Ponderous thoughts I was pondering ...

The fresh catch of the day was hornpout sushi for this young eagle.

Ponderous thoughts I was pondering while trying to keep my wits about me during a period of national insanity:

** Given all that has transpired in recent days, it goes without saying that I would try to retreat to my own little patch of nature -- i.e., my own backyard -- to shut out the noise and try to recover a sense of normalcy.

For a while, I thought I succeeded. Despite the high temperatures of the week, I went out to my favorite camping chair and waited for my bunny friends to greet me. And I was not disappointed on Monday.

People that have read this space before are aware that I have a warm spot in my heart for bunnies. I know some of you are dismayed about the overabundance of the furry things in the past couple of summers because they do tend to be voracious eaters, especially of unguarded family gardens. But that was my mother's thing, not mine. What she planted years before her death in 2015 is still growing strong, and the bunnies generally leave it alone. But in my backyard, there is a wealth of fresh and juicy grass and the vines on my fence, which they enjoy nibbling at.

These little guys aren't afraid of me.

This year's crop of bunnies has been particularly fearless (no pun intended) where I'm concerned. They have come to accept me as part of the landscape -- the big guy that sits quietly in his chair and sometimes starts snoring -- so they aren't as skittish as one might normally expect from wild rabbits. There are two little ones, probably siblings and both with a tiny little diamond of white fur on their foreheads, that will hop over and sit about 18 inches from my feet. I'll say hello, but as long as I don't make any quick movements, they'll be content to watch me for a while before sticking their noses back in the grass to chow down.

I don't feed them human food; it's not good for them. But they seem so happy and content to partake of the backyard grass, I don't need to feed them anything. They might be spooked by low-flying helicopters or the planes making their low passes overhead on their way to a landing at Mansfield Airport, but for the most part, they seem to feel safe when I'm on the watch.

But yesterday was another thing. 

Usually, the buns are out and foraging in the shaded parts of my lawn by mid-afternoon, then they run rampant after 6 p.m. But just one "diamondhead," as I call it, was out, and it was sticking very close to the shrubbery near my garage. It didn't take long for me to see the reason why.

Perched high in a neighbor's dead maple tree whose branches extend out over the pond was an immature bald eagle, and it was scanning the area for its meal.

At first I thought it was a big hawk, because I've had adult bald eagles perch in that tree before, and they look just like the tattoos on the chests of those idiots attending the MAGA convention in Milwaukee. This one was smaller, and the coloration was different, but I quickly got the binoculars and camera, took a close look at the avian visitor and then did the obligatory Google search. From what I could tell, this was a young eagle that had yet to attain the full white-feathered coloration of its head, and its distinctive beak had not yet changed from a dark shade to the bright orange of mature adults. 

I've posted a few photos for you bird enthusiasts to tell me if I'm correct or not.

Anyway, I could tell this eagle was searching for food, so I walked closer to the fence next to the tree when it was perched, probably about 40 feet above me. The bird started chirping a warning to me. Then I walked a few steps closer. More warning chirps. And when I got to the fence, the eagle took flight -- only to return not long after I went back to sit in my chair. 

And thus began the waiting game. It was not going to swoop into my yard while I sat there, and the bunnies sensed that, but the two that were present in the yard by that time chose to stay very close to natural cover.

After about an hour of that, the eagle grew weary of the standoff. It soared out over the pond -- and returned a few minutes later with a trophy gripped in its talons. It had swooped down and plucked a sizable catfish (we call them "hornpout" around here) out of the water.

I was stunned -- not that it caught a fish, I know they do that, but that we actually still had hornpout in Fulton Pond. When I was a little kid, I might have been able to catch tiny sunfish and an occasional bass in that pond, but the hornpout lurked in the shallows and were too smart, swift and slippery to be hooked by amateurs. Years later, in the wake of summer droughts, decades of industrial waste and a major dredging, I was genuinely surprised to see that hornpout still exist in the pond.

The eagle kept the fish grasped in its talons for quite a while. It steadfastly refused to budge even when four large crows decided to stop by and harass the bigger bird, hoping it would drop the fish to the ground below. No such luck. Finally, about an hour after the catch, the eagle started ripping it asunder to nibble at some tasty catfish sushi. 

