— Musings —10.10.2013 09:07 AM
My son’s schoolmate, Jaedan Washington
One of Son One’s schoolmates at St. Mike’s is Jaedan Washington. Jaedan is about as tall as my boy, but heavier and – as you will shortly see – probably a bit stronger.
Jaedan, number six, was recently filmed by a St. Mike’s kid. The video kicked around the school for a bit, and my son and others circulated it wherever they could. The video has now gone viral, as they say, and Jaedan has started to receive calls from American sports media, among many others. When you watch this, you’ll see why. My son, and his schoolmates, are pretty proud of Jaedan. (And so are others: check out the number of hits this vid, and its variants, have gotten!)
When I was a kid in the early 1950’s, my heroes were people like Sugar Ray Robinson, Kid Gavilan, Carmen Basileo. One Saturday a month I would hitch into Portage la Prairie to by the latest Ring magazine. On our military base they taught us kids boxing.
Later, circa 1960, I came across a study in the Brit Med Assn journal on the long term effects of head blows from boxing, the slow bleeding, and the irreversible damage. (I had received my share of such blows.)
I never could figure out why boxing not only continued, but became more popular than ever, big money. Even Pete Seegar’s song, ‘Who \killed Davy Moore’ made no difference. I never again had the same take on what had been my one time passion.
Until a few years ago, I helped coach football at our local high school. Concussions, which I did not remember happening much in my own playing in days in the 1960’s, happened too often. With a couple of other coaches we began to follow some of the studies being done. I notice that a week or so ago that USA PBS ran a documentary on NFL denials of the long term effects of concussions on its players. Those players are huge, and those pads are harder than I remember them being.
I think there is something to looking hard at our encouraging our kids to do things that might be adversely affecting them long term.
One of my biggest fears is that my young son will want to play football when he is in high school.
Tim. I chucked my mouthful of soup. Don’t do those things anywhere near suppertime in the Maritimes.
Kid’s a tank!
He looks like Marcus Dupree! I hope it works out better for him though.
The kid is a tank – but that has to be some of the worst tackling I’ve seen. For crying out loud there are soccer teams that hit better.