joining the TWW sportsposting with Thoughts™️ about the Bartlet daughters and school sports!!! shoutout @broadwaybaggins and @muldxr for really spearheading the discussion all over the dash this is so fun
Liz - soccer ⚽️ Started playing peewee games and was really good, largely stuck around because that was her whole friend group in elementary and middle school, especially middle school. Very fast and a good scorer but does forget to pass sometimes, when she was younger she was always being told to share the ball. By high school her coach was just like hell yeah, get it in the net! Around 12 or 13 her friends who were as good as her all started playing travel soccer, but there was just no way the Bartlets could really make that work, with her parents' jobs the way they were and a new baby in the mix too. The sting went away a little in high school, when she got to play varsity, but she had friends at that time making the young olympians team and getting to go all these places and she was definitely sore about missing out.
Ellie - swimming 🏊♀️ When she was young, 9 or 10 maybe, she joined the rec team for the Summer and was fast enough that the coach wanted her to compete. She did, and she enjoyed swimming but stressed herself out when it came to racing-- not because of beating others, but constantly wanting to make sure she was faster than the last time she swam the same event. Not a Great mental attitude emotionally but sure as hell made her fast!! And when Zoey was old enough for the rec team Summer swimming became something they did together, which Ellie really liked. In high school she did join the school's swim team, largely to have A Sport on her college apps. Swimming is a winter sport, though, and with the weather her asthma would get bad sometimes and interfere with her competition. She stayed on Junior Varsity the whole time largely because of that unpredictability, but she did see it through all four years.
Zoey - equestrian shows, summer swim, and track and field 🐎 during the summers she did swim team with Ellie, enjoying all the opposite things Ellie did-- Zoey just liked the meets, with the sno cones and the drawing on each other (eat my bubbles!!) and getting to talk to her friends. Liz would frequently have to go find her to remind her when her race was so she would actually get in the pool. She also rode her pony in shows, but that was mostly limited to local opportunities, so it was more of a hobby for her. In middle school she wanted to do a School Sport so she ran track with her friends, and was very fast-- she might've made varsity in high school, except that she quickly became a Campaign Child instead. She enjoyed going for runs with Gina while she was at Georgetown, and would occasionally pull out her meet-winning sprint just to stress the HELL out of her detail. She never actually caught Gina by surprise, though their little races frequently ended with Gina winded and cursing.
