You see it all the time. A parent pushing their child to be successful in some athletic endeavor so that any successes can stoke the parent’s desire for athletic success themselves.

As I recall it happened to me a time or two as we were raising our own children. When I was in high school there was not a three point shot in basketball. Now I was not an outstanding basketball player at a towering 5 foot 6 inches and 135 pounds of hardened steel. Now ‘hardened steel’ may be a slight exaggeration but I just couldn’t resist including it. 🙂  I was fairly successful at shooting from the three point range, a shot that was technically non-existent at the time.

So when our son played basketball and the three point shot was legal I took a certain amount of credit for each shot Steve made. I re-lived my glory days through him and since he was a much better shot than I was, I think my true glory day memories may have been greatly exaggerated!

I also was (in my mind) a track star. My junior year I was the Pheasant Conference mile champion running a blistering time of 5 minutes 16.7 seconds! Fifty-seven years later I am still the mile record holder for the Clinton Rockets but before you become too impressed let me explain why. The following year the track program was disbanded thus I remain the permanent mile record holder.

Our daughter Jill was a very fast runner. Her freshman year she was a member of a relay team that went to the regional track meet. All four of the girls were only freshman. I saw a chance of turning Jill into a track star like her ‘old man’. I decided we would spend some time after practice and work on some speed drills.

The airport was just across the creek from our house and it had a perfect practice area. The tar road entering the airport was on a slight incline and I got the bright idea that after track practice I would have Jill run numerous sprints up that incline and turn her into a state champion sprinter.

It was the spring of the year and the plum trees along the creek were in full bloom. Jill suffered from allergies and after several sprints my ‘state champion’ dream came crashing down as the pollen grains from the plum trees filled poor Jill’s lungs and she began wheezing and turning blue. She quit the track team shortly after that! 🙁

If I had to pick the sport that I was most unsuccessful at it would be the sport of swimming and there is a good reason for that. Growing up on the farm and milking cows twice a day, seven days a week plus other farm chores was time consuming. Then there was baling hay, field work and rock picking. Who had time to take swimming lessons.

I didn’t take swimming lessons until I was twenty-one. Heck, I could drink beer and vote before I eventually learned how to swim. Actually the swimming lessons kind of happened accidently.

I was in college at the time and my planned math minor ran into a little difficulty when I enrolled in a class called calculus. I wisely decided to become a physical education minor instead. I was excited about the change because I loved athletics and this would offer me the opportunity to coach which I looked forward to.

Phy Ed minors needed one credit of beginning swimming. That sounded like fun since I had never experienced swimming before. The closest I had gotten to swimming back on the farm was when my hip waders began to fill up with water as I ventured out to retrieve a duck I had shot in the slough behind our barn. I had no idea what a nightmare the learning process of swimming would bring!

It turned out I suffer from ‘lead butt’. It’s a family trait as my brother Tom had the same condition. ‘Lead butt’ people can’t float. That’s the first technique we were taught to do when I began swimming lessons. I knew I was in trouble when I couldn’t float. To this day I can’t float! 🙁

At the end of the beginning swimming class we had to take a final test to see if we could swim successfully. It was a very simple test. We had to jump in at the deep end of the pool, swim to the shallow end and turn around and swim back to the deep end.

Now I had been trying all semester to float and hadn’t been successful so how was I expected to swim that far. I dived into the pool and swam like crazy for the shallow end. I should point out here too that I had one other minor problem. I swam with perfect form. My arms and legs were churning up the water and I was turning my head at the correct moment to breathe but I couldn’t take a breath. Consequently when I reached the shallow end of the pool my oxygen deprived body surrendered and I climbed out of the pool defeated!

My swimming career came to an end. I passed the class with a C but my actual grade for learning how to swim was an F! 🙁 To this day I swim with perfect form but I still have not accomplished the skill of taking a breathe! So I can swim for about twenty yards before my ‘lead butt’ pulls me under.

Over the years my inability to take a breath while swimming has gotten me into trouble. One summer we were visiting my sister in Arizona. Her apartment complex had a pool so we were lounging on floating rafts when I slipped off my raft. My lead butt dragged me under immediately. My arms were flailing as I went under once and then a second time! As I was preparing to sink for the third and final time I fearfully looked over at my sister and she was glaring at me. “Stand up!” she snapped.

So I did and I was shocked and relieved to see I was standing in waste deep water. That was not one of my prouder moments I might add.

Another time we were in Wisconsin attending our nieces wedding. We were staying in a nice motel that had a small water park attached. So I decided to take a trip down the big slide and why not, all my nieces and nephews were doing it successfully. It looked like so much fun and appeared to be harmless.

The slide was great and then I hit the water at the bottom of the slide. I should have let my lead butt sink to the bottom first but I panicked and tried to stand. I began to flounder around like a beached whale. Finally the sixteen year old, female life guard had to throw me a life ring in four feet of water! I’m sure somewhere in Wisconsin today some middle aged, retired life guards are still laughing and retelling that near drowning experience at the Ashland water park. 🙁

So my swimming resume has not been good. I needed some young person who I could relive my swimming horrors through and hopefully their swimming skills would overshadow my past. And it happened! It seemed like a miracle and actually I think it was.

Grandson Bryce tried his hand at t-ball and he didn’t like it. Football was a possibility and I believe he even got a trophy for his efforts but that wasn’t his sport either. And then much to his Grandpa’s relief he tried swimming and it stuck!

Luckily he did not inherit the Larson ‘lead butt’ trait as he can float like a battleship.

His swimming career began when he was six or seven and as he prepares to graduate from high school this spring he has concluded a successful high school swimming career.

He was not a star swimmer but he was my hero. He never quit and he worked and worked at his sport. He was only a couple seconds from qualifying to go to the state meet so to increase that possibility he shaved off all his body hair. That’s dedication!

Bryce has humbled me but it’s good to be humbled sometimes. We usually spend a few days at their lake cabin and we both spend time in the water. Bryce spends his time swimming across the mile and half lake while I wear a life jacket and float in an old fashioned tractor inner tube.

I just want to say “Thanks Bryce” for letting me watch your practices and meets. Your efforts have helped put my early swimming experiences in the past as I projected your swimming successes upon my swimming career. (Is ‘career’ the right word?)

Since Bryce’s competitive swimming days are over I need to find a new inspiration. I’ve seen those hot tubs advertised on TV where it produces a current that you can swim against and simulate actual swimming. I may look into that as a possibility.

I still need to overcome that breathing thing though because I suppose one can drown in a hot tub too!

Until next time.