step out of the box, put on my armor, and guess that a kid who strives to be the best he can be academically, puts in more hours of "dedicated training" throughout his life than an athlete does. Which brings up the question....Who's tougher?

My coworker is a "chess mom", "spelling bee mom", "math mom" etc. She has two boys who are very bright and are more interested in academic hobbies than sports.

It has been fun to hear about their experiences at weekend chess tourneys or academic competitions, and draw parallels with the baseball and hockey tourneys which took up my family's weekends when our boys were young. A lot of similarities!

Julie

I agree MN-Mom.

Whether it's chess, baseball, s0ccer, debate, mathalthetes or tiddlywinks it's all basically the same. Same passion and committment, same competition and same parental involvement. I think the diversity is great and I would have liked to be there with TR to experience the way the other half lives.

fillsfan

It was fun talking with them and hearing their experiences

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Funny thing is, in many cases those same kids are laughing at the "jocks" to and from the bank their whole professional career.

One of the Harvard chants at sporting events is "You're beating us now. But you'll be working for us later."

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Originally posted by RJM:

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Funny thing is, in many cases those same kids are laughing at the "jocks" to and from the bank their whole professional career.

One of the Harvard chants at sporting events is "You're beating us now. But you'll be working for us later."

... and at Yale.

You know thats awesome. Your playing a sporting event and your getting it handed to you. So what do you do? Yeah your better than us and your kicking our a s s but we are going to earn more money than you down the road. Wow! Congrats. So take your butt whoopin and hang your hat on that. Congrats.

The funny thing is some of the most successful people I went to hs with never even went to college. One owns his own body shop. He started another one in the Charlotte area and has one in South Carolina. Another geek in hs who barely got his hs diploma owns his own trucking company in Durham. He started as a yard jockey in hs. He now owns the company he was working for in hs. The guy is loaded. He funds three travel teams in the youth ages and is a big donor to a local college.

I think its great kids can go to these schools and get a great education. I think its great that other kids can take an entirely different path and be very successful in life. I think that is called America.

I think it's funny that my son and a few others that I coached in a geeky, gifted program engineering competition many years ago, are now going off to play baseball in college. That didn't happen too often when I was their age, "back in the day"; there was not much cross-over between "geek" and "jock"...

A really cool 'sports' movie is 'Searching for Bobby Fisher' .... about chess tourneys and parents...it's great.

Coach May just wishes his kids would have gotten into NASCAR so he could hang out in the pits every weekend instead of throwing them all that BP over the years..

Now thats funny skipper.

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Coach May just wishes his kids would have gotten into NASCAR so he could hang out in the pits every weekend instead of throwing them all that BP over the years..

Baseball players "turn left" too.

I coached youth ball with a gentleman who was a physics teacher and Coach of the US Olympic Science Team that won gold---thus I am aware of the world outside baseball

Sidelight---his mentor was my HS Physics teacher

I am one of the aforementioned chess parents. I do not appreciate you speaking condescendingly in my direction. How dare you patronize me in your sly and utterly sinister manner. Good day.

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Originally posted by Milkie:
I am one of the aforementioned chess parents. I do not appreciate you speaking condescendingly in my direction. How dare you patronize me in your sly and utterly sinister manner. Good day.

No offense but I don't see where anyone was condescending towards chess or any other academic area kids / parents. I love the fact "these" kids are serious about chess or whatever it is.

As a teacher I spend enough time around apathetic kids as is. I LOVE teaching kids who just want to compete - it might be on the athletic field / court or it might be in the classroom. I don't care if it's the stereotypical jock or the stereotypical geek. I want to teach / coach (both words mean the same to me - I coach in the classroom and I teach on the field and vice versa) people who want to succeed.

One of the biggest eye openers to me early in my teaching career was teaching an AP class in US History. Most of the class was kids who were not going to step foot on the baseball field, football field, basketball court or any other athletic place but let me tell you this - those kids fought themselves / each other to be the best in the class.

The worst thing for a teacher is to get a class full of kids who just don't care. Even kids who get good grades that don't care are a chore to teach. You can only do so much to "make the class fun" to get their attention. At some point they have to compete to be successful.

Milkie,

I appreciate your sarcasm.

Personally, I am hoping Son24 has a professional dual sport career; baseball and chess.

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Originally posted by Milkie:
I am one of the aforementioned chess parents. I do not appreciate you speaking condescendingly in my direction. How dare you patronize me in your sly and utterly sinister manner. Good day.

I speak condescendingly in your general direction...

Now will the aforementioned go away, or shall I taunt you a second time?

wraggarm you owe me a new laptop.



After seeing the pic and reading what you put I spit pepsi all over mine after losing it from laughing. Now my fingers are wet and sticky.

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wraggarm you owe me a new laptop.

I'll add you to the list. I'm working things off chronologically, replacing or paying for all the stuff I've broken or lost.

So far, I'm up to the late 80's.

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I'll add you to the list. I'm working things off chronologically, replacing or paying for all the stuff I've broken or lost.

So far, I'm up to the late 80's.

That sounds like a great idea for a TV series.

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Originally posted by 1baseballdad:

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I'll add you to the list. I'm working things off chronologically, replacing or paying for all the stuff I've broken or lost.

So far, I'm up to the late 80's.

That sounds like a great idea for a TV series.

Yeah, but those guys are focused on Karma. I've got no chance on that front.

Actually, the cheer when I was there was
"That's alright, that's okay; they'll be working for us someday."