In our daily attempt to rush through life and get everything from grocery shopping done to answering e-mails, it's often possible to miss the little things which pass by your field of view. Namely the presence of adults within the world of teenagers and younger children.
It's something we take for granted and rarely stop to give a second thought to, but imagine what the world would be like without these people.
Legion baseball in Orillia is back from the brink of disaster, after 10-12 volunteers stepped forward to work on the executive.
A tip of the hat goes out to these people for making a commitment.
When the cry "play ball" goes out on ball diamonds across Orillia next summer, the 250-plus boys and girls will be thankful they can play their favourite game once again.
They'll interact with great coaches and the one-on-one experiences they have with them will stay with them for decades to come.
Mind you, the sport was baseball but it just as easily could have been hockey, basketball, badminton, bowling or ringette.
What has always struck me about these people is their passion for sports and their willingness to dedicate incredible numbers of volunteer hours to help boys and girls grow as not just athletes, but also as human beings.
I hate to single people out, but it's a joy to see how much time people like Andy Power, Paul Bolger, Brent Smith, Jeff Clark, Dave Gross and others dedicate to sports at the high school level.
Add people like Rex Dorkings, Terry Chatten, Stu Finlayson, Peter Hislop, Ian Skitch, Tony Clark, Dan Landry and countless others into the mix and you quickly find out how many great adults we have out there influencing children in a positive way.
Multiply those people by thousands more in Georgian Bay region and you have a lot of boys and girls who looked up to a lot of great coaches while growing up.
And for every coach who elects to step away from the game because of frustration or parental conflict, we lose another role model and mentor.
As a kid, I didn't play a lot of organized sports but I still have great memories of interacting with my first baseball and hockey coaches and also with the elderly professional who provided me with my first golf lesson as a junior. Their names live on in my mind, as the do in the hearts and minds of big and little kids everywhere.
Whatever the sport, coaches aren't people we should forget about or ever take for granted. They are special and they need to be honoured and cherished.
