Lunch with Bill Krantz
I had a terrific lunch today with an old friend and trusted educational mentor, Bill Krantz, Principal at McLaughlin Middle School. In the first half hour or so we caught up on what our families were up to etc. I then shared some ideas on what I thought was lacking for young people today i.e. the idea of how to set goals, access to mentors and positive role models, access and ability to participation in local Sports Programs, amongst others. Bill added a few additional thoughts including food insecurity, the lack of support at home as there are so many less 2-parent homes than there were just 10 or 20 years ago, parents or caregivers not being available at home when student finish their school day, amongst others.
Bill and I were in total agreement that something had to be done for our next generation. I threw out a bunch of ideas regarding what we had both learned from having been surrounded by Sport as kids including accountability, discipline, the value of your word, how to overcome adversity, teamwork and the respect for self and others. I said why don’t we start a program where we deliver this to your 6th grade students at McLaughlin? He informed me that we needed to start way before 6th, more like 4th grade. I was kind of dumbfounded, but he was the expert so 4th grade it was.
I discussed all the sport programs we could provide access to and sitting next to us was a woman and her Mom and she said, “I don’t want to eavesdrop but why wouldn’t you include Arts, Theatre and Music to what you’d deliver”. I informed her that she was 100% correct and we should. Little did I realize until later, the recommendation came from no other than Tiffany Eddy (yes the Tiffany Eddy of Channel 9 and Chronicle fame).
It was a great suggestion.
Well with that 90-minute lunch and Bill (and Tiffany’s) expert feedback, Value of Sport was born.
More to Value of Sport to come.