Soccer moms celebrate Mother’s Day at game

By MEGHAN DURBAK
Tribune staff writer

May 11, 2008 10:12 pm

— From underneath her umbrella, Linda Lawless waited for her daughter’s soccer game to begin.
Wearing gloves and covering up with a blanket, she settled in to her fold-out chair and prepared to spend nearly two hours in the rain to watch her daughter, Megan, and her teammates on Kokomo Soccer Club’s U-16 Renegades challenge some Indianapolis rivals.
“We don’t miss a game,” Lawless said. “Rain, shine, snow, sleet — we’ve been through it all.”
“We” included more than Lawless and her husband Jeff; it was also the row of umbrellas on either side of her. On a rainy Sunday afternoon, several soccer moms spent their Mother’s Day holiday watching their teenage daughters play in the mud.
“We’re crazy to be out in this,” said Carrie Allen, the one woman not using an umbrella. Her raincoat acted as a poor shield from the rain hitting her face.
She didn’t really mind.
“If it wasn’t raining, this would be the best way to spend Mother’s Day,” she said.
Allen has spent many a rainy day watching her children play their games. With four children, Allen and her husband Steve, have spent the better part of 20 years at soccer and volleyball games.
Watching her daughter Breanna, 15, play, can be intense.
“I did promise I wouldn’t yell anything,” Allen laughed. “I’m trying to be nice.
“You want to show your kids that your interested in their lives.”
A few feet away, Karol Layman was expressing her enthusiasm for the game.
“Step it up! Step it up Frankie!” Layman shouted to her daughter.
Juggling soccer, academic events and her own career has become an art form for the mother of three. She hardly misses a game.
“I really couldn’t tell you how to do it. You just do it,” she said.
Holidays like Mother’s Day aren’t so much relaxing as they are about being busy and fitting everyone in to a hectic schedule.
For Mother’s Day, Layman went to church, planned to plant flowers for her mother, made contact with the daughter who moved away and stopped at the Kokomo Soccer Club field to watch the game.
“I have never had a Mother’s Day where my kids didn’t have a sporting event. It’s all I know,” she said.
Staci Rice said she tries to avoid being too much like a “soccer mom.”
“I try not to embarrass her,” she said of her daughter, Ciara Johnson.
Like many of the mothers present, Mother’s Day isn’t about being appreciated so much as it is spending time with her child.
“I enjoy spending time with her. If that means being at a soccer game, that’s what I’m going to be doing,” Rice said.

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