We overemphasize sports, or so I hear.

Unsung heroes are trying to cure cancer, and we worship baseball players who inject themselves with stuff that causes it.

Our spouses and kids would give anything for an hour of our attention, and we gleefully spend eight at our fantasy football draft.

Sometimes it feels criminal to accept a workman’s wages to write about something so frivolous and fleeting as if it’s life and death.

Until, that is, you realize that for two hours on Saturday morning a mere game being the most important thing in a teenager’s world is evidence of God’s grace. And that making a holy hullabaloo over a game is an essential escape from life and death.

There are people in our world, probably even in our community, who don’t think the Gray-New Gloucester softball team should have traveled to York on Wednesday or Readfield on Saturday for tournament games.

They miss the point.

G-NG players experienced the ultimate kick in the stomach late Tuesday afternoon when a highway accident claimed the life of friend and fellow athlete Joshua Libby. Three other residents of a tightly connected community were seriously injured in the crash.

Nobody would think less of the Patriots if they had phoned their regards and apologies to the Maine Principals’ Association, turned in their uniforms, surrendered their spot in the postseason and gone about the serious business of mourning.

Coach Gregg Eggleston even gave his team that option and was told thanks, but no thanks.

“When I got to school on Wednesday for that York game, I wasn’t sure we were going to play,” Eggleston said. “I sat down with the girls and said, ‘How are you feeling? How are we going to do it?’ “

“There were a couple of options. We could try to move the game. I said, ‘We could just forfeit if you guys can’t do it emotionally,’ because I mean, their eyes were puffed out to here. They didn’t look like they were in any kind of shape to play any kind of game. And they said no way.”

And in continuing a thread that has tethered the history of sports from George Gipp to Lou Gehrig to Brian Piccolo to Hank Gathers to Dale Earnhardt, the Patriots marched solemnly onto a bus and went about the business of turning trauma into drama.

Laura Getchell threw a two-hitter Wednesday in a 2-1 win over York. She spun another one for good measure Saturday, and G-NG blanked Maranacook, 2-0.

As adults, we tell youth until we’re breathless that the journey of sports is littered with life lessons they’ll apply anywhere from two days to 70 years down the road.

May the good folks of SAD 15 be forever blessed for not standing in the way of a teachable moment.

Softball was not a nuisance to the Patriots this week. Playing it under these circumstances was no sign of disrespect. Rather, it was a necessary outlet for 16 girls, many of whom got a sudden, stark hint of their own mortality for the first time.

Just as music, art and faith work together to quell the storms of life, athletics are a real and necessary escape for many of us who have lost parents, grandparents or friends.

For some of us, that’s when we’re able to feel closest to them in the days and years that follow their passing. We remember their ever-presence at the games of our youth. Their smiles and hugs. Their laughter and tears.

The most unspeakable tragedy in my two decades on the beat was the death of five Madison High School student-athletes in a September 1994 auto accident.

It happened on a Wednesday. The dreadful memorial service overflowed a high school gymnasium on a Saturday. Well-meaning adults weighed the idea of forfeiting a football game, perhaps an entire season. Madison won its rescheduled game the following Tuesday.

Two months later, it celebrated a state championship. Playing a simple game, once a week, brought healing. Fifteen years have passed, and I guarantee you that every survivor is a stronger, better person for it.

And so adorning their batting helmets with a simple ‘J-LIB’ memorial sticker and immersing themselves in a piddling pastime for an hour or two wasn’t merely a neutral or obligatory decision for Gray-New Gloucester. It was the only right one.

“We’re playing. We’ve decided to dedicate every playoff game we play to Josh Libby, and they’re stepping up,” Eggleston said. “I just told them before the game to relax, focus and have fun. They did all three of those things. That’s all you can ask for, and now they’ve got smiles on their face and that’s fantastic.”

Amen, coach.

Josh is proud of you and your team. And that is overstating nothing.

Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His e-mail is [email protected].