A time-honored tradition for journalists around this time of year is to cobble together a compendium of life lessons, guidelines and advice to impart to high school graduates as they embark upon their next steps into the “real world.”
Someone once postulated that 80 percent of success in life is a matter of just showing up. If that’s true, dear graduate, then go for it and don’t be late. The life tip for high school seniors, then, is: leave earlier.
With that out of the way, here’s something to consider. Where might sports fit into post-graduation life for the high school senior? Beyond the college years, even. What sports will today’s senior athletes play, enjoy and benefit from into their adult lives?
It’s always a rush to drain a 30-foot putt, and driving in the winning run in a beer league softball game never gets old.
For a more tangible bump in quality of life, there is running.
Long ago, a friend turned me on to the effects of LSD – Long, Slow Distances – and the empirical evidence of a better life has been obvious ever since.
Unlike biking, running is a natural motion, the oldest of exercises. From the time the first troglodyte high-tailed it from some saber-tooth beast, humans have been picking them up and putting them down for one reason or another.
It wasn’t until fairly recently that the scientific community made official what runners have known all along: running is good for you, and can extend your life.
The physical benefits are obvious — weight loss, better skin tone, lowered blood pressure, etc. The biggest dividend from running is one that takes place between the ears.
“It gives you confidence, for one thing, to know that you’ve worked through whatever pain you might have been feeling,” Jake Klister said. “And there’s the feeling of inner peace that you get after a run, it stays with you. Yeah, I’ll always run, definitely.”
Klister is a Shawano Community High School senior with a knack for brisk locomotion on land or in water. He has competed in the state swimming finals in four events during his career at Shawano, and recently he topped off his second-place finish in the 800-yard run at the Bay Conference meet by anchoring the league-winning 4x800 relay that included teammates Andrew Cardish, Austin Lhotka and Brandon Pagel. A berth at this year’s track and field state finals, he said, would be the perfect capper to the past four years.
A closer delve into Klister’s personal life reveals he has served on the student council, and has been a member of the Future Business Leaders of America and the Science Society. He also volunteers as a Big Brother to an 8-year-old boy. (“Yes, I’ll try to get him into running, too,” he said.)
Klister, who will run track and cross-country next year at Winona State University in Minnesota, says that running has a way of keeping you focused, grounded and in tune to the priorities of your life path. Re-read the previous paragraph and ask yourself if he’s slinging a bunch of fried air, or if he is indeed the personification of positive outcomes achieved with a big assist from exercise.
What he advocates about the sport also applies to the 12-minute-mile jogger. You don’t need to break the tape at the finish line to feel great afterward, as Klister did as an 11-year-old, when the sport of running sunk its hooks into its newest addict.
While there is a big payoff on the vanity end of running — who doesn’t want to pare the adipose tissue off that otherwise fascinating, tight body? — ultimately the biggest draw is its ability to fend off or mitigate depression. Depression, in all its varying levels, is one of those occupational hazards of being alive. In a world surfeited with no-account dolts, liars and jerks, keeping your head on an even keel can be a challenge in the 21st century.
If you can find a better way to stay fit and manage levels of depression naturally than by lacing up the running shoes three or four times a week, by all means you should grab ahold with both hands and run with it.