Protecting its dinner from view.

I'll spare you the details. I watched it all through the binoculars, and the best one-word description I can find is "rending." Starting at the head and finishing at the tail fins, the eagle ripped and pulled at the catfish, devouring the tasty bits and flinging the less savory pieces to the ground. It took almost two hours for the meal to be finished, but once it was, the eagle did not fly off. It sat triumphantly on the dead branch, still looking over every inch of my lawn and waiting for the bunnies to come out en masse before darkness fell, as they normally do.

So again, I walked close to the tree. More warning chirps, and then flight. But when it came back, it returned to a higher branch. Again I tried to prod it into flight, but this time, the eagle knew it was safe from my sorry attempts to look menacing. I could tell it was looking down upon me and thinking, "Nice try, fat boy, but this is MY HOUSE!" I didn't even get a warning chirp.

Eventually, it was too dark for my human eyes to see anything more than a few feet away, so I gave up the vigil. This morning, the eagle was gone. I only hope that the hornpout meal was enough to sustain it last night.

** Another means of diversion for me this summer has been summer basketball at Franklin High, where veteran coach John Leighton has assembled 16 girls' teams from the Hockomock League, Tri-Valley League and Bay State League. Summer basketball is a valuable part of the team bonding process, even if some players that would be members of their winter high school teams may be absent because of AAU participation, injury rehab or just plain summer fun.

All that being said, one can still glean tidbits of information from what's on display, and here are some of those:

-- Back-to-back state champ Foxboro is not done yet, even with a few big holes to be filled with the graduations of Cam Collins, Izzy Chamberlin and Erin Foley. The whole team has not been present for much of the summer league so far, but I was certainly impressed with what I've seen of returning sophomore guard Alaysia Drummonds, who may give the Warriors a good portion of what Collins took with her to Rider University. I've also been impressed with the efforts of senior forward Ava Hill, who has been a strong rebounder and has her 3-point range back, and she's even had to bring the ball up because of missing personnel. 

-- I like a lot of what I've seen from Mansfield, especially senior Ella Palanza, who appears to have a greater level of control over all of her skills. A lot of the young players that brought the Hornets to an 18-5 record last year are showing progress, too. But the Hornets really need to focus upon finishing their plays. They run at a fast pace and execute well -- until they shoot, and that aspect of their game needs better focus. Expected in summer ball, hopefully fixed by December.

-- Bishop Feehan has lots of holes to fill after their state D1 title season, but you couldn't ask for a better anchor than senior guard Charlotte Adams-Lopez, who recently received a D1 offer from Brown. Coach Amy Dolores has some height coming up in the ranks, and I expect Feehan will make the necessary progress to make a run at another Catholic Central League title and postseason success.

-- I haven't seen a North Attleboro game in person yet, but the Rocketeers have two teams participating in the league, which shows that second-year coach Ashley Kepaa has created new enthusiasm in the program. I'm sure I'll get to see them soon.

-- Another school with good participation and enthusiasm is Attleboro. Avery James is already playing at a high level, and Tia Williamson looks stronger and more agile in the paint. There is some intriguing talent among the Bombardiers, so it might pay to keep an eye on their progress heading into a new season.

** I saw in the Globe's business pages that a store I often frequented over the years, You-Do-It Electronics in Needham, recently closed. That place was not only the first stop for serious electronics enthusiasts, but a gimmick nerd's paradise as well. I bought any number of digital recorders and microphones there over the years to help me in my news-gathering efforts because I knew it was the one place where I could stay on the cutting edge of affordable technology.

Sure, some things were miscalculations on my part -- does anyone remember mini-discs? I still have three recorders and a whole pile of the tiny recordable cassettes -- but if it was new and I thought it could help me get a clear recording from inside a scrum of reporters around a player, I bought it at YDI.

Sorry to see it go.

** I don't feel compelled to comment upon what happened at former President Donald Trump's rally in Butler, Pa., last Saturday. It is what it is. But it changes nothing in my mind.

