Carrying a baby in her womb while coaching girls basketball has been a joy for Pea Ridge coach Heather Wade.
Heather has twice gone through a season (2009-2010 and 2011-2012) while pregnant, then given birth to sons, Khale and Kolby, after the season.
Heather and her husband, Mark, a sales representative for Hillyard, planned the pregnancies in this manner so she wouldn’t have to miss any basketball.
Heather suffered a miscarriage eight weeks into the couple’s first pregnancy in her first season at Pea Ridge when the girls basketball team qualified for the state tournament and Mark recalls Heather took the loss of the baby hard.
“She thought it could have had something to do with the stress of basketball,” Mark Wade said.
Like drawing up x’s and o’s in a playbook and teaching offensive players to pick their spots, the Wades refused to give up their dream and worked out family expansion with Khale born on May 5, 2010, and Kolby born on April 23, 2012.
“One of the reasons we chose that time of year was cause you were right in the middle ofit (basketball season) and my husband didn’t have to worry about me going into labor on the basketball court,” Heather Wade said.
“The last thing I wanted was for her to be very along in her pregnancy and being very far away like at Berryville or Farmington and have to go to the hospital in a way that was different from what we planned,” Mark Wade said.
Pea Ridge athletic director, Larry Walker, was fine with Heather coaching through both pregnancies. Walker said in addition to Wade’s two pregnancies, Pea Ridge has had two volleyball coaches pregnant during season,who are both out on maternity leave now.
“They’re going to let everybody know ahead of time, everybody knows up front, they’re professionals and they do their job,” Walker said.
Others in the community were apprehensive.
“I think I scared my players and my parents cause I’d jump up and they’d tell me to calm down,” Heather Wade said.
Walker wasn’t concerned when Heather became animated while coaching a game.
“That’s not really an issue, that’s just part of it,” Walker said.
Heather is the daughter of Billy and Vickie Henson, of Pea Ridge, who play a large role in supporting her family and coaching career.
“I have really wonderful parents, who keep my babies every Friday night.”
Heather graduated from Pea Ridge High School in 1999 where her play at guard for the Lady Blackhawks earned a full scholarship to play women’s basketball for Crowder College, at Neosho, Mo., where she played two seasons before moving on to the College of the Ozarks, at Hollister, Mo.
Growing up, Heather played on a few teams but didn’t get serious about basketball until the seventh grade. By eighth grade, she knew she wanted to coach.
“I like sports and I likekids, so I thought it was a good fit.”
When Khale was eight weeks old, Heather took him to the Little ’Hawks basketball camp conducted by Pea Ridge boys coach Charley Clark.
“I’d just had a baby, so I was up there, just gettingout of the house.”
Khale was experiencing colic and wouldn’t stop crying. Yet, once he got the gym with the sounds of basketballs dribbling on the court and bouncing off the rim and backboard, he found himself in a familiar environment and wentright to sleep.
“I know that my boys have been in a gym specifically around the girls and other coaches and parents.
They don’t ever meet a stranger when they’re at the gym,” Mark Wade said.
“I walk in with both of them and one of Heather’sstudent managers will want to hold one and Coach Walker hangs out with the other one. All the sights and sounds of the gym are definitely comforting to them.”
Mark Wade said the challenge is harder than people would ever know than if they were in the situation to be a coach, teacher, mother and wife, and having to devote so much time and energy to things outside of the home a large portion of the school year.
“Heather does a great job with that. The result of a game might not be good.
You don’t always leave it at the gym,” Mark Wade said.
“It’s hard to compartmentalize those when you have a family at home waiting on you. I think she does a real good job to set those frustrations and disappointments aside and be a mom. I’m real proud of her.
She’s taken on a lot in the last three years.”
Through it all, Heather maintains a sense of humor.
“There’s been a few kids I said that baby is going to come out calling your name cause I said it so much during the season.”
News, Pages 1 on 02/13/2013