By Keith Pompey
Inquirer Suburban Staff
Tajai Ahmad has a dream about playing in the NBA and worked hard to make it come true.
But even an enthusiast knows when games feel more like jobs. And basketball started to feel just that way after Ahmad joined three teams last winter. After nearly three months of nonstop play, he finally admitted to his concerned family he was burned out – at age 10.
Ahmad still wants to play, but only for one team at a time. That, he says, will be “better, much better. I don’t have to worry about getting tired.”
Derrick Cooper, once a nationally prominent youth wrestler, walked away completely from his sport of choice, at age 11. Six years later, he chooses to just play football at Camden Catholic High, delighted he now has time for his friends.
“I do miss wrestling with a passion, “Cooper said. “But I don’t think I’ll ever wrestle again… . I got burned out.”
These boys are not alone. Of the record 40 million youths playing sports nationwide, 30 percent will quit between age 13 and 17, says Joel Fish, director of the Center For Sport Psychology in Philadelphia.
Break goes into overtime
Cooper, of Cherry Hill, had intended to take a one-year break from wrestling. A half-dozen years later, he’s yet to resume.
“I got sick of it, “said Cooper, 17, a soon-to-be senior. “I felt like I missed out on a lot since all I was doing was wrestling.”
Though he dabbled in other sports, by age 4 Cooper was spending at least three months a year on the mat. By age 7 it was five months.
“It was practice, mainly all day, “he said, Mondays through Fridays.
Then there were matches, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays, and travel to all-day tournaments on Sundays.
Cooper first loved the sport that is a longtime family tradition. His father, Charles, and uncle, Dominick Saulle, wrestled for Willingboro High.
By the time he was 3, Derrick delighted in watching older cousin Dominick Saulle Jr. wrestle and was already playfully grappling with another cousin, Chris Notte, now a senior and vaunted wrestler at Holy Cross.
“Derrick was a wrestling buff, “Mary Notte-Cooper said of her son, who took to the mat before kindergarten age.
There were rewards. A member of the Willingboro Recreation Wrestling Program and the Wrecking Crew, a South Jersey all-star team, he became a three-time district and two-time regional champ. He placed sixth in the 1995 Middle Atlantic Wrestling Championships.
Cooper remembers those successes. He also wistfully recalls practicing while friends played outside. “It was, “he said, “a little overwhelming.”
One busy boy
Last winter, Ahmad played in a combined 41 games and 62 practices in the Lawncrest Youth Access Center league, on the Cheltenham junior varsity and the West Philly Rebels.
His typical evening consisted of playing games for one team, then practicing with another.
“Initially we didn’t think it was going to be a problem, “his mother, Trina Ahmad, said. “If we would have thought that, we wouldn’t have done it.”
The sixth grader at Whittier Elementary in North Philadelphia didn’t let on that there was an issue. But, Ahmad says now: “The gyms were very hot, and I got a headache. I felt like I was about to throw up and was getting overheated because I was always tired.”
Often too busy to play video games or enjoy downtime, he’d immediately head for bed once he got home from games and practices.
Even if time permitted, Ahmad was often too tired to join friends playing outside of his Feltonville home. And he routinely did homework in his parents’ car as he shuttled from one team to another.
“It was bad, “Trina Ahmad said. “We were actually calling out his spelling words to him in the car. You could see that his mood changed. I knew something was wrong when he didn’t want to hang with his friends.
“He wasn’t doing the things that average 10-year-olds were doing.”
The mother acknowledges she had no idea life would get that involved for her son, “but when it was actually happening, it was two different things.”
Still, she kept asking him whether it was too much. He said it was not, but as the season ended, he admitted to being overwhelmed.
The family gladly went to the one-team rule.
“I had to let a kid be a kid, “Trina Ahmad said.
That’s what the 10-year-old is doing, now – while still dreaming of the NBA.
Wrestling Gear
