Olympic mothers - Children take center stage on U.S. softball tour
By Alan Abrahamson, NBCOlympics.com
Posted Sunday, May 11, 2008 4:26 AM ET
Call them the Three Amigos. They're the man power behind the American softball team barnstorming tour, the roadshow now circling the United States in preparation for the 2008 Olympic Games.
Leading off, 11 months old, very smiley: Chase Gregory Deniz. His doting mom: catcher Stacey Nuveman, a two-time Olympic gold medalist gunning for three.
In the middle: Ace Shane Daigle, just turned 2. His mom: pitching sensation Jennie Finch, a 2004 gold medalist.
The older man: Antonio Lujan, son of Lisa Fernandez, the three-time gold medalist who is one of the most recognizable faces of American sports excellence and is an alternate on this year's team. Antonio was born in December, 2005. Call him Tony. Ace does.
That the boys travel with their moms is due to a progressive child-care philosophy. It underscores a growing recognition in American Olympic circles of the plain fact that some female athletes can and do now extend their playing careers well into the years when motherhood can be expected to beckon.
Thus the softball moms -- like soccer moms and others -- don't have to choose between motherhood and being a world-class athlete.
"The good and the bad, the dirty diapers -- it's not all wonderful," Nuveman said. "But at the end of the day, you wouldn't do it any differently."
Nineteen so-called "working moms" have made or are strong contenders to make the 2008 U.S. team, according to the U.S. Olympic Committee.
In some sports the idea of mixing motherhood and world-class sports would be laughable -- for instance, women's gymnastics, in which many of the athletes expected to represent the United States this summer are still in their teens, some as young as 15 or 16.
In other sports, however, soccer and softball in particular, the athletes can and do play on well into their 20s and 30s.
During the U.S. women's soccer team's recent swing through Alabama, North Carolina and Washington, D.C., for instance, a team spokesman noted, Kate Makgraf and Christie Rampone have been kept company by their kids -- Kate's son, Keegan, nearly 2, and Christie's daughter, Rylie, almost 3.
Soccer federation officials pick up travel costs for a nanny or relative.
Softball's child-care effort similarly covers travel costs -- and is perhaps even more extensive, because the U.S. team's "Bound 4 Beijing" tour, which got underway in February, runs through July, until just before the team heads to China. The tour has been hugely successful as evidenced by a recent crowd of 8,724 in Bowie, Md., just shy of a national team attendance record.
The softball effort is tied to a formal fund-raising effort, the USA Softball Child Care Fund, that dates to 2003 and Leah O'Brien Amico, who gave birth to her first son, Jake, in July, 2001, roughly nine months after winning her second gold medal at the Sydney Games.
She then sought to make the 2004 team. Softball officials were eager to see if she could do it.
Thus the idea for a fund, sparked by Amico and by Ronnie Isham, the director of national teams since 2001, and others. To Isham, who for more than 30 years had served as parks and rec director for the city of Stephensville, Texas, and who had over those years "had a lot of mothers work for me," the idea that Amico -- and others like her -- ought to be able to be a mom while pursuing a professional opportunity seemed, well, obvious.
"A common-sense decision," he said, adding, "Family is a big deal. Our success -- to be able to do what we need to do, family is huge. We've always, from a USA Softball standpoint, tried to address family needs and make that be a part of our team."
The USA Softball fund -- it's available to top-tier male players as well, though no men have tapped it -- is now far more formalized than four years back and has grown to nearly six figures, Isham said. The bulk of the money now in the fund has come from a Southern California investment-manager pair, a husband and wife with a longtime interest in softball; through a representative, they declined to comment and asked not to be named in this article.
Amico makes it plain that the fund helped make it possible for her to chase her 2004 Olympic dream; she made the team and won a third gold.
"When you have your family and that's your foundation, you're just thankful for the other opportunities," she said.
Nuveman and Finch, on the 15-player roster USA Softball named in late March for the 2008 team, say the fund has made all the difference. Fernandez has been named a 2008 replacement player.
"It's an incredible blessing to achieve our dreams on the field and yet be a mother at the same time," Finch said.
Added Nuveman, "There's a saying that it takes a village to raise a child. In our cases, that couldn't be more true."
