Jenyfer Matthews

I never participated in sports as a kid. First because the Catholic school I attended until eight grade didn’t even have PE class. Later, I was much too self-conscious to admit that I didn’t know how to play various games which was necessary before I could actually learn to play anything.

What it boils down to is that if I can’t be sure I’ll do something well, I just won’t do it at all. Instead of sports, I concentrated on my school work and was on the honor roll rather than a team.

Never in my wildest imagination did I ever expect to have two such sports-gifted children. They are amazing to watch. And after two years of watching them play tennis and making it look easy, I was sucked in to my own lessons at the suggestion of a friend.

I really ought to have known better.

It’s not that I’m bad at it. I’m okay for a beginner, even if it isn’t as easy as the children make it look. It’s that I let myself get intensely competitive about the whole thing. I want to be the best. Except why does it matter? It’s not as if I’m ever going to be a champion tennis player at my age. I’m an adult and supposed to be more mature than that, so why can’t I just relax and have fun with it instead of channeling my inner McEnroe?

The experience has given me new insight into my children’s mentality with their own tennis lessons, and not always in a good or comfortable way. Funny to think that I was on the right track as a young person by just avoiding the whole thing…

My daughter’s tennis coach (my tennis coach!) recently announced that he’d signed my daughter up to participate in a local tournament at a nearby neighborhood club. My daughter is a cautious creature by nature – she likes to take her time to warm up to a new situation and scope things out before she jumps in – and she absolutely refused to do it.

I was disappointed by her reaction and told my mother about it. My mother in turn cautioned me not to push her too hard. She’d apparently seen some talk show (Dr. Phil?) about pushy sports parents, including the children who were complaining about how much they were pushed. One girl was an Olympic medal winning gymnast.

I know that pushy, super-competitive sports parents exist, and I have no doubt that some children suffer for it. I also know that there are children out there who participate in activities their parents choose for them, only to please their parents. I’ve seen them for myself. I do, however, have a hard time believing that many parents have succeeded in pushing a child so hard that the child won an Olympic medal against their will. If there are parents out there who can achieve that, then clearly I’m doing something wrong because I can’t even get my own children to pick up their socks or make their beds.

I talked to my daughter and encouraged her to give the tournament a try just for fun and experience, and in the end when she still refused, I let it go. If she’s going to be a successful athlete of any sort, clearly it’s going to be on her own terms.

Until I succumbed to the lure of taking tennis lessons myself, that is.

I did hold out a long time, though – I’ve been watching my children play for ten hours a week for nearly two years. I’ve tossed around the idea of taking lessons for a while but always decided against it because of back problems, shoulder problems, time. But when a friend of mine recently asked me if I’d take lessons with her, I immediately agreed. That was Wednesday morning and we had so much fun that we decided to do them two mornings a week.

I’m taking the lessons from my children’s coach and my biggest worry in the whole thing was that I’d be awful. My children are both so physically gifted that it is inevitable that he would likely expect more of the same and that I’d disappoint him. All I really wanted was not to look like a total spaz – either missing all the balls or hitting them out of the court. Happily, I didn’t miss many and all of my shots stayed within the walls of the court, if not the lines!

My children were with me for the first lesson, watching avidly. My daughter’s assessment? “You don’t suck!”

I was using my daughter’s racquet and wearing my sport sandals for the first lesson. Since I’m going to stick with it, I bought proper tennis shoes yesterday. Buying a racquet is slightly more complicated so I’m going to take more time with that. If you see a blonde playing bad tennis in blindingly white tennis shoes using a racquet with purple strings and a Sponge Bob vibration dampener, that’s me. Keep your eye on the ball because it might just come flying out of control in your direction…

But you can’t take competition out of the children.

I subbed last week for a librarian at the local American school and instead of working in the library that day, I did what she was scheduled to do that day and worked at their annual sports day. Only they don’t call it “sports day”, they call it “kids day” – and rightfully so because there was nothing sports-like about it.

When I was a child we called it “field day” and there were actual competitive sporting events. We had things like sprints, long jump, relays. There were also slightly borderline events like three-legged race and wheelbarrow race, but all the events had one thing in common: they were all competitive and they all had a declared winner. Someone kept a tally, and at the end of the day the person who won the most events was declared the overall winner and on the next regular school day the first, second, third and fourth winners were recognized with ribbons. It was meant to be a mini-Olympic type day and anyone who cared competed fiercely for those ribbons. I can still remember that I won first place for the girls when I was in sixth grade.

Back to the present and last week’s kids day. It was a day of fun, a day of games, but not a day of competition. At least not officially. Some of the games had ways to measure wins and losses, but they were all team events and so far as I could tell, no one was keeping track of it in any official way. As the officials running the various game stations, we assigned points for how well the children listened to the instructions, how much positive team spirit they displayed, and how many children were wearing hats. If there were a way to swab for sunscreen and what SPF they were wearing, I’m sure that would have been on the sheet as well. But nowhere was there a spot for recording winners and all the activities were team activities. No individual events. It was all for fun.

