#i spent a lot of my teenage years observing the myriad ways in which sports can twist and warp parent/child relationships

[batsplat]

casey if you want the showers-

https://www.tumblr.com/kingofthering/766887733130084352/sounds-fantastic

random thought: maybe being a part of a structure like the academy might have fixed teenage casey stoner……

(x) he's getting in the shower, he's enjoying the sausage, he's having it all

and oh hm this is SUCH an interesting idea that had never occurred to me. with the academy, I often think about how valentino himself never ever would have joined it... just this implicitly subservient position to another rider, any restraints placed on individualism, losing the ability to define himself to the same extent... I do actually think valentino would be pretty good at team sports, like it's not a loner mentality that would be the dealbreaker - it's just that specifically the academy vibe would not have been for him

with casey... I mean, yeah, maybe? yeah, I reckon you're right. that could have worked miracles for casey. the closest he got was being one of alberto puig's kids for a while (hence the 27 to dani's 26), but obviously that was a very different vibe. this is how puig is being described in 2006 (x):

Puig is a very powerful figure in the paddock, running teams in the lower classes, as well as the MotoGP Academy, widely acknowledged as the best route into premier class racing for young riders. His influence is hard to exaggerate, and when you add in his forceful personality, known for attempting to silence those who criticize his riders, this makes him a potentially disruptive figure in any team. He is, like so many people involved at the very highest levels of professional sport, utterly driven, and people who are so driven often find it difficult to keep a sense of perspective. Alberto Puig is concerned with only one thing: that the riders he coaches should win. Nothing else matters. In a sense, this is totally understandable: He is paid to nurture young talent to produce winning riders, and he is remarkably good at his job. But his focus and his drive rubs off on his protégés, and can turn them into single-minded, dour automatons, concerned only with their own performance, and little else.

not very valentino, is it. like you do probably want an actual academy-esque structure where the kids within it actually get the chance to... y'know. bond. care about each other. no puig

and while puig did play a critical role in casey's career, that's still a connection that had more or less fizzled out by the time casey gets to motogp. so obviously no real equivalent in casey's career. and... I mean, yeah, surely it would have changed a lot. it always comes back to the same few things with casey, doesn't it. casey, who was bullied at school, who was frequently made an outsider even in the australian motorcycling community until he was eventually pushed out of the country entirely... the impact of this hypothetical academy structure does depend a bit on when it would GET to casey - because by the age vr46 typically steps in, a lot of casey's formative experiences have already happened to him. he doesn't get a racing licence from the AJRRA (the australian road racing association controlled mainly by parents of kids casey had been beating most of his life). he has to leave the country. they leave his sister behind. they depend on the charity of others in england. his family is 100% financially dependent on his racing success. every opportunity feels like it could be his last. like... this is stuff that's kind of set by the time he's 14-15. the contrast between his childhood and valentino's is discussed in this post:

and yeah, obviously a lot of that stuff would have already happened. then again, having somebody step in when he was... what, maybe 16-17-ish? and give him some job + financial security... I mean in blunt terms, I know this ask was probably more thinking about the community aspect - but you cannot understate the importance that these practical elements would have had for casey. and yes, there's the more emotional element of... finally being let into a club, of having someone fight your corner, of knowing you've got this structure looking out for you. of handling your contract negotiations - casey also talks about how he and his father frequently just felt like they didn't GET the paddock politics; the insider/outsider dynamic is so foundational to his experience in the sport. all these unspoken rules casey just didn't know... having someone there who DOES know and is looking out for you and can take care of everything bar the riding would have made such a difference

and my god, yeah, there's the community aspect. so much of casey's time in the sport is defined by how deeply, deeply lonely he was. the childhood friendships he'd had either get left behind or are eroded by competitive tensions. he never gets close to another premier class rider, doesn't get particularly close to his team either. in 2009, he said his only friend in the paddock was his wife. and... y'know, while I have no doubt the paddock could feel like a pretty hostile place, I also reckon it would've been a good thing for someone to force casey out of his shell a little bit. like, I get not getting close to your direct competitors, I doubt I'd be massively different, but maintaining that level of distance from basically everyone you travel with most of the year feels... not ideal. at least befriend some of the mechanics my man. looking at some of the canonical vr46 academy riders - naming no names, but I can also easily imagine them in the loner category if the academy hadn't picked them up. and at least THEY could still fall back on childhood friends and acquaintances if they hadn't had the academy, more so than a bloke who moved to a different continent aged fourteen. casey needed some friends!! and maybe just an occasional reminder that not the whole world is out to get him

