Adam Karon Karon was a Sports staff writer.
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Last year I learned about sports. Sure, I had played ball most
of my life, but I never really knew what it was about. I took for
granted the times I could run, and when I could no longer do that I
seemed to forget why we play these silly games. Two people have had
an incredible impact on me, and both came into my life last year.
They taught me what the world of sports and, in some ways, what
life is all about. Most people play for the sheer enjoyment of the
game. Heck, it’s fun to run around getting dirty. It’s
even more fun when you win. But what about the athletes who play
for pure therapy? He may not know it, but Josh Canales taught me
about sports while sitting on the steps behind Men’s Gym. As
a shortstop for the UCLA baseball team, he was having a career
year, but we didn’t talk about that. Between bites of his
subway sandwich he choked out the most incredible story I ever
heard. He spoke of the past summer, the one in which he killed his
best friend with a batted ball. He told me about his nightmares and
his regrets. Most of all, he told me that continuing his baseball
career helped him cope with life and what it brought that summer.
Here was a kid who would soon be drafted by the Los Angeles
Dodgers, and his mind was more caught up in grief than green. When
we were done talking he thanked me for listening. I thanked him for
teaching me sports. The second person did not need to teach me
anything. She is already responsible for 18 other students, but she
added me and my brother to her list of pupils without hesitation.
When I was assigned to cover women’s gymnastics last year I
called head coach Valorie Kondos Field and told her, “Coach,
I will be covering your sport, and I don’t know a thing about
gymnastics.” Her response was simple, “I’ll teach
you. And don’t call me coach.” Little did I know she
would not limit her teaching to the sport itself. In following the
squad for two years I learned that a team can be a family. Though
the girls have very different personalities, somehow Kondos Field
melts them together to create a group that is welcoming and warm,
yet deadly competitive. She exposed me to new ways of thinking,
welcomed me into her home, took me to visit John Wooden, and made
me and my brother feel like we belonged in the foreign world of
leotards and back flips. To this day I do not know why she did all
this for me. Both Canales and Kondos Field taught me that there is
more to sports than glory and success. For me there are many
glorious highlights, from meeting John Elway and Marcus Allen to
covering the NFL combine in Indianapolis. But if I had to choose,
I’d rather spend time talking to a gymnast on her way out
than a blue chip football player on his way up.