Claire Moty is preparing to head off for college at the University of Arizona this month, a change that will put the 18-year-old 128 miles from her home in North Scottsdale’s DC Ranch for the first time in her young life.

Right about now, most of her peers would be scouring the Web for hot clubs to hit in the Old Pueblo, plotting out that classic rite of passage where autonomy, along with intellectual growth and general worldliness, rules the psyche’s id.

But Moty, a seasoned triathlete who regularly competes in about 18 swimming and triathlon contests a year in Arizona, has been busy Googling after-school sports clubs for Tucson college students.

“I did a bunch of research and I found the club that I want to join: the Tri-Cats,” Moty says, excitedly. “They’re a collegiate triathlon club. And I’ve already made room in my class schedule so I could fit their weekly meetings in.”

Like millions of other young Millennials raised by the generation of hyper-involved parents who popularized the term “soccer mom” and elevated organized family activity to a year-round Olympic event, Claire Moty is finally stepping out on her own. But you’d never know it from looking at her packed schedule.

“Whenever I get bored, I get on the Internet and look at all the college classes that I’ll be able to take,” she says. “I already have my four-year plan for college in place. I haven’t picked a graduate school yet, but I know what classes I’ll be taking. And I’ve already got my career all mapped out, too.”

Moty is a classic “overscheduled child” of the ‘90s – and perfectly okay with it, thank you. Her mom, Jane, a first-grade P.E. teacher, happily admits she posted daily schedules that had Claire and her older brother, Stuart, rising at 4 a.m. every morning to tackle the roughly 100 miles of bicycling, 13 hours of swimming and six hours of track practice the two would have to squeeze in each week between school and homework – which, in Claire’s case, included demanding International Baccalaureate courses at Desert Mountain High School.

“You have to push them out of their comfort zone – whether you’re challenging them academically, physically or socially,” explains Jane.

In the Moty household, TV was all but banned. Jane and husband Pat – outdoor sports enthusiasts who registered all three of their children in extracurricular swimming, running and bicycling classes by the time they were in elementary school – always demanded more activity from their brood.

“My parents always told me I was special, that I wasn’t on the same level as everybody else,” Claire says. Apparently, it worked. At 16, Moty finished second in the legendarily grueling Escape From Alcatraz Triathlon in San Francisco, and has placed in nearly every swimming and triathlon contest that comes through the West. At one time she admits she questioned why she had taken on I.B. classes at school, but in the end scored all As and high Bs in that arena, too.

“They made everything that looked difficult seem like a challenge, one that I could accomplish,” she says. “And that really helps me now, in my confidence level. Anything that comes up that might be a challenge? I can get over it, no problem.”

If anyone’s the least bit daunted by the youngest Moty entering college, it’s Claire’s mom, as the nest – and the minivan – finally empties. Oldest daughter Bridget has already earned her biology degree from the UofA, and son Stuart, 19, recently enlisted in the Air Force.

“My role lightened a little when they all became drivers, because I didn’t have to shuttle them around so much,” she says, with a sigh. “Now it’s them pushing themselves. But I don’t see any of them easing up on their schedules. They’re all still very busy.”

Call it achievement addiction – for good or bad. After years of parental pushing to get into extracurricular sports, music lessons and enrichment activities, many high-achieving freshman are finding it impossible to slow down, even when miles away from their parents’ watchful eye.

“I don’t think it’s in their blood to relax a little bit,” says Jane. “They’re always thinking, ‘What’s the next thing I can achieve? What’s the next level I can get to?’” Not that that’s a bad thing, Jane insists. “In the workplace, it’s good to be competitive.”

Her daughter appears to agree. Ask Claire if she looks forward to a time when she can settle into a cushy job and just “coast” for a while, and she recoils as if responding to an offensive word.

“I don’t see a reason to coast at all,” she says sharply. “I really want to be involved and contribute to my community, and ‘coasting,’ to me, just seems like taking a step back and getting away from everything that I love.

“That’s just so not me,” she says. “I don’t think I ever could do that.”

Winners and Losers

As a child psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld has seen more than his share of busy kids over the years. Co-author of the 2000 book The Over-Scheduled Child: Avoiding The Hyper-Parenting Trap, Rosenfeld has become one of the most vocal critics of the “attachment parenting” method of the last two decades, which he feels has created a societal pressure on parents to raise the most exceptional, most well-rounded kids on the block.

“It’s always done with the best intentions,” Rosenfeld says. “But it can become almost like a competition to see who can manufacture the best childhood possible.”

Rosenfeld says the effects of hyper-parenting are most visible in affluent neighborhoods. “You’ll hear people saying, ‘Oh, so you’re not signing Jim up for soccer this year?’ And the other parents will act like they’re being called a child abuser, because they’re depriving their kid of this essential activity. It’s a system built on enhancing parental anxiety, and thereby the children’s anxiety.”