so YEAH I do agree an academy-esque structure would've made a MASSIVE difference... to the extent that it's almost tough to imagine that version of casey. it does make you realise just how foundational all of this angst feels to casey, in a sad way. what does he even look like without his isolation... you might wonder whether that change would take a bit of his edge away - it's just undeniable that he got a lot of motivation and drive out of his oppositional dynamic with the rest of the world. he wanted to show everyone that they were wrong about him... the rejection by the club back home in australia made him angry, the rejection of teams in motogp made him angry... and well, his circumstances did make him desperate. they made him hungry. it's what he talks about here, isn't it, the feeling that some young riders just aren't taking their riding seriously enough, contrasting it to how he knew he had to take every single opportunity he was given. valentino vs casey about young riders (2009//2013):

(remember that the question valentino got explicitly referred back to an earlier answer about casey - "serious and sad" is kinda his characterisation of casey specifically)

then again. saying this pain was necessary to casey's success would be needlessly myopic, casey has plenty of drive even without piling on the horrors when he was 16-20, give the kid some friends y'know. you can still be plenty neurotic within an academy, you can still cultivate a persecution complex, look at pecco. also, y'know, obviously sports success isn't worth miserable children and never will be. and I suspect casey himself has softened a bit from the stance expressed in his autobiography - I've been thinking again about that podcast interview he gave earlier this year that takes a more explicitly critical view on how his parents forced their dream on him

speaking of, another big benefit of the academy is in outsourcing the role of enforcing discipline so that it's no longer the parents doing it, which again just feels considerably healthier. casey basically says as much in his autobiography:

though, again, I wouldn't call puig a particularly helpful influence either, and jorge's experience with amatriain should be enough evidence that it doesn't take a parent to establish an unhealthy (and even abusive) dynamic. obviously, the assumption here is that you drop casey in a vr46-esque academy - for all his sins, the academy valentino set up in no way resembles how these other 'talent spotters' manage their charges. it's just... it's a safety net, isn't it, in every sense. financially, job security-wise, socially... obviously it's always going to be performance-dependent, yes, but that bit's never going to be an issue for any version of casey

so, yeah. maybe not 'fix' casey exactly, but it would've changed so much for him... it does feel like it would've been an unambiguously positive presence in his life. no, it wouldn't just erase all his issues with the sport - but if he could've found a place within an academy structure like that, he would've been a lot happier for it. probably could've loved the sport more than he did. certainly would've felt a lot less alone

[sudsybear]

Saturday Study

It’s not that I wasn’t busy sophomore year – every high school student in the district is busy.  Students carry a full academic load and participate in at least two extracurricular activities; sports, National Honor Society, foreign language clubs, music training, visual arts, performance arts.  Choir, Corral and spring track season rounded out my academic responsibilities. Junior year was no different.

 I got my driver’s permit in September and took “behind the wheel” with Mr. Rockel. He was a petite man with straight greasy black hair and a foot deformity, which required him to wear special shoes. Some twenty-five years earlier he managed to get on staff with the local school system. By the time we had him as an instructor he had the dubious honor of teaching Driver’s Education and Health Education to belligerent and obnoxious adolescents. He also had the honor of being assistant coach of the football and wrestling teams. “Behind the wheel” involved four students and one instructor riding in the student driver vehicle on Saturday mornings and weekday afternoons. We drove all around town, practicing starting, stopping, signaling, and turning. We ran Mr. Rockel’s errands, and the big event was highway driving.

 AFS (American Field Service) filled my time – my family hosted a student from Spain – and I served as an officer of the club. Choir and the more elite Triple Trio both required frequent rehearsals before and after school. Corral Board required monthly meetings, and I became involved with a program called Teen Counseling.  All this on top of an Honors English class, a senior math class (trigonometry and functions) an experimental biology class, and chemistry. In my mid-30s with a house and family to care for, I cannot imagine how I ever managed to keep such a schedule. Throw in babysitting for pocket money, and I wonder how I ever had a social life, much less got any homework done!

 But what a social life I had!

 I spent all my free time with David. And when not surrounded by our friends, we adventured on our own. When he finally decided to get his driver’s license, he drove an old metallic brown Datsun B-310 hatchback. Over the months we spent as a couple, David drove us all over the county and downtown from the suburbs to explore. One afternoon after school David and I drove out to the sprawling suburban county park, Winton Woods, found a secluded picnic spot, and didn’t do our homework. Another night he drove us downtown to one of the fancy hotels, parked in the underground garage and we spent our evening racing up and down the stairwells of the Westin.

