This week was another exciting week in our household. A went out for the high school soccer team and they had their first scrimmage. So, he got all dressed in his uniform, we loaded up into the car, and I dropped him off in the parking lot and drove home to watch the livestream of the games on Facebook.

This is quite possibly a helicopter parent’s worst nightmare. As someone who has dutifully followed my children with my camera or my cellphone and captured every major event for posterity, usually in both picture and video, adding a photo of A standing in the parking lot, masked up, rolling his eyes at me was not quite up to my standards.

Granted, as a freshman, I don’t expect that A will see much playing time. So, like most other activities I do now, I’m multitasking, writing away as the varsity game plays in the background. I probably have a load of wash that also needs to be folded when I’m done writing. I will probably duck out to the kitchen at halftime and start dinner, which will beat picking up takeout as the game ends, especially now that many restaurants aren’t open quite as late on weeknights. I just have to remember that I’m going to need to leave before the game is over to pick him up. I hope nothing exciting happens in those last 15 minutes.

This is extra tough for us because we’ve always tried to stay close to the action, just in case A had any health concerns, and I was tempted to sit in my car in the parking lot and watch from there, but the lack of bathroom facilities nipped that one in the bud pretty quickly.

Besides, as A grows older, this is a reality that we’re going to have to deal with more regularly and we probably need more practice doing it than A does. Right now, the most important thing is that he’s getting the physical activity that he needs to help stay healthy, and he’s perfectly capable of doing that without us hovering on the sidelines.

Now, I’m going to take off my mom hat and put on my coach hat. Whoooohooo! This is a dream come true! For the first time in maybe forever, I can give my athletes 100% of my attention. (Granted, my sport, swimming, is a few months off yet, but I’m almost hoping that this current state of affairs lasts through the winter season.)

Being the coach usually means making sure the facility is operating smoothly, that the concession stand is coordinated, that the parent volunteers are all lined up and ready to go, that every i is dotted and t is crossed. And that’s before you get to the actual coaching part of coaching.

As I sat listening to the critical catcalls of baseball parents who disagreed with a call at our last game of the season, I thought about how nice it would be to just play the game without the background noise. I think about our athletes like the football players who go out in front of most of a town on a Friday night and have every move either cheered or jeered.

While the positive energy of a crowd can certainly motivate you, the negative energy can have the exact opposite. I’ve been at too many events in the past few years that had adults acting quite badly and taking attention away from the student-athletes, where it belonged.

While I know the loss of things like concession stands and admission fees may take their toll on organization bank accounts, I also think that maybe this is a time to re-evaluate how much “stuff” our kids need. I recently did our seasonal purge of clothing and ended up with quite a pile of outgrown T-shirts from every activity imaginable.

As I was putting items away, I realized I had the exact same set of sweats for swim team that I had for track, only one said “swimming” and one said “track.” They are both well-made, and I bought them big, and I expect they will fit A for all four years of his high school career. However, they were his “middle school” uniforms, and I’m sure another form will come home to order another set of identical ones for “high school.”

Wouldn’t it be easier to just buy one really high-quality sweatsuit that just had the school’s name on it, and could be used for an entire year or two or four? I’m also going to try to take the amount of money that I would have spent at a concession stand and somehow donate it back to the team or the program.

Minimizing the amount of equipment that is shared and used is another plus in my book. For one, I won’t have to worry about running short on some things or replacing things when they break. Again, I will be forced to take things down to their purest, simplest form: the athlete and the playing field. Or pool. Or court. I think there is some real potential here to get back to the most basic forms of “pickup” style training.

I know many of us will miss watching our young athletes in action, whether they are our own little prodigies or someone else’s.

I am incredibly grateful for the volunteers who will stand out in the heat or the rain and manage to livestream what they can for us. I will miss the camaraderie that is found sitting in the bleachers on a cool, fall evening, listening to the marching band as it enters the stadium. I will miss not being there for some of A’s “firsts.” But, none of that has anything to do with our student-athletes’ accomplishments. None of that has anything to do with their love for their games or their sports.

I am mostly grateful that they’re getting the chance to play, at least for now, and I hope that they all make it safely through the fall seasons. To all of our athletes, in whatever shape or form your season is taking place, good luck! Enjoy your sport on your field with your team, without all the noise, without all the extras, and yes, even without us helicopters flying off in the distance.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.