Hamilton couple follow their grandchildren’s athletic endeavors with color-coded chart
Spring is in the air, and Jack Hardiman sits down at his large desk calendar, armed with a sizeable assortment of highlighters. With knitted brow, he begins to study a bunch of different athletic schedules, ranging anywhere from T-ball to high school freshman baseball.
From there, he starts coloring in the blocks of his calendar, as if he were Dwight Eisenhower plotting the invasion of Normandy. He checks and re-checks, making sure everything will run smoothly.
Except in this case, Hardiman is not deciding who will go to the left flank, who will storm the hill and who will be the last guys off the boat. He is basically figuring out how he will get from Sayen Park to Van Horn Field to Veterans Park all within one Saturday afternoon.
Welcome to the life of Grandpop and Grandmom Hardiman, a Hamilton Township couple that has dedicated a huge chunk of their lives these days to watching their nine grandchildren play youth sports. That’s a heck of a lot of games to keep track of, but through “the chart” they manage.
“It is truly amazing the number of games they attend year round and the miles they log to watch their grandchildren play,” said son Pat.
The motor is warming up for 2014.
“We’re all set for another baseball season,” proclaimed Jack’s wife, Maribeth. “Now we have to get the blankets and gloves out. We start out while it’s winter, and by the time August comes it’s so hot we can’t stand being outside. But we always look forward to it.”
It’s a fairly unique story, if only because it has turned Jack Hardiman into Jack Chart-iman thanks to the color coordinated chart he has developed in order to keep track of every grandchild’s games throughout the spring and summer. Jack has assigned a different color for each child to make it easier to set course.
“When he started that I thought he was crazy,” Maribeth said. “We made trips to Staples to get highlighters. We must have 20 in a drawer, they may never get used. We gotta have all these colors, and he keeps these charts from year to year. When we bury him, we’ll probably put them in the casket with him.”
“I would say I’ve been doing this for at least three years,” Jack said. “I gotta make sure I got all this straight. That’s really what it amounted to—where am I supposed to be, and when.”
At age 68, Hardiman doesn’t live vicariously through his grandchildren, he just downright enjoys watching them mature through the happiness and social advantages that athletics can bring.
“It’s something that I really enjoy very much,” he said. “I’m very proud of my kids and my grandkids. A couple of the things I really enjoy, in addition to seeing them improve as athletes, I enjoy watching the friendships they develop with the players on their teams. And then you see the friendships they develop with the players on the other teams too, and that’s just so great to watch.
“And we have also made a few friends out of it over the years as well.”
Which isn’t a surprise, as the Hardimans are quite friendly people.
To understand how this all got started, it’s best to go back to when Jack was still employed running retail furniture stores. He worked a lot of nights and weekends and barely got to see his four children—Megan, John, Patrick and Matthew—play recreation sports or play for Notre Dame High School.
“I would see them when I could,” he said. “I worked Saturdays and by the time I quit I was working Sundays as well, so it was tough. It’s probably why I enjoy this so much now.”
Maribeth managed to get to the games, but Jack always felt bad about missing them. When he retired six years ago, he decided he would make up for it by seeing his grandchildren play. Three years later, he developed a system that is fast becoming legend among his friends and family.
“I enjoy it,” he said of filling in the chart. “It’s a labor of love. I just need to go someplace where I can find a complete set of these markers.”
It wasn’t quite the process when he started as it is now, since the family has grown every year.
Megan and her husband Bill James (a Steinert football coach) have three children. John and wife Angie have two, Patrick and Amy have three (including twins), while Matthew and Kim have three, but only one is old enough to play sports.
“I guess my retirement kind of fit in with the oldest (Will James) starting to get involved in sports,” Jack said. “With each passing year, as more of them started to play, it got a little more complicated each year.”
How complicated? Let us count the ways – in color, of course.
It starts with Will James, 15, who plays Nottingham Babe Ruth and is on the Steinert freshman team. Jack marks Steinert games with green and Nottingham with orange “because Steinert is green, and orange is Will’s favorite color.”
“I am happy with those colors,” Will said. “The color coded chart has always been something I enjoyed seeing.”
Brendan James, 12, plays in Nottingham Little League, which is an aqua color.
“I got some new colors this year,” Jack boasted. “That’s one of ‘em.”
Brendan is also on a Mercer Elite travel team and will also be playing on a Nottingham 50-70 team, which is yellow on the chart. Eight-year-old Colin James is playing as a 9-year-old in Nottingham Little League “so as far as I’m concerned, he’s nine,” Jack said with a laugh. Colin is also on a travel team.
“Colin’s Nottingham team is like a royal blue,” Hardiman explained. “As opposed to the travel team, which is like a lighter blue.”
And you don’t think there’s a well-organized thought process to this?
Next up are the sons of John and Angie, starting with 11-year-old Jack.
“He’s an 11-year-old at Nottingham, so he could be on the same team as Brendan, but no, he has to be on a separate team,” big Jack said. “He does play on the same travel team as Brendan, so I got a break there. He’ll also play for the 50-70 team, but Nottingham has two teams so naturally he’s on a different team than Brendan.”
Jack’s team is light purple, while the 50-70 team is a dark purple with a yellow circle around it.
A yellow circle?
