KCU Soccer Team Mom, ten years and counting 279/366

This is my tenth season as team mom for at least one of the KCU soccer teams. I began with the Women's team in 2011 when my youngest daugther was a freshman. I officially added the Men's team to my "brood" in 2014. It's always interesting when perspective players and their parents come for a campus visit, hear the coaches and players call me mom and ask "Whose mom are you?" or "Which one is yours?" My response is usually something along the lines of "none of them and all of them" with an explaination of how I got involved. I am also quick to assure them I am not here to take anyone's place as a parent, I am here because they cannot be. That my purpose is to keep my eyes open, to be a listening ear, an encourager, a prayer warrior for their child. Why do I keep doing this, long after my child left KCU? Because this is a gift and ministry God has given me. I honestly do not know what I would do if I did not have young adults nearby to love, encourage, mentor, "mother". I think it began way back when my brother Charles was born. I was fifteen months old. Two more brothers came after him. I was twenty when my twins were born and I carried four more babies to term after them. (They turned forty this year, how did that happen? I must have blinked). I've been at this mom gig a loooong time. If it's up to me, I'll be at it until I draw my last breath. That is why you will find me at the Bermuda or Turf almost every afternoon from 3:30-5:30(ish) with the Men's and Women's Soccer teams at KCU from mid August to sometime in November for as long as they allow me to tag along. Who knows, maybe I'll celebrate a twentieth anniversary as team mom.