By Cory Armstrong-Hoss / Herald Forum
I didn’t want to write about Corey Van Lith.
I didn’t want to write about how he rented out Newberry Elementary School in Wenatchee for two hours at 8 every night so he could forge his then fourth-grade daughter into a basketball phenom. How he pummeled Hailey with pads as she drove the lane, over and over again, the banging sometimes erupting into yelling, father and daughter going after each other, followed by silence on the ride home.
How his dedication helped his daughter become a basketball sensation.
Hailey Van Lith from Cashmere, averaged more than 30 points a game at Cashmere High School’s AI girls basketball team and became Washington’s all-time leading high school scorer in 2020. She grew into one of the top five college players in the country, and then the 11th overall pick in the 2025 WNBA draft, and now plays for the Chicago Sky.
I imagine that Corey Van Lith feels validated with his daughter’s every victory, every award, every record broken. With the NIL (name, image and likeness) deals she signed with Dick’s Sporting Goods or Adidas, and her new endorsement contracts with LaCroix, American Eagle and Gatorade. Good for him.
Instead, I want to write about the parents who are there when dreams are born and when they die.
The mom who sees her six-year-old daughter out-swimming everyone at that rental pool near Lake Chelen, and encourages her to join a swim team. The dad who watches his eight-year-old son hit bomb after bomb in Little League, doubles and triples and in-the-park homers that bounce off the chain link fence, and signs him up for a select club.
I want to write about the mom who drives 45 minutes to Redmond four times a week for basketball training. The parents who set up camp, spending their weekend at the Snohomish Aquatics Center for a swim meet. The dad who attends each of his son’s eighth-grade basketball games — home and away — which means Arlington or Snohomish or Shorewood at 4 p.m. on a weekday, his backup forward only getting a couple minutes on the court during a blowout.
These are the parents who were there when their kid’s dream was born.
These are the parents of kids who are now pre-teens and teens. These are the parents who see their kids’ dreams slowly fading.
The mom of that joyful swimmer, now 13, who comes in last in her heat in every 100-meter freestyle race. The dad whose 15-year-old hasn’t grown as fast and strong as his teammates and can’t catch up to the fastball like he used to.
These are the parents who travel with the club to Spokane or Eugene, spend $250 a night at the Marriot or Days Inn, and clap for all the starters, hoping their kid gets time in the game. If you look closely, you might see a flash of pain across their faces when their kid strikes out to end an inning, or misses a layup in garbage time, or touches the timing pad on the pool wall 10 seconds or more after all the other swimmers.
We don’t talk about it, but there is an opposite to that warm, surprising high we get when our kid performs well in public. There is an inverse from the fist bumps in the gym stands, the post-game congratulations from other parents, the Facebook or Instagram posts with a photo of a kid or team holding up a trophy. There is something wholly different from the feeling of floating for the rest of the night.
It is the quiet.
It is no one high-fiving you in the bleachers or on the sidelines. It is parents around you trying hard to make conversation about something other than the thing we are all watching. It is you on the hard ground, thinking about what to talk about on the ride home, not wanting to talk about the game, the match, the meet, but not wanting to avoid it altogether.
It is you, thinking that maybe this isn’t the dream anymore, maybe it shouldn’t be, despite what you said at that pool or field or court a few years ago.
It is you, watching the dream die, a dream that was born when your child was young. It is you, wanting desperately to say:
It’s OK. You don’t have to be Hailey Van Lith. I don’t have to be Corey.
We can let this dream die. There are plenty of other dreams out there, kid.
Cory Armstrong-Hoss is nonprofit guy, father of three, and community volunteer.
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