Kids’ sports.

You either love them or hate them. I love them. Being a member of the swim team as I was growing up has to have been one of the most formative experiences of my life.The fact that 20 years later, I still spend most of my life as part of the swim team proves that! There are so many things to love about sports for kids.There are the obvious physical benefits to being active, but the intangible lessons that kids learn about being part of a team and perseverance and hard work can last long after the last race in the pool, or the last run around the bases.I often find myself navigating the tricky waters of being both a parent and a coach.There are days when I’m much better at one than the other. I was a coach for a long time before I became a parent, and I have to admit that being a parent has really changed my perspective on how I coach.Just to give you one example, as a coach, I never thought twice about laundry. Now, as a parent, it consumes most of my waking hours.As a swim coach, I never realized that taking three kids to a three-day-long weekend meet would mean packing up the entire house supply of towels and returning home too late on Sunday night to wash them.I have a newfound respect for some of the swim families I’ve worked with over the years who unquestioningly packed up their four or five kids and hauled them all over creation for meets with no questions asked. Meet weekends are one thing; laundry that goes on for weeks is another.When we travel for swim meets, most of our down time is spent at the hotel pool.This means that we need to pack “fun” swimsuits in addition to our regular team suits.Invariably, one of these wet swimsuits will end up at the bottom of a suitcase or a swim bag where it will be left for a few days, developing that icky smell that permeates everything around it and requires multiple washings and a gallon of Febreze to remove.I’ve started looking to book hotels without pools so that we can avoid this in the future.This realization has prompted me to question some of the judgment of the coaches in other sports. Baseball. White pants? Really? Who thought this was a good idea? Yes, the players do look nice and sharp and crisp as they trot out to the field for the first time. Within 30 seconds of play, however, that look is gone.The sole purpose of baseball for anyone under the age of 8 is to roll around in the dirt or the field as much as possible.Everyone over the age of 8 has perfected their sliding technique and will use it at every opportunity, whether it is needed or not. Brown or green would be much better color choices for baseball pants. Sure, I’ve heard all the tricks. … Dawn and hydrogen peroxide, Fels-Naptha, Shout pretreatment, gallons of bleach … I’ve even tried them all together. The only way I can remove the stains is to disintegrate the pants entirely.The wrestling team has provided my biggest laundry challenge to date, though.This is the wonderful husband’s sport, and I have to admit, I may have been a little unfair when I issued the ultimatum that the first time a kid brings home ringworm or scabies or some other gross skin thing, we are done with wrestling. The swimming pool is just as much of a hotbed for warts and rashes because, contrary to popular belief, chlorine doesn’t kill everything.At any rate, we have a process for wrestling practices. Everyone comes right home from practice, strips and immediately shoves all clothing into the washing machine and jumps right into the shower.I have learned to wait to start the sanitary cycle on the washer until they are finished with showers. Otherwise, they run out of hot water before they are sufficiently clean.During wrestling season, this means that the sanitary cycle, all 2 hours of it, runs every single night in our house. Luckily, the climbing water and electric meters distract me from the other piles of laundry that aren’t getting done because I won’t risk contaminating them with gross wrestling clothes. Neurotic? Yes, but in this day and age of MRSA, you can’t be too careful with this stuff!Being a mom is a lot grosser and stinkier than being a coach ever was, but the rewards are also a lot greater. I know when the uniforms come home dirtiest and smelliest is when they’ve poured their all into their games and practices.Now, I just need someone to give me a motivating pep talk so I can tackle the next load of towels.Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.