Coming Out of Retirement (Pep Rally!)

I’m sure most if not all of you know by now, that I have dabbled in professional public speaking. It’s been nearly a year since I spoke in front of my last audience in Las Vegas (Nearly 3500 people). The days of Power Point presentations and practicing in front of the mirror seem so long ago.

Last September, when the kids started school, we were asked as parents to volunteer for various school activities and fund raisers. I signed up to help with sports day, thinking that I could put some of my love for sports, as well as my coaching experience to use.

Nearly seven months went by before I received any indication of a need for my involvement. In early April I received an e-mail indicating that in just four days there was a meeting that required my attendance and that the big day (Sports day) was in just three weeks! Ahhh, the spontaneity of Italians!

I arrived at the school expecting to be assigned various events to assist in planning. Sports Day at ISF is similar to a decathlon with the school being divided into four teams (About 100 kids on each team) and participating in ten planned events spanning the course of five hours. As it turned out, I was the only parent that showed up from the list of volunteers and quickly found myself in a meeting with five other moms who comprised the PTA for the school, along with the PE Teacher, Ms. Ianonne! After sitting through twenty minutes of heavily debated discussion regarding what fruit would be best for the kids at snack time, how many trash cans we will need at the field and what the strategy would be if it rained, I finally spoke up and asked “Is there anything related to sports that you need my help with?”

The ladies looked a bit puzzled by my question and then asked what I had in mind. I explained that I have coached kids the past four years in various sports and would like to help in this capacity. I was then informed that the PE teacher had all the events planned and assigned to the teachers for execution on the day of the festivities!

The next subject of critical importance for discussion was how to ensure a strong turnout for the event. The ladies were worried that since Sports Day was scheduled for a Wednesday before a four day weekend that many parents would hold their kids out of school for the day and take the opportunity to go out of town. It was at this point that I sensed my opportunity and raised my hand…

I explained to the ladies that I thought that it would be wise to make the children their ally. If we could get the children fired up about sports day and send them home to their parents as a lobbyist on our behalf, that we stood a much better chance of success.

They loved the idea but weren’t sure where to go with it. This is when I came up with the idea of a school pep rally. “We can seat the kids together in the auditorium with their respective teams and teach them cheers. We can share the importance of being a gracious winner and of teamwork and to honor the game with sportsmanship”, I explained. “Afterwards we can loop in the art teacher and have the kids make banners in art class so they will be thinking of the big day for the next two weeks!”

They ate it up. In fact before the meeting was over I was not only assigned to organizing the pep rally and hosting it, but was also asked to be the Chairman of Sports Day. I accepted, not having a clue as to what it entailed regarding responsibility :>)

As the pep rally drew near, I found myself getting a bit nervous. I have never spoken at a pep rally before! Heck, I have never spoken to over two hundred grade school kids either and hadn’t a clue as to what I was going to say, much less what cheers I would teach them. The weekend before, I decided to draw upon my experience by creating a Power Point Presentation to guide me through my fifteen minutes in front of the kids.

I know enough about Power Point to be dangerous, but hit a few snags while creating my slides (Many of which entailed clip art sports shots taken from the internet, of great sports moments, crazy looking fans and the pinnacle of sportsmanship, a photo of Aaron Afflalo (UCLA) picking up a crying Adam Morrison (Gonzaga) off the floor following a heartbreaking loss in the NCAA Tournament.) The cool thing was that Trey helped me whenever I got stuck in Power Point! The kid literally knows the program better than I do at this point!!!

The rally itself was a huge success. I talked to them about teamwork, pride in their efforts and honoring the games and their rules. I explained to them that there are no losers on the field as long as you do the best you can, and that the real prize goes to the team that respects their opponent and honors the game by being both a gracious winner and loser. We had the kids screaming and cheering at the top of their lungs at 9:00 am. The crescendo was a cheer that I created joining all of them together in unison at rally’s end, where they cheered for their school as a whole. It was a blast.

One week later, came the big day at the field. The kids had a great spirit and the events went well. The highlight for me was watching Trey and Olivia compete and have fun. I was in charge of the 800 meters (A pretty long distance for 7, 8, 9 and 10 year olds at a half mile!). The first and second graders ran a quarter mile at 400 meters.

Without question, the moment that I will never forget was Olivia running the 400. I have always been blessed with good foot speed. I was the only kid on my little league ten year old baseball team with the green light to steal whenever I wanted, was the fastest kid four straight years on my high school basketball team and ran cross country in high school with my fastest ever mile being 4:52. With all that said, I can assure you that my daughter doesn’t have one single running gene of mine in her body. To say that Olivia is slow would be like saying that Italians use tomatoes in their food. Top that off with the fact that she hates walking, much less running and loves to talk more than anyone I know and you have the makings of one hell of a spectacle when watching her compete in a track event!

Soon after the start of the race, I noticed that she was pulling up the rear in a big way. I had instructed all of the kids to pace themselves before giving the signal to take off, but Olivia’s pace out of the blocks would have made the infamous tortoise feel like Carl Lewis! I decided that I needed to get involved and began running the inside track and cheering her along as she made her way around the first curve.

I told her that she needed to catch the girl in front of her (Now about 50 meters ahead!). She just kept running with her long skinny tongue hanging out. As we made our way to the half way mark, she asked me if I would hold her hand! I told her that it was against the rules and the she needed to keep running! Around the final curve we passed Trey and several other kids on the blue team who were cheering Olivia on. Trey shouted to me “Dad, how can you expect her to run fast when she wont stop talking!”

To say that she came in last place would be an understatement. The second to last kid finished with Olivia still having more than 25% of the track to circle. When she crossed the finish line, she as always had a big smile on her face. I will never forget that run as long as I live!