Rare is the parent who hasn’t thrilled in the victories and agonized in the defeats of his or her offspring. Even more uncommon is the dad like Robert Strauss (a frequent contributor to this magazine), who takes it all in stride. Strauss—a weekend warrior who would’ve liked to have had a son but was blessed with two athletically inclined daughters—writes insightfully of life as a sideline dad.
Strauss’s girls (now 19 and 16) could not be more different from each other. Ella (“the little buzzsaw”) is short on height but long on hustle. Younger sister Sylvia is taller, but prefers “the path of least leg movement.” Both girls flitted from sport to sport, succeeding at most but always looking for new challenges. Ultimately, each found a role that suited her: Ella as the coxswain for the varsity crew team at Haddonfield High School; Sylvia as a goalie and then a defender on the lacrosse squad. Both also played on Haddonfield’s state-champion varsity tennis team of 2010.
As much a meditation on fathering girls as it is on sports, the book works because Strauss puts neither girl on a pedestal, acknowledging that both are B-level talents capable of A-level moments. Strauss’s retelling of those moments—a mad-dash soccer goal, a dramatic basketball three-pointer—will call to mind similar spasms of joy for most Jersey moms and dads.
Equally important is what Strauss omits. Yes, he describes the inadequacies of certain coaches, unequal playing time and the bizarre nature of college recruiting, but he does not wax cynical about such tiresome issues. Instead, he turns memorable phrases about life in “a land of $25 T-shirts and $28 shorts” that will leave readers longing for overtime.