Todd Merkow sits down with Lisa Proctor — career attorney, former competitive tennis player, 30-time marathon runner, and the mom at the center of the Proctor family story — for the second episode in a three-part series titled "When the Dream Unexpectedly Changes." Where Jeff's episode was the dad's perspective, this is the mom's: more emotionally present, more willing to sit in the hard parts, and more honest about what she'd do differently.

Lisa grew up in Odessa, Texas — Friday Night Lights country, where nobody cared about tennis. She was ranked in Texas 18-and-under, super confident, planning on playing in college. Then her senior year fell apart. She describes it as being "yippy before we knew what that word was" — completely in her own head, losing to players she used to beat easily, watching the beautiful arrogance of a young athlete dissolve in real time. There was no sports psychology infrastructure in the early 1980s. She didn't know what was happening, didn't know what to do about it, and never did anything about it. She quit playing competitively and never went back. She played again in law school and after, at a higher level than her senior year, but the competitive chapter was over.

“

I lost that beautiful thing that we all have when we're young — that arrogance. And when I lost it, I lost it big, and I never got it back.

”

That experience shaped everything about how she approached her own kids. Hannah, three years older than Will, played tennis in high school — and Lisa admits she expected Hannah to be like her, to have that same drive, that same daily compulsion to practice. Hannah didn't. She had beautiful form, more potential than Lisa ever had, and almost no competitive fire. She'd lose a match and skip off the court. Lisa's honest about the fact that she pushed too hard for too long before finally letting go. Hannah went on to get her master's in women, peace and security and works in DC. Will was different from the start — the same daily obsession Lisa had recognized in herself, the same need to be in the batting cage even when he was little, the same belief that more work would always produce better results.

The co-parenting section is one of the most candid in the series. Lisa and Jeff approached things differently — Jeff was always Will's coach, Lisa was more involved with Hannah — and they didn't always agree. Jeff was better at compartmentalizing. Lisa felt things more, expressed them more, lost more sleep. She describes staying in Athens for two weeks when Will's shoulder fell apart, being with him every day, not sleeping when she wasn't with him and feeling sick when she was because he was so sad. She also describes going to a brewery outside Athens, playing cornhole, getting drunk together, and how that release — that moment of just being with her kid in a horrible situation — became one of the memories she holds onto.

“

I think we tend to assume that this is the way — without thinking about it. You have to be smarter and more intentional about recognizing that we're not all the same.

”

The mental health thread runs through the whole conversation. Lisa saw Will's anxiety earlier than Jeff did. She remembers visiting Athens his freshman year, sitting at a restaurant, and Will saying he didn't know if he wanted to keep doing this. She knew he was stressed. She knew he hid it behind the arrogance that young athletes use as armor. She talks about a friend of Will's — now in the MLB — who had panic attacks in college and ended up in the hospital, and whose coach recognized it and helped him through it. She wishes Will had had that. She's honest that she contributed to the "work harder" culture that made it harder for Will to ask for help: when he was struggling, her instinct was always to go out and hit 200 more balls, shag grounders for two hours, fix it through effort. She knows now that sometimes the mind won't let the body do what it used to do, no matter how hard you work.

“

I didn't sleep. It was an awful time. When I wasn't with him, I felt stressed. When I was with him, it was horrible because he was so sad. But we went to a brewery and played cornhole and got drunk together, and it was such a special time to be with my kid — in a horrible situation.

”

The injury section covers the same events Jeff described — the cortisone shot, the Vanderbilt game, the shoulder falling out of the socket in the dugout, the Georgia doctors who mostly treated football players, the transfer to Michigan, the years of rehab that never got him back to 95 — but from a different angle. Lisa is still carrying some of it. She mentions the cortisone shot specifically: she still thinks about it, still feels sad about it, still wonders what would have happened if they'd said no. She's not looking for absolution. She's just being honest about what it's like to be a sports parent who made decisions in real time with incomplete information and has to live with them.

“

Instead of working smarter, maybe you kept working harder — thinking the more I do, I'm just going to get over this. His mind wasn't going to let him throw 95 again.

”

The episode ends on something genuinely hopeful. Will has found filmmaking. He's directing a documentary. He doesn't come to it with the baggage baseball carried. He's found a new identity — and Lisa's point is that this is the thing parents need to understand: the identity will come. It always comes. What sports instills — the work ethic, the passion, the ability to pursue something with everything you have — that doesn't go away. It just finds a new home. Her final message to parents is simple: talk to your kids. Pull it out of them. Let them be part of the journey instead of feeling pushed along. And lighten up.

“

He wasn't just a baseball player. He was lots of things. And it turns out he's really great at things I never knew he was so great at — mostly because baseball took over every aspect of his life.

”