Meet my friend, Dana Yoo.
Dana works full time as a cell biologist and vice president of research and development at a biotech company.
She has another role, one she jokes, that could be her actual full-time job.
Dana is a sports mom. To my wife and me, Dana is the ideal sports mom. You might know someone like her, the mom from the team who gets everyone organized and wears a variety of hats.
She wipes noses and wipes away kids’ doubts, cheering like heck but also knowing when to stay quiet and offer her arm or shoulder for support. It seems ingrained in her DNA to not only multitask, but to make it look easy.
“She is doing so much that I really can’t keep up,” says Dana’s husband, Chris Antolik. “Dana tells me where to go and when.”
Dana has counted Little League board member, scorekeeper, team event coordinator, video streamer, first aid provider (“I always have my first aid kit ready to go!” she says) and assistant coach among her many unofficial positions.
Most of all, Dana is a rooter − for their sons, Caius, 15, and Marcus, 14, and for all of the boys on our Northern Virginia baseball teams.
“What makes me love being a sports mom isn’t just that I get to spend so much time with my kids,” she says. “I love getting to know the teammates and their families. They are my community.”
This weekend, as we honor what our wives and moms mean to us, we can also salute their roles in sports that can sometimes be underappreciated, if not unnoticed.
Sports moms are often the…
