Mom Knows Best

When I was a freshman in high school, I had a conversation that changed my views on being a multi sport athlete forever. In ninth grade, I was playing three sports year round. I played ice hockey, soccer and softball. I had been really focused on soccer and was thinking about dropping my other two sports to specialize in soccer in hopes to maybe play in college. I decided to ask my mom how she felt about it, and we ended up having a very eye opening discussion. My mom was against me specializing ultimately because of injuries. She made several points about overuse, and being an RN with a medical background she had the success baggage to get me to start thinking. We talked about how the things I learned outside of soccer were helping me sustain my body and physical state. It dawned on me about halfway through this conversation that I was the only one on my soccer team who never got sore muscles, and hadn't had some problem with the ligaments in my knees at 15. I was also the only one who did year round workouts to strengthen these ligaments for hockey. The things I was being required to do for hockey were actually saving my knees and ACLs to the point where when I had an injury with my knee, the ligaments held instead of tearing. I had never thought about this circular use until my mom brought it to my attention. My mom then discussed thinking about this from a reverse angle. I was one of the only players on my hockey teams, girls or boys that could kick a hockey puck from my skates to the blade of my stick without losing balance. This was because of my soccer background. I had never thought of how many skills from sports had come in handy in different sports until my mom opened my eyes and made me really think about it. I had no idea how important being a multi sport athlete was to my physical health until I thought about not being one.

I chose to share this conversation because it has stuck with me for a long time. If I were to write about sustainability in athletes, I could use my own examples as support to my argument. This conversation was very eye opening for me, and if I had not asked my mom, I probably would have ended up becoming less physically sustainable as a person. I also noticed that sustainability of athletes is not talked about as often, and it is a different view to sustainability than what people usually think of.

Source: Shelly Lehto, Abby Lehto