Race Mom Jitters

It is a rare occasion that I get to devote an entire day to watching my kids ski race. Based on my physical reaction to being Race Day Mom last weekend, that’s probably a good thing.

I’d taken the day off from coaching the littlest racers at Cannon to spend the day rooting for my son and his friends at the U12 State Finals at Cranmore. Most of the day, all was just peachy. The sun was out. The snow was soft. I chatted with other parents at the finish area, cheering as kids we knew came down the course and through the finish.

(Photo cred: Josh Lawton)

About two racers before my son’s bib number, though, my heart rate quickened. My shoulders tensed. I had to focus on taking even breaths. By the time I saw Owen push out of the start at the top of the hill, I felt like I was going to vomit. Or cry. Possibly both.

For the 49 seconds it took him to get through the course, I was a disaster. And then he pushed through the finish, and everything returned to normal.

This is how it is for me every time one of my children is in a race course and I am at the finish.

I can’t explain why the mere act of watching my children do something they love causes such acute angst. There is no logic behind it. I am not overly concerned with how well or poorly they will do compared to the field. Nor am I particularly worried about them being injured.

And this is not a new sport to me. I grew up ski racing. I’ve coached young racers and soon-to-be racers for several years. I’m familiar with race day nerves from a competitor’s perspective, but I was never the kid puking off the side of the trail before first run. Likewise, I never felt overly nervous for the kids I coach as I doled out pep talks at the start or high fives at the finish.

Although I’ve coached and watched my kids play other sports – soccer, baseball, basketball – those competitions don’t inspire anything like the anxiety I experience during ski races. The one exception there, perhaps, is the few times my kids have been involved in penalty kick shootouts during soccer games.

Maybe, then, it is that sense that my child is up there alone.

Perhaps at its core this nearly paralyzing, and thankfully only momentary, anxiety I feel on race days is simply motherly instinct. My son is facing a challenge on his own, and there’s nothing I can do to help him. My daughter, who wakes up full of nerves every race day, has to overcome her own anxiety to push off from the start and charge hard through a course, and there’s nothing I can do but stand idly by and watch.

There are no timeouts, no teammates to rely on mid-race, no direct opponent to deke around or win the ball from. During that short race run, it is just the racer and the course – and the potential for both heartbreak and triumph.

I know I’m am not the only frazzled parent standing at the finish line. I’ve watched friends stare at the course stone-faced as their children come through, or bouncing with nervous excitement, or muttering some encouraging phrase repeatedly for their child’s entire run. Normally reasonable people, we get a little wonky during races.

My kids are just at the start of their ski racing experience. Maybe the more races they’re in, the more times I stand at the bottom and watch, the easier it will get. For now, though, I remind myself to breathe, cheer as loudly as I can, and know that this feeling, too, shall pass – as soon as my kid crosses the finish.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the March 9, 2018 issue of the Littleton Record.

What happened to Winter?

The driveway this winter has progressed through a somewhat regular and recurring rotation of fresh snow, slushy post-rain puddles, and the thick ice that forms when temps drop from well above freezing to well below. There is no consistency to winter anymore, it seems.

Missing snowier days...

We survived the deep freeze of Christmas week, whose brutal cold sapped our energy and made our fingers and toes ache. By the end of those two frigid weeks, even the most outdoor-loving of my outdoor-loving kids was content to stay inside when he could.

The January Thaw came twice – both the week before my birthday and the week after. I don’t remember all the specific weather details, but somewhere in there, between the rain and thawing, it snowed enough that we had to shovel the roof, brush off the car, and plow the driveway several times.

The first week of February, I let my kids skip school one day to ski a foot of new powder. When I tossed that idea out to my husband, feeling a bit guilty about the missing-school part, he was immediately on board (although, sadly, he still had to go to work). We only get so many powder days in a winter – or a lifetime – after all. The kids dragged me through every puffy-with-new-snow glade they could find, and we stayed out well into the afternoon.

I guess it was good we had that day, because this Tuesday I wore my rain pants and muck boots to the mountain for my coaching gig. Out of a small vacation week group, I had only two intrepid 7-year-olds join me for a morning of slushy-icy runs and wet chairlift rides. As we went in for our mid-morning break, I wrung the water out of my sopping mittens.

The kids didn’t seem to mind. They chatted happily on the chairlift, practiced the rainy day drills I assigned them, and skimmed cheerfully through slushy puddles to get from one place to the next.

The last three years, we’ve had similarly wacky winter weather during the two weeks of February break that are traditionally the busiest ski weeks of the season. Last year, for the first week, when out-of-state skiers are on vacation, we had fresh snow and beautiful weather. The New Hampshire kids got rain and ice the following week, but they didn’t batt an annoyed eyelash.

I have a photograph, somewhere, of my crew from two years ago standing in a deep puddle at the top of a chairlift. They gleefully slid through that puddle – and another one at the bottom of another lift – every run that day.

