Facing Down Disappointment over Sports Day

Surely nothing spells summer and the end of the long school year than Sports Day: the smell of freshly cut grass, painted chalk lines, and string barriers holding back cheering parents and children. Little children compete in egg and spoon races, hobble along in three-legged competitions, and shriek as they hop along for the sack races. Parents are not spared and compete in parent-child races or 500 metre heats. Who can forget the sight of Princess Diana hitching up her eighties mid-calf denim skirt and racing against the other mums at her boys’ sports day? It’s ritual and rite of passage. In the UK, that is.

At the end of Pre-K3, my daughter’s first year in a real school setting, (albeit part-time pre-school), I waited eagerly for the announcement of Sports Day. Sure enough, news of Field Day, as it’s known over here, came along but only for Pre-K4 through 8th grade. I’d have to wait. This year, with the grandparents visiting from England, I pumped and primed the whole family to expect a whole day of fun at school, races, games and an ice-cream sundae table thrown in for good measure. I checked with other class mums. Would I see them at Field Day on Tuesday? They looked at me quizzically. “I don’t think so,” said one mother, “It’s usually just for the kids.” But I was emphatic in my certitude. “But the whole school will be participating! I’m sure all the parents will be there. I’m bringing my son, my husband is trying to get out of work early, and I’ve invited both sets of grandparents. See you there!”

At pick-up the day before, I collared a teacher over our expected arrival time. She looked puzzled and assured me it was really just for the children. “Don’t you have races?” I asked. “It’s mostly team games, lots of water fun, and a bouncy castle. But parents don’t come. I mean you could… but you’d be the only ones.” She didn’t categorically tell me not to come but I understood we’d be Norman No-friends if we did. And frankly nothing embarrasses a child more than its mother waving, “Yoo-hoo, sweetie! Coo-eee, it’s Mummy!” from the sidelines of any sporting event, let alone one to which the ’rents aren’t actually invited.

I was pretty crushed about this news. Could it really be that my long-awaited dream of attending my children’s Sports Days would never happen? I mean, ever? Living in the states would make it so. All those re-runs of Peppa Pig’s Sports Day priming my young for the fun and sportsmanship of Sports Day were all for nought. Dashed were my projected memories of rolling around in great piles of grass cuttings, having massive allergy attacks, and screaming “Bundle!” as we all piled on top of one another in a scrum. Could it be political correctness had gone awry in the school system where competitive races were to be discouraged? Or maybe parents had become too feisty, belligerent even, in shouting encouragement to their progeny and disparaging remarks to their classmates. Every year there seems to be at least one news story of some ghastly parental altercation at a football/hockey/baseball game. And in 2005, British magazine, Country Life, reported many UK schools had banned the “mothers and fathers” races due to fighting and cheating. Nice.

Perhaps I’m looking back at those pre-noughtie years with misplaced nostalgia, remembering when racing heats were fun and relay races depended on team spirit, before every childhood accolade was instant fodder for the academic résumé. The school lacrosse team might play a short scrimmage, and the gym team might do a demonstration of back flips and tumbles. (Of course, there was the summer of ’79 when half the elementary school gym team suffered first-degree burns on their feet after dancing on black rubber gym mats in the midday sun. But that was just a blip on the summer landscape.) Sports Day always ushered in the summer with a literal bang of the starting gun.

Not one to be deterred, I’ve decided to bring a slice of the motherland to upstate New York with a little impromptu Sports Day at our house. Egg and spoon races, sack races, mother/father races, a friendly little round of croquet will prevail! Let’s just hope it doesn’t end Eliza Doolittle style, with one of the excited mums yelling, “Come on little Jimmy, move your bleedin’ @#$%!”