Dear Mothers #14

For Impatient Mom Questioning Her Love of Team Sports

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Dear Mothers,

We are parents to an only child, currently age seven and in second grade. She has many of the typical only/eldest child trademarks ... determined, hard working, sometimes a perfectionist, presents older than she is, competitive and confident. 

In many ways, these attributes serve her well. She is quick to stand up for what's right, has a strong moral compass, does well in school, and makes friends easily. 

However, like with most things in life, there are downsides. Her competitive and perfectionist mindset leads to being very hard on herself, especially in sports. She is in her third year of recreational soccer and asks to sign up again every year. This year, thanks to a December birthday, she has leaped to the U10 age bracket which is a big shift in rules, field size, etc. 

I don't want to bore you with the details of soccer rules but let's just say it's a lot harder to score and many girls are older/bigger/better than her on the field. 

I would love to say it has been a learning experience thus far but more than anything it has been an exhausting exercise in patience and pep talks. She is on the brink of losing her temper almost every minute of the game, visibly upset and fighting back tears. At the end of the game she bursts into tears and has a hard time regaining her composure despite her teammates being very supportive. 

In short, how do you make your kid a good loser? I have reminded her that "recreation" means fun, but it sure seems that there is more frustration and disappointment than fun happening on the field this year. I think a team sport is essential for her to learn good sportsmanship and compromise, but there have been many days where I'm wondering why we are doing this if it only ends in temper tantrums and tears. 

Sincerely, 

Impatient Mom Questioning Her Love of Team Sports

Dear Impatient Mom,

There’s a little boy on my kids’ club wrestling team I’ll call Sam. He is spunky and energetic and loves to wrestle. He’s good, too. While he might not be the most technical wrestler on the team, he’s aggressive and quick, and overwhelms his opponent to win more often than not. Which works out in his favor because Sam hates to lose, and I mean hates it. Last year, toward the end of the season, Sam lost a match to end up taking fourth place instead of third in his age-weight class. The ref (a high school volunteer) was a little quick to call the pin and Sam was outraged. He screamed, cried, and refused to stand next to his opponent while the ref raised the other wrestler’s arm to signal Sam’s defeat (to their credit, his parents carried him back onto the mat and made him shake the other kid’s hand and apologize to the ref).   

That night, after we’d driven home from the tournament, unpacked the car, and put kids to bed, my husband, Levi, and I sat in the hot tub debriefing the day. “Did you see Sam when he lost today?” I said, still in disbelief. 

Levi, who helps coach the wrestling team, laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “He reminds me of me as a kid. You should ask my dad about the time I threw my head gear across the gym when I lost.” 

I stared at him, open-mouthed, before cracking up. Then I listened to Levi tell me about pulling Sam’s mom aside after the tournament to tell her the same thing. 

“Sam will be fine,” Levi said. “You can teach a kid to lose respectfully a lot easier than you can teach a kid to find that kind of fire.”

There’s a picture of me from my senior year of high school that lives on an old hard drive somewhere. In it, a purple and gold hair ribbon sticks to my tear-soaked cheek and my mom wraps me tightly in a hug. I’m not quite sure why my dad felt it was appropriate to snap a photo moments after my varsity volleyball team lost a third-round, loser-out, state tournament game, but he did, and even now, seventeen years later, I can feel the devastation that image captured. I was crushed to leave the tournament without a trophy, sad that my volleyball career was coming to a close, anxious about standing on the cusp of adulthood, and furious that the juniors on the team had another chance next year (thankfully my dad didn’t capture the near-scuffle in the locker room when one of those juniors had the gall to bring up that second chance within my earshot).

In short, I looked a lot like a seventeen-year-old version of Sam (or, from the sounds of it, your daughter). 

Like your daughter, I, too, am an only child, burdened with many of the only/eldest child traits. I am determined, hard working, and competitive. I am also a perfectionist and presented older than I was as a child and teen. I performed well in school. As you said, these attributes have served me well. But they also have a downside. 

You may be tempted to think, based on my presence on a team who played at the state tournament, that I was a star volleyball player. But really, I was a solid athlete and only an okay volleyball player. Despite spending every summer playing club ball alongside my teammates, I spent my junior year riding the varsity bench, and only got a significant amount of playing time my senior year because, frankly, everyone else who played my position had finally graduated. And for someone who excelled in every other area of my life, playing decently for that team was one of the more difficult experiences of my teenage life. 

It also was one of the most impactful.

A few months ago, I spent a Wednesday evening watching a High School volleyball game. But not just any game. In a strange repeat of history, it was a loser-out state tournament game played by my alma mater, coached by the same coach I played for half a lifetime ago. I sat between two other ‘07 alumni—two girlfriends I’ve known since preschool—and watched (along with a bleacher section full of other alumni) as our beloved “Coach” coached her second-to-last career game. 

After the game, we made our way down the bleacher steps to wait for the team with all the other fans (mere steps from where that old photo was taken, I might add). The team finally rounded the courtside barrier and I locked eyes with Coach, who squealed and burst into tears. We laughed and hugged and congratulated her on another career win. We teased her about getting soft and reminisced about what it was like playing for her in the “good ‘ol days.” Then we squeezed together for a picture and hugged her one last time. 

All these years later, the sting of that 2006 State Tournament loss has faded. The angst and frustration of playing on that team has disappeared. The disappointment of mediocrity has softened. 

The three of us went to dinner after the game that night, eager to take advantage of our kid-free time together. We told the story of the time Coach made us run laps in the gym after a game we’d won but shown poor sportsmanship. We laughed about the blocking drills Coach ran in tryouts every year that left us unable to walk down stairs or sit on the toilet for a week. We remembered how Coach made us sit down every week and go around the circle saying something positive and kind about a member of the team, and when it was your turn in the “hot seat” Coach made you write down every single compliment the team gave you to keep in your volleyball notebook. And when you played poorly, or got down on yourself, or threw a seventeen-year-old tantrum, she made you sit down and read those compliments back. 

Coach didn’t just see us as athletes on her team. To her we were young women worthy of her time and love and she invested in us as such. She taught us to believe in ourselves especially when things got hard. She taught us to work hard physically, but also taught us mental toughness. She taught us to be kind to one another and lift each other up and to put the good of the team ahead of the good of us as individuals. 

Coach’s legacy isn’t her impressive collection of state trophies or career wins. It’s the number of alumni whose lives were touched enough by her to show up and celebrate her career last fall. 

I don’t know that I have an answer to your question about how to make your kid a good loser, except to say that she will get better at it. Just last weekend I watched Sam lose his first match of the season, and while he still stomped his feet and hid under the bleachers for a while after his match, he did shake the other coach’s hand (and his opponent’s) and stood in the center of the mat while the ref raised the other kid’s arm in victory. He has grown and matured since last year, and your daughter will, too. 

But you also said you’re wondering why you are doing this, which I think I can answer. You’re doing this because you were given the gift of a child with what Levi calls fire. Maybe she’ll change her mind about soccer and move on to volleyball, or track, or math team (or heck, girls wrestling is the fastest growing sport). But as the old adage goes, no matter where she goes, there she’ll be. And wherever her interests take her, she’s going to need adults in her life who can help her channel that fire into something constructive. 

She is going to need coaches who believe in her, and love her, and expect greatness from her. Coaches who will hold her accountable to a code of conduct and teach her to believe in herself. Coaches who will help her channel that fire—that passion—onto the field or court or mat, and take it with her into adulthood and her career and her life. 

And she’ll need you to be her safe space when she still—at seventeen (and, let’s be honest, thirty-five)—lets that fire get the best of her and falls apart. 

Hang in there,

A Fiery Mom

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