Generally whatever you read here is the product of something that started with a personal experience, then rattled around in my brain for a period of time (hours, days, months?) until enough thoughts turned into words that could escape my mind through my fingers.
Occasionally, there are a few false starts. I don’t have as robust a drafts folder as many writers, but there are lots of folks much more prolific (and certainly commercially successful!) and if the recent posting schedules is any indication I only fire up the old blogging keyboard once a year when I can’t stop thinking about the weekend of the state cheerleading competition.
See, I pasted part of that thought from an earlier attempt to get this thing moving. Which I didn’t need to admit, of course, except to say one of the things I’ve come to appreciate about being a cheer dad over three high school seasons is not just the outsized ratio of practice to performance — that’s easily understood as a gymnastics parent, to say nothing of music and theater — but specifically the way a given routine (a word whose multiple meanings are relevant in this context) can and often must evolve over the course of a season and how it takes total buy-in from all coaches and competitors to make those adjustments look seamless because the whole thing only works if everyone understands that day’s assignment and is willing to adapt on a moment’s notice.
Easily the best shot from three years of high school cheer. Not my picture, which is OK because this was never about me! (And here I am, finding a way to make it about me…)
Because although by the time some kid yells “5-6-7-8!” everyone theoretically knows what they’re supposed to do, watching 70 routines over two days (and several hundred over three seasons) belies the undeniable truth: not all squads have contingency plans, and sometimes it seems the confidence that fosters excellence can be a masquerade shrouding the inability to accept or understand imperfection.
So is this introduction about writing or cheerleading? Both? Neither? Frankly, after 313 words, the author probably should have a better understanding. What’s really happening is an admission: sometimes you’ve got your brain wrapped so tightly around an idea, a moment, an outcome, you’ve squeezed yourself out of the larger and more important truths.
Here it was the journalist’s instinct to distill an entire season to a single event, spotlighting it as a metaphor for months of ups and downs. Which isn’t a bad strategy, judging by several decades of other people’s legendary sportswriting, and probably not too far off in this case. But a few strides down that path it became clear the framing — whatever writing it might’ve yielded — was a shortcut to avoiding the bigger thoughts warranting attention.
In other words, anyone can talk about how and why the team finished in an impressive sixth place and dissect relevant data points about the strength of the competitive field. (And because I will not let that part of my soul remain entirely mute, it’s worth noting the school record score in Friday’s preliminary round was high enough to win the state championship in all but six of the first 20 years of the contest. And also, because I am still a little bit the petty teenager embroiled in interscholastic rivalry, they finally beat Stevenson, twice, on the biggest stage we have.)
But what I actually need to do is recognize that whatever lessons might’ve been learned or proved on one February weekend in Bloomington, it all falls in the context of accepting my kid is moving on from a phase of life that has become transformative. Which means I have to move on, too, ready or not. (Honestly: a little of both.)
In cheerleading you get two senior nights, one during the football season and another in winter after the final competition. This one was all smiles, today’s might be a little weepier. (This isn’t my picture, either.)
That this all transpired a few weeks before his 18th birthday is another timely reminder of growing up meaning letting go — and also that I’m almost two decades different from the day he arrived, too, so even if I haven’t gone up (hopefully not too much out) this whole crossing off milestones thing is less me passively watching him enter young adulthood and more appreciating we’ve all actively changed together — for, with and through each other.
Which is to say if you want to understand all the lessons Max learned from cheerleading, and specifically this team, these coaches and that athletic director, well, ask Max! He has a remarkable grasp on his own development. As I wrote to him before the state meet: I see the care you have for your teammates, the energy, the intensity. I see the goal setting (and achieving!) and realize where you are today isn’t an accident but an intended consequence of following a plan, overcoming setbacks and consistently pushing forward.
That’s his story to tell. And through observation and conversation it’s clear he tells it well, as an understanding of how life led to this point, living in the moment and looking to what the future might include. (Spoiler alert: cheer dad life may not be over, though there will be far less photography and uniform laundry.) It’s a weird thing to look at a person you once waited to meet and realize how much there still is to teach but also think maybe he’s already more mature than someone with a 28-year head start.
But together we are ending this chapter of Libertyville High School cheerleading. We leave with thousands of photographs, hundreds of videos and enough T-shirts and sweatshirts to represent the Wildcats every day for a month. Certain moments blur together from across seasons while other memories stand in the starkest relief — good, bad and otherwise — with spoken and musical words and phrases able to revive the past instantaneously in vivid detail we can only hope never fully fades, even as we understand and aspire for so much life yet to be lived.
My gratitude is boundless. Not specifically for the sport, but the people. At this juncture last year my wish for other parents was for their children to truly find a team. But now, with the journey concluded, that wish also has evolved: I hope other people truly see your child. I hope they understand what makes them tick. That they listen sincerely and love strongly. That they push in the right ways, receive in others and leave that kid better than they found him.
It’s been about a month now where if anyone says or writes even the mildest, most generic compliment about my son I start to choke up. I have four kids and they’re all pretty cool and lots of people say many nice things. But it’s something specific about this cheer program … the people it’s brought into his life genuinely understand who he was and is and wants to be, and it fills me with a new kind of joy. A gift I didn’t know I needed and can likely never repay.
Two of the most important influences on Max’s young life: Libertyville High School Athletics Director John Woods and Varsity Cheerleading Coach Erin Vance. They truly see, understand and especially believe.
Like cheer, orchestra will end soon, then all of high school, then comes college and moving out of home for most of the year and all the other changes parents typically hope kids experience. Growing beyond the bounds of childhood I can only wish for other safe spaces ahead, with the comfort to be himself and the security of others who just want everything to work out. This probably aligns me with every other parent preparing to watch a kid claim a high school diploma in a few weeks. And yeah, we’ve already had one graduate. But that was a different path, one without this particular landmark screaming: “Hey — a thing that was all consuming is now unequivocally done.” That’s a lot to process!
