Winning Is Everything

There is nothing more pathetic than parents living through their children. Be it stage mothers who force their infants into an uncomfortable limelight, or a dad finding satisfaction in his son’s domination of his classmates, there is something sick and selfish about framing your child’s unlimited potential in such definitive terms. No matter how often they claim they’re only helping their kids realize a goal, they are basically afraid to acknowledge who placed the desire in the kids’ heads in the first place—and who will get the most out of the success, if and when it comes.

Nowhere is this dynamic more disturbing than in the world of competitive athletics. While sports surely serves as a legitimate avenue for physical and psychological development, as well as for teaching lots of clichéd lessons about sportsmanship and teamwork, this hardly seems the raison d’etre for the modern participant’s parents. For them, sports is an route to financial security and personal fame.

Bravo, the onetime “arts” network, has recently embraced reality TV, including Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and the eight-part series Showdog Moms and Dads. Applying the same principles that it did to said puppy parade, Bravo now presents Sports Kids Moms and Dads, premiering 1 June.

Sports Kids Moms and Dads doesn’t begin on the most promising of notes. It introduces us to five families, each with a gifted athlete at the center. Bryce is new to the figure skating game, but his mother Kim already thinks he’s a champion. Sarah is one of those Texas tykes predestined to be a professional cheerleader, or at least, that’s what her obsessive mom Sharon believes. Karlie is a child of privilege with the $40,000 show jumping horse to prove it. But family matriarch Karen is in the middle of a messy divorce, and sees the steed as an unnecessary expense. Like any other basketball prodigy, Lindsay wants to excel, but no one wants success more than her coach—and mother—faded college star TJ. As the sole fawning father here, Craig believes his Pee Wee football player, Trent, will make it to the NFL, and Dad is going to shadow him every step of the way.

Sports Kids doesn’t celebrate a team ideal. Instead, it centers on individual achievement, egged on by individual parent. But it’s hard to believe these kids when they say they want to be the best “X” in their fields. Most children can’t put together two complete thoughts without wandering off into their own worlds and logics. To hear each asserting his or her desire for a fixed professional future smacks of the sort of brainwashing that was supposedly outlawed by the Geneva Convention.

While you can argue over the genuineness of such sentiments, and while it may be difficult to judge from a first episode, Sports Kids Moms and Dads doesn’t promise anything much different for the long term. The stories are all going to follow a formulaic path (at least, that’s the impression one gets from the frequent previews of future installments) and the so-called stars, the parents, aren’t going to generate any twists on the stereotypes they embody.

Both Craig and TJ come across as disgruntled weekend athletes, certain that if fate had been kinder to them, professional sports would have been pounding at their doors with accolades and contracts. Sharon stinks of the superiority she feels when her precious darling does what she’s supposed to, yet won’t take responsibility for pushing her too hard when little Sarah fails. Even Kim, who argues that she wants to balance winning with character development, can’t help but get her digs in with Bryce (in the only affective scene in the entire first episode, she holds up a photo noting that, with a fifth place finish at Regionals, there was no place for her son on the podium).

Frankly, if the makers of Sports Kids were smart, they would chuck all the classic corrupt parent/child bad sportsmanship storylines and instead focus on Karen and Karlie. They seem a family with reality-show-friendly issues, like sibling rivalry, absentee parents and unsolved matrimonial woes.

Like the others, their storyline is telegraphed in the setup: soon to be single mom can’t spend $50K a year on the horse hobby and newly daddy-less princess is setting her sights on rebellion. To watch this dynamic turn all murky and soap operatic should be the guiding principle behind Sports Kids, especially when mom hints at her child’s possible eating disorders (she’s on “anorexia watch”) and she herself is emotionally unbalanced and about ready to make a visit to the loony bin.

Sports Kids, however, means to make a different point, one we’ve heard a hundred times. TJ will have to face her daughter’s budding sexuality, something that scuttled her own chance at stardom. Kim will watch Bryce fall one time too many, and he’ll drop ice-skating forever. Sarah will overcome all the personality pitfalls placed in her way by the instantly hateable “Miss” Nicole, while Trent’s career-ending injury will force his father to get an actual job (he appears to be lost in a series of arrested adolescent obligations that don’t add up to providing for his family).

Maybe if the sports had been different—why not focus on lacrosse or some other competition outside the cultural mainstream?—we would find something to engage us. Or better yet, dump the dad and focus on the rise of female players in traditionally male endeavors. One is reminded that 1976’s The Bad News Bears managed to make a pretty definitive statement about parents being obsessed with their children’s performances on the field.

Sports Kids acts like its subject is news. Maybe it can capture the same kitschy lightning that made Showdogs such a guilty treat. But it’s hard to get past the idea that the underdeveloped feelings of adolescents shouldn’t be used in such a heartless manner. Certainly not by the parents. And definitely not by a TV series. All the athletes here show some promise. Sadly, Sports Kids Moms and Dads does not.