Athletes with children

By Mark Dent

Published on Wed., January 23rd, 2008

A piercing wail awakens KU track athlete Cortney Jacobs from a deep sleep. She stumbles out of bed and checks the clock on her cell phone. It’s the middle of the night. A long day of track practice, classes and homework awaits her in a few hours, but the noise keeps Jacobs awake.

It’s Kiara, her baby. She’s crying.

Jacobs and boyfriend, Aqib Talib, All-American cornerback and Orange Bowl MVP, have adjusted to life with a child since their daughter was born June 22, 2007. They and other KU varsity athletes who become parents have to balance classes, child care and sports obligations, making every hectic day a test of their discipline. They must piece together money from summer jobs, savings and parent support to pay for babysitting, medical care, food, clothing and other child care expenses because the NCAA does not allow the University to provide extra benefits to athletes who are parents.

Jacobs and Talib, basketball player Sherron Collins, volleyball player Paula Caten and football player Eric Butler have all discovered that with or without support, raising a child is more difficult and rewarding than competing in sports.

Making the Choice

Frightening thoughts quickly crept into Cortney Jacobs’ mind when she learned she was pregnant last October. Jacobs thought she might lose her scholarship or have to drop out of school if she had the child.

She went to tell Talib about the situation.

“I talked to Aqib about it, and the whole time he was telling me he wanted to have it,” Jacobs said. “But I was upset and telling him it’s not going to affect your life and all this. We had a serious conversation about it, really sat down and looked at things, and he kind of just told me everything was going to be OK.”

Jacobs was still afraid to tell Kansas track coach Stanley Redwine she was pregnant and continued going to practice through November. Then, during a mile time trial, Redwine pulled Jacobs to the side of the track after she was vomiting and cramping.

“Cortney,” he told her, “I’m not stupid.”

Jacobs went to his office the next day, started crying and told him everything. Redwine was supportive. He went to the Athletics Department and made sure Jacobs kept her scholarship and got an extra year of eligibility.

“I just think you support your athletes,” Redwine said. “It’s doing what’s right. It comes down to moral issues. I was just trying to do what I believe in.”

In the wake of Jacobs’ pregnancy and reports of abortions and athletes losing scholarships at other universities, the Athletics Department created a policy in July that states the University can’t revoke a female athlete’s scholarship because of pregnancy. It would help such athletes extend their eligibility by one year, which NCAA rules allow. On Jan. 14, the NCAA approved legislation that would make it illegal for any college to reduce or cancel a scholarship because of pregnancy.

However, NCAA rules forbid providing such considerations for male athletes who father children except for counseling, and the NCAA doesn’t grant males extended eligibility to take time off for parenting. Female athletes who become pregnant also have to pay for their own medical expenses.

Jim Marchiony, associate athletics director, said that the Athletics Department didn’t educate athletes, male or female, about relationships, pregnancies, sexual education or child care responsibilities. He called them personal issues.

Delightful Dad

While the choice to have the child belongs more to women than men, men have to decide whether they’re going to help care for the child. The law requires that they at least provide financial support.

There was never a choice in the mind of KU basketball guard Sherron Collins. From the moment his girlfriend, Re’Quiya Aguirre, gave birth to Sherr’mari on April 6, all he wanted to do was hold his son and take care of him. He didn’t have that opportunity with his first child, Sherron Jr.

Sherron Jr., born in June 2006, lived only 10 days after being born four months premature.

Collins displays his fatherly devotion on the underside of his right forearm. One tattoo reads “Sherr’mari” in cursive letters. Underneath, another tattoo features two hands folded in prayer above the words “R.I.P. Sherron Jr.”

Whether he’s in the classroom or in Allen Fieldhouse, Collins looks at the tattoos whenever he needs motivation.

“If I fail,” Collins said, “I fail not only myself, I fail Sherr’mari, too. I take a lot of things more seriously. I try to do everything because I want my child to have a good life and think good of his dad.”

Although Sherr’mari lives with his mother in Chicago, Collins said Kansas coach Bill Self had been supportive, letting him visit Chicago every other weekend in the spring and summer. Aguirre and Sherr’mari have already visited Lawrence six times since school started in the fall. Collins holes up with Sherr’mari in his room every time his son visits. The two are nearly inseparable.

