12 May 2010
On Sports
Mayberry Mom wrote a post (a long time ago) about how few women were coaches for extracurricular sports. Me? I have neither the skills nor the inclination. Furthermore, I do so much vis-à-vis child care, that were there to be a need for a parent to participate in a sports activity, I’d volunteer the husband as a way of forcing his involvement in her life. Okay, that's not at all fair - he makes lunch and puts her on the bus and arranges her playdates and takes her to swimming and the after-school farm program - but still. I suspect I’m not alone in that. Plus, if you’re looking at a weekend event and a once traditional daddy works/mommy doesn’t family, lots of daddies will want to step up and volunteer...which means that in our mommy works/daddy doesn't family, I should be signing up to coach soccer. Oops. Not going to happen. Luckily, she's evidenced zero interest in sports.
We are none of us sports enthusiasts. We root for no teams. ESPN has never be seen in our house. The girls show no interest in anything sports-related (unless hitting each other counts) and that's just fine with me. I don't know how I'd manage to sit through a whole soccer/softball/whatever game over and over again.
ReplyDeleteMy stay-at-home husband is also Em's soccer coach (or, usually, assistant coach on her team), and N's golf buddy. That's because he loves these things. And I? Do not. (Though I will admit to screaming like a banshee from the sidelines during games. My not-love doesn't go that far.)
ReplyDeleteMy husband has long hoped that Violet would show promise as a tennis player. We own rackets and that's as far as we've gotten.
ReplyDeleteI spend so much time taking them back and forth for school that the thought of sports and all that entails gives me the shivers. I would coach if there was no one else to do it but honestly I am not at all sporty so I would hope that the other parent's expectations are low. Thankfully none of my kids has shown a huge interest in sports so I have dodged that bullet.
ReplyDeleteI have coached both soccer and softball--soccer for the little ones, softball for a 9-year old team.
ReplyDeleteI think the thing that made it hard was that I still needed to cook dinner, plus I was also pushing a baby around in a stroller while doing it while my husband worked.
My husband did coach baseball for many, many years.
Parenting already an intense sporting activity. Who needs to spend more time telling kids what to do?!?
ReplyDeleteThere are so few male teachers in the schools that I'm happy, actually, to find male teachers on the ski slopes. (Skiing being our only sport, at least for now.) I like for my kids to understand that women can ski like rock stars, but I'm fine with male coaches.
ReplyDeleteThe only sport we really watch around here is figure skating. The Man is even more indifferent to sports than I am.
ReplyDeleteLucky for us, the girls evinced less than zero interest in organized athletics, because the local groups are shark tanks as far as I'm concerned--I mean "microsoccer" for kids who have barely mastered walking, never mind kicking a ball? The whole thing sets my teeth on edge...
We couldn't do the schedule anyway. Just dealing with ballet would have been an impossibility if not for their teacher doing a lot of the transportation!
I have never been a sports person. But I will say this, I do love tossing around a football/frisbee in the backyard, or kicking around a soccer ball. It's the "organized" part of sports that turns me off.
ReplyDeleteI love Julia's point actually. I've learned from chaperoning the odd field trip that I really don't like being in charge of other people's children.
ReplyDeleteI was the assistant coach of my kid's soccer team. Trust me, you are doing the right thing by staying on the sidelines. Let's just say, she doesn't play soccor anymore
ReplyDeleteThe kids' first soccer coaches were women, but they were the exceptions on the court. Around here, even when the women work (and there's probably a higher proportion of SAHMs than the national average), the men tend to work more, and so they get signed up for the weekend coaching.
ReplyDeleteThe basketball referees are all volunteers, mostly from the local basketball-crazy university, and a fairly high percentage of them are girls/women. So that's good.