I am still fully committed to voting for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election because I believe in an America governed by people of good conscience and compassion. And if that isn't the ticket, I'll still vote Blue for the aforementioned reasons.

I will have more to say about the choices available to the American public once the conventions are history.

** Please, Major League Baseball. Go back to having all-stars wear their regular uniforms for the game. Those abominations chosen for this year's game looked as if they'd been hanging for far too long on the cut-rate rack of children's pajamas at Marshall's. Simply awful.

** The Patriots released their list of assistant coaches this past week, and I think they have more than 25 of them. Some high school teams don't have that many players. Way too many coaches for a 48-man gameday roster.

Catch you on the flip side, folks.

Mark Farinella has yet to declare his backyard a national wildlife sanctuary, but he would if he could. Comment on his posts at theownersbox2020@gmail.com.

Film Review: "Trophy Kids."

Leland Anderson produced and wrote a film about abusive parents in sports.

This is sort of a follow-up post to the recent one announcing the passing of former Attleboro High School basketball star Leland Anderson, who lost his battle with lung cancer at 43 a few weeks ago. 

As I mentioned in that post, about a decade ago Anderson served as a producer and co-screenwriter for a documentary film called "Trophy Kids," made while the former Attleboro athlete was living in Santa Monica, Calif. It first appeared on HBO in 2013, and is currently available on Prime Video. It also served as a springboard for another limited series about the topic.

I had not seen the film before, even though I had known about Anderson's participation in it since Peter Gobis wrote about it for The Sun Chronicle not long after it was made. But, given Anderson's untimely passing, I decided to finally take a look at it last night.

Well, it was absolutely chilling. 

It was a brutally honest look at the excessive pressure that can be put on high school-aged kids when their parents lose their perspective and try to create superstar scholarship athletes out of their children. The film really drives home the fact that these overbearing parents have no regard at all for what emotional and psychological damage they are doing to their kids.

It was a hard thing to watch in 2013, I'm sure. And the lessons within are still valid for parents in 2024 and beyond.

The film is set in the greater Los Angeles area, involving six young athletes and five parents that are unrelentingly driving their kids to achieve at a high level. It has a frightening degree of access to each family, and in each case, viewers are not spared the warts and all. From the moment when we are introduced to each family group to the finish, the parents' obsessive drive to push their children to greatness escalates to the point where we observers are screaming at the screen for the parents to lighten up and let the kids just be kids.

I know I was. 

Here's the lineup:

** We're first introduced to the father of a freshman football player at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, a promising wide receiver and safety who is locked into a very aggressive daily training and practice regimen by his father, who played for the University of Washington.

** Next is a promising young basketball player at Redondo Union High School, a 6-2 shooting guard that has stopped growing -- to the great disappointment of his runty New York-transplant father, a stereotypical figure that could have been lifted from the pages of a script for "The Sopranos."

** Alongside that ghastly stereotype at Redondo Union is a seemingly less irritating father of the team's point guard, who is battling injuries and having a hard time keeping his starting job. As we learn over the course of the film, the father is blaming all of his kid's problems on the 11-year-veteran coach of the team, and he is quietly plotting to convince the school board to fire the coach.

** Up next is the father of a 9-year-old girl that is somewhat of a golf phenom. The dad has no talent of his own, but when he's not standing right next to the coach he hired to help the girl grow in the sport, he is caddying for her during tournaments. His constant negativity often reduces the girl to tears during the course of competition.

** Our final parent is an evangelical Christian mother of middle-school-aged twin boys, who she believes she can transform into championship-level athletes with a constant regimen of training and the power of prayer. She might be the most annoying of the lot because of her proselytizing and passive-aggressive presence in the life of her twins.

In each case, the young athletes eventually fail to reach the desired level of immediate accomplishment as set by their parents, and the conflict between being driven to succeed as opposed to being normal kids makes all of the young athletes victims of a very insidious form of child abuse.

