Life
High School Years
In high school, I played a lot of sports. Football (quarterback) and basketball (small forward) were my favourites, and I also played rugby (fullback or wing) and soccer (right defence). I was pretty popular, but it was kinda at a shallow surface level. I think that's because I moved to Port Elgin right before high school started, and it's a small town where everyone grew up together. I didn't have the same long ties to everyone that the rest of the kids had.
First Impressions
On my first day of high school I was feeling bold and showed up in a pink collared shirt. I had a thin little moustache as well. One moment from 9th grade I remember pretty vividly. On the first day I had gym class, and my teacher, Pete Buttenaar, did some roll call and admin stuff with us — I got the sense that he was a no-nonsense, hard-nosed former athlete.
On the second day of gym class we went to the weight room, and a huge kid in my class (probably 6'1, 210) told Pete he could probably bench 200 lbs. Pete laughed and said, I bet you $100 you can't. Ronnie was strong and did it right then — one rep of 200 lbs at around 13 years old. I was pretty shocked, but I didn't fully understand it either. I had never bench pressed anything and didn't know what 200 lbs meant.
Finding My Place
A few weeks later we played football for the first time in class. Nobody really knew who I was, other than a couple of the athletic kids who'd seen me around the summer before school. I was playing safety and picked off a deep ball, a jump ball between me and two wide receivers.
Pete was impressed and told me to come out for football next fall to play for his team (he was also the football coach). I was cocky and said, "yeah maybe, let's see." Pete said, "let's see? What else are you going to be doing?" and we both laughed. After that, I was basically part of the cool kids, who were mostly the athletic kids with a few of their party friends thrown in.
Testing Boundaries
One time in the main hall, between classes or at lunch, a kid named Paul LaTouf came up to me and we got talking. He was about my height and weight — 5'11, maybe 175 lbs, athletic looking. You know how some people just have that aggressiveness to them, that real dog in them? That was him. His older brother was a bigger, stronger, meaner version of him, and I later learned their dad was exactly the same — a police officer or lieutenant at the nuclear power plant where my dad worked.
Paul kept talking in my face, and I didn't take intimidation from anyone. He reached out to push me, both hands on my biceps, and I reacted right away and pushed back. It was a standstill, like a tug of war, and I think he was shocked at how strong I was. He was a big, strong kid. But so was I, and it might have been the first time he'd come face to face with someone who could kick his ass just as likely as he could kick mine. He never tested me again. In fact, nobody in high school ever did after that.
St. Joe's
Sports were most of my identity in high school. Football and basketball structured the whole year for me, and they were where my competitiveness had somewhere to go.
After the winter, a few friends and I would go to Saint Joe, the Catholic school in Port Elgin, pretty much every day and spend hours there playing game after game after game. Some of my funniest and most athletic moments happened on that court — I have a few pictures of me trying to dunk a volleyball there. The rims were a little low, but I was pretty athletic and could get above the rim.
That's also when I first started having issues in my lower back, and I wonder if all those jumps on concrete, with no training and no core strength, slipped a disc early at 17.
Looking Back
Sports were the way in. They got me social acceptance in a town where I had no history, and a kind of confidence I'd lean on later. I'd like to say I was also building resilience and adaptability and all the rest, but mostly I was a kid playing ball and figuring out where I stood. The bigger transitions were still ahead.