By MONTE DUTTON

In many ways, now is the end of the year. It’s the end of the sports year, especially for those who follow teams fielded by schools. For the athlete, the coach and those who support him or her, Christmas and New Year’s is sort of a break in the action with fruitcake and fireworks.

Maybe this is the end of growing season. This year’s spring harvest consists of many athletes moving on to play at higher levels or just moving on to adulthood.

Some will excel. Some will fail. Some will barely be heard from again. It’s the same with every kid. Education is about finding a path. Mine worked for a long time, but, like most who live long enough, at some point the world passed me by.

I believe life experiences give athletes a free throw into adulthood. Most of the time it swishes. For some it clanks. Most get back to the line again and again.

A coach of mine was fond of saying, “If you must make a mistake, make it full-speed,” and sure enough, I’ve been a full-speed mistake maker ever since. I’m from a long line. At the present, I just aspire to keep a penny until a die penniless.

If playing sports – and trying to be an athlete – benefited me, it was in teaching never to give up. I’ve tried to reinvent myself a dozen times. Some such attempts have succeeded.

If I have an overriding flaw, it’s that I’ve never wanted to be successful by marketing, promotion, whom I know, or who knows me. I’ve always aspired to be successful by being good at what I do. Quite possibly, I was delusional from the start.

There’s a Statler Brothers song, possibly my favorite, but it’s so old that it only resonated with my parents’ generation. “The Class of ‘57” was targeted at the age of my folks, but new verses could be written for classes right up to the ones graduating now.

The Class of ’57 had its dreams / We all thought we’d change the world with our great works and deeds / Life gets complicated when you get past 18 / But the Class of ’57 had its dreams.

The song was written by Harold and Don Reid, who sang together with others as Statlers. I recommend the full lyrics to anyone. It’s a nice, simple poem to which almost anyone can relate, even those who don’t particularly care for four-part harmony.

Classmates of mine became military heroes, law enforcement officers, coaches, teachers, mechanics, businessmen and businesswomen, millionaires, lawyers, doctors, preachers, teachers, musicians, alcoholics, engineers, landlords, actors, actresses, crooks and bankers, and some such as me became miscellaneous. Some experienced the highs, others the lows alike, and the great majority experienced both. Some never got a chance due to untimely deaths. Some lived too long. Others lived too short.

When a kid sallies forth into the world, he or she is cruising for a bruising. That’s a given. Learn from the skint knees. Avoid the direct hits.

An athlete – and those similarly drawn to greatness in other fields – aims high, even when he’s not swinging for the fences of life. The real world can be disillusioning.

Upon jumping off the freight train of childhood and trying to hit the ground running, there are few perfect landings. Some will discover that the world is being run by people who wouldn’t have made it through the first day of practice back in the glory days, whether they were last week or last century.

Most find their way. Some forget from whence they came. Some wind up where they never intended.

The advice I have been giving since way before I had enough sense is that world is made up three groups of people: (1.) those who bang their heads against the system and let it destroy them; (2.) those who knuckle under to the system and forget what’s wrong with it; and (3.) those who know the system stinks but figure out a way to work within it without selling their souls.

The world chews up the first group and spits it out.

The world chews up the second group and digests it.

The last group is the one that tames the world and changes it.

I’m somewhere between the first group and the third. The remainder of my life will determine which. The same is true of yours.