A couple weeks ago I saw a meme on Facebook that said something like, "The wins and losses will be forgotten, but you'll remember your teammates forever." At that moment, it struck me that I don't feel like Jacob feels that way about his sports teammates. He's always been friendly enough with his teammates, but never really made anything I'd consider a life-long friendship.
But it wasn't until we were chatting with his therapist at our monthly appointment last week that I realized the significance of this issue. The therapist asked him about his teammates, and what he likes about them. As he started discussing them, I realized everything revolved around their skills on the field, rather than their personalities. Hmmm.
Ever since Jacob could walk, he's been obsessed with sports. It has been central to almost everything in his life. Conveniently, he grew up with a dad working in sports and a mom with a very high tolerance for them, so it was always pretty natural. As a toddler he constantly had a piece of sports equipment in his hand--be it a bat, lacrosse stick, hockey stick, or a ball. And if he didn't have one of those things, he was making something into sports equipment--a toy broom became a hockey stick, or a toy pot and plastic apple became a lacrosse stick and ball. It was constant. And when he got older, he graduated to simulating a sporting event however he could--playing in our living room, drawing it on paper, or playing with action figures, keychains, condiment bottles, or whatever else he could find on a pretend field or rink. It was just a way of life, and to this day he is mostly either playing basketball outside, in his room, or on the Xbox.
The sports have changed over the years. As a toddler it was usually whatever was in season. As he got older, there's been an ebb and flow--usually in something in season but periodically something would strike his fancy and we'd be on a whole new obsession out of the blue. He tried soccer when he was four, and started lacrosse when he was five. Baseball came the following summer and lasted four summers, until kid pitch started and it got a lot less fun. To be fair, lacrosse was really starting to take over at that point, but I'll admit that having kids pitch made it extra slow and very hard to get a hit, so it's no wonder Jacob was frustrated. We hated to lose some of the relationships we'd made, but it seemed necessary at the time to focus on his true love, lacrosse.
For the past six years, lacrosse has been the constant in his sports universe, in some form--whether playing or being a fan. And now, it's not. When he plays his last travel tournament in July, that may be the end of his lacrosse career. It's heartbreaking and disappointing...but seemingly inevitable. He just doesn't love it anymore. After not winning a house league game in about a year, and not getting reasonable playing time with his very successful travel team, he's lost his fire. Maybe he's just burned out. It takes an effort every week to get him to go to practices (house and travel) and his one weekly game. He can't see the opportunity to grow in practices and doesn't want to get hit during games. He's not having fun anymore, and it's so sad to see. The spring in his step just isn't there. The other night he had two goals and it was great, but the team lost again and the goals seemed like a hollow victory in comparison. The worst part, perhaps, is that we'll miss the families so much. It was hard enough to lose our travel families when he didn't make his old team this fall, but now we'll lose our house families, too. We went to a great Super Bowl party with a few of them last week, and it was a blast. But will we get invited back next year if we're not playing with them anymore? Every week when we go to games and practices there are so many people we know, and it will be a bummer to start to lose those connections, just like we did in baseball a couple years ago.
On the other hand, where lacrosse has died off, basketball has picked up. He has been passionate from time to time for years (all the way back to his mini basketball hoop at age 2), but it's been solid since the Raptors' playoff run this past spring. Camp and the big hoop last summer solidified it, and now that he's playing for a real team, he's all in. Well, he's annoyed with the small court they play on half the time, but he is passionate about it otherwise. And it shows when he's out on the court. I've never seen him look so comfortable or so eager. He's faster than I've ever seen, and is so sharp out there. He looks smooth and you can see his excitement. I love it. It makes me wish he could be like that about lacrosse again, too, after all the time and effort (and money) we've put into that, but I'm glad he's found his spot.
But here's the thing, getting back to the moment at the therapist the other day--he's still not really embracing the teammate thing. He loves sports, but it's always been all about the sport. He's taken it super seriously, always on the hunt for the right equipment or just the right move to make his game better. But I'm not sure he's ever had FUN. It's mostly been about winning and personal stats. He's not a bad teammate, per se, but his motivation to be a good teammate is to win and indirectly help his own game. But until I saw that meme I never really put two and two together that he's never looked at his teammates as more than a means to an end. When he didn't make his travel team, he did say he was going to miss his teammates, but now he says he doesn't--particularly since only a couple of them still talk to him at practice. It breaks my heart as I think of all the teams and all the opportunities he's had to make friends...and while they've been solid acquaintances, I'm not sure any of them have truly stuck. I already see the same thing happening with basketball, too.
As we worked through this issue with the therapist, she made a good point. The lack of solid relationships has probably also made it easier to leave. When you have a relationship with your teammates, there's a trust there. Leaving breaks that trust, so it makes it harder to make that decision than if you didn't have it. In adult life, it's those types of relationships that make it hard to leave a job, or even some sort of activity or committee. Jacob doesn't seem to have that, so he can leave his team without guilt or without a true sense of loss. When she made that connection, his complete lack of hesitation to quit lacrosse (and baseball before it) made a lot more sense.
Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure what the answer is. We came to this realization late in our therapy session, so hopefully we can dig back in next month. It saddens me that this is how he operates. I don't know if it's just a matter of talking him through this to help him understand why this isn't ideal, or if a lot more digging is needed to figure out the cause. I don't think he's entirely like this at school, although hardcore friendships have never been his strong suit. Maybe it's a fear of rejection, or just how ADHD hyperfocus plays out in sports. Maybe he's just compartmentalizing a bit too much and doesn't realize that teammates can be friends. He's often complained that other kids don't pass to him, and it definitely has some merit, but I can't help but wonder if it's just that he hasn't built up that friendship-like trust enough with kids that probably still "see" their friends better on the field than anyone else.
I apologize if this is too abstract a concept to come across clearly, but it was just such an a-ha moment when it happened that I wanted to talk myself through it here, too. Jacob's "difficult personality" diagnosis five years ago has definitely held true in many areas of his life, and apparently sports is no exception. Let's hope that a bit more maturity and some positive team experiences moving forward help him understand there's more to it than just the sport.
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