 Ours is the first generation of teenagers to grow up with personal computers in our homes. Very little useful software was available for the general public, mostly word processing (Apple’s Mac Write, or IBM’s WordStar or WordPerfect) or Lotus spreadsheets. E-mail was an elite luxury, used mostly on academic campuses and in private industry. Certainly personal computers in the home were not ubiquitous. David and his friends joined the cutting edge of a new technology. He was the proud owner of a newly introduced, and mass-marketed Apple IIe. He called it Rutherford, typed some of his homework on it using an early word processing program, and participated in a local dial-in Apple bulletin board service. He taught himself binary, and wrote letters to me in code. I didn’t understand 99% of it, but thought it cool that he liked it.

 Apple went head to head with IBM marketing their products. School systems struggled with how to integrate the personal computer into the curriculum. Our school district chose to require all students to take a computer course in order to graduate high school. The high school basketball coach was recruited to teach a loose history of the computer and the BASIC programming language. All I remember of the course is infinite loop logic (Go to, if, then, go to) and what the acronym stood for “Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.” This was supposed to make us all computer literate, much less good programmers? We struggled with tagging lines, editing our rudimentary programs to make them do something. All in all, we’d have been better served to take typing (now keyboarding) classes and learn how to prevent Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. But a few were actually inspired by what they were taught. They found the process fascinating, and armed with new PCs in their homes, they became masters of a new technology.

 David and I spent hours in his bedroom at his mother’s house while she was at work or out for the evening with her companion, Jake. Instead of talking with each other like other teens did, David turned the lights out, put music on and in the glow of the green monochrome monitor, we typed our conversation. Quiet, except for the click of the keyboard, one of us might accidentally hold down the space bar for a length of time, need to use the backspace key, but misspelled words were forgiven. I sat on his lap, and we took turns at the keyboard. We considered our words well. Committing a thought to fingertips requires a more careful consideration of word choice. Inflection and tone don’t come across well on a monitor and we didn’t have today’s emoticons or myriad font collection. We laughed when one of us typed something funny or kissed when the conversation took a tender turn. An insufferable tease, I did my best to distract him from his thoughts when it was his turn to type. What might have taken another couple three minutes of intimacy to reveal to each other, took us three hours because of the time it took to type our thoughts.

 David loved his Apple, and was one of a select few souls who played around with programming, a newly popular technology. He was eager to learn on his own, and yet wanted to share his new hobby. He found friendship with Christopher and Moj. The three worked together on the technical crew of the Corral show. Lighting and sound, they wired up the performance center, paying attention to fire codes, working with the directors and getting the timing just right for the several performances. Thus forged, their friendship solidified. David, Moj, and Christopher talked computers and programming among other things like girls, music, bikes, cars, and other testosterone topics. They shared interests, stimulated each other intellectually, and challenged each other to excel in their computing pursuits. Thus netted, Christopher and Moj were pulled into the clique.

 Moj was a quiet one. He was 5’10” or 11”, not quite six feet tall although he reached that height in adulthood. Dark curls and dark eyes, he has a stockier build than David, more substantial. A gentle giant, he is thoughtful, introspective, and observant, and has a tough shell that wears like armor. I never knew Moj very well. We were wary around each other, always polite, but distrustful. We never shared those intimacies that I shared with David and Christopher. Instead our world-views and personalities are quite different. Though our friends were links in a chain, we were on opposite sides of the circle – linked together not directly, but through the friends with whom we surrounded ourselves. He avoided any discussions about the opposite gender, devoting his energy to the discussions about computers and wiring and programming and pyrotechnics.

 Christopher’s family was from New York City, the Big Apple, The CITY, Brooklyn? They moved to town so his mom could attend medical school at the University of Cincinnati. They lived at the end of a cul-de-sac off the same residential street that led to Anna’s house. His dad ran a small business from home, manufacturing specialty canoe paddles. Mr. Leideigh went to Florida on occasion, but basically was home during the day. He was a great “House Dad” keeping his eye on Christopher and his younger brother Jason. He kept the rest of the group of us out of major trouble. His office was in the space between the kitchen and the stairway to Christopher’s bedroom above the garage. He worked the phones and on the PC, and we (David, Anna, Erin, Julie, myself and others) said hello as we paraded by on our way up to Christopher’s room.

