MINNEAPOLIS – To have a mom is to know her in the context of you. Does she clean up your knee after a fall? Does she cheer your name from the bleachers or pump her fist when you take the shot?
Something strange started to happen to the three Mauer kids as they were growing up in St. Paul, excelling in baseball, football and basketball. Though Teresa Mauer never talked to her sons about her playing days, people in her community remembered. They’d tell the boys, “Your mom is the best athlete in your family.” The kids heard it constantly. From umpires and refs. Parents of friends. Coaches at the Jimmy Lee rec center. Teresa’s athletic dominance became undeniable to Joe, her youngest, when he was in fourth grade and the rec center organized a parent-kids’ basketball game. His teammates were blown away: His mom was a baller. “She kinda took over the game,” recalls Joe, cracking a smile.
You may know her as the mother of Minnesota Twins legend Joe Mauer, but Teresa Mauer – who went by Teresa Tierney before she was married – was a three-sport athlete in the infancy of girls’ prep sports in Minnesota. She helped lead her St. Paul Central basketball team to Minnesota’s first official Class AA high school girls’ state championship in 1976 and has been inducted into three local halls of fame. While she also played volleyball and ran track in high school, she couldn’t partake in one of her favorite sports, softball, because St. Paul schools didn’t have a girls’ team at the time. Her senior year, she tried out for baseball along with the boys, but didn’t make the cut. “I tell that to my granddaughters and their friends,” Teresa says, “and they look at me, like, ‘Holy cow. How old are you?” (She’s only 65.)
