Following Athletes Is a Winning Plan

Instead of summer vacation, Jake and Elaine Carr spend most of every winter weekend on the road. But they’re not getting much R&R.;

With three boys playing ice hockey, including one in college, the Carrs are traveling all over New England and as far as Canada to their sons’ games and tournaments. Many weekends, they drive hours to one game and back again for another. Along the way, they drop some serious bucks on hotels, gasoline, meals and the kids’ gear--money they might otherwise spend on a summer vacation.

“Sure, I miss having a relaxing vacation at the beach,” says Elaine Carr, a bookkeeper who lives in Hanover, Mass., and also the mother of an older daughter. “Your social life suffers. The house gets neglected. But the boys really love it. That makes it worth it.”

Mike Wolf, a Denver caterer who drives all over Colorado to his two teenagers’ ski races, praises the healthy benefits of such programs. “I’d rather spend the money and the time on this than a drug rehab program,” he says. “This has given them self-confidence and discipline. And it’s fabulous for us as a family too. Sharing their victories and defeats has made us closer.”

Parents from New York to Los Angeles--I’m included in this group--are telling themselves that same thing as they travel ever farther from home, even across the country and to Europe, for their children’s soccer tournaments, swim meets, tennis matches, basketball games and so on.

With so many millions of kids in so many sports--nearly 10 million 7- to 17-year-olds alone playing soccer and 15 million playing basketball, according to the National Sporting Goods Manufacturers Assn.--participation has never been higher, the experts say. For example, Colorado’s Winter Park Resort, where Mike Wolf’s kids train, has more than 500 youngsters on its teams, nearly double the number a decade ago.

Thousands of kids will compete in 15 sports this summer in Europe, the South Pacific and the Caribbean in the rapidly expanding People to People Sports Ambassadors program.

“The interest has been overwhelming,” says Susannah Cornelius, the director of the Spokane, Wash.-based program. “We have more than 100 applications coming in every day.” For information, call (509) 534-0430, Internet https:// www.sportsambassadors.org.

Some parents have their eye on future college scholarships or are harboring Olympic hopes. But more often, “parents get swept along, and before they know it, they’re in the middle of a rat race,” says Judy Young, executive director of the National Assn. for Sport and Physical Education, a coaches’ organization in Reston, Va.

Parents juggle work schedules, budgets and child care for younger children. Often they won’t see each other all weekend as one parent heads off with one child while the other is watching another child compete elsewhere.

“Sometimes we’d switch halfway during the weekend,” says Anne Fenn, a mother of three young Connecticut swimmers who has traveled all over the country to watch them compete.

Others plan their vacations around the kids’ sports. “Why do we do this insanity?” Deidre Hamilton, a consultant who lives in Santa Cruz, Calif., asks with a laugh. She has traveled as far as Florida for her basketball-playing sons and has helped organize the teams’ trips. “I want to be there,” she says. “I feel like I’m missing something if I’m not.”

The biggest growth has been with girls’ sports since Title IX in 1972 mandated that equal money be spent on girls’ athletics. The resulting success of women athletes, notably the U.S. women’s soccer team, has helped fuel the trend.

Experts hope these youngsters will continue to make exercise an integral part of their lives. But they worry that the intensity, including hectic travel, is burning out young athletes. The American Youth and Sports Participation Study, conducted in the late ‘80s by Michigan State University, notes that participation in sports declines sharply as kids hit their teens. They quit because sports stop being fun, according to the survey of about 10,000 kids ages 10 to 18 in 11 cities around the country.

“Sports can become a mini-job for these kids,” says Laura Finch of Western Illinois University, who teaches sports psychology and counsels young athletes and their families. “Some feel pressured to continue even if they don’t want to because parents are spending so much time and money.” She and other experts also worry about the negative effect on less athletic siblings and what happens when parents’ egos are vested in their child’s athletic prowess.

“Remember, it’s just a game and these are just kids,” says Linda Bunker, a professor in the department of exercise science at the University of Virginia and coauthor of “Parenting Your Superstar” (Triumph Press, $12.95).

Still, there are many positives to this kind of travel, parents and experts agree: the camaraderie with teammates and the chance to compete at a higher level, to see new places and to meet like-minded youngsters from different parts of the country and abroad.

Just as important, parents say, is the time they have with their children they wouldn’t have otherwise. “When else will you have their ear for an hour and a half?” asks Anne Fenn. “And in the hotel, you can get a pizza and cuddle up and watch TV together.” As the mother of four, she knows how valuable--and rare--that one-on-one time can be.

Marianne Martino used her son Kyle’s soccer exploits to spend some time with her other children, taking a son and a daughter to Europe on separate trips to watch Kyle, a member of the junior U.S. National Team. “It all goes so fast,” she says. “You’ve got to take advantage of every minute.”

And point out the life lessons along the way, says Bunker of the University of Virginia. “Most wins are temporary. So are losses. The nice thing about sport is you get a fresh chance tomorrow.”

Taking the Kids appears the first and third week of every month.