This blog has been in the works for nearly a year now (there goes my hopes of being more "engaged" with my blogging) SIGH. As a new football season is underway and I am once again in the football stands on a weekly basis, a moms heart can't help but miss what isn't there anymore. My youngest and the baby of the family is now playing his fourth (nonconsecutive) year of football. While I am so grateful for still being an active "sports" mom, I know these days are quickly coming to a close, and definitely tugs on my #1fan heartstrings. Watching my sons play sports since the itty bitty age of 3, has been a huge part of my life. Busy days turning into rushed on the go evenings of sports activities, throwing dinner to the kids in the back of the mini van as we motored our way from one activity to the next. The younger years of my boys' lives often times seemed like a blur as I was constantly on the move, trying to be one person in three different places. It was amazing when all three kids were all in one practice location, often times my husband and I had to tag team giving each other high fives and a quick smooch as we saw each other in passing. My husband often felt the need for more of a challenge and insisted on coaching two and often times all three sons teams. Those are the days that seemed to end in exhaustion but were gone in the blink of an eye. You never truly know how much something will be missed, until it's no longer a part of life.
As parents of all boys it was natural that my husband and I would encourage sports at a very young age. Our lives revolved around WWE matches in the living room, dare devilish stunts off of the built-in bookshelves onto a pile of blankets and pillows, diving into swimming pools off the waterfalls at the age of 2, and bucking bronco (aka dad's back) contests to see who could stay on the longest. I am only going off of what I know, but boys are endless balls of energy, I swear they never tire and can pull all nighters with the best of the best frat boys before they are forming complete sentences, (the toddlers not the frat boys, well I guess that could be iffy too). Not much has changed through their teen and into their young adulthood years. I swear sometimes they are just shutting down as I am waking at 4:00 AM!!! As a way for the boys to exert some of that energy, they played two sports a year starting at the age of 3. Although this often meant that my husband and I were also making a huge commitment (time and money) and adding to our already busy and chaotic lives. They definitely needed and enjoyed that outlet. However, we felt that the benefits of sports were necessary for our rambunctious little ones and they far outweighed the sacrifices. Plus, if you have never watched your husband try to coach a team of 3 year olds on a baseball field, out in nature, the possibilities for a toddler to become distracted are endless and you're definitely missing out. Or perhaps coaching basketball on a court is a little more your style. At least the area of trying to keep them wrangled in is a little smaller. But the kids will still lose interest oh about 15 seconds after you start talking, and they will instantly insist on you watching their new found Globe Trotter skills of bouncing the ball off their head, instead of learning to dribble the ball correctly. I believe my husbands saying was something along the lines of coaching being a lot like trying to herd wild cats. Let me just add that if you've never had the utmost pleasure of being a team mom (aka chaos coordinator) you're definitely NOT missing out. Okay I digress. There were so many reasons for putting our boys in sports at a young age and the biggest reason being that it was such a blessing in all of our military moves around the world. It allowed them to already be a part of something in a new town, school, and community before we even settled in. It gave them a sense of belonging when everything that they had known was suddenly ripped away and left behind. Sports was one thing they knew they always had no matter where the military took us and how far it separated them from friends and teammates. They would always have that bond. They would always have that one constant. While the faces of their teammates and coaches, the team names and even the dynamics changed, the foundation of being on a team was always solid, no matter where in the world they were asked to pick up and move to. Once they put the jerseys on it felt as if nothing had changed.
What they have learned from being a teammate is also essential to being an adult in the future. It taught them how to be a part of something bigger than themselves. It also taught them discipline, commitment, how to be a competitor, and how to grow to respect authority from their coaches. It taught them time management and yes sometimes giving up fun free time. Most of all it taught them that in competition you win some and you lose some. As hard as loosing is for a Gilleo, it made them work that much harder. Playing sports created a special bond between my boys. All three of the boys played baseball and basketball for many years. Sports gave them as brothers, something that brought them together, especially when it came to competing. If you know their father than you know what the word COMPETITION means in our household. Many one-on-one basketball games in the cul-de-sac have ended with body slams on the asphalt. I just knew we were one point, one block, one flagrant foul or one wrong eye roll away from going to the E.R. I may be a slight contributor to their insane level of competition when I refused to hand them a win with our many rounds of Chutes n Ladders and Candy Land. I wasn't going to "let" them win...so what if they were barely three years old. So I guess I can't place all the blame on my husband.
