Bethune-Cookman head coach Vanessa Blair-Lewis gave birth to her son, Blair, at 11:41 a.m. on Monday, Jan. 27, 2014. Six hours later, she coached the Lady Wildcats' game vs. Howard at 5:30 p.m.
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Kidding.
Of course she didn't. It's preposterous and entirely unrealistic to coach six hours after childbirth. Blair-Lewis, however, is not realistic and says she "was ready" to coach.
"I told the doctor just do what you have to do. Give me enough drugs, I have to go coach this game," she recalled. "And he was like, 'She's definitely high right now, just go lay down.' But if the doctor gave me a choice I would've tried to prove that I couldn't do it.
"Everybody else's reality is usually not mine. I feel like I can do mostly anything I put my mind to, and one of those things was coming down here and taking over this program. Everyone said, 'Why would you do that? You can't win there.' "
Bethune-Cookman was a moribund program (by their own admission) when Blair-Lewis arrived in 2008 after nine seasons as head coach of Mount St. Mary's, her alma mater. The Lady Wildcats went 6-24 in 2007-08, their fourth straight year with six or fewer victories and 13th with fewer than 10 wins since 1989. They were averaging 10.8 wins over 26 Division-I seasons, or a .420 winning percentage. They had three times as many coaches in the preceding decade (three) as they did total regular-season conference championships all-time (one) and had never reached the WNIT or NCAA Tournament.
"Vanessa Inge represents the total package," said Bethune-Cookman's Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics Lynn Thompson, when announcing the hire of then-Vanessa Inge in July 2008. "She is a former outstanding student-athlete, professional player and highly-experienced Division I coach from a private, church-related university. We expect her to flourish in leading our program with these great qualities."
Entering Saturday's home game vs. Savannah State, they are 21-4 overall, 13-0 in the MEAC, one win shy of the single-season program wins record and three wins shy of their first-ever undefeated conference record. They are 149-148 in nine-plus seasons under Blair-Lewis (.502), have never won fewer than 10 games, have two straight 20-win seasons for the first time in 33 years and are chasing a third straight first-place MEAC finish.
Blair-Lewis is nine months pregnant.
Bethune-Cookman hosts second-place North Carolina A&T on Monday before concluding the season next Thurs…wait, what? She's nine months pregnant? Correct.
"She's literally not done anything different," fourth-year assistant coach Chandler McCabe said. "To me, that should blow everybody's mind. She's nine months pregnant and at every practice, every film session. She misses maybe 10 minutes of a coaches’ meeting because she’s at so many different doctors appointments but she doesn't miss anything."
Blair-Lewis missed their last road trip, a two-game trip to Baltimore last weekend due to doctor's orders, which left McCabe as acting head coach. The wins over Coppin State and Morgan State were the first two games she's missed in her entire coaching career.
She drove to the other five air-travel games, which included battling snow and ice storms and " basically living in a car" during a prolonged road trip.
"It was so hard," she says of missing the games. "My entire day still revolved around what the team was doing that day. We have shootaround at 9 a.m., so I was up and pacing. I knew pregame would be at 1:30. OK, 'Where are you eating?’ since I know we eat two hours before the game.
"It was a part of me the entire time. Come game time just lock me in a room. No matter what you hear, don't open the door, I'm fine. It was hard . . . I watched Chandler and her reactions, saw her stress, wanted to pass on information and I can't. It was really, really difficult."
Her husband, Eric Lewis, and mother-in-law, Norma Lewis, did NOT open that door.
"You could hear her yelling, banging on the table, yelling at the kids and giving directions to the coach like they could hear her," Eric said. “It was a very emotional moment, and she almost went into labor."
Labor was the goal.
"If I get so overly excited maybe I'll go into labor, and this is really what I want," she said.
Blair-Lewis is an amateur horologist — someone who studies dates and times — in her free time. And she has even dabbled in selonology — the study of the moon — after the mother of men's basketball head coach Ryan Ridder said full moons led to the birth of all her children (it didn't work).
