It’s 6:30 on a Tuesday night, and study hall is about to begin.
As Joan Hohs points her blue van south on the Tri-State Tollway, she flicks on the overhead lights.
Daughters Lynn and Karen, who had been listening to music while Joan worked her way from their Morton Grove home to the open road, get to work. Lynn, a Niles West junior, studies physics; Karen, a sophomore, does math.
Occasionally they yawn.
It has been a long day, and it will get longer.
Lynn and Karen were up at 6 a.m. for school, which was followed by basketball practice. Now they’re on their way to the Orland Park A’s training facility for softball practice.
Back home, Heather, a Niles West freshman, is working on math. Husband/father Don will be reading to sons Matt and Brad from a “Harry Potter” book.
The van pulls into a Mokena strip mall at 7:25 p.m., 68 minutes, 48 miles and $1.20 in tolls from home.
“I should ask that guy what his name is,” Joan remarks as she pulls away from one toll booth.
“I see him all the time.”
This is a calm day by Hohs standards, especially compared with the Sunday before.
That day started with church. Then Joan dropped Brad, a 5th-grader, at Niles West, where he got a ride to Stevenson High School for 8:30 and 10 a.m. basketball games with his Niles West feeder program team.
Matt, a 7th-grader, got a ride with a friend to Stevenson for his feeder team’s 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. games.
Joan picked up Don, who was away on business, at 10 a.m. at O’Hare. Don then headed to Stevenson to watch Matt play, and Joan picked up Brad back at Niles West.
At 5:30 p.m., Don and Heather drove to Des Plaines, where they helped run a clinic at a pitching school. Joan had already left for Mokena, where she dropped Lynn for a 6 p.m. practice.
She then drove Karen to Aurora for a 7:15 indoor softball game and returned to Mokena to get Lynn, whose practice ended at 8.
Then it was back to Aurora to get Karen. The three got home at 9:45 p.m.
Joan drives to A’s workouts three to four times a week, hauling varying combinations of Lynn, Karen and Heather, who are on different practice schedules because each joined a different A’s team last fall. Sometimes there’s no time for dinner at home, so it’s sandwiches or pizza in the van.
Then there’s Lynn’s and Heather’s pitching lessons in Des Plaines on Thursday nights, the same night Heather also plays indoor soccer for Niles West.
It’s little wonder the three-year-old Dodge Grand Caravan has 98,000 miles on it. And it’s little wonder Matt refers to the family’s oversized monthy calendar as “the Constitution.”
All three girls are multisport athletes for Niles West. Lynn is one of the top softball pitchers in the Chicago area and a backup guard in basketball.
Karen is an all-conference performer in cross country and softball and starts at guard in basketball. Heather plays freshman volleyball and basketball (she starts practicing with the varsity Monday), and she is struggling to decide whether to play soccer or softball this spring.
Matt and Brad play football, basketball and baseball on various school, club or feeder program teams.
“There’s not a lot of down time in that family,” Niles West softball coach Steve Ramseyer said. “It seems like they’re a collection of Energizer Bunnies–they keep going and going and going and they don’t wear down.”
On this recent Tuesday, Joan had arrived home at 3:30 p.m. from her job in a Glenview gift shop and had chicken breasts on the outside grill and a pizza in the oven by the time the girls got home from basketball practice.
She also found time to install a wallpaper border on an upstairs bathroom in their home, which they renovated in 1998 from a 1,600-square-foot ranch house into a 4,000-square-foot, two-story house, doing much of the work themselves.
Lately, Don, a commander in the Glenview Police Department, has been working on the lighting for the batting cage he installed in the basement.
“Are we nuts or what?” Joan said with a laugh about their constant activity, but she said it comes naturally.
“Don and I both have high energy levels,” she said. “We’d be doing something, so we might as well be doing something for the kids.”
The two, 1976 graduates of Niles North and lifelong Morton Grove residents, have been married for 20 years.
They have coached their share of their kids’ teams–Don currently coaches Niles West feeder baseball and football teams, but they have cut back because it’s hard to coach and drive at the same time.
All this sports has a steep cost not only in time but also in money for everything from gas to program fees.
Don and Joan pay it gladly for a variety of reasons, including a love of sports that drove their own athletic careers and a belief in the role sports plays in a child’s development.
“Athletics is an opportunity for us as parents to spend a lot of time with our kids, and productive time,” Don said. “It develops self-discipline, a healthy lifestyle, leadership, teamwork and setting and achieving goals.”
The Hohses also see sports as a possible road to a college scholarship. Lynn’s desire to pitch in college fueled her decision to leave the Niles West volleyball program and join the powerhouse A’s.
Don and Joan describe an athletic scholarship as “an opportunity, not a goal,” insisting it’s not something you can count on. But they say they’ll support their kids’ efforts as long as the kids continue working hard.
“The dream is theirs,” Don said. “Not Mom’s, not Dad’s–theirs. As long as they put forth the time, effort, energy to better themselves, we’ll put forth the time, effort, energy to drive them and pay the fees.”
Joan worries at times it all may be too much, particularly when she sees a tired daughter doing late-night homework.
“That’s where you start to feel guilty,” she said. “But we ask them over and over, and they say, `No, we want to do it.”‘
Don and Joan realize some will see them as overinvolved parents overly wrapped up in sports and scholarships. But they say their concern is less sports than overall development, which is why they are actively involved in their church and make sure the girls remain on the Niles West honor roll.
“We have been perceived in many different ways,” Don said. “But you can’t live your life worrying about what other people say. In the long run, people have come to believe we’re doing our best to raise our kids right, and we get a lot of compliments. The kids’ value system and behavior is what counts.”
In sports, the girls ooze determination, something Lynn showed a year ago when she stayed in a basketball game after suffering a bad cut and what turned out to be a broken left wrist in a fall.
“Don is very intense, and Joan is the same way,” Ramseyer said, “and the kids show that persona on the field. They have that desire and will to succeed.
“It’s a hard thing to teach kids to be good athletes and good all-around kids, which they are.”
Both Ramseyer and first-year girls basketball coach Dave Jenis describe Lynn and Karen as so determined that they occasionally lose focus. Jenis uses the two as models for the aggressiveness he’s trying to instill in his other players.
“I said, `That’s the way I want you to play, with that kind of fire and intensity,”‘ Jenis said.”
While Lynn and Karen go through hitting and fielding drills in Mokena, doing homework while they wait their turn in the batting cage, Joan reads and chats with other parents, including a mom who commutes with her daughter from far-off Park Ridge. When Lynn pitches, Joan catches–without a mask.
They’re back in the van at 8:55, a half-hour earlier than usual because waiting times were unusually short. Joan buys ice cream for the girls at a nearby drive-through–“My favorite part,” Lynn says, giggling.
Lynn acknowledges she is tired and doesn’t have as much time for her friends as she used to but says it’s worth it to pursue her dream of playing college softball.
“If you don’t want to do this, it’s OK,” Joan tells the girls.
“I don’t want to quit,” Karen protests.
“That,” Lynn replies, “is the Energizer Bunny.”
The lights stay out on the journey home. Karen is done with homework; Lynn will finish later.
The van pulls into the driveway at 9:50 p.m.
“What time is my doctor appointment tomorrow?” Lynn asks.
Joan just sighs.
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Send e-mail to Barry Temkin at BarTem@aol.com
