When Kathy Pogue found out she was expecting triplets, her first reaction was one of shock. Her husband, Steve, on the other hand, was immediately ecstatic.
“I remember calling him and telling him we were having triplets, and I was sort of speechless and shocked, and he said ‘Woo hoo!’ on the other end. He was very excited.”
Mrs. Pogue spent three months in the hospital in San Francisco prior to the triplets’ birth. But the hardest part was over after triplets were born. “It’s been an adventure ever since,” Mrs. Pogue said.
Paige, Spencer and Molly were born in December of 2001, in that order, with a one-minute lag between the three of them. This matters, the triplets say, and Paige and Spencer good-naturedly tease Molly about it.
When the triplets were three years old, the family moved to Edgartown.
“We had a house here,” Mrs. Pogue said. “And we decided we were going to raise them here, just because our older daughter was going off to college, and it seemed like a perfect transition.”
As parents, the Pogues are encouraging but strict. “I think they just want us to be driven,” Spencer said.
“Steve and I have always enforced with them that we wanted them to stick with one sport,” Mrs. Pogue said. “And we wanted them to have at least one instrument... and that they have to take a language. And they all have stuck with those things, which has been nice, because they’re getting pretty good at it.”
That’s a bit of an understatement. The triplets, who are 15 years old, have been playing at the Vineyard Youth Tennis Center since they were four, and are now, as Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School freshmen, all members of the varsity tennis teams.
They’re also all musicians. Molly plays violin, guitar and ukulele and loves to sing. Spencer also sings—he’s a member of Sound Wave, an a capella group at MVRHS, and plays guitar and viola. Paige plays the cello and piano. One member short of a quartet, they sometimes get together with one of their friends to play.
But back to the tennis. Molly and Paige play doubles together and are undefeated in the regular season. Spencer plays doubles as well, usually with Owen Favreau, and has only one regular season loss.
Boys tennis coach Bill Rigali praised Spencer’s game: “He plays smart tennis.” A lefty (Paige and Molly are both right-handed), Spencer has a powerful serve with a wicked slice.
Coach Rigali calls him “my Google search, because many times he has the answer before I do in terms of what’s the scouting report on the next team or the opponent.”
To him, that’s indicative of Spencer’s genuine love of the game. All three are fully immersed in the sport. Paige says that when they were young, they “all tried other sports too, but we ultimately stuck with tennis.”
“It’s a lifetime sport,” Spencer said.
Recently, Spencer made the change from wearing glasses to contact lenses when he plays. Coach Rigali relates what Spencer told his parents: “Before he started wearing his new lenses, the game was like a French Impressionist painting.”
“That’s the type of kid he is, he’s very sharp, he’s witty,” Coach Rigali said.
At home, amid the family’s miniature dachshunds (only two, not three, Paige notes) his sisters call him a “human autocorrect,” with good cause. Spencer won the All-Island Spelling Bee twice in a row, in sixth and seventh grade.
Nina Bramhall has known the triplets for most of their tennis-playing careers. She started coaching them when they were in the third grade at Vineyard Youth Tennis. Now she coaches Molly and Paige on the varsity girls team.
“Ever since they were little kids, they were unbelievably polite, well spoken, dedicated and hardworking,” she said. “Sometimes there’s a lot of sibling rivalry...and I never sensed any of that, they seem like very supportive siblings.”
Paige agreed with this assessment, especially on the court. “If you have a doubles partner you know well, it’s easier to play with them.”
Molly concurred. “It’s kind of just automatic, because you want to make sure you and your partner are on the same page.”
But of course there are moments when the triplets disagree, on the courts and off. When this happens they have a failsafe solution: Rochambeau.
“Without rock paper scissors, we’d be in big trouble,” Mr. Pogue said. They use it to settle everything from who does the dishes to who gets to sit in the front seat of the car. They’ve worked out a schedule for this, but sometimes they lose track. Rochambeau resets the order.
As the trio gets older, they’re starting to debate about colleges, specifically, which coast they will choose to attend school. That decision is a ways off, but their parents have said they’d like the kids to stay on the same side of the country.
But for now, there are more pressing issues to consider. With their 16th birthday approaching next winter, the triplets are thinking about taking driver’s education. Paige seems most excited to get her license. The Pogue parents have already made it clear that they will not be getting three cars for the children.
“We live in town!” Mrs. Pogue says with a laugh. The triplets seem fine with that. “We’re going to make Paige drive,” said Spencer, who is perhaps less eager to get behind the wheel.
Until then, you can find Mrs. Pogue on her regular route. Three kids all involved in a number of activities means a constant stream of pick-ups and drop-offs.
“I’m up and down Edgartown-Vineyard Haven road probably about at least 10 times a day,” she said. “Parents laugh, they’re like, ‘I saw you again!’”
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