Giving them a sporting chance

Parents can often be bewildered by the sporting talent of their offspring and are sometimes unsure whether it is a blessing or a curse

“It’s hard as a parent

to watch them getting

involved with tennis. It’s a very hard sport, emotionally, physically and mentally. It’s not a team sport. But she’s happy and they play because they want to play

THERE’S ALWAYS the suspicion that behind any high-performing young athlete, there’s an over-pushy parent or two. But that’s usually far from the truth. Although parental support is essential, success in sport, at its essence, requires a huge amount of self-motivation.

In fact, parents can often be bewildered by the precocious, sporting talent of their off-spring. They are not always sure whether it’s a blessing or a curse.

For all the joy and benefits of sport, to succeed in some of the more intense, individual disciplines requires sacrifices that are at odds with a so-called “normal”, carefree childhood.

Parents are torn between wanting to give children every opportunity to pursue their sporting dreams and the worry that it will jeopardise their education and long-term development, and then all end in tears.

The demands of high-level sports training dominate not only the child’s daily schedule, but have an impact on the entire family. It can be hard to balance that with the needs of siblings.

Here three parents talk about how excelling in sport affects their children’s lives.

The swimmer

When Tara Dunne (14) first suggested to her parents last May that she might move to Limerick from their Co Mayo home to improve her swimming, the answer was “categorically no”.

“She’s 14, we also have a 10 year old at home and two jobs to keep going,” explains her mother, Mary Dunne. “It was impossible.”

But weeks of “teenage persuasion” and conversations with Swim Ireland’s high-performance coach, Ronald Claes, about how their daughter would benefit from the facilities at the National Performance Centre, in the UL Arena at the University of Limerick, finally convinced her and her husband Liam to give it a go on a trial basis until Christmas.

So last August, the Dunnes leased a house in Limerick for Tara, across the road from the university, and settled her into second year at a new school, Castletroy College.

“There is no question that this is what she wanted. We were worried about her changing school and how she was going to cope. But there’s no going back, she is as happy as the Lord.”

Mary stays with her in Limerick on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, a relative or adult friend takes over on Wednesday nights and Liam goes there on Thursday nights and has, up to recently, brought her home every Friday. But this year she is training two Saturdays a month as well.

Tara, who is a member of the Swim Ireland squad being coached towards qualification for the 2012 Olympics, is up at 4.45 on four mornings a week and, after a light breakfast, is in the pool half an hour later. Then one of her parents collects her between 8 and 8.30am and she has time for a second, more substantial breakfast before starting school at 9am.

She finishes school at 3.10pm three days a week, 3.50pm the other days, and it’s back to training until after 6pm. Then it’s dinner, homework and into bed.

Mary describes Tara as “very single-minded” but agrees it’s a very hard life for any swimmer.

“I think as a parent looking at it, it is one of the loneliest sports,” she says. “But she loves it, so what can you say?”

Mary does worry that her daughter might regret dedicating her young life so fully to the sport, “but we also feel if we did not give her the chance, it is something we could never give back”.

There is no history of competitive swimming in the family. Tara began with Ballina Dolphins Swimming Club at six and by the time she had won her first national competition on her 11th birthday, “we realised she was obviously very good”, says Mary.

Tara and her local coach, Bridie Patten, had great plans for her swimming. “As parents, we felt there was no point in aiming for the stars,” says Mary. But, as their daughter has since shown, she had other ideas.

Of course, it’s not just Tara who has to make sacrifices for her dream of fulfilling her swimming potential and maybe one day competing at the Olympics; the rest of her family pay a high price too. “We all had to agree to it,” says Mary.

With the help of a supportive employer, Mary manages to juggle her nights in Limerick with her job as office manager at a medical practice in Ballina, while Liam, a paramedic, works his shifts around his time with his daughter. Then whoever is not with Tara, is with her younger brother, Shane.

“We do not have as much time together as a family as we want. That can be very hard, but we appreciate it more when we have it. We can only be together at weekends and, because of Liam’s shifts, that’s not always possible.”

Does her younger brother sometimes resent the effect of Tara’s swimming on the family? Not at all, says Mary, as far as Shane, himself a promising young swimmer, is concerned, his sister is going to the Olympics, and that’s it.

“But it’s a long, long road,” adds Mary, with all the heart-felt realism of a mother.

The tennis player

There weren’t enough hours in the school day for tennis as far as Amy Bowtell (15) was concerned so, with the reluctant permission of her parents, she has opted for home schooling.

This means, as a member of Tennis Ireland’s national training programme, she can now spend most of her day playing tennis at Dublin City University.

“She is a very academic kid and did very well in school,” explains her mother, Trina, “but she felt a lot of the day was wasted.”

Amy’s ambition is to be a professional tennis player, a goal shared by thousands of girls around the world who have better opportunities, acknowledges Trina.

“But she is keen to pursue it and we are giving her the opportunity. It’s very idealistic but we are giving her that chance. Has she got the ability? You never know if you don’t try.”

Trina finds “other people would look at you and question if you’re sane”. But, she says, Amy’s school, St Andrew’s College in Booterstown, Dublin, was supportive when she made her decision to leave. Meanwhile, Trina and her husband, Paul, who have three other children, are waiting to see how it all works and if Amy can cope with being out of school.

