COURTESY DUSTIN SWINEHART

Charlotte MLS Director of Community Engagement Dustin Swinehart with his family: Dylan, Ava, Tyler, wife Betty and Bryce.

Life looks different for everyone during a pandemic.

For Charlotte MLS Director of Community Engagement and former Charlotte Eagle Dustin Swinehart things are different. He and his wife Betty have four kids between the ages of 12 and 17. Typically that would require a lot of running around, but for now, sons Bryce, Tyler and Dylan and daughter Ava are all at home.

Gov. Roy Cooper closed schools to in-person instruction for the rest of the year. The Swineharts manage remote learning by dividing their time.

“The first half of the day is school-related,” Dustin Swinehart said. “There’s a lot more time spent on laptops doing schoolwork. The afternoons for us have really turned into the workouts and training as a family. The fun thing for our family is that we have three boys who all play soccer, and they can play together.”

To the benefit of his kids, Swinehart knows his way around the pitch. He made 450 professional appearances, scoring 135 professional goals.

“It’s really created a school, workout, family evening together repetition,” Swinehart said. “Sometimes it feels a little bit like Groundhog Day. On the positive side, it has really given us some additional time to all be together, and I think we’ve been creative in making the most of it.”

As hard as it is to put things on hold, some good has come out of pandemic. It’s brought people closer, whether in person or at distance, for instance.

“It has slowed everything down and I think there is some good to that, even though it’s hard,” Swinehart said. “We’ve had more family dinners together than I can remember in terms of all six of us being together. We are finding some of the hidden blessing in that.”

However, the Swineharts do miss youth sports and other things that come with having teenagers at home.

“We are still building with every intention that we are going to launch the same day;a the season is going to start at the same time. We still have the same goals,” Swinehart said. “We are trying to tackle some of the preparation for that in different ways. I think it would be very different if we were in the middle of the season. I think it’s a blessing in some ways that we didn’t start this year, because our whole season would be interrupted right now. The preparation is kind of being disrupted, but the actual season itself is still months away.”

Comments