Pre-Season

Click on the link below to see my Pre-season

There’s a pre-season to everything but it’s hard to tell when it begins and ends. This is the period when offensive and defensive schemes are mastered, team chemistry developed and vision is cast. It’s also the time when drill-speed becomes game-speed. Rehabilitation, physical therapy and off-season strengthening are put to the test in pre-season because the next step is the real deal. I’ve always thought of off-season as what you do to prepare when there’s nothing at stake. Pre-season is something more.

I grew up in various parts of inner-city Los Angeles specifically: 48th & Avalon, 101st and Avalon, Watts and surrounding areas. We lived in Inglewood and inner-city Los Angeles from 1975-1989 after which we relocated to West Covina, a suburb probably 30 minutes east of downtown LA. But what’s unclear to me is whether or not the inner-city was pre-season or off-season. From 1981-1989 here’s a snap shot of the life I remember in the city pre Suburb:

Summer swimming at Will Rogers Park
Pop Warner Football practice for L.A. Sheriff’s
Up by 5:30 a.m. (elementary through junior high)
Picking out and Ironing my clothes the night before school or before 6 the next morning.
Hustling to grab a doughnut from “Winchell’s” before the bus arrived
City bus rides to the school bus-stop at 6 a.m. daily
Fending off the “knuckle heads” trying to take my money in the morning
1.5 hour school bus rides to and from school everyday
Being called an “Oreo” for trying to study on the bus (black on outside/white on inside..get it? As if to be smart means you’re trying to be white. 🙂 )
Being called “Nigger” by some of the kids at the school I was bussed to
Loving the after school activities that kept me in the San Fernando Valley just a little bit longer each day before having to go home to the littered streets and urine-stained alleys of my neighborhood
Least favorite chore: Taking out the Trash to find that cats had torn open the bags and maggots had materialized. (I still hate the trash)
Saving lunch money so I could buy cupcakes from the lady who sold them out of her house on the walk home from the school bus-stop
Saw a couple of shootouts in my day
etc…

And these are just the things that jump out at me upon reflection…good, bad or otherwise. I’m pretty sure the “season” has begun now and the LA factor probably qualified as pre-season. I probably became whoever I am…back then. Hopefully you can recognize what your pre-season was and began extracting wisdom that you can apply to game day this season.