So all of that being said I knew eventually the day for the contents of this blog would come, but it came a bit sooner than I was prepared for by any means. The day the middle child called home from college in Kansas I knew from the tone of his voice the call was going to end with me hanging up the phone in a puddle of my own tears. But for a little backstory (yes I keep stalling on getting to the point.). In 2010 he played one season of flag football at the age of 7 during our stent in Missouri. After the end of that season we got notice that we would be PCSing to Italy. He didn't touch a football field again until the age of 10 in Arizona. We arrived in Arizona late summer so we missed the cutoff to tryout for the local AYF team so we signed him up for a local rec league. That season he worked his butt off but to no avail it was a losing season. 0-10. This was a very hard pill for a young competitive Gilleo to swallow. He met his adversity when he signed up for the AYF Marana Broncos team the following season. He was told that he would have to lose weight if he wanted to play on the team for his age. He worked his a$$ off and by the cutoff date he lost 27 pounds. There were many practices he felt like he was never going to make it, but he never gave up. He ate salads and fruit at school for lunch, and he made sure he ate a healthy portion of food at dinner. The restraint this must have taken a 10 year old who has always loved to eat and who always had food in his mouth, his willpower was astonishing. Needless to say his hard work and resilience contributed to the team having an undefeated season, going to nationals in FL and winning it all. That season of football sparked a passion and love for the game like no other. The athletes, coaches, and parents that were placed in our lives that season was all of God's doing.
The following year we PCS'd to Georgia where he played three years of undefeated football, two seasons for middle school and one season for high school. It wasn't until his sophomore season in California that he lost a game after coming off a four year winning streak. However, with each new move and new team to join he had to work 100 times harder to prove what he was offering to a new coaching staff that didn't know him at all. The starting over part proved to be daunting, but very rewarding once they saw him in action. Throughout all of his seasons of football he had some amazing coaches, mentors, and teammates. They all had a part in him continuing to have love and an undeniable passion for the game of football.
He played varsity for 3 years in California. His junior season even though it was more losses than wins was the best season. We were all looking forward to him and the team putting in some serious work over the off season so they could show up and show out his senior season. Just as spring season was getting underway the $hit hit the fan world wide. Two weeks to you know, turned into two months and then many more months. 10 months after what was supposed to be his senior season, they were able to throw together a joke of a season. It was an utter disappointment especially for those who were seniors and graduating. The injuries were at an all time high because of lack of practice and preparation, moral was down, some kids gave up hope on the season and quit all together, and the coach was resigning his position. It was all a huge disappointment but he made the best of it, and we soaked it all in watching him in his element. They got to play six games and that was the end of that. Had we known that his Junior year was going to be his last "REAL" season on a high school football field we would have reveled in every minute of it, even more so than we did.
In February 2021 he committed to Benedictine College in Kansas to play football at the NAIA level. After our move to Texas last summer, we drove him to college in August. This was following his several weeks bout with the KO vid crud. He wasn't completely back to himself when we released him into the wild, not to mention he was coming off of a year and a half distance learning and jumping right into the pressures of real life college. In addition to nerves and everything else that goes along with moving 800 miles away from family and becoming a college student, his recovery process was extremely slow and frustrating. He just couldn't seem to get back to feeling 100% healthy. He was out two weeks to recover even after testing negative for KO vid. He just seemed from that point to be losing his passion and love for the game. He was finally able to start practicing and even got to play a few games, but he was not feeling excited about it. His grades began to decline and he started waking each morning with extreme stomach aches, extreme stress and anxiety. This turned into visits to the doctors and eventually the decision to stop playing football and come back home after the end of the semester.
At the end of that dreaded call I was staring at my phone soaking in a pool of my pity tears, and I couldn't help but think what could I have done differently as his mother? This was hard news for Clark and I to hear, but ultimately it was his decision and one that he would have to live with. After all his life is where HE takes it. We did our jobs to equip him with the tools to make hard decisions like that so we can't be hard on ourselves. Fortunately he is very content with the decision and after sitting down with him and talking through his decision process we understand the amount of thought and consideration he had put into the very tough decision. Ultimately it came down to his health, and the long term affects of the damage he was putting on his body both physically and mentally at his age. He knew that football was only temporary and that it was eventually going to end, so he felt it wasn't worth it to continue to put his body, health and mental state through the ringer for three more years and not have anything but physical damage and $100,000 debt to show for it. Just didn't make sense to him. How can we deny his decision?
As much as Clark and I loved watching him play something that he once had such a love and passion for we could only whole heartedly support his decision, and if that meant ending football and moving back home we were going to be here to support him. Shortly after he made this decision, and I was having a hard time getting my emotions in check, thinking somehow I failed him, I was scrolling through FB and came across a friends post about one of their friends. This particular friends son had mentioned to my friend that he wanted to attend college close to home so he can be with family. To which my friend stated "you know they must have an amazing home life." There is no other explanation for that post being on my feed at the very moment of my doubting my job as a mother then God wanting me to read those words. After reading the post a couple of times I was more at peace with my child's decision and excited that he would be back home to have closer a little bit longer. I never want to be a parent that stops their (adult) kids from pursuing their dreams because I don't want them to move away or be in different parts of the world. The world is an amazing place and I want them to venture out in it and experience it (more than they already have). Besides I want to have an excuse to travel, and the hubby can't deny me from going to visit my kids! :) For now he's staying in Texas but we never know where life will take him.
The day we dropped him off at college in August 2020, he weighed 320 pounds.
To August 2022 he weighs 220!
"Some journeys take us far from home. Some adventures lead us to our destiny." -C.S. Lewis
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