Justin Kline has seen how athletics boost family bonds in the Plant City area.
One of the many things I’ve learned in my line of work is how influential something as basic as playing sports together can be for siblings.
I can’t say I know from experience, though. Mine are both much older than me, and only my stepbrother — the oldest — was a good athlete. Whenever I played sports, it was most often with friends and classmates. It’s fun, but not the same.
So, I enjoy hearing about what makes the on-field bond between brothers and sisters tick. No amount of team-building exercises can recreate the kind of chemistry you have with someone you’ve spent all or most of your life with. You can hang out with your best friend most days of the week, but it’s not the same as living together under one roof and growing up with the same experiences.
Sometimes, I do wish I was older, or that my stepbrother was younger, so that we could have played sports together. In that sense, I might be a little bit envious of some of the athletes I regularly cover here in Plant City.
At Plant City High School, you’ve got families like the Kings — whom are featured in this week’s Sports section — and the Wards, who have played organized sports together since as far back as they were Turkey Creek Trojans. The Haley family has been a Durant wrestling mainstay for many years, and the football team can claim at least a few sets of brothers, such as the Myers, Novos and Rentzes. Strawberry Crest’s girls basketball team is led by the Trigg twins, who have learned much from playing with their older sister, Maiya, and the Blackmon twins played key roles for the football team in 2015. There are many more sibling duos and trios that I’ve talked to in the past, too.
They say they just have this innate knowledge of what the other sibling is capable of and what they’re going to do, and that playing with the other sibling is more productive at times than if the person was playing with a classmate or non-relative. Corey King throwing passes to Xavier King worked this year because it’s worked since the Turkey Creek days. Ayanna and Briana Trigg setting each other up on the basketball court works because they play with and against each other in practice nearly every day.
I may not know what that’s like from experience, but I do know that you won’t get that kind of connection doing anything else.
I hope that, as we hit the Christmastime break period, these athletes take some time to reflect on how good they have it, being able to do something they love every day with their siblings. Tell them you love them, and that you appreciate what they do to help you be a better athlete and teammate. Go outside and have some fun doing what you all do best. I can almost guarantee you’ll have more fun than I’ll have on my parents’ couch, watching the Buffalo Bills find a way to lose to my least favorite team in sports, the Miami Dolphins.
Contact Justin Kline at jkline@plantcityobserver.com.
