For The TV Moms Of Nascar Mother’s Day Is Celebrated A Bit Differently

The celebrations of mothers and motherhood can be traced in antiquity to the Greeks and Romans; later as a Christian festival called “Mothering Sunday.”

The celebrations of motherhood grew in America in the 19^th century but didn’t become an official U.S. holiday until 1914 and are now held on the second Sunday in May. We celebrate Mother’s Day by taking our favorite moms to brunch, or dinner, sending them flowers and gifts, or simply by making a phone call.

Being a mother, however, is much more than changing diapers, making dinner, or raising children. It’s a role that requires a great deal of sacrifice, time, sweat, and even tears. Motherhood is also a role that many times women must balance with a career.

That’s what makes the second Sunday in May a special day to celebrate their accomplishments and show moms just how much they’re appreciated. Sundays for most moms is a day off. One where they can enjoy the complete attention from their adoring family.

For millions of women however, Sunday is a day of work. That’s true for those who work as first responders, doctors, in law enforcement, or in sports.

Like other career minded women working in NASCAR means not only dealing with the pressure of the sport but balancing the role of being a mother. And since most NASCAR races are held on a Sunday for those women whose careers are in the sport, Mother’s Day is just another day of work.

Among those whose career involves the biggest stock car racing league in the world are those who help bring NASCAR to the fans. Women like those who work for Fox Sports, the network that handles the NASCAR broadcasts for the first half of the season; the part of the season that just so happens to include Mother’s Day. This Sunday while the rest of America honors their moms on Mother’s Day, the women of Fox Sports will be involved with the broadcast of the NASCAR race at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina. Before they headed to Darlington, they took some time to talk about Mother’s Day and being women in the world of NASCAR broadcasting.

Jamie Little is a pit road reporter for the network for the NASCAR broadcast on Sundays. Her broadcast career stretches back 22 years. In November 2020 she was named the play-by-play voice of the ARCA Menards Series making her the first woman in history to call TV play-by-play for a national racing series. She has an 11-year-old son, and a seven-year-old daughter.

Shannon Spake joined Fox Sports in July 2016 as a three-sport star, covering NASCAR, college football, college basketball and NFL. Since 2019 she has been the host of Fox’s anchor duties for NASCAR Cup Series and NASCAR Xfinity Series races and prerace shows live from a studio in Charlotte. The South Florida native has balanced her NASCAR duties and being fulltime NFL reporter since the 2018 season while raising identical 13-year-old twin boys.

Kaitlyn Vincie serves as a co-host for much of Fox’s NASCAR programming, most notably NASCAR Race Hub, a daily NASCAR news and information program. The Virginia native is married to NASCAR crew chief Blake Harris and lives in North Carolina with their two children, a five-year-old girl and two-year-old son.

Behind the camera Lindsey Mandia is a multiple Emmy Award-winning producer who not only leads live productions for Fox’s NFL Sunday but NASCAR’s events as well. A Texas native, she has two girls, five and seven.

For these women, Mother’s Day isn’t a sedate affair where they are taken to brunch, it’s a normal workday.

“I won’t have time to really think about it being Mother’s Day,” Jamie said. “We’ll get shout outs and people are very kind to us at the racetrack about it being Mother’s Day. But you know, we just get used to in this business celebrating birthdays and anniversaries and holidays on a different day. And that’s just kind of how it is.”

For Shannon her family does it a bit differently.

“Mother’s Day for me is actually Saturday night after we get done with the Xfinity Series race,” she said. “That’s what I’m going to go out to eat with all of my family.”

Missing holidays and special occasions come with the job. When someone decides to work on TV, and specifically the world of sports TV, they know what to expect. And at the end of that day, they are sports fans who get to work in an area they love.

“We knew that there was going to be some sacrifices and there was going to be some things that we were going to have to give up,” Shannon said. “Birthdays and Christmases and, Thanksgiving and Easter and weddings and going to sporting events with our friends. Those are all things that over the last 20 years or so that we’ve all been in this industry, we’ve all had to sort of come to grips with.

“That doesn’t mean it’s okay for everybody, but it is okay for us because of the fact that I think we’re replacing it with something that we really, really love.”

Lindsey Mandia said they make those most of those special days, even though they are all working.

“There’s always texts on holidays or birthdays or whatever, but that’s become special to me,” she said, adding that there is always some form of communication among the group, like texts.

