- Olympic athletes like Kendall Coyne Schofield challenge motherhood's impact on sports careers.
- Elana Meyers Taylor, a decorated athlete, balances parenting and Olympic aspirations.
- Support systems and policies evolve, aiding athletes in combining motherhood with sports.
MILAN — The message Kendall Coyne Schofield posted on her social media was not terribly difficult to decipher.
A framed blackboard propped in front of Schofield's two dogs, Penny and Blue, spelled out the message: "Baby Schofield Coming Summer 2023." The dogs wore matching big-sister bandanas in case something got lost in translation.
Yet along with the congratulations to Schofield and her husband, Michael, came a rather puzzling rejoinder.
"A lot of people said, 'Hey, congratulations on a great career,'" Coyne Schofield said at the Olympics media summit in October. "I was like, 'Wait. I didn't announce my retirement.'"
It is a uniquely female athlete's quandary, the presumption that parenthood means the end of competition. Athletes-turned-dads return to their sport with a shrug, with nary a raised eyebrow about how they might juggle it all. Yet somehow – through the feminism movement to the "You've come a long way, baby" campaign to the birth and eventual seismic growth in women's professional sports – sports-star moms, not unlike those in the working world, still face the same age-old questions.
This month, six American women will cart their baby gear along with their Team USA kits to Milan Cortina, pulling the double duty as mom and Olympian.
Coyne Schofield – a gold medalist, three-time Olympian and the mother of Drew – will captain the women's hockey team. Kelly Curtis, mother to two-year-old Maeve, the first Black athlete to represent Team USA in skeleton, returns for her second Games. Elana Meyers Taylor, mother to Nico and Noah, is the most decorated Black athlete in Winter Games history and will go for her sixth Olympic medal in Cortina. Her teammate, Kaillie Humphries – mom of 15-month-old Aulden – is the first female bobsledder to defend her Olympic title and will vie for her fourth gold. Tabitha Peterson Lovick is making her third Olympics in curling, and her sister and teammate, Tara Peterson, will make her second Olympics run, with son Eddie, born in September 2024, in tow.
None will say it is easy – on their bodies, their training and occasionally, their peace of mind – but impossible?
"I knew I could return to not only where I was but better," Coyne Schofield said. "I wanted my son to know he wasn't the reason I stopped playing hockey but the reason I continued to play hockey. And any hard day I might have, or source of inspiration I need, I can just look at him and it's right in front of me."
The sisterhood within motherhood
In 2019, Nike debuted an ad campaign, "Dream Crazier," showcasing women athletes and their accomplishments, urging other women to show "what crazy can do."
In response, track athlete Alysia Montaño crafted a video in conjunction with the New York Times, parodying Nike's sponsor's ad. Then under contract with the shoe company, the mother of two said in a voice over, "If you want to be an athlete and a mother, well that's just crazy."
She explained that the shoe company paused her sponsorship after she told its representative she was pregnant.
Montaño's outspokenness – and her break with Nike – created a movement, #DreamMaternity. As women stepped into the spotlight to share their stories and their frustration that motherhood and peak athletic success were somehow mutually exclusive, action followed. The US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, with outside pressure from several senators, created reforms to ensure women maintained their health insurance after getting pregnant.
And then came the moms who proved how outdated the thinking was. Allyson Felix – who won world championship gold after giving birth to daughter, Camryn – broke with Nike, citing maternity pay. Serena Williams won a match after giving birth to daughter, Olympia, and Alex Morgan scored a goal for the US Women's National Team after having daughter, Charlie.
What had been absurdly labeled impossible was suddenly proven to be very doable. By 2022, the US Olympic Planning Committee launched the Women's Health Initiative, bringing together a collection of athletes and caregivers to create action plans to support mothers and mothers-to-be. At the 2024 Paris Games, the Olympic Village included, for the first time, a nursery with free diapers and wipes.
Today, the training centers provide lactation and feeding rooms, and the US Olympic Planning Committee offers everything from physical and mental health support to nutritional planning and postpartum recovery strategies.