Some, like Claire Moty, thrive in this kind of upbringing, Rosenfeld admits. But he says others can buckle under the pressure, and go through life feeling they can never measure up to their parents’ high expectations.

“There are kids who’ve become the winners in this kind of environment,” he says. “They always finished at the top of their class, they proved they could live up to these high expectations and do well in this way of life. The winners can play the system very well. They’re the high achievers, the intensely motivated kids.

“But the losers are the kids who feel they can’t measure up, and the parents who feel more or less guilty that their kids didn’t turn out the way they’d hoped. It can be bad for families all around.”

Jane Moty has heard the criticisms of the overscheduled lifestyle she admits to having enforced in her house, but insists it’s only damaging if the parent uses activities as babysitters and doesn’t get involved personally in the extracurricular recreations she books.

“As a parent, you have to be involved. Somehow, some way,” she says. “Don’t drop them off at practice and leave them and never ask them about it.” True to her word, last year Jane completed her first Ironman triathlon, to stay close to her children’s passion. “I just really believe that you need to spend time with your kids. And in the end, that helps them develop into confident, well-rounded adults.”

The latest research tends to back her up. A Yale study on the effects of overscheduling published in fall of 2006 found that the more time children spend in organized, adult-led activities, the better they fare in school, and the less likely they are to abuse drugs. Additionally, those 5- to 18-year-olds who participated in more than 20 hours of activities a week were shown to have higher self-esteem and better relationships with their parents. The only instances where overscheduled kids felt unhappy was when they were left unsupervised and perceived their parents as too critical.

Still, detractors insist any upbringing where achievement is measured in awards and gold medals can potentially wreak havoc on a child’s self-worth.

“In the old days, kids proved their worth to the parents by helping out on the farm or in the store,” says Rosenfeld, who’s 64. “Today, children have become economically useless. So the only way they can prove to their parents that they’re good kids is to become these achievement machines.”

Rosenfeld is reminded of John Candy’s line near the end of the movie Cool Runnings, when, coaching a challenged member of the Jamaican bobsled team, Candy confides, “A gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you’re not enough without the medal, you’ll never be enough with it.”

“That’s a great line,” Rosenfeld says. “And also a pretty good piece of wisdom.”

In Due Time

If there’s one Valley teen you’d expect to be the product of an overscheduled, heavily-pushed childhood, it’s recent Xavier College Prep graduate Cheyenne Woods.

Niece of the legendary Tiger Woods, 19-year-old Cheyenne has been making her own name in golf since she was 7 years old, when she joined an LPGA youth club, winning her first tournament by age 10. Coached by Tiger’s dad – and her grandfather – the late Earl Woods, Sr., young Cheyenne was pegged as a prodigy with pedigree early on, winning over 30 junior tournaments before graduating high school.

Now entering her sophomore year at North Carolina’s sports-centric Wake Forest University, Woods made her professional debut this summer at the Wegmans LPGA in Pittsford, N.Y., where she missed the cut by four strokes. Golfweek currently ranks her at No. 107 in the country.

Even if she’s not yet in the sport’s upper echelon, it’s easy to imagine the family pressure that’s been piled upon the pretty putter to succeed. You can picture Cheyenne’s mother, Susan, divorced from Tiger’s half-brother, Earl, Jr., since Cheyenne was two, struggling to turn her daughter – who, thanks to paternal genes, bears an uncanny resemblance to her famous uncle – into golf’s next superstar.

And you’d be dead wrong.

“Her mother was never, ever one of those crazy sports parents,” says Xavier’s athletic director Sister Lynn Winsor, who coached Cheyenne to her first two state championships and also saw her crowned as an EA Sports All-American.

“She was never one of those super-pushy parents who never let their child have an opinion in what they wanted to do” – a type Winsor has seen plenty of at the pricey private school. “It was always Cheyenne’s call. And when Cheyenne decided to do something, then her mother backed her up.”

Woods, always modest about her achievements and still reluctant to talk to the press, reportedly even backed out of an intensive tutoring session with uncle Tiger at age 14, according to ESPN, telling him, “I’m not used to practicing this much. And I don’t want to. Maybe when it’s my career, but not now.”

Sports reporters have questioned her drive, wondering if golf’s heir apparent is hungry enough to reach for her famous uncle’s glory.

“She’s subtle,” says Winsor. “She doesn’t work so hard at it that she doesn’t have a normal life. It’s not a compulsive thing with her. She knows she has a talent, and she works with it, but she doesn’t let it consume her.

“She’ll make the LPGA, I have no doubt about it,” Winsor adds. “But she’ll do it her way – and her mother will support her in that. All along, Susan said, ‘Cheyenne, it’s up to you. You do what you want to do.’ And I think that’s the way to approach it.