Editor’s note: Stephen Seall, father of one of Corona del Sol’s standout varsity football players, shares his observations about the season and what he sees as the way it helped shape the futures of those to whom the experience will always make them proud to have been Aztecs.
My son recently completed his second season on the varsity football team for Corona del Sol High School. This program, as many know, has had more than its share of challenges, turbulence, even drama over the last couple of years. Nonetheless, he was lucky enough to be able to play as a starter over that time, and despite the lows, was also able to feel the excitement of making big plays, build close relationships with his teammates, grow in confidence, and learn more about the sport of football than he ever imagined he would.
But toward the end of this last season, it slowly became evident he was becoming dissatisfied and discouraged. He almost seemed to have grown to dislike playing football, which I knew was not really true. Of course this was partly a result of the weariness that affects players at all levels of this grueling sport toward the end of their seasons.
Football is hard physical work, and he had been working hard along with his teammates for almost half a year, several hours a day and often 6 days a week, without a break. The expectations of success, from not only ourselves but those around us, can also exert mental pressure. Being a senior this year, he likely felt a greater degree of responsibility for any failings or shortcomings of the team, either actual or perceived, than he had in his previous years playing football.
But after some consideration, I began to realize that, at a more fundamental level, his experience playing football had maybe forced him to face a difficult truth too early for most young people to have to recognize: that his commitment, his character, his heart and his desire, his good intentions and good fellowship, his plain hard work without complaint, and even his talent, do not always result in success.
Many of the players on his team this year definitely have talent, and some have been recognized at the state and even national level.
Talent is sometimes a gift, sometimes a result of hard work, but most often a combination of those qualities. And although many of us may know someone who has wasted their gift, it’s fair to say that the young men who have played high school football over the last two years at Corona del Sol have pitted their talent, whatever its level, in combination with hard work against many significant and daunting challenges.
And talent and hard work in the service of challenge will always lead to some good.
But talent, although always a help, does not encompass all that is important in life. Commitment and character, heart and desire, good intentions and good fellowship, and plain hard workwill always take you much farther than talent alone, and in concert with talent, can often take you beyond your expectations.
So my hope for not only my son but for all the young men who have been or will be part of the football program at Corona del Sol, whether they play one year or four, whether they start or never leave the sideline, and are part of teams with stellar winning or dismal losing records, is that as a result of their experience and through whatever challenges they undertake in the future as they inevitably move beyond us, they recognize and appreciate at some point in their lives a basic message I suspect we adults in our roles as parents, coaches, teachers, and administrators have all tried in our own way to instill.
That as long as they continue to honor and pursue the values of character, commitment, and plain hard work, it is okay to feel good about themselves despite a lack of success, recognition, talent, or even happiness. Anyone among us who can claim those values deserves our respect as a success in life, despite their social, financial, or public status, as better said by the closing paragraph from one of my favorite novels:
“Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who have lived faithfully a hidden life, and now rest in unvisited tombs.”
So not only to my son but to those who have touched his life during his time at Corona, we are all connected, whether faintly or strongly.
So good fortune and best wishes. And I hope we all can contribute to the good of our friends and teammates, our loved ones, our community, and even to the world, through our actions going forward, unhistoric or otherwise.