“While you don’t get, you know, a dedicated day away or just with the kids or whatever,” she said. “You do get to celebrate with the women that we work with and really have become my biggest confidants as mothers that I get to work alongside and also share friendship and life with.”

They all still make time for special days, like Mother’s Day with their families.

“Just the fact we don’t celebrate it on Mother’s Day necessarily doesn’t take anything away from that,” Kaitlyn said. “We still spend time with our kids when we can on Saturday, like Shannon was explaining, if we have to, our kids are used to kind of an abnormal schedule to say the least.

“At this point in time, they know that we spend time with them when it makes sense, whether it’s on a specific holiday. Sometimes even birthdays are challenging because of the NASCAR schedule being what it is for me, Mother’s Day, last couple of years, I’ve spent the morning timeframe with my kids, then gone out to the racetrack, which is what I plan to do this Sunday.”

Still, having the camaraderie among the group they have makes being away from their family on Mother’s Day a bit easier.

“It’s very nice knowing that you have so many other working moms within the Fox Sports family,” Kaitlyn said. “To trade messages with on that day, to share funny stories with on that day to trade photos or whatever it is.

“This is what our normal is. We don’t know anything else. And it works for us, and I think it works for our children too.”

The on-air talent and their producer aren’t the only women working on Mother’s Day.

“I think it’s important to point out,” Shannon said. “We might be the four that you’re talking to right now, but there are many women that are in that building at Fox Sports when I walk in there on Sunday morning who are also away from their family.”

Shannon added she has her own way of acknowledging those women in her work family.

“On Valentine’s Day and on Mother’s Day, I bring every woman in there a rose,” she said. “Just to let them know that ‘Hey, you know, this is our day.’”

The moms also face a task that most mothers don’t: explaining to their children why they must work on Mother’s Day.

“I think I’ve got the oldest here,” Shannon said. “My kids are 13 and they didn’t know for a really long time. And they are starting to know now…like this past year missing Easter was a big deal for them. Not being there on my birthday is a big deal for them not being there on their birthday, Christmas, because I do NFL as well.

“They’re definitely starting to know. And it’s not something that I thought, ‘Hey, this is just how it is’. They’re used to it; it’s been like this the whole time.”

“I think obviously because my kids are still so young and then my husband works in the industry as well,” Lindsay said. “We just have a different, I guess what you would compare it as normal. Our lifestyle is just different, but that’s the way it’s always been. Right. For both our daughters and I, you know, Shannon, you bring up a good point of, we may get to place and time where it is different, but it, that’s just our normal, right?”

While they face challenges like moms everywhere working in TV has other challenges as well.

“You can never be a human being,” Shannon said. “Being tired Being sad, missing our kids. Like you’re not allowed to, right? You have to be ‘on’, and you have to be ready to go and you have to be perfect, right?”

“And that’s what I tell all the women. I think my advice to them is, ‘it’s okay. It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to be tired. It’s okay to miss your kids. It’s okay to take a day off. It’s okay to feel insignificant, feel guilty.’”

“I think for me, one of the biggest challenges and I’m learning this more and more is the two different hats,” Jamie said. “You know, when you’re home, you’re mom, you’re wife. You can lean into your significant other, you’re, you’re chasing, you know, football and soccer and dinners and my dogs and life.

“And then it’s like I get on the plane you have to put all that behind you. Literally. You have to flip a switch so that you’re good at your job and you’ve got to be strong, powerful, independent: walk up to any man in the garage, tell any story and then you take the hat off when you come home.”

“There’s always a little bit for me of a transition when I get home. There’s that little transition and when I get on the plane, I’m making that transition.

“I think I’m used to it now, but I think that I still have moments where it is a challenge.”

On Mother’s Day the women of Fox Sports will be doing their jobs. And while many of us will be celebrating our own moms, for Jamie Little, Shannon Spake, Kaitlyn Vincie, and Lindsey Mandia it will be another workday. But that’s okay, they have all adapted in their own ways and still celebrate not only the moms and wives they are, but the journalists who are doing what they love: bringing NASCAR to the fans around the country and around the world.

And come the following week the women of Fox Sports will get ready to do it all over again. And they won’t mind a bit.

“I’ve been home two nights in the last eight days,” Jamie said. “And I go through those moments, but thankfully, you know, my husband’s my rock and he reminds me all the time, ‘you’re really good at what you do. You love what you do and your kids are just fine. We’ll be here when you get home’”.