How I Got My Daughter Keen for Saturdays

Kate Morrow, 42

Mum of a 12-year-old striker, taxi driver, orange-slice supplier and sideline logistics manager.

6 min read

A smiling girl in a teal soccer kit jogging onto a suburban oval with a ball — First one onto the oval these days. It was not always like this.

Every Saturday had a third act I could have done without

Game over, oranges done, boots off. Then came the bit my daughter has always hated. The ice routine. The zip-lock bag of ice wrapped in cling wrap, me holding it to her ankle, her complaining the whole time that it was slipping and freezing her sock. We were not icing so much as performing some loose impression of first aid that satisfied no one.

A mother crouched beside her daughter at a sports ground holding a bag of ice and a roll of cling wrap, the girl unimpressed — The old third act: a zip-lock of ice, a roll of cling wrap and one very unimpressed striker.

She is twelve, a striker, and she takes her Saturdays seriously. But there is a difference between loving your sport and loving the after-match production. By the time we got to the car she was over it, cranky, and a cold wet sock away from declaring the whole season off.

I had always assumed this was just what you did with sporty kids. You carry a first aid kit and you manage it. Then another mum at training showed me the thing her son had in his sports bag.

What the other parents had worked out

It is a compression sleeve. Not ice you have to hold in place, not a strap-and-hope arrangement, an actual sleeve you slide on like a sock. It lives in the freezer, and when you need it, you pull it on. That is it. That is the whole operation.

The one she showed me does cold and warm, so you can also bung it in the microwave in winter if you fancy, but we are a cold household. The gel inside stays flexible in the freezer, so it wraps around the ankle properly instead of going rigid and sliding off like the zip-lock did.

She just grabs it herself now. That sentence took me twelve years and one Saturday of complaining to be able to write.

There are sizes, which for us was the first question. Ours came from the Small, which covers foot, ankle and wrist. She checked the chart against her leg and announced, with the gravity of a twelve-year-old who has done research, that Large reaches her shin better. She was not wrong.

Saturday, version two

She walks off the oval, pulls it from the esky, pulls it on, sits for ten minutes. I am redundant in this process. Occasionally I hand her a water bottle to seem involved. The sleeve does the thing I used to fumble at with plastic wrap and good intentions.

I should say, too, that this was not an expensive adventure. The one we bought was $79.95 for the Small, and they come in a few sizes depending on which bit of the body you are wrapping. Not nothing, but not a big spend either, and it goes in her sports bag and comes home in her sports bag and has yet to melt anywhere it should not.

“My daughter doesn't have to wrap an ice pack with clear wrap anymore after her weekend games”

One customer wrote

Cold/Hot Compression Sleeve

from $79.95

Slides straight on and stays put, no straps, no wrapping. She runs it herself.

See it at Cryo Remedy

The mood shift

Here is what changed that I did not expect. It is not just that icing is easier now. It is that the game does not follow us home in a bad mood any more. Saturday afternoon used to be a low-grade grump. Now she eats her lunch, does her sleeve, and is off to her room to compare stats with her teammates like nothing happened.

A girl in a teal soccer kit with her sports bag at the front door while her mum locks up — Kit on, bag packed, waiting at the door before I have even locked up.

She is keen for next Saturday. Genuinely keen. That was the whole point, and I did not know that was the missing piece until it turned up.

Cold/Hot Compression Sleevefrom $79.95