National teams, once ill-equipped to handle maternity leaves, now are required to give advance notice for team meetings so athletes can find adequate childcare, and the US Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation ranking/quota protection policy means women who return after childbirth do not have to repeat the qualification process to regain their spots.
Finally, For All Mothers, an organization that grew out of Montaño's original plea, provided $5,000 grants this year to each of the moms headed to the Olympics.
But the real power comes from the individuals, not the organizations – the sisterhood within motherhood.
"We have a great network to rely on," Curtis said.
Meyers Taylor, the most decorated Black winter athlete in history, is, if you will, the den mom.
The oldest among the mothers, she also has the oldest kids and has plenty of "been there" advice to share. Hers has not been an easy road. Her oldest son, Nico, has Down syndrome and both he and his little brother, Noah, are deaf. Nico was born at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the well-organized plan she and her husband, Nic, crafted for her to return to competition – sports psychologists and nannies and trainers all lined up – disappeared when the world shut down.
Instead, Meyers Taylor, recovering from a C-section, figured things out on her own while simultaneously teaching herself American Sign Language.
She returned to qualify for the Games in Beijing. There, at age 37 and with two-year-old Nico in tow, she won a silver in monobob and bronze in the two-person bobsled. In November 2022, she welcomed Noah. That pregnancy took its toll – she couldn't lie down flat for six weeks – and it left Meyers Taylor questioning if the end of her career was near.
She skipped the entirety of the 2022-23 season. A year later, she won a silver at the world championships in monobob, and this year took a bronze, positioning her for this: her fifth Olympics.
"It's not always perfect, and I'm not always 100%," she said. "But I'm going to do what I can to get on that podium."
Doing it all
As anyone who has traveled so far as the grocery store with a toddler in tow can relate, maneuvering through Olympic sport training and competition while parenting could be an Olympic sport unto itself.
It takes equal parts precise planning and a willingness to embrace total chaos.
An example: Curtis, who's been living in Cortina d'Ampezzo, had to fly back to the US for a skeleton competition in Lake Placid, New York. She and her husband, Jeff Milliron, packed up her sliding gear, Maeve's stuff and their two cats – "We looked like a traveling circus," she laughs – only to arrive at the Venice airport and discover somehow the payment for Maeve's ticket hadn't processed.
"I was like, 'OK, here's my credit card,'" she said. "That's not how they do it. We had to go home, rebook and come back the next day with all of our stuff. I kept thinking, 'This is not a good omen.'"
Humphries, whose son has stamped 10 different countries on his passport in his 15 months of living, has sought out diaper rash remedies across the globe and Meyers Taylor once found herself checking a toilet in St. Moritz, worried one of the boys' cochlear implants wound up there (it didn't).
But while others might question, "Why do it?" they respond with the same refrain: How could they not?
Humphries, who grew up in Canada, dreamed of winning an Olympic gold at seven. She has achieved that dream three times over, albeit far away from the childhood vision that included Humphries succeeding in the pool.
Her course to bobsled success has been arduous and circuitous, including moments of firsts for a woman – one of the firsts to pilot a mixed-gender team in four-man, and the first to drive an all-female team against men in a World Cup – and fights for a woman. She filed harassment complaints against Canadian bobsled executives and was granted permission to leave Team Canada to join Team USA.
Her singleminded pursuit of Olympic excellence was just that – her pursuit – but it also meant she put the rest of her life's desires on the back burner.
"I put the sport ahead of family for a lot of years," she admitted.
Married in 2019 to American bobsledder Travis Armbruster, they tried for years to start a family, only to find that Humphries had stage four endometriosis. Two-and-a-half years ago, they started IVF.
"It was a two-and-a-half-year process, with multiple failures along the way," Humphries said. "Injections, hormones, all of it, while trying to be the best version of myself, was not easy."
Aulden arrived in June 2024. He has spent months in Europe while his mom chased Olympic qualifying.
"He's not going to remember this, but we'll have the pictures and the memories," she said. "For me to hold onto this, to chase down my dream and take him along? I am so grateful for this experience. I get to have my cake and eat it, too."
