How to be Sports Mom and Homeschool Mom at the Same Time

This week on Homeschool Highschool Podcast: How to be Sports Mom and Homeschool Mom at the Same Time.

How to be Sports Mom and Homeschool Mom at the Same Time

Vicki and Kym are together for this episode to discuss how to handle homeschooling and teens who seriously love to play sports at the same time. It is hectic but it can be done.

While Vicki’s teens played various sports during their high school years, they did so as a past time. Kym’s teens were more involved, in fact, her twins played women’s ice hockey all the way through college.

How did Kym end up being a serious sports mom?

Kym and her husband both love sports, but as Kym describes it, she was always the “bubble kid” always the last chosen or the first cut from the team at her small high school. All her four kids participated in sports at some level. Her older two decided the sports were not as fun when the competition got serious in high school (although her son still plays sports as an adult, just for fun.)

Kym’s youngest, the twins, first got the sports bug in pre-school while Kym was working part-time at the YMCA. They saw brochures for hockey and asked to play. Kym started them out by trying all the sports the Y had to offer. Then they graduated to the roller hockey team there.

Then after watching Disney’s Mighty Ducks movie, they decided that they were determined to play ice hockey. They presented their desire with business-form presentations. Doug and Kym decided they had better pray about it. They prayed daily from then all the way to their college hockey careers.

Benefits of playing sports:

Belongingness and connections (the twins have gained lifelong friends from their years in the intense togetherness of hockey league)
Fitness
Quick thinking skills and reactions
Activity burns off stress hormones and releases dopamine (a mood enhancing hormone)

After roller hockey, the girls played on a community mixed-gender league. However, when the boys hit puberty, Kym and Doug moved their diminutive twins to woman’s hockey. (Kym says that there is something magical for the girls to play on a girls’ team.)

Kym and Doug knew that the women’s sports leagues were more serious and quite expensive. They prayed and God provided equipment and finances for the twins’ hockey experience. They also prayed that hockey would not be come an idol. After prayer they stayed clear on their goals.

How do you stay clear on the goals?

Prayer (as Kym always says, “Prayer: first, last and always)
Discuss the goals as a family.
Remember the goals that must stay clear are the athletes’ goals and also the family’s goals. (If you goals do not match, it can be dangerous. Remember, parents who live vicariously through their teen-athlete’s goals end up burning out their teens and damaging the parent/teen relationship.)
- Practice
- Games
- Playoffs
- All Stars
- Tournaments
- Summer camps

Much of Kym’s hockey-mom years were in the car. Kym and her girls came to love this time because:

They had awesome conversations about deep, funny and personal things
They had uninterrupted time to study (car-schooling)
They had time for awesome audiobooks
They learned out to *fill the moment*/time management
Kym found drive time (when her husband was at the wheel) was a great time for grading papers for her daughter’s work or her group Spanish classes.

Kym also found connections with other hockey moms, the moms on her daughters’ teams and random hockey moms she meets in real life. (Vicki remembers when we were at our favorite conference: 2:1 Conference3 and Kym and Marci Goodwin of Snarky Homeschool Moms podcast were both hockey moms. It was so delightful to see the light come on in both moms’ eyes when they shouted, “You’re a hockey mom, too?!”…then they spent ages together “talking shop”.)

Kym’s daughters decided not to try NCAA college-level sports but rather, find a college with a well-run college club team. (They knew NCAA-level sports would not leave them enough time to join other college extracurriculars and rigorous study.) The twins ended up at the University of Delaware where they played all four years.

As you know, most high school and college athletes do not usually end up playing professional sports. However, based on those wonderful sports experiences, the girls found that they wanted to stay in sports at a support level. One of the twins is in graduate school studying Performance and Sports Psychology. The other twin works with a travel agency that works with sports teams.

Join Vicki and Kym for an enlightening discussion. Also, check out these posts and episodes that will help you as a sports mom:

How to Prepare for NCAA Sports (Homeschool Highschool Podcast)
Homeschooled and Headed for Harvard (Homeschool Highschool Podcast)
How I Prepared for a Competitive College (Homeschool Highschool Podcast)
Tips for Success for College Athletes (Homeschool Highschool Podcast)
Why Your Teen Should List Competitions on Homeschool Transcript (7SistersHomeschool.com)

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