Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

I thought this would be a relevant inaugural post for this blog on this inauguration day. The pursuit of happiness - those constitution writers really knew how to turn a phrase. I remember somewhere in the mid-40's, when the signs of aging start to take hold and one starts to become reflective, and that phrase, the pursuit of happiness, started to take on more meaning. What does life really boil down to? The pursuit of happiness.

What does this have to do with LS running? Let me start the long-winded process of tying this into this blog's theme. As a parent, it is hard to be happy if your children are not happy. Kids are all different so there is no single magic formula for making kids happy, but you have to make your best guesses. It also has to make them happy for life not just an afternoon, so leaving it up to a ten year old is probably not going to work (picture lots of video games and not much schoolwork, and donuts instead of vegetables).

People are happier if they are healthy, so something that promotes health would be a good ingredient for the happiness formula. Exercise promotes physical health. From what I have read, studies have shown that exercise also promotes emotional health and can reduce depression. One way for kids to get exercise is to participate in a team sport, and getting exercise as a byproduct of having fun is easier than getting exercise for exercise's sake. Except for cases where parents have gone off of the deep end (topic of another blog) team sports can be a lot of fun.

I have also read that teenagers who participate in team sports are bullied less and have less social issues. Yet another article showed a correlation between higher grades and participation in sports, and I would theorize that those that are more succesful in school will lead to more success later on in life, and its easier to be happy when relatively succesful than when not. So there you have it - participation is sports is a positive influence on physical health, emotional health, social acceptance, and success in school. It also helps to keep them out of trouble, at least they have less time to get into trouble. This is the line of logic I feed my kids, when in truth it may just make me happy to watch them.

At any rate, the rule in our house is that you have to do some sport - its their choice but they have to do something - ballet, basketball, swimming, whatever.

Which finally leads to Emily, my oldest. My favorite sport growing up was basketball, and when she was in sixth grade, for her winter activity, I wanted to sign her up for the local youth basketball league. Lot's of her friends were doing it. However, she wanted none of it, but she still had to pick a sport. It was the year after the Sydney Olympics and she had dreams of running in her head and asked to run in track meets during the winter. Having no clue about youth indoor track it took me a while to find the Liberty Athletic club, which is the oldest all women's track club in the United States, boasting former youth members such as Join Benoit Samuelson and Lynn Jennings, and they had a youth program. It was low key, just one practice a week, which was perfect for starting out.

And that was the genesis of one of the main pieces of the golden age of Lincoln-Sudbury girls track - Emily - who along with Dana Jamieson, Molly Binder, and several others led the program to four team state titles.

See, I told you we'd get there.