At Saturday night’s second annual Roughriders Hall of Fame, there were lots of stories about what a great community Port Angeles was to grow up in. Stories about ferry rides to Victoria to play sporting events.
There were a lot of stories about Vern Burton and badminton, so many that I just had to watch some YouTube videos of competitive badminton to see what all the fuss was about. I had never actually seen real badminton being played. I know it’s an Olympic sport, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it shown on television.
First of all, the net is a lot lower than I thought it was. I had it in my head that a badminton net was as high as a volleyball net, at least that’s how high I remember the badminton net set up in the summer outside my dad’s cabin in the Sierra Nevada, where we would have heated games of badminton in summer until the mosquitoes got so bad, we’d have to run inside.
Our version of the sport wasn’t terribly athletic or skilled. We mostly just doinked the shuttlecock back and forth and tried to keep the thing from getting stuck in the tree branches.
Anyway, I digress and at some point, I’m going to have to delve deeper into Port Angeles’ history of once being the badminton capital of the U.S. because it certainly is fascinating.
Lesson of sports
So, what I was struck by in the past couple of years of Hall of Fame dinners was all the stories of what sports gives us later in life long after we’re done playing.
I joke about all the things sports has provided me — Bones scraping together at the joints from osteoarthritis, a couple of crooked fingers, a couple of missing teeth, a balky shoulder that threatens to slip out of joint every time I sneeze, and the occasional spooky lapse in short-term memory from more concussions than I care to admit.
I won’t lie, I saw a few people in walkers and wheelchairs at Saturday night’s event and I wondered how many of those walkers and wheelchairs were the results of a lifetime of sports or just the normal wear and tear of life.
I don’t want to dwell on that. Sports gives us much more than pain.
I was particularly struck by one very powerful speech given Saturday night at the Hall of Fame event, by Carrie Morrison, who got in the hall because of her exploits in badminton and later in the marathon. She talked about how after enduring six surgeries and being told she could no longer run marathons, she fell into a black hole of depression and seriously contemplated suicide.
Until she remembered the words of her coach Vern Burton, about not giving up. She credited sports with giving her the tools to dig out of that hole and get help. I didn’t expect to hear something that heavy at the induction ceremony, but her speech was the most poignant for me. That and the story of Karena Greeny, who is battling cancer and told me she was happy that she got to be inducted while she can still share the experience with her family. She spoke about how sports gave her to tools to keep up her battle her disease.
That’s one big tool sports gives us — the will to not give up when it would be so easy to just simply give up, let go. Like the line from “Captain Marvel,” the will to get up after being knocked down is what makes us human.
How many times did I insist on going one-on-one with older kids in the driveway, knowing full well I was going to lose, knowing full well they were really kind of jerks and would NOT go easy on me. But, I didn’t give up. I kept coming. Mostly, because I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing me give up. They might beat me, but I was going to make them earn it, at least.
Many, many times while climbing mountains, I wanted to give up. A few times I did when I realized I really was in over my head. Most of the time I didn’t. One of my favorite stories about not giving up was a mountain in Montana called Trapper Peak. It’s a bear to climb at 10,150 feet, with about a mile-long scramble up loose scree after an insanely steep hike to a saddle 500 feet below the summit. The first time I tried, it I got hopelessly lost among the boulders and turned around. I was determined to try again. I actually got really sick about halfway up the mountain (from what I later found out was some badly brewed organic beer I drank the night before), then after resting at the saddle at 9,500 feet, I I suddenly felt better and went for the summit. Then I got lost AGAIN, accidentally climbing a false summit too far to the west. Then I climbed along a razor’s edge ridge to the real summit 200 yards away. This ridge was literally inches wide. And I made it. It took me 12 bloody hours and two tries, but I finally climbed that damn mountain.
It’s one of my best memories. Certainly not from the throwing up and feeling sick as a dog, but because I didn’t give up. And I’m sure glad I didn’t. I don’t remember the pain so much as the view … and the amazing sense of accomplishment I got from standing on the top of that brute.
