Not every son or daughter is equipped to celebrate Mother’s Day gracefully.
For some, Sunday brunch is the breakfast burrito you scarf down after rolling over at 11a.m. with a pounding headache in a desperate attempt to soak up Saturday night’s poor decisions. Yet each May, we brave the strange world of frittatas and mimosas out of admiration for the matriarchs in our lives.
These women have ample ways of showing love. Many of those appear in competitive athletics, whether it means suiting up with cleats and a mouth guard or simply toting a cooler full of Capri Suns.
Today, we commemorate the coolest moms in sports.
Kara Goucher
As someone who has given birth, Goucher has probably suffered some of the worst physical pain a woman can experience. As someone who runs long distances for a living, she has definitely suffered some of the worst physical pain a human being can experience.
Shortly after the arrival of her son, Colt, in 2010, Goucher ran her fastest 26.2 miles with a time of 2:24:52. Then, she won the USA Half Marathon Championships in 2012, followed by the San Antonio Half Marathon in 2015, with Colt likely receiving some seriously intense stroller rides along the way.
I have to wonder how Goucher first became aware of her pregnancy. Cramping, vomiting and an urge to devour anything vaguely resembling food may be common for expecting mothers, but they aren’t exactly rare sights among endurance runners either.
Kerri Walsh-Jennings
Amid 2008’s Great Recession, America was in dire need of a hero. Its saviors arrived that summer, clad not in capes but in two-piece swimsuits.
Whenever the volleyball threatened to hit the sand, Walsh-Jennings and partner Misty May-Treanor dove even harder than the U.S. economy. They tore through the Beijing Olympics, then placed first four years later in London with the added twist of Walsh-Jennings being over a month pregnant.
For one week in the seventh grade, I was tasked with caring for an egg meant to represent an infant. I could barely get my hard-boiled offspring to pre-algebra without evoking allusions to Humpty Dumpty, so I can only imagine carrying a child to a gold medal.
I was far from a perfect father. In my defense, no matter how enticing an omelette he could have become, I never beat my son.
Candace Parker
One injustice of motherhood is that several women are forced to put their careers on the back burner once they have a child. This appeared to be the case for Parker in 2009, when the WNBA Rookie of the Year and MVP welcomed her daughter, Lailaa.
But Parker was no stranger to rebounding. By the time Lailaa was in the third grade, Parker was once again the league’s MVP and owned a championship ring with the Los Angeles Sparks. With the multitude of trophies earned by her mother, I doubt Lailaa ever had much competition at show-and-tell.
Occasionally, young children will claim to their friends: “My dad could beat up your dad.”
Lailaa, however, holds the distinction of being able to boast: “My mom could cross your mom over and dunk on your dad.”
Serena Williams
There are certain moments in which a contender’s resilience is truly put on display. The waning minutes of the fourth quarter. The last lap of the race. The eighth week of the first trimester.
That is precisely where Williams found herself during the 2017 Australian Open, one of many victories in her storied tenure. In case any question remained regarding her legendary status, Williams then disclosed she nearly died from complications after the birth of her daughter, Alexis Olympia.
Williams has been the face of her craft and the most dominant individual athlete of any sport for two decades, so it makes sense that she could return any serve, be it from Maria Sharapova or death itself.
Alexis Olympia may be a miracle baby, but considering how little she aided Williams at Melbourne in 2017, she has to be the laziest doubles partner in the history of professional tennis.