When they are in Chicago, Collins said he talked with Aguirre on the phone every day to find out how Sherr’mari was doing. Although Sherr’mari can only say “da-da,” Collins still talks to him. He even turns on the speakerphone so that Brady Morningstar, sophomore guard and Collins’ roommate, can hear Sherr’mari holler “da-da” over and over.

“He loves his son so much,” Morningstar said.

Collins regrets not being around every day to see Sherr’mari, but he said he was doing the best job he could to take care of him.

“My mom tells me he’s one of the happiest babies she’s ever seen,” Collins said.

Giving up the game

A few weeks before his high school graduation, Eric Butler’s girlfriend, Chantel, gave him some shocking news. She was pregnant.

“Oh crap,” he said.

All of a sudden his financial freedom, football scholarship and youth were gone. “Oh crap” was right.

But Butler didn’t stay down for long. He grew up. He went to great lengths to be a father for his daughter, Angelina.

Butler gave up his football scholarship to Northwest Missouri State, got a job and attended DeVry for two years. He could finally play again in 2003 and joined the team at Avila College before walking on at Kansas in 2005. He recorded two sacks and played in all 12 games as a defensive tackle that season. Butler wanted to play as a senior in 2006, but the NCAA ruled him ineligible because he had been enrolled in college for five years. He challenged the NCAA, saying he took time off to take care of his child, but lost the appeal.

Football never turned out the way Butler wanted, but he has no regrets. He said it was important to care for his girlfriend and daughter.

“If things didn’t happen the way they did, I wouldn’t have turned out to be the person that I am now,” Butler said.

Missing fathers

A cover from a 1998 Sports Illustrated showed a small child sitting down with a basketball. The caption below read, “Where’s Daddy?”

Many children with famous athlete fathers have had to ask that question throughout the years. SI reported that NBA stars Larry Johnson, Scottie Pippen, Jason Kidd, Larry Bird and Isaiah Thomas had all been named in paternity-related lawsuits. Last fall, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Denver Broncos running back Travis Henry had fathered nine children by nine different women.

Although no studies have been conducted about how many athletes take care of their children, anecdotal evidence suggests that not all athletes are responsible fathers.

Former KU basketball forward C.J. Giles seemed primed for a break-out year last season as a junior before Self suspended him. Word soon came out that he owed more than $4,000 in child support to Laura Bender, the mother of his son Jaiden. Bender told the Lawrence Journal-World that Giles had seen their 1-year-old son only four times.

Giles’ Kansas career abruptly ended when Self dismissed him from the team after police charged Giles with battery. He transferred to Oregon State but played for only a month before getting kicked off the team this week.

Another athlete with children, former Jayhawk running back John Randle, had six run-ins with the law while he attended Kansas. Randle transferred to Southern Illinois, where he just finished a successful senior season with the Salukis. His team made it to the Division I-AA semifinal.

Living in Carbondale, Ill., Randle is far away from his two children, who live with his girlfriend in Wichita. He said he was only a semester away from getting a degree and talked to Niah, 5, and John Jr., 2, every day.

“They have to know that I’m here for them and not running out on them,” Randle said. “I tell them I’m at school and trying to do a good thing. I explain it to them as much as I can.”

Long-Distance Love

Long before she made the trip from Brazil to Lawrence to play volleyball, Paula Caten, then 17, made a journey to the doctor in Sao Paulo, Brazil. She was playing for a semi-pro volleyball team at the time and went to the doctor after frequent vomiting. The doctor said she was pregnant.

When Caten informed her coach, he told her to get an abortion even though abortions were illegal in Brazil. Caten objected to this because of her beliefs and had her child. She wasn’t allowed to return to the team.

After Caten made her decision to have her baby, she had to make another important one. She could give up volleyball and get a job to support Paola, her baby daughter, or she could move to Kansas, where a friend was playing at Barton County Community College. Caten headed north after her parents agreed to care for Paola in Brazil until she could bring her to America.

The journey wasn’t easy. When Caten’s coach picked her up at the airport and drove her to Barton County, she started crying uncontrollably the second she stepped out of the car. The tears continued regularly for two months. She missed Paola. And with rules that prevented students living on campus from living with their kids, Paola wouldn’t be able to come to America anytime soon.

“I was like, ‘I don’t want to be here,’” Caten said. “‘This was crazy; this was stupid.’”

