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ABOVE // Heather Vance Devers in her home with her daughter, Betty, and son, Jude. The Weekend Guide
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M
good sport
ANY OF MY CHILDHOOD MEMORIES revolve around playing sports. I started riding horses at the age of 4 and was jumping by age 6; the smell of sawdust still fills me with a sense of nostalgia. Ironically, I stopped riding when we moved from Virginia to Oklahoma—stereotypes be damned—and started trying other sports. First it was gymnastics, but being tall and long-limbed didn’t serve me well in the balance and grace department. I vividly remember struggling to accomplish a back handspring: being upside down, attempting to get my cumbersome legs to flip over. Then there was ballet (see lessons learned from gymnastics). Softball was my next stop, but it wasn’t fast-paced enough to keep my attention, and I ended up making flower crowns in the outfield. Finally, I tried soccer and quickly learned that I was much more coordinated with my feet than my hands, and it became my go-to sport. I loved it. By fifth grade, I was playing club soccer, and we traveled a lot for tournaments—including a summer trip to Austria to play against teams from countries such as Germany, Sweden and Italy. (We unsurprisingly placed last, not able to compete with the football phenoms of Europe.) When we moved to New Mexico for my high school years, I attended a school so small that we didn’t have enough players to field separate girls and boys teams, so I played on a co-ed team that competed in the boys division. I was the sweeper, the last line of defense before the goalie. It was assumed that, because I was a girl, I would be easy to beat. This only motivated me to toughen up and prove those assumptions wrong. During one particularly brutal game, someone snapped a photo of me running away with the ball, two boys from the other team on the ground behind me. It was my badge of honor, and it gave me an incredible sense of confidence during a generally insecure time. Beyond getting us active, playing a sport teaches us many lessons. I think most importantly, sports teach us at a young age that we’re not going to be good at everything, and that’s part of life. You have to be brave enough to fail until you’ve mastered a skill or put in enough hours to improve. If your child is not interested in sports, then theater or band can teach the same lessons. It’s a game of trial and error, of finding what lights the spark in your child and helping them chase that passion. Trust me, mamas—it’s all worth it to see the light in their eyes when they find their niche.
XO,
Heather Vance Devers 6
march 2020 / dfwchild.com
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KORENA SINNETT
OUR TRIBE.
