Obeying my thirst

I almost felt guilty sipping on a bottle of water as I watched the Crestview football team go through a workout Thursday in the hot July sun.

Actually, it was my second bottle of water, and my guilt wasn’t for enjoying the cold drink in front of the players, but rather because it went against all I was taught as a player so many years ago.

It’s hard to believe it is 2010, and even harder to believe that 35 years have passed since I was getting ready for my senior season in high school.

Summer workouts for the Gulf Breeze football team were strictly voluntary and, at best, loosely monitored by the Dolphin coaching staff.

There were no team drills as there are today. Due to construction of the new gym, the weight room, such as it was, consisted of one universal weight machine, and was a temporarily located in a classroom where, as a freshman, I had taken world geography.

On a good day five or six out of 40-45 varsity players would show up to lift. And, to tell the truth, there weren’t too many good days when we had five or six guys lifting.

In reality, Gulf Breeze wasn’t too different than most schools. At the conclusion of spring practice coaches told the players when the weight room would be open during the summer, that is, if they wanted to lift.

Players were told what conditioning would be expected of them at the start of preseason practice and left it up to them to be in shape when they reported. More often than not players would have to run a mile and if they didn’t make a certain time, they would have to run it every day until they hit that time.

In 1975 summer conditioning programs were still a several years away at most high schools. And it would be another decade before the benefits of weight training would trickle down to the high school level.

If you consider that a lifetime from a primary school perspective is 12 years, then three lifetimes have passed since my senior year.

In the classroom we have gone from the typewriter age to the age of super computers. In athletics the changes have been just as dramatic with nutrition, conditioning and workouts.

So why did I feel guilty about sipping on that nice cold water? As I said, it wasn’t because I was enjoying a drink in front of the players as today’s players get frequent water breaks and are encouraged to get a drink any time they feel the need one.

I felt guilty because my generation of football players was taught that a player needing a drink during practice was weak. We were told to hydrate at home, but on the practice field we were supposed to tough it out.

I watched enough high school football practices in recent years to know there are other ways to tough it out besides denying you need some water.

But there was still that twinge of guilt for listening to my thirst.

I guess some old ideas really do die hard.