Olympian Parents Deserve Medals Too

Imagine sitting in the grandstand at the half pipe and watching your "little boy" or "little girl" slam the snowboard against the lip of the structure and fall 20 feet to the icy floor. How would you react if your son, the bobsled pilot, and his brakeman flipped their sled while going 92 miles per hour on a block of sheer ice?

After spending hours, months and years transporting their children to lessons, paying for those lessons, sewing costumes, repairing skis and skates, and putting up with pre-adolescent or adolescent angst, one would think the parents of world-class athletes would be used to all the drama. As the mother of a son who played all sports, but who "majored" in baseball, I can tell you unequivocally that those parents never get used to the drama. It is a wonder they aren't passing out in the stands from holding their breath for the duration of their wunderkind's performance.

My son made it to the minor leagues of the Atlanta Braves. From the moment I pitched the first nerf ball to him when he was less than two years old, he has been in pursuit of some level of excellence in some form of competitive sport. He was especially gifted in hitting and fielding, but through the years of Little League, high school, American Legion and the University of California at Riverside, he played every position on the field. When he pitched, I could barely breathe, for fear he would walk the batter. Once while on the mound, a batter sent a line drive straight into his head. My knees buckled and I couldn't speak. Between the two of us, his dad and I spent more hours in the emergency room than some of the docs.

The hardest part is dealing with the disappointment when things don't go the way your athlete hopes. Not my own disappointment --my job was always to reinforce the win-some-lose-some philosophy. But as a parent, or more specifically, a mother -- there seems to be a real difference in the way fathers deal with it--it is heartbreaking to watch the kid process the belief that he has let down everybody in his world.

I will never forget the day I had to face my son in the recovery room after five hours of surgery on the knee he had ravaged sliding into second base for the Braves. The doctor had finally come to the waiting room to find me frantic. The surgery was only supposed to last for an hour and a half! There he explained that the damage had been far worse than he had thought. The chances of my son returning to baseball on the professional level were extremely slim. I felt it was my responsibility to deliver this devastating news to a young adult whose entire life had been spent chasing the dream of making the"Bigs" (Major League Baseball).

Any parent who has persevered long enough to have a child reach the Olympic Games deserves a special level of recognition, and all of it should be gold.