Birthright

I was lying on my back, staring up at the overcast sky, with grass tickling my ears and golden leaves falling from the trees, as my heart remembered a childhood memory from this exact spot sixty miles from my home. Closing my eyes, I remembered hearing children laughing, smelling charcoal burning, watching snippets of teens playing tag, and feeling my heart warm to the memories of my parents laughing with their physical education co-workers. In the distance, I also heard a waterfall, and it all came tumbling back. This was a childhood haunt I had forgotten about.

Raised as the daughter of two athletic parents who owned a ski shop, taught, coached, and loved nature, I enjoyed the pleasures of growing up on a lake learning how to waterski, swim, and sail in the summer. By the age of five, I was skiing every weekend on bunny trails at a ski area where my mother taught ski lessons. As time went on, we skied at bigger mountains with red round gondolas and bumped courageously through icy moguls. We were all round year athletes.

When it came time for my sister and I to choose our careers, she followed in my parents’ footsteps going to their alma mater and obtaining the same degrees they held. Oppositely, I decided teaching and coaching wasn’t for me, so I went to school for business and left athletics behind, except to try my hand at refereeing club mixed water polo one semester, which wasn’t exactly as fun as I thought it would be.

As soon as I became a mother with two sons, I enrolled them in sports knowing how much I loved it at their age. We put up a basketball court and lacrosse goal, added a pool, and taught the boys how to skate and fish on our property’s pond, also allowing them to ski, snowboard, and ice fish in colder months. I lived sports through them until they left for college and then suddenly, I missed sports, even if I wasn’t the one participating in them. I would watch ESPN, as my older son did all the time, to be in touch with athletics in some way.

When my son Thomas became the basketball manager for the Boston College Men’s team, I traveled five hours back and forth each way to have first row seats at Conte Forum on campus. Watching my father’s favorite coaches, like Duke’s Coach Krzyzewski or North Carolina’s Coach Roy Williams, courtside was some of my favorite events to attend besides watching my son working for the team. I should have known then my love for sports had taken a turn.

One day after a busy day of work, I knew it was time for me to replenish my own newfound sense of athletics, so I started jogging and running. Eventually, I trained to run and complete the 2017 Boston Marathon and traveled to England to run in an all-women’s marathon with a team of three international women. I started a Women’s Athletic Network and invited other women to join me in fun adventures and sports like white water rafting, 5k races, and supporting the Syracuse University Women’s Basketball team at games. It was only the beginning of an awakening at the age of 50.

So, two years ago, when I rose off the grass at my childhood haunt, where I was trying outside autumn yoga, I shared my memories with the instructor of being there in my childhood and my love for athletics. She looked at me and quietly said, “Sports is your birthright, Tracy.” I never thought of it that way. I was born into an athletic family with sports-loving parents. I did in a sense run away from it to be independent and choose my own career path in life. Now, I wanted it back.

That day, on my hour ride home, I committed to myself to involve sports in my everyday life, even trying every single sport once in my lifetime. I wrote and blogged about it to inspire other women to try more sports. My website was born within the month. Women of all different ages have since joined me in flying trapeze, curling, parasailing, field hockey, minitriathlon, standup paddle board yoga, and mountain biking infusing the thrill of movement and confidence into their lives.

It is only the beginning of this life-long pursuit, and one I intend on finishing whether jumping out of an airplane skydiving, riding a motorcycle in motorcross, snowboarding down a mountain, or just lying on my back trying Moonlight Pilates. Sports are my birthright. I am so happy I found it in time.

Tracy Chamberlain Higginbotham is a 30-year woman entrepreneur, published author, blogger, feminist, and athlete. She believes the world won’t change for women unless women change the world for women.

Find out more about Tracy at https://www. tracyhigginbotham.com/