When it Comes to College Recruiting, Parents Are the GOATs
Be honest, parents. When you read the title of this post it conjurs up images of Tom Brady, Charlotte North, David Ortiz and Aly Raisman, doesn’t it? Indisputable GOATs, right? And doesn’t that describe us? Rockstars in a world of our own making? Parents to above-average progeny looking to make their mark on the collegiate lacrosse world?
We are drivers of great distances and suppliers of snacks! We are sports psychologists and schedulers and stick stringers wrapped up in one! Our former glory as witnessed in our ability to shimmy up a rope in our fifth-grade Presidential Fitness test is finally being made manifest in our offspring’s imminent grasp of the brass ring of a college lacrosse offer. So, yes, we are the GOATs, aren’t we?!
Yes, we are. But not in that way. We’re more of the Secretariat-style goats. And I’m not talking about the 1973 Triple Crown-winning athlete with a heart twice the size of his competitors’. I’m talking about his friend LeAnn.
Legend has it that during his competitive career — and for a long time after Secretariat retired from racing — his favorite companion was a goat named LeAnn. The two grazed the fields of Claiborne Farms in Paris, Kentucky, hoof to happy hoof: one the undisputed GOAT of thoroughbred racing and one a literal goat.
We, parents, are the latter.
And as with all of the literal goats who occupy the shedrows of the world’s most prestigious racehorse stables, our job is not to prod, cajole and hype the well-bred beasts we keep company; our job is simply to hold space near them, to provide calm and quiet comfort, to let their giant hearts slow and synchronize for a spell with an unambitious fellow beat.
I channeled my most caprine self this past January, down in Naples, Florida, at the end of Day One of a two-day Lacrosse Masters event.
Thea and I had made the mother-daughter trek to the West Coast of Florida just days into the start of the all-important second semester of her junior year because every coach (but one) of every college lacrosse program in which she was interested was going to be in attendance. It was as close to a “must do” recruiting event as you can get.
With an eye on affordability (more on the dollars and sense [sic] of the recruiting process next week), we booked our flights for off hours, used a budget car rental agency and made a reservation at a new-ish hotel far from the coast that was offering reduced rates to get customers in the door. At the very least, we told ourselves, having made a three-day trip to Florida for the IWLCA Presidents’ Cup back in November but failing to get our feet in the ocean — or even to splash around in a pool — we’d be setting ourselves up to get a little winter sunshine and that long-awaited warm weather swim.
Saturday dawned clear and hot. Thea was quiet on our early morning cross-town drive to the fields and I opted to let the silence carry us down the road. In lieu of conversing, I noted features on our commute: a strip mall smoothie shop, a grocery store, a CVS, a bagel bakery, a hospital. Some venues we might need; others I hoped we wouldn’t.
I hung around the sports complex in the morning, watched a bit of the session and kept the AC intermittently blowing in the rental car so that Thea could post up out of the heat during her mid-morning and lunch breaks. We didn’t talk much. Thea was dialed in and I respected her tacit choice to keep tension on the rope of her sport-specific focus throughout the day. I simply kept her company: a warm and familiar heartbeat in a comfortably cool car.
In the afternoon I took the wide Floridian boulevards back across town and jumped on a hotel treadmill in the tiny glassed-in gym overlooking the lobby. There, on a rickety machine running hard but going nowhere, in the middle of Chapter 72 of James Patterson’s “Along Came a Spider,” my phone rang.
It was Thea. She and another player had collided in pursuit of a ground ball in the afternoon scrimmage. They’d butted heads, she explained, and the other player’s goggles had sliced open her top lip. The trainer said she needed stitches.
I was on my way, I told her.
OK, she sniffed. She said she’d already walked out to the parking lot.
On my unwisely fast drive back over to North Collier Regional Park, I clocked the location of the hospital again. And the CVS. I worked to lower my redlining heartrate and stem the rushing tide of questions. I stood no chance of being a good LeAnn if I was revving higher than my racehorse.
As I took the sweeping left into the parking lot, and the gap closed between Thea’s solitary figure standing curbside and our tin can of a rental car, I saw in her body language a kid who was holding it together. But just.
I didn’t fuss over the wound when she got into the car. I took one quick look, confirmed aloud what she already knew — she definitely needed stitches — and steered us back onto the main road towards the hospital.
Thea’s breaths were originating from a place high in her chest and there was a sheen to her eyes that told a tale of suppressed tears. But the rest of her was still and composed. I’m certain, though, if I’d taken her pulse in that moment her strong heart would have been racing hummingbird fast. Instead, I put my hand on top of her head and asked the only important question: You doing, OK, Sweet Pea?
She kept staring straight ahead, spine straight and chin lifted, and answered with a question of her own: Do you think I’ll be able to play tomorrow?
I did not laugh. But I probably should have.
Thea’s heart is huge. Secretariat big. It’s full of care and courage. Though she guards it closely, her capacity for empathy is outsized and the depth of her consideration for others is profound. She feels deeply even if she doesn’t like other people to know it. She is also an ace at metabolizing pressure and discomfort. In addition to being an awesome lacrosse defender, she’s been the starting goalie on her high school’s Varsity soccer team since sophomore year. If, in a few years, the CIA decides it needs to replenish its ranks with some steely-eyed recruits, they could do a lot worse than to assemble a class comprised entirely of soccer goalies. These kids have ice in their veins and they know how and when to summon their frostiest selves. We were in such a moment.
The waiting room at the North Naples Hospital was crowded. Dozens of patients were already triaged and in various states of agitation, illness and injury. We were in for a long and late evening, I surmised. We gave our information to a kind-eyed woman at the registration desk, who did not make Thea suffer the indignity of explaining why she was there. Thea’s injury was legible.
How old are you, honey? she asked.
Sixteen, Thea replied.
Oh, then let’s bring you in through pediatrics, she said. And pointed us to a previously unnoticed door opposite the busy waiting area.
Once on the other side we were met by a different world entirely. The pediatric emergency room was quiet and nearly empty. Colorful tropical murals animated the walls and jaunty xylophone music tapped out a happy beat. Within minutes a nurse greeted us and moved Thea to a curtained bay, where she climbed up on the hospital bed and took her first deep breath in what I would guess was close to an hour.
I climbed up next to her.
Thea is 5’11” and I’m just an inch shorter. Still, we fit all twelve feet of us side-by-side on the narrow pediatric gurney. We stayed that way, like two AA batteries snuggled into a flashlight compartment, through intake visits from the nursing staff, a consult from the doctor, three numbing attempts, six stitches and the better part of Disney’s Zootopia. The movie was on point: we were, after all, a goat and a horse in a hospital bed.
Thea was brave and I was calm. She didn’t need a champion or an advocate; she was her own best version of both of those roles. She needed a sure and steady presence, a familiar breathing pattern and proximity to the pulse she’d known since before she was born. I could offer that salve for her galloping heart. Doing the least was the most and the best I could do.
Before we checked out, the nurse gave Thea a set of discharge instructions: no sweating and no swimming. She split the difference. She played day two. Of course she did. But we never did get that midwinter swim.
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