Indiana Daily Student
4
SPORTS
Thursday, May 14, 2020 idsnews.com
Editor Tyler Tachman sports@idsnews.com
SOFTBALL
How Shonda Stanton unified a community By Tyler Tachman ttachman@iu.edu | @Tyler_T15
There’s a commotion coming from IU softball coach Shonda Stanton’s front yard. Her property is covered in gym equipment. Miniature orange cones dot the pavement. Agility ladders stretch across the road. Scooters lay aimlessly on the curb. It’s 2 p.m. in Stanton’s neighborhood, and a group of about 10 kids eagerly waits. That can only mean one thing: Class is in session. The schools in Monroe County are closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The students at IU have been sent home. The softball season has been canceled. Stanton slips on a pair of sunglasses, suits up in a crimson windbreaker and sets out for her driveway. It’s P.E. time. In late March, just as coronavirus was shutting down normal life, Stanton had a conversation with her neighbor Coleman Kavgian in her driveway. Stanton, a mother of three, and Kavgian, who has two daughters, talked about how their kids would adjust to school. And how, as parents, they would cope. “Coleman, I’m doing P.E. everyday,” Stanton said.
When Kavgian got home later that night, she shot a text to Stanton. “How about a coach Stanton P.E. class?” Kavgian typed. “Can we come over?” The next day, Kavgian and her two daughters, Grace, 11, and Vera, 10, headed over to Stanton’s house. The first group consisted of Stanton’s son Josiah, 9, and the two girls. They made sure to abide by the social distancing guidelines. “All right, give me 10 jumping jacks,” Stanton called out. Grace worked her way through the set. After a couple more exercises, she was out of breath and gulped down half of her water. “Okay, good warm-ups,” Stanton said. Grace couldn’t believe it. That was just warm-ups? Next, they sprang over hurdles. They scurried up a rope ladder. They finished with jogging on a trail. When Grace got home, she splashed the rest of the water on her face and laid in bed until dinner. Grace was assigned to write an “I survived” paper for her fifth grade class. Her story was titled: “I survived Coach Stanton’s gym class.” Soon, word of Stanton’s sessions spread around the single-street, 14-house
neighborhood. Grace bragged to one of her friends about being able to workout with a Division I coach. Her friend wanted in. Others saw the lively crew outside. Stanton kept it up almost every weekday. She put her class through ladder drills, ball handling skills, sprints and games of Simon Says. “These kids are committed, I tell you,” Stanton said. “It gets the coaching juices in me flowing.” To finish, they would circle up and share something about the day or what they were thankful for. “It really got us through the quarantine,” Kavgian said. “It strengthened our neighborhood community. We’re so grateful for investing that time in our kids.” In total, six families joined in. Parents who didn’t know each other besides a wave bonded. Kids got a break from online coursework. They stopped being “Zoombies,” as Stanton calls it. A wide range of ages took part. Five year olds wobbled through a workout. “I see you,” Stanton would say to motivate them. Rainy days became the worst days. Everyone stayed home. “We’re all on this earth running that relay race of life and living during this time,” Stanton said. “There’s a lot of peo-
COURTESY PHOTO
IU softball head coach Shonda Stanton, right, leads exercises for kids in her neighborhood. Stanton’s sessions have drawn children of a wide range of ages from her 14-house neighborhood.
ple that this is a really traumatic time for. What can we do to get out from behind our laptop? Maybe it’s just picking up the phone and calling someone and saying ‘Hey, how are you doing.’” In the softball program, they use the Chinese expression jiayou. The literal meaning is to pour oil into another person’s lamp. It’s a concept that Stanton, who is in her third year as head coach, has made one of the foundations of the program. After more than a month of hard work and encouragement from Stanton, Grace noticed that the workouts got easier. The small neighborhood has become more tightlyknit. They are planning baseball and kickball games. Last Thursday marked the last day of online school. Stanton gifted certificates and T-shirts for their final class. Before the gathering, Josiah turned to his mom. “Let’s work them hard,” he said. And that’s what Stanton did.
TAKE IT LIKE A FAN
Commemorating some of the coolest moms in sports today Bradley Hohulin is a sophomore in marketing.
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 twopiece swimsuits. Whenever the volleyball threat-
TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE
Serena Williams practices during the fourth day of the Miami Open tennis tournament March 21, 2019 at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla. Williams was pregnant with daughter Alexis during her Australian Open win in 2017.
ened 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. bhohulin@iu.edu
