Athletic Mortality

On a night that tugged at his emotional core, TigerBlog remembered back to the first time he ever used his GPS.
  
It wasn't that long ago. At least, looking back on it this morning, it doesn't seem that long ago.

It was March of 2012. He was headed to Kennett Square, outside of Philly, to see TigerBlog Jr.'s first high school lacrosse game. The GPS took him this way and that way, on one country road after another, until TB was sure he was completely lost and would miss the game.

Then, there it was, on his left. The field.

TB remembers the day. It was cold, but not freezing. Mostly what it was was windy. Very, very windy. He remembers a wind that whipped at him from right to left across the field. TigerBlog wore Princeton Lacrosse sweats and a Princeton Lacrosse jacket, and the home fans thought he was a coach there to scout a player.

He remembers the game too. TBJ was small at the time, about 10 inches shorter and 40 or 50 pounds lighter than he is now. He was a kid still, playing on a team with a big senior class. A boy goalie on a team of men.

The first quarter didn't start out too well. The first shot went in. So did the second and the third. His team trailed 5-2 at the end of the quarter, and he had made two saves.

He settled down, though. He would allow only three more goals the rest of the way and finish with 11 saves, including one in the final seconds to preserve a 9-8 win.

After he made the last save, he hurled the ball down the field as time expired. He was mobbed by the rest of his team, and TB has a video clip of the play, right down to the massive fist pump TBJ gave.

Yeah, it seems like yesterday.

It actually was yesterday when TBJ's high school career ended, with a 10-5 loss in the district tournament.

He made 15 saves last night, giving him 901 for his career. His 901st might have been his best, as he sprinted back to the crease after a turnover and dove fully extended to slap the ball away just in time.

TBJ played 3,470 minutes in goal for his high school team. That's more than 57 hours. He allowed 545 goals and made the 901 saves. He was lucky - he never got hurt, and his team won a lot more than it lost.

And then it was over. In a blink, he went from a boy to a man (all 6-1, 190 pounds of him), from a freshman to a senior about to graduate.

Gary Walters, the former Ford Family Director of Athletics, used the term "athletic mortality" on numerous occasions. TigerBlog isn't a huge fan of the word "mortality" in this situation, because of its connotations of death.

At the same time, he's never come up with a better one.

TBJ is one of the lucky ones. He'll be playing in college next year, at Sacred Heart University, or, as TB likes to call it now, "America's Team." Hopefully his college experience will leave him as fulfilled as his high school experience was.

Fulfillment, though, is something that needs to be digested over time. Last night was not about feeling fulfilled. It was about feeling the end of something.

It was a night for tears, actually. From the seniors. From some of the parents (for the record, TB did not cry).

TigerBlog has seen this phenomenon at Princeton for more than a quarter of a century. Of all the dynamics he has seen here, this might be the one that sticks with him the most.

He's seen it so many times. Princeton athletes, playing in their final game, knowing they'll never put the uniform on again.

He's seen tears. He's heard curses from some whose last game didn't go the way they would have hoped. He's seen Princeton athletes meet the media with great composure and say all the right things. He's seen slammed lockers and broken equipment and long hugs from teammates who know they will never again compete for Princeton.

He's been there for celebrations too. Of championships won. Not league championships, which usually are followed by competing in the postseason. TB is talking about NCAA championships.

The worst is being in the locker room with the responsibility of having to get someone to talk to the media after a career-ending loss. One of the toughest male athletes TigerBlog has known at Princeton asked him if his eyes still looked too red from crying.

You'd think the best is being in the locker room after a national championship. Even then, though, there is the finality of it for the seniors.

TigerBlog remembers those seniors from Princeton's NCAA men's lacrosse championship teams. They too were wrestling with their athletic mortality, knowing that no matter what, their time as a Princeton athlete was behind them.

It's even worse because very, very, very few seniors end their careers with national championships. Almost every college athlete loses the last game in a postseason championship tournament - or never makes it to the postseason.

For all of these athletes - except for the tiny percentage who go on to play professionally - it's the end of a lifetime spent playing a competitive team sport. Yes, many will play again on a club team or a rec team or in unlimited or pickup games, but it'll never be the same.

It's not easy to handle all at once, this athletic mortality.

For athletes, and for their parents, who have spent the majority of their kids' lives taking them to and from games and watching them develop into athletic and academic studs who could then play at a school like Princeton. For them, the end brings a different kind of void.

As for last night, TigerBlog Jr.'s team had a huge senior class. At one point in the game, all 10 players on the field were seniors - with others who played a lot not on the field at that moment.

For all of those seniors, four are going to play in college - Grant Toller at NJIT, Michael Major at St. Joe's and Andre Puleo at Cabrini, in addition to TBJ. And that's a lot. For the rest, last night was the end of their competitive lacrosse careers, though one - Michael Kirby - will play Division III soccer at DeSales.

TigerBlog focused on TBJ during the final seconds, the game hopelessly lost by then. The ball was on the far side of the field. TBJ looked straight down for the last 20 seconds. When the final horn sounded, he went to the ground, sitting, taking in the unforgiving nature of the final horn.

When the game ended, TBJ told TB that the bus from school had dropped them off but not stayed and that he needed a ride back.

The two got into TB's car, just as they have been doing after lacrosse games since TBJ was in second grade and TB was his coach, just as they did when TBJ first volunteered to play goalie at the end of that year, just as they did when he became a full-time goalie in third grade.

They've spent hours driving back after lacrosse games. Ironically, TBJ's youth career - and TB's coaching career - had ended on the same field exactly four years earlier.

This ride was different. For one, TB was driving his son back to school to get his car, where he'd parked it earlier.

Life is about taking a series of steps, clearing a series of hurdles. Once they're cleared, it's on to the next. As the hurdle is cleared, focus shifts to the next one.

Every now and then, though, there are hurdles that make you look back on them even as you're crossing them.

Last night, for TBJ, was one of those. He's lucky. He is not yet facing his athletic mortality, as Gary always said, as so many Princeton seniors now are, as so many generations of Tiger athletes have as TigerBlog watched and wondered what it was like, what was going through their minds.

Now he has a pretty good understanding of it. Maybe not exactly, but close.

This was it for TBJ's high school days. There's always been an innocence to all of this - "little kids playing ball," TB's friend Jack has always called it - and now that's gone.

TigerBlog knew it. TigerBlog Jr. knew it. Neither really said anything about it. TigerBlog thought about the right words, but they escaped him.

In the end, all he said to his son was that he was proud of him.