The young football player eventually cracks under the constant boot-camp pressure. During a visit to his mother, who divorced the father and lives in Seattle, the father explodes in a torrent of rage when the son finally sheds his intense fear and tells the old man that he's had enough of the constant brow-beating. After that, the son moved back into his mother's home and went to high school in the Seattle area, where he would be free of the pressure to be turned into the superstar athlete that his father failed to be. Justus Moore graduated from high school in 2015 and did not play football after that.

The shooting guard's father is eventually banned from his son's games because of the constant invective-laced commentary he spewed from the sidelines about the officials, the coach and players on the opposing teams. Freed of his father's embarrassing presence, Derek Biale plays well enough to earn a Division 2 scholarship at a school in Colorado. The father claims at film's end that he will go to all of his son's games in Colorado, home and away. The younger Biale is now a fitness instructor and AAU coach in the Phoenix area. 

Meanwhile, the Redondo Union point guard threatens to transfer to another school at the end of his junior season unless his father can get the coach fired. The scheming father is successful at that, and the kid stays. But the kid certainly acts in interviews as if he's buying into his father's refrain that his shortcomings were the fault of the coach and others, and not possibly because of his own limitations as a player. In other words, he appears to have been brainwashed by his father's influence. Ian Fox eventually played at Fullerton College and is now a real estate agent in the Los Angeles area.

Amari Avery is the most successful of the Trophy Kids.

The young golfer, whom we see in tears and pleading for her father to stop berating her, continues to play. The next year, her father was not allowed to caddy for her in regional tournaments. Her name is Amari Avery, and she is still a golfer; she was member of the Class of 2026 and women's golf team at the University of Southern California, and was rated among the nation's top 10 amateurs, but decided last year to leave school and turn professional. Hopefully her life course has since been a lot happier than what was depicted in the film.

And the tennis twins seemed to be the ones least negatively affected by their mother's constant presence. They entered high school the next year and made the junior varsity tennis team. But they were also very reserved and their social development appeared to be hindered by being smothered 24/7 by Mom and Jesus. Blake and Tanner Suard now play something called "beach tennis" in Southern California. They never made it to Wimbeldon.

As I said, it's a chilling film. It's a classic tale of how damaging it can be for parents to become so vicariously involved in their children's competition, they are trying to erase their own failed lives and replace them by claiming their kids' accomplishments as their own.

I won't speculate why Leland Anderson would have involved himself in this project. But I'm glad he did. If I had my choice, I'd make it required viewing for every parent of every high school athlete before the very first day of competition every year. 

I've known many wonderful parents over my half-century of local sports journalism, and I've also known my share of insufferable ones. When you're a parent, you have two choices of direction on the day when your child decides to become an athlete, and Anderson's film pulls no punches in illustrating what the wrong direction is.

Anderson scored a lot of points and won a lot of games at Attleboro High, and was one hell of a basketball player. This film, however, may be his best legacy.

Trophy Kids (2013): Directed by Christopher Bell. Produced by Leland Anderson and Christopher Bell. Executive Producers: Peter Berg, Jake Wood. Written by Leland Anderson, Christopher Bell, T.J. Mahar. 107 minutes.

The Owner's Box, Ep. 56.

Coach Amy Dolores brought Bishop Feehan its second state title last season.

We're back on a basketball court for the latest episode of the best little audio podcast in Massachusetts, The Owner's Box. You'll be able to tell because of all the buzzers, whistles and squeaking sneakers in the background.

I took a ride to Franklin High School for the first night of the Franklin summer league, and that's where I was joined for an interview by Amy Dolores, the coach of the defending state Division 1 champion Bishop Feehan Shamrocks.

It's Amy's first appearance on the show, and we hit upon a wide range of topics -- what it has meant to her to be a part of the Feehan community since 2003 (and the head coach since 2019), how her team rallied from the disappointment of losing a state title game in 2023 and brought home the title this past season, and of course, the growing attention being given by sports fans of all ages to the women's game as Caitlin Clark and the rest of the impressive rookie class make their impact upon the fortunes of the WNBA.

I also take some time later in the episode to look back at the career of Attleboro High star player Leland Anderson, who died recently of lung cancer at the far-too-young age of 43.

It's 51 minutes of audio that will make you mad, sad and glad all in the same click of a button. I hope you'll enjoy listening to it.