* Edited * Look who’s the featured reader on Mamazine today!

I thought middle-of-the-night parenting was for newborns and kids with stomach viruses. I thought wrong. It’s also for high school athletes.

Since last week I’ve stumbled out of bed when it was still dark, stepped over sound-a-sleep dogs and clunked down the hallway using the walls on either side of me as my guide. My eyes were always somewhat stuck closed with sleep, my legs not yet working to capacity. I could tell this because my knees cracked. I attributed it to the hour and not my age. I’m like that.

Each morning I pushed open my son’s bedroom door where the glow of the tv left-on brightened the room and woke him with the alarming news that it was 4:30.

Yes, again.

Yes, already.

And faster than I could say “Pick up your socks,” he’d be up and into the shower. If only he heard so well and moved so quickly when I arrived home with 7,000 bags of groceries or the phone rang. Never at this early morning, pre-golf hour did I hear the word, “What?”

High school sports are very motivating it seems. Who knew?

They are also unforgiving. In order for my son to complete sophmore golf team tryouts 25 minutes away for five days in a row we had to postpone a trip East AND I had to get up with him every morning to make sure he didn’t go back to sleep. I know that eventually he’ll have to get himself out of bed and to classes at Harvard (ok, or State U) on his own, but not yet.

Because, if you don’t try-out, you don’t make the team. And if you make the team and you’re not there to practice, you’re cut. No exceptions.

Kids in Spring sports like baseball, softball and soccer can’t go away over Spring Break or they are cut from the team, or sit out 90% of the season. It’s brutal. It’s the brave new world of high school sports, where the goal is not to have fun, but to win. Luckily those things often go hand in hand at 15. I don’t suspect my son will be getting a golf scholarship nor will he be the next Tiger Woodstein, but being on the team enhances his high school experience and I’m all for it. Even if it meant I had to take naps mid-day in lieu of falling asleep at 6pm.

For him it’s about something to do besides school — because that’s just not enough even with honors classes and a course where he’ll be making a 55 minute documentary. It’s also about being with his friends, most of whom tried out for the team.

For me it’s about him being busy and happy, which go hand in hand. Even if it means for the next eight weeks he’ll rarely be home for dinner and that he’ll complain he has no down-time.

But it was all - and will all - be worth it because he made the team.

This would have been a post of a different color if he hadn’t.