Blair-Lewis has pored over calendars every single day since early January, repeatedly evaluating potential birth dates for their son, who's due March 5, four days after the regular season ends and two days before they’ll open the MEAC Tournament as the 1- or 2-seed.
She became particularly fixated on the night of Monday, Feb. 19, when the team was flying home from Baltimore and Eric, an NBA referee, was home during the All-Star break. Nope, no baby.
Eric then flew out on Wednesday to work Thursday's Kings–Thunder game in Sacramento and Friday's Mavericks-Lakers game in Los Angeles.
"Just before my husband left, I said, 'I could do Monday night. I could go into labor at 7:50 on Monday night and this would be great. It'd give me an entire week before I go back'. He's like, 'Vanessa, that’s another good idea,' "
"I have a different perspective of situations," says Eric, who's the guy losing his damn mind opposite the visitors' bench at Moore Gymnasium. "I can't go on the floor and get rattled [during NBA games]. The game doesn't go according to plan all the time, so I constantly make adjustments on the floor.
"She's already making plans. 'If the baby comes this day, we can leave'. She's looking at renting RVs, whatever it is that she needs to get there. I don't know, a boat? Whatever gets her there fastest, she's trying to find it. I just say, ‘Yeah OK, you let me know and we’ll make the proper adjustment.' "
The "plans" all revolve around not missing one second of time with her family and team, although it's not really family and team. It's family slash team.
"I view Vanessa as part of my family for the rest of my life," says McCabe. "These girls are really sisters with each other, and I view them as part of my family as well. They definitely took Baby Blair on as their little brother and I consider him to be my nephew. We're family. The girls fight like sisters but they also love like sisters."
Baby Blair is now a 4-year-old, an active one. Throughout our phone call, he repeatedly interrupted but each time obeyed his mother's "Mommy is busy right now" request. Moments later, he'd waddle back with another urgent need that was clearly more pressing than a dumb phone call.
"I look at these girls and I want them to know that you can be a mom," she says, apologizing for pausing and fighting back tears. "You can be a coach, you can be a wife and you can be everything you want to be. They look to me and they're able to see and say, ‘Wow . . . she is able to be a leader of this team and bring a life into this world and not miss a beat.'
"And I'm not saying many women don't do this. I'm so happy they see a different perspective of what my husband and I are bringing to this program. They are our family. Those girls are our family and they look at this baby as a little brother coming into their family."
"Those girls" are chasing history. They're the first-ever team to be ranked in the CollegeInsider.com Mid-Major Top 25 and could be the first-ever team to make the NCAA Tournament. They haven’t lost in eight weeks, have five conference wins by at least 10 points and are three wins away from the MEAC's first undefeated season since 2013-14, all amid an uncertain coaching situation.
"It's something we try do for the girls," McCabe says of maintaining the status quo in preparing for — and during — Blair-Lewis' absences. "Keep things as much as the same so nothing will change for them.
"I had a goal that I'm not Coach Blair and will never will be. I'm just gonna be who I am and coach how Coach Blair would coach. What would Coach Blair do here? We try to make it as normal as we could."
Admittedly, I did not find this balancing act normal as I spoke with Dan Ryan, Bethune-Cookman's senior writer, historian and media contact for women's basketball, a few weeks ago. It seemed far from normal, which is why I pursued the story.
After more calls, e-mails and text messages with Ryan, Blair-Lewis and her husband and McCabe, it became very clear that while this is remarkable and impressive, it should not be abnormal.
"We are such examples to the young women we coach," Blair-Lewis said. “They don't have to sacrifice having a family and being a mom and all the beautiful things that God has given us the ability to do. We don't have to sacrifice that just to have a job."
But, coach, the real question: If this baby is born on a gameday, and your team wins, will he have bragging rights into perpetuity?
"Yeah, yeah, I think he definitely will inherit a whole lot more."
Editor's Note: Vanessa Blair-Lewis gave birth to Brice Robert Lewis on Monday, March 5, while the team was in Norfolk, Va., for the MEAC Tournament.
