Childhood summer sports created community, nostalgia

If there’s anything I love, it’s nostalgia. Records, physical copies of old books, film cameras, ’90s cartoons and recapturing an old feeling.
It’s hard not to feel nostalgic in summer. We’re stuck at work but our inner children are out in the streets on summer break. It’s hot and sticky. The days are longer and the bugs are out. It’s the season when fun memories and new friends are made. The time for family reunions, festivals and cookouts.
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Recently I was talking to my friend JD about what summer used to look like when we were kids and a bunch of memories of playing sports came flooding back.
I remember playing kickball in the yard with my cousins on family trips to North Carolina. We’d use whatever was available as bases — my grandmother’s rose bush, a lid to the garbage can, the sandal of a cousin who decided they wanted to play barefoot. We’d play while the adults gossiped and my grandma would peek out at us from the kitchen window. Sometimes she’d bring us slices of watermelon.
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Back in my hometown in northeast Ohio, we played baseball in the streets with the grandkids of the older couple next door. Our particular street wasn’t busy but occasionally we’d pause our game so a neighbor could drive through. Our reward at the end of games would be ice cream from our favorite local stand.
Sometimes I’d ride my bike to the neighborhood basketball courts with my little sister in tow. We’d meet up with other kids and watch the hoopers trash talking as they ran up and down the concrete court. The park would be filled with kids in various stages of play — foot racing, swinging, making up new dances to the songs from cars that passed by.
Kids play in the grass outside a fenced-in swimming pool at the Cavalier Manor Recreation Center in Portsmouth, Va.
We didn’t need much in the way of equipment; we had each other, a ball and our competitive spirits. There was no trophy, just bragging rights.
The pride felt in those moments — the bragging rights — was not only in winning but being in community with those who lived and played around me.
As an adult, I’ve talked about wanting to assemble my friends at a park somewhere and play some games. Can you imagine what a game of flashlight tag would look like now? Would we just use the lights on our phones?
Today, families, communities and sports all look different. Nostalgia, despite feeling good, has a way of clouding us to the absence of the things we had before. The “good ol’ days” have been transformed into something more abstract and mythical rather than something we can make our current reality. And because our childhood memories occupy such a revered place in our thoughts, it’s harder to connect the dots between then and now, between the communities of one’s childhood and the transformation or absence of them in adulthood.
Would it be possible for children today to have those same experiences? And what does that say about how our memories have led us to shape our communities as adults?
Imagine a young Luis Robert Jr. on a dirt field with his friends, playing until it got too dark to see. Or Connor Bedard on a pond in western Canada, the sound of a puck hitting the metal post. Or Justin Fields throwing passes to his dad, Ivant, his NFL dreams far in the future. Sepia-toned images conjure a past that was fun and easy.
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Nostalgia can be so powerful because projecting our current circumstances onto those of our childhood can feel so burdensome — we’ve grown up, after all — but one constant from then till now is how sports shape our communities.
Kids are still being kids. They’re in our neighborhoods, in our backyards and on our blacktops. And this Fourth of July weekend, adults should grab some friends and recapture that feeling.