Obviously not everyone has the same experience with their high school sports, and surely I don’t speak for the other nine seniors from this year’s team, and especially not for their families. Everyone’s road is necessarily a little different and no one else’s steps are more or less valid. But for Max, it was the right community at the right time and it’s impossible to picture life lived differently. I will not miss the parental anxiety, the family logistics or the skull-penetrating music. The freezing football games, the GoFan service charges, the volunteer commitments, the near constant dread over physical well-being. But I am already sad to have photographed the final routine, to have celebrated the final accomplishment and to know I’ll never again see up close the little interactions of this team whose members genuinely put the whole above all individual relationships.
And so it goes, right? Sunrise, sunset and we all have lives to live. I’ve got a couple more sons to see through high school and plenty of sports will be in that mix. Max has some major orchestra stuff ahead, along with the (so far) most important decision of his life, and if the universe allows me another 46.5 years on the planet maybe these three cheer seasons will be just one tile in a rich mosaic. But for right here, right now, it’s an important culmination of so, so much, and my gratefulness for that isn’t fully expressible with words, even though I’ve already spilled about 1,500 in the attempt.
Thank you, LHS cheer, for an experience I never imagined. It wasn’t even mine directly, but it’s given so much to a person still, and hopefully always, trying to find the right way forward. The drive, the respect, the energy, the resiliency — I want to be like that when I grow up.
And another thing…
The Friday before Sectionals (at which the top five teams advance to state — and at which the team finished sixth and fifth the last two seasons) I was listening to a podcast where the hosts recounted their favorite members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The second list included someone dear to me, so I had to pause and write this email.
Thrilled to hear you invoke Marv Levy on today’s Top 10.
Marv graduated from Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He was enrolled there at the same time as my grandmother (a small-town girl from Jo Daviess County, Ill., who turned 13 on Pearl Harbor Day). I am a third-generation Coe grad — class of 2001, which means my wife and I overlapped with Fred Jackson, who took one of the most circuitous routes to the fringe of NFL stardom (he’s currently No. 5 in all-purpose yards for a single season).
When you go to a small school like Coe you instantly learn the famous alumni, like William Shirer and Curt Menefee, and weird facts like Levy graduated right before future HOF basketball coach Bill Fitch enrolled, and in fact Levy coached Fitch as an undergrad.
I borrowed these photos from Coe. Not sure you can spend four years on campus without seeing the one on the left.
Anyway, that is all Wikipedia stuff. My story about Marv Levy was when I met him in the fall of 1994 at the Coe homecoming game. We were out there for my parents’ 20th reunion and, although Coe football is generally an afterthought — students would prefer to stay in the dorms to watch the Iowa game on TV — that was the senior season of Carey Bender, a 5’8” running back from nearby Marion who absolutely shredded D3 defenses.
At this point Marv had already coached four straight Super Bowl losses. He had long been Coe royalty, but every football fan knew someone with his stature. The Bills’ bye week lined up with Coe homecoming so he took the time to come to Cedar Rapids. And he just happened to sit in the row behind us at Clark Field with absolutely zero fanfare. He wore the same alumni name tag as my parents, and when my dad asked if he knew my grandmother (by maiden name) Marv either absolutely did or totally snowballed us with faux sincerity.
He was, as you said on the show, an old Jewish guy from the South Side who could not have been a more regular, friendly gentleman. He could’ve big-timed everyone or made a show of coming to “scout” a kid who never had a chance to play in the NFL, but he just sat there like any other guy in his late 60s enjoying a fall Saturday and above all being gracious.
I’ve coached youth baseball for a few years now in Libertyville and every time I print the lineup card it features Marv’s name and one of his inspiring Buffalo legacies, the quote “Where else would you rather be than right here, right now?” At least once before the first game of the season I explain the significance, and while we don’t have it worked in to a pregame chant or anything like they do at Ralph Wilson, it means a lot to me as a reminder to be present in a given moment and to give your best effort for the people on your team and in your corner.
I don’t think it would matter as much if it weren’t for Marv. Not because he’s famous or knows my grandmother or whatever, but because he was just a guy. A regular dude who did great things and knows he had a lot of things go in his favor to end up on that life path. I guess on paper he’s known for losing. But he’ll always be a winner to me because he put everything in such a fitting perspective.
Thanks for the smile and the chance to reminisce.
I had to send a follow-up the next week. Because after I saw the six-minute video about Levy’s impact in Buffalo, and how that phrase lives on at the start of every home game, I knew I had to send it to Max before what could’ve been his final practice. Before clicking play, he said, “Oh, ‘Right here, right now’ is my mantra.” I don’t think it came from me, but we watched the video together, which gave me a chance to point out the phrase everyone knows starts with a concept that means even more: “All you ever asked for is an opportunity. You’ve got it today.”
I sent Max the original clip while they warmed up for Sectionals, and both days at State. “Right here, right now” is powerful for focusing on the task at hand. But there also is power in being grateful simply for the chance do to what you love, to play how you practice, to show up and show out. And it’s not just the performances — just having the opportunity to do the work is its own blessing. To grind in the gym. To bond with teammates. To sweat, to dream, to fail, to fly. All those moments build up to “right here, right now.” And then, God willing, there’s another right here, right now, another chance to give what you have to the moment and the people you love. That’s not just about sports, at least it shouldn’t be, and I’m grateful for this entire confluence of experiences giving the chance to make this new connection with one of my favorite people.
Recognize opportunities and dive in headfirst. The road that journey follows might be something better than you ever expected. Right here, right now. Forever.
All smiles after putting up the best score in school history. (Click text for video.)