He was good at math.....

I have been struggling to focus on math (and school) this week.  But today I realized that Tyler’s story is full of math connections.  Tyler struggled academically but was a passionate and successful lacrosse player.  His desire to play at the college level resulted in a switch to a small private school this year.  He had recently been accepted at a Division II school in California where he was going to play lacrosse.  Last week a car accident took his life and ended those dreams.

I remember the first time I met Tyler’s mom, it was at the parent meeting for lacrosse when our boys were high school freshmen.  We met in the coach’s classroom, he used to split his time teaching math and phys ed.  The coach was pretty intense and I remember he spit out a lot of statistics about his team.  Patty whispered to me that Tyler was not good at math and maybe the coach would be able to help him out.  I remember telling her to have Tyler check in with my son Aidan, he was a “math kid”.  That was before I knew all the ways you could be good at math.

Tyler had an amazing ability to see the entire lacrosse field and know where all his teammates and opponents were located.  He was a defender (like my son), but his talent for always being where the action was earned him a spot on the varsity as a freshman.  In addition, he was the guy to go to when you needed to restring your lacrosse head.  This is an art that requires patience, hand eye coordination and 3 dimensional visioning – a kind of puzzle.  This week, I learned that Tyler also knew all the starting NBA line-ups and their jersey numbers. 

He was a fabulous lacrosse player and he was good at math.  He will be missed.