In spite of all this carefully orchestrated non-competitive fun, I still heard kids cheering for their teammates to hurry up, accusing others of cheating, and declaring themselves the winners of an event. They were clearly enjoying themselves, but they were also very intent on winning and were disappointed when they didn’t do as well as they would have liked.

So why is it that we can still celebrate the victory of our Olympic athletes, but we want to erase any sign of competition when it comes to our children? Where do people think that Olympians come from anyway? Or any successful people in any field for that matter? Different people are good at different things. No one will excel at everything, and yes, when you are young and still figuring all that out, it’s not always a happy or comfortable process. But parents and teachers aren’t doing anyone any favors by trying to shield children from that knowledge. And from what I’ve seen over the years on soccer fields, tennis courts, and schools, parents and teachers would be much better off accepting that competition is a part of human nature and instead of trying to expunge it from the curriculum, teaching children sportsmanship – how to be good winners and good losers.

While I was looking forward to the children going back to school, one thing I wasn’t looking forward to was the crazy schedule that tends to go hand in hand with being back in school. Some parents do Scouts, some do music lessons. We do sports.

If it were just one sport, I’d probably manage well enough. But it’s THREE sports x TWO children. That makes for a fairly busy and complicated schedule trying to remember who has to be where at what time on which days.

Truly, I never thought I’d be that mom – the one who scheduled ever minute of their child’s day. And I know what you’re thinking – why do I let them participate in so much? I could always do what my mother did which was to say “no, no time/money”. But she worked full time so she had a built in excuse for not being able to pick me up after school, and if I had really cared I probably would have pushed harder. I have no such excuse, and you should see the puppy eyes they give me! How can I tell them no when all of the activities they are asking for are such healthy pursuits that they are also good at?

They each take tennis lessons: a sport which they can continue to play their entire lives so long as they can find one other person to play. Those lessons account for five evenings a week between the two of them.

They are both about to start playing in the community soccer league. Soccer is an excellent companion sport to tennis because they build up stamina from all the running and good footwork besides. It’s not as if I had to twist their arms either – both of them love soccer. That accounts for one evening of practice and a Saturday morning game for each child – at different locations for their different age groups of course.

The one sport I actively tried to discourage was the swim team at school. On the plus side, swimming is a wonderful exercise. On the other, it’s just one more day of practice and another obligation during an already packed schedule. I’ve reluctantly given in but if it starts to interfere too much with other things – like school work – it’s the first thing that will be cut.

They have so much going on that it’s actually beginning to interfere with my own exercise schedule. But I’m hoping that running them from one place to the next will make up the difference!

Why is it that when I was away on vacation I’d have 20+ emails in my inbox every time I checked it, but now that I have the time to sit down and read them and respond I have none? Where is everyone? Or do you think it might be more a factor of the frequency with which I check my email when I am at home (every 10 minutes or so, give or take)?

I actually have other things I could be doing but I’m restless and bored. I’m home but not really back in my routine yet. It’s the lull before the sports crazy fall starts – the children want to do tennis AND soccer AND swim team. All that in addition to school and homework. Soon I’ll be too busy to check email again and no doubt there will be a deluge.

What are you up to today?

I’m wearing red, white & blue and I have the Rice Krispie Treats ready to go. Today is international day at the school – the day my daughter has been agonizing over for two weeks now – and all because she couldn’t decide what to wear.

It’s a shame that American doesn’t really have a national dress – no lederhosen, no sari, no galabiya. Some of the other children look so exotic when they come to school in their embroidered tunics and pillbox hats. But unless I’m going to dress her up like a Pilgrim or maybe Davy Crockett, it’s pretty much just jeans and a t-shirt for good old USA.

(She wanted to dress hip-hop but I put the kibosh on that!)

She made her final decision last night – her baseball jersey and her plaid flannel pants. I bit my tongue – mostly because I knew it wasn’t really her final decision. Today she walked out of the door wearing long gray soccer shorts and a gray Nevada t-shirt decorated with wild ponies. I thought I was home free until I noticed that Sunday is the end of year party at school and is once again a non-uniform day. No theme this time, but I see lots of angst in my weekend as she tries to decide what to wear.

It’s going to be a busy weekend for me. Baseball is finished for the season but there are still tennis lessons for the month of June and there are two birthday parties this weekend. Plus I have to design a Greek tunic and leafy crown for Greek Day next week (heaven help me!) I may not be around much, but don’t despair. Marianne Stephens will be here over the weekend with her Cerridwen Press book Gone to the Dogs.

What are your weekend plans?