I’m glad the kids go with the flow, and I try to match their enthusiasm for skiing in the rain. But maybe they don’t mind because it’s such a regular occurrence in their young skiing lives.

I can remember only a handful of rainy ski days in my entire childhood. Tuesday one of the other coaches, a guy who’s on the hill six days a week, said it was his eleventh day this season skiing in the rain. Rain ponchos and serious rain pants – like the kind fishermen wear – have been added to many a ski coach’s wardrobe.

My own kids, like the good New Englanders they are, will ski in just about any kind of weather: howling wind, 40 below, sleet, snow, ice, sunshine. But like me, they are dismayed by the recurring winter thaws that no longer stick to a few days of January.

“This is sad,” my 9-year-old proclaimed Wednesday morning, as she exited the house jacketless and looked out on the snow-less field and the mud bog of our driveway.

All I could do was agree – and hope for another swing toward winter before spring sets in for good.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the February 23, 2018 issue of the Littleton Record.

Soccer Love

At the end of the day we were cold, sopping wet, and exhausted. The 3^rd and 4^th grade soccer team I coach had played five games over the course of 10 hours. They’d experienced soccer firsts – three penalty kick shootouts, one last second (literally) goal, and a sudden death overtime – which is a lot to throw at 8- and 9-year-old kids. They handled it all like champs, and I bet this is a day they remember for a long while.

I love soccer, have loved it for as long as I can remember. The game has been an integral part of my life from childhood onward. Soccer led me to friendships in high school and focus in college. It introduced me to places and people I wouldn’t know without it – in Europe during a brief high school tour, in Colorado when I moved there after college, and in Connemara where soccer became a comfortable connection to a place far from home.

I started coaching when my kids were in kindergarten because I wanted to introduce them to the sport. Over the last five falls, I’ve had the privilege of introducing their friends and teammates to soccer, too. Coaching is a labor of love – and of balancing various skill and interest levels, kid-sized attention spans, and parental expectations.

Sport can be transformative, and as a coach of young kids, I get to witness that transformation up close – both in my own children and in their teammates. I am fully aware that the kid who is a complete goofball in 2^nd grade may morph into one of the strongest players in 5^th grade, and that the one who is the biggest and most coordinated in 1^st grade won’t necessarily be the strongest in 6^th grade. I know that the 4^th grader who has never touched a soccer ball before, but who comes to practice all season and pays attention and works really hard is going to make steady improvements.

Through soccer I get to watch my older daughter, who loves fashion and embraces femininity, transform into this tough girl who will dribble through opponents and fight for 50-50 balls against kids much bigger than she is. It is no wonder that her soccer idol is Alex Morgan, who somehow always looks as if she’s just stepped out of the beauty parlor, even as she’s burning her soccer opponents and scoring goals.

I watch my son tackle the sport with a completely different mindset, steady in the backline, confident now in taking command of a defense. Where my daughter is all bursts of speed and changing pace, my son is methodical, thoughtful, steadfast. Never one to be left behind, their little sister, whose soccer season ended two weeks ago, practices push passes against her dresser when she is supposed to be getting ready for bed. I know I could just take the ball out of her room, but I kind of love that she wants to play soccer all the time.

I have watched their friends grow through the sport, too, seen them transition from clumsy kids with too-big shin guards to soccer players who pass the ball with confidence, make moves, support each other. Saturday I got to see one group of kids overcome nerves and bad weather to play together as a team. Three times I watched five of these children step up to the penalty kick spot and take their best shots. I got to share in their relieved exaltation when they scored, and I knew their frustrated disappointment when they missed. Fifteen times, I watched our young goal keeper of the day stand, sometimes on the verge of tears, and face PK shooters from other teams.

Soccer can be a tough sport, and coaching is not always easy. It makes for sometimes hectic family life, frenzied dinners thrown together between practice and bedtime, and a week’s worth of homework crammed into non-soccer days. I spend more time thinking about the teams I coach and their young players than I probably should. And each year, somewhere about two-thirds of the way through the season, I wonder why I do this to myself. I think, sometimes, how much simpler it would be to just drop the kids off at the start of practice and pick them up at the end.

But I don’t think I could do that. I love the game too much. I love seeing the kids, my own included, develop a love of soccer and an understanding of how to play it. I love when a 1^st grader tells me she’s done her soccer homework, and when a 3^rd grader proudly shows off his new goalie gloves, and the smile from the kid who always says thanks at the end of practice.

Saturday, our team lost in the finals of the annual Halloween Cup on our home field. We were cold and wet and bone-tired. But I think the kids felt a sense of accomplishment at making it so far. As I watched these young soccer players disperse into the pouring rain of a darkening night, huddling under umbrellas held by their faithful fans and climbing into warm cars, I felt proud of their growth over the season and their perseverance through a long day. And I felt lucky to be their coach.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the October 28, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.