“I ran out of magic markers,” Hardiman said.
Younger brother Aidan, 9, plays on the same travel team with cousin Colin, but is on a different 9-year-old team in the NLL.
“Aidan’s Nottingham team is brown,” Hardiman noted. “He and Colin’s travel team is light green…lighter than Steinert, but not quite aqua.”
That brings us to Pat and Amy’s kids. Ryan, 11, is Jack’s age but plays for HTRBA instead of Nottingham.
“Unfortunately, they live a couple blocks away,” Hardiman said. “He also plays on a separate travel team associated with HTRBA, so there’s no overlap for him with anybody.”
But he still gets full consideration when it comes to carefully choosing the chart colors.
“Ryan’s HTRBA team is a lighter orange than William’s Babe Ruth, like a peach,” noted grandpa. “And Ryan’s travel team is red, because his shirts are red.”
Jack naturally saved pink for his twin granddaughters, Emily and Lauren. The 8-year-olds are now playing travel soccer in the spring and fall, and expanding their grandfather’s horizons.
“I guess since watching them play soccer, I’m starting to get a better appreciation for it,” Jack said. “I never was much of a soccer fan, but I’m starting to understand the game better.”
Last (for now) but not least is Matthew and Kim’s 4-1/2-year-old, Lily, who plays Saturday T-ball at the CYO also gets the color purple as her ID, which we assume is the same color as one of Jack’s purple but without the yellow circle around it.
Thus ends the saga of the chart, until of course, the travel all-star teams are announced. Then a whole new set of colors are added to Jack’s rainbow.
The effort is greatly appreciated by the grandchildren.
“It makes us feel special to know that they’re always there rooting for us no matter what,” Ryan said.
The adults also appreciate the effectiveness of Jack’s system.
“It obviously works because he always knows when and where everyone is playing,” Bill James said. “However he may have to get even more colored highlighters the way things are going.”
The chart also has several uses.
“It not only allows him to plan where he is going on a certain day, but it also helps him track what games he missed due to a conflict with another game,” Pat said. “This way he can be sure he sees every grandchild play an equal number of times.”
That brings up an interesting point. With so many games to attend there are bound to be conflicts. Much like the NFL playoffs, Hardiman uses a system of tie-breakers
“If someone needs me someplace, that has to be the top priority,” Jack said. “Let’s say three of them are playing. If Bill’s coaching he’s going to one game, and Meg is going to another game. So we have to provide rides sometimes. That’s the first priority…or tie-breaker if you want to call it that.”
The next one comes down to who hasn’t been seen. There’s even another chart for that one.
“If I miss Ryan’s game one night because of a conflict, then the next conflict that arises, I go to Ryan’s game,” said Hardiman. “I keep a ‘Miss List’ to look at so I can keep track, and keep all the misses equal. You gotta be fair to everybody.”
There is also third and fourth options…if he can see two kids on one team, he might opt for that over seeing just one on a team. Or, if he can work the schedule where he can see two different games at the expense of a third, he’ll go that route.
However it shakes out, the Hardimans are having the time of their lives keeping up with their young family members. Unlike some parents and grandparents, who choose to impose their will on the game with snide comments toward umpires or sometimes coaches, the Hardimans sit happily and just appreciate the family they feel blessed to have.
Every rule has its exception, of course.
“They are always well behaved, cheering not only my brothers, my cousins and I on, but also the rest of our team as well,” Will James said. “But one time when I was playing in a tournament in Flemington as a 12-year-old, my head coach and one of my assistant coaches were thrown out of the game on one of the worst calls I have ever witnessed.
“My grandfather knew it was a bad call as well, and was ready to be right beside my coaches questioning the controversial ruling, until my mother and grandmother corralled him to his seat and made him be quiet. Besides that one time, he usually keeps his opinion to himself and waits to talk about it with me.”
For the most part, things are calm.
“They know we’re there,” Maribeth said. “If we weren’t there they would miss us. But what I don’t think they like is a lot of cheering. They don’t want to be singled out if they just scored or something like that. But we always come up and give them a kiss after the game.”
Those can be some expensive smooches.
“They all hit us up for some money,” Maribeth said with a laugh. “The refreshment stands make a lot of money, and I think we play a big part in it. We were in Flemington one day, and one of the mothers said ‘Do you go to the bank before you come here?’”
The Hardimans travel all over the state and beyond to watch their kin. And they dress accordingly. Barb Ardery, a lifelong friend of Maribeth, noted that “Jack has a supply of team shirts, hats and the appropriate colored apparel that he wears for each game. Sometimes that requires a few changes in one day.”
One thing that will never change, is Jack and Maribeth’s joy of watching the kids play, and vice versa.
“It means a lot to us to have them there to support not only our sons but our nieces and nephews as well,” Bill James said. “Not only does he come to all the games, but he and my mother in law help out with rides to and from practices whenever we have conflicts.
“The kids love having him at all their games, but they don’t know any other way because he has been their number one fan since they started playing. However, I do think some of the older kids realize how special it is and are learning to appreciate it even more.”
Maybe the ones who appreciate it more than ever are the office supply stores. If they are based in Hamilton Township, they better not run out of highlighters.
General Jack has a lot more rec field invasions to plan.
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