Everyone seems to love the popular Dr. Seuss quote “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” Someone asked me if I was going to cry when I finally left. I laughed… nervously… similar to the kid in the Vine that is being interviewed and starts out laughing before bursting into tears.
*Plot twist for those that don't know, I'm a bit of a crier. Not quite as bad as Oprah… or my mom… but I may or may not have been known to tear up when I see Forrest Gump, Charlie St. Cloud or Remember the Titans. No shame, it happens*
It's hard. I guess life in general is hard. I started at KY3 in November of 2011 and helped launch Ozarks Sports Zone just six months later. Ironically enough, my bosses (Chris Parker and Mike Scott) weren’t going to hire me because they knew I wanted to graduate, attempt to go to law school and chase political dreams. I'll owe them forever for changing their minds (Denise Tucker too for hiring me at the News-Leader as a sports clerk in 2010). I started doing the Mohawk Chronicles in 2012 (thanks to my brother, Kellen, for the name) and it began out of boredom. I had my tonsils removed during that summer and I sat on my mom's couch in Joplin with nothing to do. Unfortunately I couldn’t really eat (I tried McDonald's and donuts despite my mom's warnings and was in pain for days) so I just started writing. I called it my football bible and sent it to (Chris) Parker. It was 11,000 words of players to watch, conference breakdowns and predictions. Four years later it's still a thing with some people agreeing with my opinion and everyone else being wrong (kidding, kind of). I've welcomed the tweets, texts, emails and phone calls either agreeing or disagreeing with whatever the opinion may have been. Those interactions are part of what makes this job even that much more special.
I've been in the area my entire life and this will always be home. While I'm extremely excited and blessed to be joining ESPN, I would be misleading if I didn't say that this was the hardest decision of my life and about as equally heartbreaking as it is exciting. I’ll miss cashew chicken, Andy’s, Friday Night Football and the hospitality rooms of the Ozarks because I’m a bit of a gluttonist at heart. I’ll miss the Tournament of Champions and seeing people freak out over the t-shirt cannon at JQH, as well as the random arguments that we have around our office about everything from if it is socially acceptable to eat boneless wings with a fork to who is more popular, Jack Nicklaus or Michael Jordan (yes, both of those were real arguments). I once ripped the seam of my pants at a Willard basketball game and at one point had a full hot dog, wrapped in foil, in the pocket of my jacket for a calendar year. I could go on forever with things I’ll miss or will never forget, but most of all I’ll miss the people. Say what you want, but the Ozarks is a special place with incredible people. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to me and I wish I could change certain things, but I couldn’t have asked for a better place to have been raised and start my career.
I remember when we first launched. We had zero followers on Twitter, our freelance pool was thin and we couldn’t get anyone to email or call us back; everyone thought we were spam about the environment or something. Kai (Raymer) and I sat in our office with minimal experience of still or video cameras, trying to figure out what the heck we were doing, while Parker, a Wichita native, butchered names like Lebanon, Clever and Nevada. To see what it’s become and the attention we can devote to high school athletics is incredible. At this point, I’m not sure I truly remember what it was like to be a sports fan in the Ozarks before O-Zone.
I’ll miss the games, the coaches, the players, the rivalries and the fans that make each game unique. Somehow, I get paid to watch sports and talk about it which still blows my mind. I could work in sports for the next 40 years and not have it as good as I do here in the area. I almost feel bi-polar because some days I can’t wait to move and others I want to call Penny and tell her I changed my mind. But ultimately it is ESPN and something I’ve wanted to do for my entire life. I have an incredible opportunity in front of me, during the process I also learned that chasing dreams isn’t really free.
This will be my final Mohawk Chronicles and I’ll probably end up cutting the Mohawk just so I don’t have to hear people ask why I have so much gray hair (I’ll blame Penny for that too). New zip code, new haircut, right? Anyways, it’s really just a series of random thoughts for coaches, parents and athletes.
Enjoy.
To the coaches…
Thank you for all you do. Teaching seems like a sometimes thankless profession and you’ve doubled down on it by deciding to coach. Athletes think you have it out for them, parents think you’re clueless and administrators just want you to make them look good. You’re underpaid and underappreciated, but your job is imperative to American culture. We all have a teacher or coach that inspired us to do better and be more and I am no exception. Please don’t lose sight of the big picture; the kids. Winning games is awesome and obviously makes any team experience that much better, but at the end of the day you’re tasked with teaching life lessons through a game which isn’t really easy. You’re the backbone of sports, especially at the prep level and your contributions don’t go unnoticed. Your time matters. Your influence matters. The single greatest gift is the ability to positively construct change in the life of others and you have the opportunity to do that daily.
