How to have a Win/Win sports season this spring

Spring sports are straight ahead. Like you, Chrys and I will be cheering on the next generation regardless of their game of choice. It seems a good time to tell you a story that holds a good reminder for all of us.

I’m the youngest of three girls. My sisters and I all fell in love with basketball at an early age. Our dad, we call him Papa, wasn’t always able to attend our ballgames. He was farming back then, and making a living had to come first. So, while he supported us, it was Mama who made sure we got to games and practices. Mama who washed the uniforms. Mama who made sure our bellies were full before the took the court. Mama who never missed a game. We girls had been playing ball for several years when we discovered a secret about Mama, the cheerleader…

We had been in the attic looking for, I don’t know what. That detail has been lost to time. What my sisters and I found that day was Mama’s high school scrapbook. As we turned the pages, we girls were shocked to find action photos and newspaper articles detailing the basketball exploits or one Charlotte Stone, AKA Mama. The headlines from another day trumpeted the high school sports news of her day with, “Stone shines against home-town rivals!” and “Stone sizzles the net for 44!” Wait. What? Our Mama had been a star? Turns out the answer was yes. The American Redheads, one of the first professional women’s basketball teams had even come to Natchez, MS to court her.

I’ll never forget how strange it was to reconcile the woman at the center of all those articles with our mother. Why, we wondered? Why hadn’t she told us? Mama’s response was that she didn’t want us to feel the pressure of trying to live up to her story.

I think Mama’s hesitancy to talk about her day in the sun is a great reminder of the role we should play in our kids’ and grandkids’ lives. Here’s wisdom on the subject from Proverbs 27:2. “Let another man praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lip.”

It’s okay to engage with our families on what we did back in the day. It’s not okay to suck the oxygen out of the room and drain the joy out of their experiences by comparing them to ours. That’s not the kind of role that will endear us to our loved ones taking the court or the field this spring. Let’s make it our goal cheer from the wings without adding the pressure of performing for the family or living up to a day in the history books. They’ll love us for it. And that’s what I call a win/win.

Hugs,
Shellie