 With strawberry blonde hair and freckles, Christopher was the all-American poster-boy for mid-80s “preppy.” Puberty hadn’t hit quite yet; his voice still in the treble register and facial hair more than a wet dream away from reality. We spent a lot of time in his room above the garage, secluded from the rest of the house. Once there, we did any one of a number of things – sat around and talked. I listened to Christopher go on about his relationships with Julie, and later Erin. He whined about them not willing to call him their boyfriend. I counseled, and played go-between. Then again, perhaps we actually worked on homework – I vaguely recall opening an algebra textbook.

 Mostly we listened to music – while I listened to the tales of Lake Wobegon on Saturday evenings with my parents before a baby-sitting job, Christopher and David were part of the crowd that sat around listening to Pink Floyd for all hours. I became well versed in the history of the band…from Piper at the Gates of Dawn right on up through Dark side of the Moon, Wish you were here, Animals, and The Wall. I was quizzed on album names and track titles, and they forced me to play “Name That Tune.” The only thing I didn’t know was the names of the band members. But the rest of that knowledge served me well once I got to college – I fell in with a crowd of ‘Floyd fans, impressing them that a girl was familiar with the tracks.

 I had signed a deportment contract to participate in the Teen Counseling program – no drinking or drugs. Besides, Councilman and Squadwoman Savage’s daughter could NOT be caught under the influence! David and Christopher and the rest of the guys shooed the girls out of the house when they were going to drink or light up. I was trusting. David reminded me of my curfew, or told me he needed to talk to Christopher privately or gave me some other plausible tale. Gullible and slow as I was, I just left. It was at least a full year until I recognized the signs of impending high-dom. Either they got sloppy, or I got wise, or a little bit of both. In retrospect I appreciate their respect for us. After all, had they been mean-spirited, or otherwise unsavory characters, they could have gotten us drunk, high, and then had their ways with us. But they didn’t. I was “sweet’n’innocent” (my words) “high on life” (their words) and they kept me that way. Thanks guys.

 *          *          *

 Somebody told me (Anna? Heather?) Ross was lonely and gave me his address suggesting I send him something to cheer him up. For whatever reason, despite all the research and preparations, College of Wooster was not a good fit. I was told he was lonely, bored, and terribly homesick. So, in the fall of 1983, I started sending mail. I tell myself now that my goal was to write a note and send one envelope per week. I probably wrote less often, every other week, or once every two or three. Regardless, writing to Ross was my teenage therapy, my sanity. I kept my notes to him private – he was the lucky recipient of an adolescent girl’s diary. I could and did write anything and it didn’t matter. Ross was so far removed from my daily life I felt safe sending him my thoughts. Since we grew up in the same community and knew the same people, he would understand (or so I believed) my frustrations, my passions. Ross was a teenybopper’s fantasy, and that year as busy as I was, he learned more about me than anyone else.

 Like so many school districts across the nation, our high school instituted a “Saturday Study” program as a deterrent for behavior problems. For so many infractions of various school rules, you were issued demerits. Collect ten demerits, and you were required to attend school on Saturday morning from 8 a.m. – noon. In our school, Saturday Study was formal detention held in the large lecture hall. Only no lecture was delivered that morning. Instead, every other seat was filled with a warm body who had committed some adolescent transgression. Most were regulars – those who smoked in the bathrooms, who regularly started fights, some minor criminal mischief (graffiti or some such) those who skipped class and were caught off campus, and then there was me. I lived 800 yards from the school building, and was rarely on time. And so, after earning so many demerits every time I was marked tardy, I had to serve a Saturday Study. The kicker though, was that if you were late for Saturday Study, you were locked out, and had to serve twice instead of once. I did my time in Saturday Study more than twice. I’m still not punctual. If I ever have a job that requires me to be on time every day, I’ll be fired within a month!

 Most of us slept. Which was okay if you got the right teacher supervising that particular Saturday morning. But some teachers refused to allow sleeping. If you didn’t bring schoolwork or something else to do, you were required to write an essay, or escorted to your locker to retrieve your textbooks. Personal stereos (Sony Walkmen – in the pre-MP3 era) and small TV’s were confiscated. For me, it was an unfortunate opportunity to actually do my homework, at least then it was done and over with for the weekend. And write letters. I wrote thank-you letters to my grandmother, I wrote letters to my brothers, and I wrote to Ross. I scribbled random thoughts, offered up gossip, told him what was going on at Corral – I’d taken a position that he had previously held - lamented difficulties with David, and doodled. While sitting in that lecture hall, watching the clock, waiting for noon to finally arrive, I addressed and stamped the envelopes and then on my way back up the hill to home, put the whole mess in the mailbox.

  y/��3