“We take every week and month as it comes,” says Trina. Amy’s results after she sits the Junior Cert next June will give them an idea of how she’s faring.

Most of her peers on the junior world tennis circuit would have left school at the age of 11 or 12 and are home-schooled or do internet schooling, Trina points out. “Amy was late in making that decision.”

Amy had seen girls who she could beat at under-12 international level getting ahead of her because they were spending many more hours training each day and were also free to travel to a lot more competitions, while she was restricted to competing during school holidays. “She knew she was getting left behind,” says Trina.

Now, six days a week, she is leaving the family home in Delgany, Co Wicklow by 7.30am to get to DCU in north Dublin in time to start training at 9am. At noon there’s a break for lunch and study and then they’re back training from 2.30pm to 6pm.

She expects to travel to at least 10 competitions abroad this year, either as part of the Tennis Ireland squad or with one of her parents.

As former hockey players themselves, Trina and Paul do not identify at all with the stereotypical “nutty tennis parents in the background” pushing their child. In their case, Amy is making all the running.

“She’s an unusual kid, she’s very focused,” says Trina. A very good hockey player and cross-country runner, at age 11 she decided tennis was the sport for her and gave everything else up.

She had first picked up a racket years earlier at Greystones tennis club where her eldest brother, Mark (18), was a member.

He is now on a sports scholarship at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, playing tennis on the college circuit.

But for Amy, says Trina, that would be settling for second best. It’s the professional circuit that she has in her sights. She had the advantage of starting earlier, being able to avail of Tennis Ireland’s recently improved training programmes and the women’s game is relatively easier to break into.

While she doesn’t believe Amy was more gifted at tennis than many other children, what marks the six-foot player out is her all-consuming desire to play the game and her determination to succeed.

The national training programme includes sessions with a sports psychologist and Trina, who admits to having been initially rather sceptical about the benefit of this for her teenage daughter, says it has been a huge help, making Amy see that the most important thing is to have fun and that she plays the sport to enjoy it.

“It’s hard as a parent to watch them getting involved with tennis,” adds Trina. “It’s a very hard sport, emotionally, physically and mentally. It’s not a team sport. But she’s happy and they play because they want to play.”

The gymnast

Daniel Fox (12) had all the physical prerequisites to be a good gymnast from an early age. Born with six-pack abs, according to his father, Jeff, he had excellent muscle tone as a baby, exceptional co-ordination and was walking by 10 months.

At two he was doing pull-ups on the steel bar provided by his father and soon outshining other children on the monkey bars in the playground.

He had inherited not only the physical attributes but also perhaps the single-minded discipline that is so essential for success in this very demanding, individual sport. His father, a native New Yorker, is a former professional dancer and now a physiotherapist working at Mallow General Hospital in Co Cork, while his mother, Bernadine Cusack-Fox, a radiographer, was a keen and talented ballet dancer.

However, one big disadvantage for the young gymnast is his country of birth. There is no permanent gymnastics facility in the Republic, no gym with a pit where gymnasts can safely practise dismounts from equipment and little professional coaching.

Despite the odds, Daniel, an artistic gymnast competing on six pieces of equipment, came seventh in the British under-12 championships last year.

“If he was living in the UK he would probably be on the British team,” says Jeff, and benefiting from all the facilities, professional training and support that would go with it.

Instead, Daniel has to make do with training and competing as a guest of Tolworth gymnastics club in London, where he goes for a long weekend every six weeks. He also has eight competitions abroad already pencilled in for this year.

Meanwhile, at home in Douglas, Cork, he fits in about two hours’ training after school four days a week, and also at weekends. But it’s barely enough. His father says a gymnast at Daniel’s level needs to be doing at least 18 hours a week.

“My wife and I thought about moving abroad,” says Jeff. “But is he going to make his living out of gymnastics? I don’t think so.” Although going into a related field, such as sports science, is a possibility.

A chance of participating in the Olympics is also probably “unrealistic”, with Ireland being in the tail-end of the international gymnastics league, although “he might be able to get in on a wild card”, says Jeff.

Jeff is chairman of Douglas Gymnastics Club, which is attended by about 300 children and is where he helps to train Daniel, along with competition coach Tim O’Donovan. They are trying to establish a permanent gymnastics facility locally, if they can secure funding.

Jeff does wonder if such facilities are not provided in the next year or two if it’s worth Daniel’s time and effort to continue training at his current level here.

Does he sometimes worry that his only child’s devotion to gymnastics deprives him of a “normal” childhood?

“I would hope he has an abnormal childhood,” Jeff replies. “What’s often considered a ‘normal’ childhood these days can be far from ideal.

“I think that it is beneficial to be the best that you can possibly be at something you want to do, in the short time you have in this life,” Jeff explains.

But enjoying the whole process is essential. “If it becomes frustrating, I would prefer him to do something else with his time.”

Daniel also does well in school. “He is an A student. I demand he gets As in all his subjects,” says his father, who describes him as “a very easy child”.

“I sometimes hear stories from other parents and I wonder what they are doing wrong. They don’t instil discipline and I don’t quite understand that.”

There is no need to be authoritarian, Jeff adds, it’s a matter of needing to show a child why something makes sense; how you have to focus or you won’t succeed.

As a parent, he believes it’s a case of saying to a child: “If you have a goal, I can help you achieve it but I can not do it for you.”

swayman@irishtimes.com