To the parents…
I love y’all, but sometimes you’re crazy. I hear parents yell some of the zaniest things to coaches, players and refs during games. I get it, you love your kid and want the best for them, but sometimes the best thing for them isn’t always the most fun thing. It’s okay for your kid to get tough love at times. Allow them to be coached and not coddled. Let coaches hold them accountable. Let your child learn life lessons through competition and the overall theme that life isn’t always fair but what defines us is our ability to respond to that adversity. The only guarantee in life is that things will go wrong at some point. Teach them to be resilient, not to assign blame. The love and support that you show for your kids is huge and no athlete can make it without a dedicated parent or guardian. Driving them to camps and tournaments, paying for them to have extra instruction and trying to remain sane is almost a full-time job in itself. Many of you wear that hat for multiple kids which cannot be easy. But the goal is to raise a good person, not just a good high school athlete, right? One day it won’t matter how many yards they had or how many points they scored. Don’t let your pursuit of them being the best athlete possible drive the majority of your interactions and the relationship; there are things bigger than high school sports. Screaming “pull your head out” or “*insert loud inaudible here*” probably won’t help them in the moment. Most of the time they can’t actually hear you during a game and even if they can, they aren’t intentionally playing bad. Nobody takes the field of play and wants to perform poorly and wants the team to lose. Lighten up on kids and coaches and if you do have something to say, make it teachable. I remember being in high school and my parents barely said a word during games. I thought they were bored or something. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized that their quietness wasn’t out of boredom, but respect for me. Also, I promise the O-Zone staff doesn’t hate your school. There is a method to our madness when it comes to coverage. If it were up to us we wouldn’t miss a game, but unfortunately that’s not physically possible. We do this job out of passion and love for sports in the Ozarks. Not just us, but every other newspaper, website and magazine in the area. Joboo loves what he does. Byron Shive loves what he does. The guys at Southwest Missouri Basketball love it. Rance, John Harvey and Jeff Kessinger love what they do. We aren’t in the business of trying to screw people on coverage and not give attention/credit when it has been earned. But keep in mind we don’t exist to serve just one community and that makes it hard. We are in a no-win situation as someone will also be upset that we didn’t cover their game. Such is life, but it is never an intentionally spiteful decision.
To the athletes…
Your athletic career is finite. That’s not breaking news, but in order to get the best out of yourself you have to embrace that. Each practice, each meeting and each game could be your last. It sucks. The best advice I can give you is to live in the moment. Four years seems like forever as a freshman, but it flies by. Each year you’ll lose a class of friends and teammates that you’ll never compete with again and people will tell you there’s always next year and then eventually you’re that senior that will never get their high school career back. Do not take it for granted. If you don’t believe me just ask your former teammates that have already graduated; the least talked about thing in high school is how much you’ll miss sports. I’ve heard so many kids talk about college and the future, which it is great to have a plan, but remember you’ll never get these days back. The opportunity to play with people you’ve known forever, against kids you’ve played against forever is pretty special. College is not always the same. College is a collection of people that were all “the man” in their hometown. Your parents and friends won’t be at every game. Your assistant coach won’t be the person that played with/against one of your siblings or has known your family forever. The scorekeeper won’t be an alum that has watched you play since you were a kid. The kid that sits next to you in math class won’t be singing the national anthem and the people to your left and right won’t be the teammates that come to your parents’ house and eat all their food without even knocking on the door first because that’s just how comfortable they are with your family. I’ll be the first to tell you that college is awesome; there is nothing like being poor, busy, bored, stressed, hungry, socially active and evolving with your peers. But that can wait. Enjoy high school in the moment. You’re not too cool to get decked out in your school colors and go crazy at a sporting event. I promise it is okay to go to a school dance and actually have fun and it’s not lame to join clubs that don’t involve some kind of ball. I don’t care what it is that you’re involved in, just be engaged when you’re there. Make the most of that opportunity, be it in choir or track. Own it. Anybody can be a bum. Anyone can be a nobody. Be someone that is willing to do what it takes to be special. Don’t settle for being average, or even good, be great. Live your four years passionately and when you’re done have no regrets and move on to the next phase of life.
The last four and a half years have been a blast for me. I can’t imagine being any other place than KY3 and here in the Ozarks. Hopefully this isn’t a goodbye, just a see ya later. I sincerely thank you for allowing O-Zone to document the last few years from an athletic standpoint. I never imagined doing something like this and now I can’t imagine living a life that doesn’t involve sports. Nothing will be the same for me following the move, but I couldn’t be more thankful for the lifetime of memories and friends that I was able to make here in the Ozarks. This place will forever be home to me.
Take care.
