My grandson Eli is nine, weighs seventy-one pounds, and on Saturday morning a teenager at Dick’s Sporting Goods tried to sell me a $389 cold plunge tub for him. Pop Warner starts Monday. We came in for cleats. We left with cleats. But not before a kid named Brayden, who had a clipboard and an earpiece and could not have been older than nineteen, asked me — out loud, with his face — what Eli’s recovery protocol was.
I told him the recovery protocol was a Capri Sun and a nap on the couch. He laughed. I had not been kidding. Brayden then pulled up a tablet and showed me what he called a Youth Performance Package — cleats, gloves, a pair of compression sleeves the color of antifreeze, and a Theragun Mini that vibrates so a fourth grader can manage soreness. Eli has never been sore. Eli has been tired, a problem I have solved with a juice box for forty consecutive years.
There is a section now at Dick’s, between the bats and the basketballs, that did not exist when I was buying my own kids cleats in 1988. It is called Recovery. Big sign. Soft lighting. A wall of foam rollers in nine different densities, like wines. The cold plunge tub I mentioned was on a stand next to a child-sized mannequin. They are selling cold plunges to children. I want that in print.
I asked Brayden what a nine-year-old needs to recover from. He said, with a straight face, training load. Eli’s training load is two practices a week, one of which is mostly the coach explaining where the bathroom is. Brayden said modern youth athletes are more susceptible to overuse injury. I said that’s because you have them squatting at age seven, and he nodded like I had agreed with him.
Coach DiMaggio, who ran my high school team in 1971 and once made us run gassers until a kid named Petey Corrigan threw up into his own helmet, used to say recovery was Tuesday. Tuesday was the recovery day. You went to school. You ate a sandwich. On Wednesday you ran a hill until you saw God. That was the program. He won three district titles. He died at 91 of, I have to assume, spite, because the funeral home had a ramp.
The cleats themselves were $124. For feet that will be different feet by November. There were six models. One had a carbon fiber plate. For a fourth grader. I asked what the carbon fiber plate did and Brayden said it transfers ground force more efficiently. Eli weighs seventy-one pounds. The ground does not feel his force. The ground does not know he is up there.
We ended up with the second-cheapest pair, which were still $89 and lit up at the heel. I do not know why they light up. I do not want to know. Eli wanted the carbon plate ones because his friend Mason had them, and Mason’s dad bought Mason a speed sled. A speed sled. Mason is in the third grade. Mason cannot tie his own shoes, but he is dragging weight across his backyard like a Clydesdale because his father read something on Instagram.
At the register, Brayden tried one more time. He pitched me a Recovery Starter Kit: the cold plunge, a percussive massage gun, and a subscription to an app called RecoverY — the capital Y at the end was on purpose, somehow — that tracks youth athlete sleep quality. I told him my grandson’s sleep quality is excellent because he is nine and we do not let him have a phone. Brayden said the app pairs with a kid-friendly wearable. I said you have invented the LoJack for a child, and he gave me a 10% off coupon to make me leave.
I called Ray Kowalczyk on the drive home. Ray coached forty years of Catholic League football and is the meanest sweet man I know. I told him about the cold plunge for nine-year-olds and he was quiet for a long time. Then he said, “Duke, when did we lose.” Not a question. A statement. A guy looking out the window of his Buick and naming the moment.
Eli’s first practice is Monday. He will be sore Tuesday. The cure is going to be a popsicle and a Pixar movie, and on Wednesday he will be fine, because he is nine, and the human body at nine is a miracle of self-repair that does not require Bluetooth. Denise is bringing chili to Ray’s tonight. She says the recipe is from a podcast. I told her she didn’t need to recover from anything either, and she threw a dish towel at me.