My Two Athletes

Submitted by email from a cheer mom.

Middle aged, 2 kids, a minivan, house in the burbs and trying to plan for college.  My husband has a great job and so do I... MOM! Seriously, the IRS should have an official tax bracket for full time MOM.  Like most parents, I want the best opportunities and richest experiences I can give my kids so they can develop as people and find enjoyment and hopefully success in something they like.  So off to football, basketball, baseball, volleyball, soccer, gymnastics and cheerleading practice.  Thank goodness for friends, carpools and a 16year old legal driving age.
When my son became really good at pitching in baseball things changed.  Instead of doing a million different things, he specialized in pitching and baseball.  His father became invested in learning and understanding more about the sport and the position.  As parents, we naturally began to look into what his possible future could be.  Let me go back a step, our son is really good at pitching.  We got him into pitching camps, private lessons with pitching coaches and joined a highly competitive travel team.  As the worrysome mom, I of course asked all the questions about pitch count and arm/shoulder injuries.  I did the research and read the information about the dangers of pitching and overuse at the teenage level.  We tired to protect and prepare our son for a future in a sport he loved.
Everything was going wonderful and right on track until one Sunday evening.  My husband had just got home with our son from a baseball game and I with my daughter from a cheerleading competition.  Their two days had gone about as opposite as could be.  My son's team won their tournament and my son was named tournament MVP.  On the other hand, my daughter's team finished 7th out of 9 teams and she touched down on her standing tumbling in the routine and her stunt group missed part of their sequence.
My son is a Junior in high school and my daughter is in the 8th grade.  Typically, big brothers are either all in for lil sis or they look at her as the annoying sibbling they have to deal with occassionally.  Jason, our son, is the all in type.  So after all the hoopla about his success, he asks Jackie, our daughter, how her competition went.  After hearing about her woes, he asked the simplest question... "can't youjust take some flipping lessons or something?"  The thought was so natural from my son.  If you want to be better at something, you have to train and practice at it.
Later that night, as I discussed private tumbling lessons with my husband, our conversation centered on the cost and additional time/transportation considerations given the closest gymnastics gym was 40 minutes away.  Although we decided to get our daughter the privates, it wasonly because the time and travel was feasible.  What I didn't realize at the time was that we were treating our daughter with a completely different set of rules because her sport was cheerleading.
That was over a year ago.  Jackie is now a freshman in high school and is one of the very few freshman that has ever made the varsity team.  While she is a good cheerleader, she is a better tumbler and base.  She is throwing whip through to layout step out and is working a full... on the dead floor.  I finally got the point that the same intensity and commitment we gave to our son's success, we should be putting towards our daughter's success in cheerleading.  Why wouldn't we give her the private lessons and individual training she needs to be better at her sport.  It was a simple question my son asked that night because it was a natural thought that she should take private lessons just as he did to improve at his sport.
I think the thing we as parents were guilty of is two fold.  My husband and I viewed our daughter as a girl instead of an athlete.  She is strong and athletic, but she is into facebook, shopping, jewelry, clothes and boys just like many girls her age.  We just didn't assign the same inner drive, competitiveness and desire to win to our daughter because she was a girl.  Little did we know, it's just as strong in her as in our son.  She just doesn't spit, grunt and slide in the dirt so we didn't know it was there.  Girls simply don't always manifest their interest in sports and their fierce desire to compete or be the best the same way boys do.
Our second problem is that we never took cheerleading seriously.  The middle school team she was on competed, but we just never equivocated cheerleading to sports.  It wasn't until Jackie was taking private gymnastics lessons and stunting lessons that we began to see her improvement and relate the training process to that of our son.  When it was apparent the training led to skills that put her on Varsity as a freshman, the perspective was even clearer.  Athletes train for their sport.  It is our job as parents to support that process for our kids whatever the sport or interest.
As the end of the school year is in sight, my son has several scholarship offers to play college baseball.  We couldn't be more proud of the athlete and young man he is turning out to be.  While high school baseball is just about to get rolling, my daughter's very successful cheerleading season just finished. For my son, I see at least 4 more years of baseball, a free college education and maybe the pros from there.  For my daugher, the reality is completely different.  She is a base and that limits here ability to make a typical Div IA program which are usually coed.  To my knowledge, there are no full ride scholarships for female bases at any Div IA programs.  There are no significant cheerleading scholarships at all at the Div IA programs in our state that Jackie wants to apply to.  We know she will be very good by time she is applying to colleges, but will there be an opportunity for her to continue the sport she loves?
You can imagine my exhiliration when my daughter's high school coach was telling a couple of us parents about a new acrobatics and tumbling team sport at one of the universities in the state.  I had no idea.  None of us did.  Wow! Ka Boom! Bam! It was like fireworks going off right there in the room.  I couldn't wait to get home and get to my computer.  I read every word I could find on the internet about Acrobatics and Tumbling.  Most importantly, I read every word I could find on the team at the university in my own state.  This is exactly what my daughter wants.  This validates every dollar spent, every 45 minute one way trip to gymnastics, every late night, every frustrating practice and so on.  Not because there was no point to the sacrifice to date or because I think Jackie would make the team.  It's all validated because for the first time in the history of college athletics, girls who have excelled in cheerleading can finally have the OPPORTUNITY to compete in their sport during college on a scholarship.  This is about opportunity and choice that was never there before.  My daughter has always wanted compete, not cheer.  Now, just like every other high school athlete, either male or female, my daughter has an opportunity at the collegiate level.
Wouldn't it be a total dream if my son and daughter played their two sports at the same university?  Perhaps your daughter will be team mates with mine.