After a year at Barton County, Caten raised enough money from working in the cafeteria to fly back to Brazil. She finally had the opportunity to develop a relationship with her daughter. Caten took Paola to parks, spent the little money she had on her and never stopped holding and hugging her.

With a newfound confidence from being around her daughter in Brazil, Caten started playing volleyball at Kansas in 2004, two years after enrolling at Barton County. The tears had stopped by then. Paola was growing up in a good situation with Caten’s parents, and Caten decided she would continue to live away from her daughter so she could focus on getting her degree in communications studies.

That decision paid off. She was a 4.0 student and two-year starter for a KU team that played in the NCAA volleyball tournament both years. Caten brought Paola to Lawrence to live with her after graduation, and she now lives with her daughter and husband in Olathe.

Paola is happy to finally be around her mother all the time. As Caten sat in the kitchen of her home, 6-year-old Paola, who had just finished dinner, ran up to her mother, smiled and declared: “Mom, you made yum food.”

The Busy Life

Talib worked out every morning with the football team before going to class during the season. Then he met with defensive back coaches and practiced for three hours before he went home. Home meant homework and playing with a child at the same time. Jacobs’ days are nearly the same. Practice. School. Homework. Child.

All athletes with children have to find time to excel in all four of those categories. It’s hard work. Butler remembers waking up before dawn and not getting home until after 7 p.m.

“I never relaxed,” he said. “With football, it was like a full-time job and school, too. It was like you’re working two full-time jobs, and you have to go home and work with the child, too.”

With that kind of a schedule, a job is not realistic, even though athletes could use the money.

“All the girls would go out to places on Friday nights,” Caten said, “and I’d have to stay home to save money. They’d call me Grandma.”

Athlete parents try to make ends meet on cash from past savings, summer job opportunities, help from their parents and the $35 per day allotted to athletes for food by the NCAA. It costs parents, on average, $11,000 to raise a child the first year of life, according to the online magazine Parenting Weekly.

Mom and Dad help out the new moms and dads by donating time and money to help their children and grandchildren. Jacobs and Talib hire babysitters now, but earlier this fall, Talib’s mother spent a month living with them and helping take care of Kiara.

All of the athletes interviewed said their parents helped them after the initial disappointment they felt when they found out their son or daughter was going to have a child. Caten’s parents raised her daughter in Brazil when she was at school. Jacobs’ parents send her money. Collins gets financial help from his mother, grandmother and uncle.

For Talib and Collins, raising their children could become affordable because of the prospect of an NFL or NBA career. Now that he’s declared for the NFL Draft, Talib is assured of a lucrative deal and fewer financial problems if he is selected in the second round, where he is currently projected.

Collins is the 32nd best pro prospect in his class, according to NBADraft.net. The NBA has been his life-long dream.

“That would be the biggest thing to achieve right now — to get to the NBA, to take care of my child,” Collins said. “He’d have no worries and wouldn’t have to ask for anything. I wouldn’t even be doing anything for me. I’d be doing it all for Sherr’mari.”

Proud Parents

Moms and dads sat at the small desks near their children on the first day of school for Angelina Butler’s preschool class. It’s likely all the parents were a little uncomfortable squeezing into the tiny chairs, but their awkwardness was minor compared to what Eric Butler felt because of his 300-pound frame and youthful looks.

He thought every eye was on him.

“I’m sitting here, man, and I’m barely 20-something years old,” Butler said. “She’s in preschool already, and I’m sitting in the classroom with all these parents who are 35-plus. It was weird.”

Weird, but rewarding. Butler said the first year or two of raising Angelina was rough. Now he doesn’t know what he’d do without her.

Paola and Caten are nearly inseparable once Caten gets home from work. Collins is counting the days to the next time he can spend some time with Sherr’mari.

Jacobs is getting ready for what she hopes is a successful comeback season in track and still spends all of her spare time with Kiara. Talib is preparing for NFL Draft workouts. Jacobs said Talib insisted he’d give her and their daughter everything they would need to be happy.

They didn’t plan on having Kiara; none of the athletes planned on having their children. But they did, and their children changed their lives.

“When she smiles,” Jacobs said of Kiara, “that’s one of the best feelings to just touch and play with your little child. It’s a lot of stress and a lot of work, but it all pays off. When I’m upset, have had a bad day and don’t want to talk to anybody, I just see her and I’m in a lot better mood.”

— Edited by Dianne Smith

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