Madison Potter is raising a ruckus, which is pretty much what 13-month-olds do.
“I’m just sitting here handing Cheerios to my baby,” Rob Potter, Madison’s dad, is saying by telephone. “We’re staying in a house in Lake Placid.”
Lake Placid? We know this is a U.S. Olympics, but we’re not in Lake Placid.
“Did I say Lake Placid? I mean Salt Lake. It’s been a little crazy,” Potter said.
Crazy, indeed. Madison’s mother is playing hockey for the U.S. Olympic women’s team that will face rival Canada in the anticipated gold-medal game Thursday.
Jenny Potter plays center for the U.S. team and is tied for the team lead with 10 points in the eight U.S. victories against Canada this season.
She also played for the 1998 team; as Jenny Schmidgall, she had two goals and three assists in six games for the gold-medal winners.
Back then she was a 19-year-old from Eagan, Minn., who was less than a year out of high school. Now she is a 23-year-old veteran of international competition who is more than a year into motherhood.
She is going for the gold while reaching for the diapers.
“It’s hard at times, but you have to focus on what you have to do,” Jenny said. “I’m here to play hockey in the Olympics. That’s what I have to keep my focus on. I want to see Maddy, and it’s hard not seeing her.”
Jenny is staying in the Athletes Village, and it is just that–an athletes’ village. No kids, no husbands, no nothing, especially in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. So Jenny, one of two married women on the U.S. team and the only mother, attempted to hook up with Rob and Maddy early on. Good luck doing that in a locked-down Salt Lake City.
“It was a struggle,” Jenny said. “Everything is security. Everything is blocked off. I went downtown and they only have one dropoff. I didn’t know the area. I’m like, `Rob, just meet me here.’ He took public transit down there and he had to walk like two miles. You can’t go anywhere. Everything’s blocked off. It’s good to know that it’s secure, but it still makes it a pain to get around.”
It has been just as difficult over the last year during the U.S. women’s team’s pre-Olympic tour. Last month, for instance, Rob and Maddy flew to San Jose, Calif., where Jenny and the team would be for three days. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
“We just saw each other going in and out of the arena,” Rob said. “It wasn’t much.”
Maddy was born Jan. 5, 2001, and Mom was playing hockey on baby’s first birthday. But they were together at the United Center for a game against Canada.
“They showed her picture on the video board, so it was cool,” Jenny said.
She started training three months after giving birth and was traveling shortly thereafter, but Jenny made sure she was around for Maddy’s first steps and other precious moments that parents never forget.
“I don’t think I missed that much,” Jenny said. “It’s hard when I haven’t seen her for a week and then seeing her and she looks totally different. Then I ask, `What did I miss?'”
Now Maddy is cranky again, so Rob gives her a bottle and goes about recounting how a 34-year-old man hooked up with a 23-year-old woman, how she asked him out after she had gone to him for training, how she called him after they beat Canada in the gold-medal game in Nagano, how they began dating, how they talked about marriage.
Said Jenny: “We never really got into the details.”
They got into the details in a hurry in the summer of 2000, when Jenny found out she was pregnant.
“The only thing I could think about was my parents were going to kill me,” she said. “Other than that, I always knew I was going to come back and play hockey. Rob was very supportive and I always knew we’d get married and he would do everything he could to help me keep playing hockey.
“Obviously, it changes your life, but I knew I could handle the responsibilities.”
Still, she acknowledged being fearful of the prospect.
“Maybe a little bit,” she said, “because I was never really around kids my whole life.”
They had Maddy a year ago January and were married six months later. In between, Rob, who trained Jenny and four of her 2002 teammates and ran a youth sports consulting business, juggled his hours and made sure his wife could pursue another gold medal.
It seems they have made it work, getting Mom to the brink of her second Olympic gold and getting Dad and daughter into town for the big event. Maddy’s too young to know what Mom already has accomplished as a reigning gold medalist and what Mom might accomplish Thursday, but she will be in the stands and knows something is up, Rob said.
“Anytime we walk into an arena and she sees hockey players, she says, `Mama,'” Rob said.
Perhaps she’ll say that after Thursday night’s game if Mom is one of the hockey players on the ice celebrating another gold medal.
Of course, no matter how the game against Canada turns out, Jenny believes she already won the big prize.
“I don’t think you can compare having a kid to a gold medal,” she said. “That changes your life. You have a responsibility for another human being. It came from you. I can’t put it into words how much it changes you.”
Rob still has Maddy in his arms. She is singing.
