Sunday Lunch with WNBA players Stacey Lovelace and Jia Perkins
Here's how the WNBA is different from the NBA: When Chicago Sky players Stacey Lovelace and Jia Perkins arrive, escorted by a publicist, for our lunch interview, the first thing they do is ask the publicist for some cash so they'll have enough for cab fare on the way home.
Perkins, a single mother, has brought 2-year-old Aalirah along for a kid-friendly meal at the extra-touristy Ed Debevic's. Lovelace's daughter Ryann, who turned 3 on Friday, is vacationing out of town with her dad.
"How's the potty training going?" Lovelace asks Perkins, who rolls her eyes to indicate that it has been a bit of a struggle. "You have to make a really big deal out of everything," she advises, "which makes you sound kind of stupid, if you listen to yourself."
Mother-and-professional-athlete is a relatively new twist on the whole working mother thing, but for these two women, it's all they've ever known.
Lovelace, 32, took two seasons off from the WNBA to marry high school sweetheart Brian Tolbert and then give birth to Ryann. She returned to the European professional leagues -- playing in France -- when her daughter was just 4 months old.
For Perkins, the turnaround was even faster. After playing for Texas Tech through the first four months of her pregnancy, she arrived for training camp with the WNBA's Charlotte Sting when Aalirah was just 1 month old.
"She stayed with my mom in Texas," she says now, eliciting a nod of sympathy from Lovelace, who has regularly relied on her own mother for child care, especially while Tolbert has been pursuing his own pro basketball career in Europe.
"Ryann was 9 months old the first time I had to leave her," Lovelace recalls. "I was still breast-feeding then [when she was invited to try out for the WNBA's Minnesota Lynx], so it was, 'OK, guess I'd better wean her.' It wasn't hard on her as much as it was on me."
Lovelace remembers an early road trip with the team, when she was still using an electric breast pump to collect milk for Ryann. "I was rooming with one of the young rookies," she says, "and she happened to come back to the room when I was pumping. She looked like she didn't know what to think. But finally she said to me, 'OK, I can see that you're all really adults. This really is a professional thing.' When you play in college, you know, it's still just a game. But this is a job. I don't think she'd really gotten that before."
More accommodating in Europe
When Lovelace was a high school standout in Detroit, she had no idea a professional basketball career might be open to her. "I would have never thought 10 years after college, I'd still be playing," she says.
For Perkins, 25, the possibilities were only slightly more broad. "I used to think about trying out for the NBA," she says, "but once I knew about [professional women's teams], that was my goal."
Each has played in Europe, where, in contrast to the still-struggling 14-team league here, almost every country has a thriving league of a dozen or more teams. The season there is longer, which makes for a slightly less grueling schedule; games are played about once a week.
And, of course, Lovelace adds, "The money is better."
But, beyond that, she continues, "They're just so accommodating to players. When I first went over, [Ryann] was 4 and a half months old. And one month into it, Brian, a professional basketball player in Europe, got a spot with a team. So I was alone in France with a 51/2-month-old baby. The coach said I could miss some morning practices if I had to, and even though I think I only did it a couple of times, they rearranged my workouts, and it was so nice just to know that I could have that flexibility."
Perkins looks wide-eyed at the thought of it.
"Here," Lovelace says, "I'd like to have her in day care, but it's $300 a week. We don't make that kind of money. I really believe the league should be doing something to help us. We're talking about women. . . . The women's soccer league had a network of nannies in each city, I heard."
Something to celebrate
Lovelace might be coming to the end of her WNBA career. She and Tolbert would like to have more children, but, she says, "it will have to be after basketball." Spending much of the year overseas, away from family and friends, has become more difficult, and she has started to think about what life might look like, post-basketball. She has done some substitute teaching in the off-season and might be interested in a broadcast career.
"I don't know what I want to do, career-wise," Perkins says. She'll likely head to Europe after this season but isn't sure how best to take care of Aalirah while she's so far away from her usual support system.
The cheeseburgers, fries and milk shakes the women have ordered up for their post-practice lunch are just about to arrive, so Perkins steps away for a moment to see if she can get Aalirah to use the restaurant's bathroom.
She returns to the table pumping her fist in victory.
And Lovelace cheers, too, knowing how important it is to celebrate these things.
