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| My backyard golf course has fostered many important lessons. In golf, you either block out distractions, or play poorly. |
Do you know how much money we spend each day to house and feed prison inmates? Me either, but I bet it is a lot.
How about the cost of caring for them as juveniles before they finally make it to the big house? Do you know how much that might cost America? I am sure it is really expensive as well.
Some of the worst of today's prison inmates actually started in the social service system as children of other prison inmates, or were rescued from broken families before they climbed the criminal ladder to become inmates themselves. Do you think our money was well spent?
My life was never as tumultuous as many of the young men that I grew up with as a kid, but I certainly had friends and family all around me that suffered from the impact of maturing in a social environment that seemed less interested in your success and more interested in your compliance. For me, the combination of seeing negative images and positive voices kept me from falling onto the wrong side of the story myself, but I always think about the kids who didn't make it through as I thank God for all of those who did.
If we had only had golf
As a child, I was mostly like every other kid in my neighborhood. We all played sports, and most of them either involved an element of violence, or a demand for teamwork, or both. The problem with being an impressionable child is that violent sports offer a release and an altered reality of acceptability. Every traditional team sport that we play offers an opportunity to violently enact pain upon your opponent. If you grow to develop your sports skills without sufficient social skills to balance, it is likely that you will see violence as a reasonable solution to common problems in life.....all from a day in the life of common sports in America.
What is also a common trend is that kids without stable family environments fail to thrive in sports and never develop the most important skill that team sports offers. Teamwork! Children who do not learn to constructively fight through their problems may actually choose to fight when problems arise. This is a learned behavior that violent sports help to develop, yet one that wise parents can mitigate a bit.
In the absence of wise parenting, I believe that we are losing kids early in life due to poorly channeled aggression that is grossly misguided in our some of our at risk youth.
I have a solution..........
Golf!
I never played golf as a kid, but as an adult, I quickly experienced the joy of butchering a few round or so each year in the company of business associates who are golf fanatics. Now that I am also a golf fanatic, I realize how other golf fanatics utilize every sneaky opportunity to get on the course, and I was simply enjoying the perk of having business associates who golf.
What prompted me to really learn to play comes from the thoughts and theme that I began with. How much does it cost to deal with a child who is losing their way? In the case of Sir Mario Owens, it cost us the life of Javad Marshall Fields and his fiance Vivian Wolfe.
In case you are unfamiliar with this case, here is an excerpt from the Fields/Wolfe Memorial Fund website.
While attending Colorado State he (Javad) touched the hearts of many. One such friend was Vivian Wolfe. In June 2005, Javad gave Vivian an engagement ring. They planned to relocate to Virginia; both were looking forward to starting a wonderful life together with their dogs “Coco” & “Face.” On June 20, 2005, Javad and Vivian were gunned downed and killed while driving down a street in Aurora, Colorado. Javad Marshall Fields was scheduled to testify against Robert Ray for his criminal involvement in the killing of Gregory Vann. He observed Robert Ray leaving the scene in a vehicle after the shooting. He cooperated with law enforcement authorities. He was murdered days before he was due to testify for the prosecution. The District Attorney office stated that Javad Marshall Fields never asked for or requested witness protection services.
I came to know about this story more personally because I had the honor, for several years, of donating signs for the charity golf tournament that spawned out of a mother's grief. Rhonda Fields is that mother, and if she tells you the story herself, she would let you know that her initial focus was to raise money to catch the criminals herself. In the early days of rage and anger, Fields needed to feel like something was being done about this travesty.
Over time, her focus evolved and her energy transferred into raising money to help educate other Colorado State University students just like Javad and Vivian.
(Fields has currently advanced her role in the community by being elected to the State House of Representatives) The Fields Wolfe Memorial Fund focuses on awareness about intimidation against witnesses and seeks to ensure that we all have the courage to do what Javad did.
It also seeks to offer a way out of the situation that causes young people to fall into trouble. Through educational scholarships offered at CSU on behalf of Javad and Vivian, students each year are given the financial support it takes to succeed and become a productive person in society and not succumb to the negative influences of life.
Sir Mario Owens was the gunman assigned to murder Fields and Wolfe. As bad luck would have it, I would eventually earn the job of producing a poster board for the Owens' murder defense team. On this poster was a graphic breakdown of this young man's family tree. Littered throughout was an unusually high amount of family members who suffered from mental illness. I recall seeing Rhonda Fields during the trial, and it was clear that even she was afraid that his defenders had produced a compelling case for how this kid went astray.
I also recall how torn inside I was when I congratulated her on winning this death penalty case while visions of that gigantic family tree board remained etched in my brain.
I understand why we have the death penalty and have never appreciated our use of it until I saw it comfort someone who matters more to me than any dead criminal. Yet, everyday that I spend with young men who I hope to teach about life through the medium of sports, I wonder........ which one won't make it? When you haven't already developed the discipline to work well with others and the respect to listen to an adult, what options are left?
Golf!
No really. Golf is an answer to how we rescue young people that we continue to lose early in life.
I literally had an Oprah, a'hah moment when I started to think about the functional benefits of golfing. If nothing else, it is hard to beat the pure stress relief of smacking the hell out of that little white ball. The moment we begin to detect an aggression issue with a child, we should find a way to channel that energy into golf. The pure rush of violently hitting a ball has consistently been enough to inspire the need for more. Team sports might offer a similar outlet, but they demand that you understand the team part first. Golf does not.
Golf is a sport that turns you into your own coach on the field. A caddy can guide you, but the final choice is always in the hands of the golfer. Such a responsibility forces a focus that team sport athletes never quite experience.
Golf is both empowering and humbling at the same time. As golf builds confidence, it ensures humility as well. Golf is an unconquerable sport that uses mother nature as its wicked partner. Whether wet greens or dry, high winds or low, even the same golf course never really plays the same way twice.
A golfer is more than an athlete. A golfer is a thinking person with an ability to quickly analyze and execute a plan of action. The worst golfer has a keen understanding of how to quickly analyze and create a plan, even if the execution gets marred by confidence. The best of golfer can make micro-adjustments with there hands and club within a fraction of a second in order to impact club contact, flight and roll of the ball.
What I know for certain is that most sports experiences translate into life situations. Athletes the world over declare how they learned to deal with real life situations from real sports challenges. Almost every real life challenge has been personified with a sport equivalent (and a matching movie). We are a nation of sports enthusiast' who raise our children with sports as a nanny . Even as we accept that every sport ain't for everybody, we are limited with very few non-violent alternatives.
Not Golf.
Golf has been primarily reserved for the elite. The cost of participation has made golf somewhat cost prohibitive, but I think its time we change all of that. I see the cost of golf as an investment in our future. Every kid that we save through golf is a kid we save from a much greater future cost to society. In effect, golf could be priceless.
Golf is a gentleman's game with rules that encourage the inner gentleman to surface. Walking 18 holes with a bag in tow is intensely physical, so even kids who are struggling with weight problems can be channeled into the world of golf in an effort to impart calorie burning habits. With every second hand shop littered with cheap golfing equipment, the cost of golfing can be highly affordable, and again, cheaper than prison, or juvenile detention (or gastric bypass).
Now that I know, I'll admit it. Golf fanatics are always looking for another way to get out and golf and I could be guilty of this malady. However, as I look back on my anxious childhood, I am convinced that the serenity of golf could have helped. As I consider the challenges of many kids today I get the same feeling.
Even a bad day of golf is a good for your life, and in the end IT is always worth the cost.
The golf and the life.
