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Michele Vasconcelos signs autographs with daughter, Scarlett following a match at SeatGeek Stadium. (Daniel Bartel/ISIPhotos.com)

Mother’s Day special: Parenting while playing, Red Stars moms doing both

Michele Vasconcelos was watching on TV in Brazil when the Red Stars picked her 11th overall in the 2017 National Women’s Soccer League draft. She didn’t realize the wait to begin her rookie season would be more than a year.

“I had felt off towards the end of our trip,” Vasconcelos said. “I thought it was just because of traveling. I remember my husband asked, ‘Are you pregnant?’ And as soon as we got home, he made me take a pregnancy test.”

It was positive.

Vasconcelos had torn her ACL as a college sophomore knew what it meant to overcome setbacks in her career, but pregnancy would be nothing like returning from an injury.

“I was devastated for a long time,” Vasconcelos said. “With an ACL, I feel like you know more of what to expect, but with female athletes that get pregnant at the elite level, there’s not a lot of women who have done it before. I remember trying to look up articles, but there’s just not a lot.”

Vasconcelos had never even visited Chicago before, and now she was picturing raising a baby there while having a successful professional soccer career. At 23, she envisioned working with her husband, Pedro, to build a stable foundation before starting a family. It was a weight she wasn’t yet prepared to carry but with the support of her husband, she would.

Vasconcelos flew to Chicago soon after the draft to let coach Rory Dames know in person that it would be a year before she could join the team.

“When I got to Chicago, he right away said, ‘You’re going to score a lot of goals on this field,'” Vasconcelos said. “I was like, ‘Well, let’s take a step back.’ I told him the news, and he was really supportive. He told me he was happy that I was adding another person to my family and that they’d see me next year.”

Vasconcelos returned to Chicago once more before giving birth to a daughter, Scarlett, in August. She recalls being a few months’ pregnant, standing on the sideline, watching as her future teammates practiced, feeling embarrassed she wasn’t participating. But as practice ended, she got the reassurance she needed from a new teammate who knew all too well what she was going through.

Sarah Gorden grew up in Elk Grove. Soccer led her to DePaul, where she played five seasons for the Blue Demons. During the 2013 season, at 20, Gorden was sidelined, pregnant with her son.

Caiden was born on Feb. 17, 2014, and since then, Gorden has raised him on her own.

She was back playing within six weeks and had her best college season in 2014 after his birth. In 2016, she became the first Blue Demon drafted in the NWSL, selected in the third round by the Red Stars.

“When I came into the league, we were making $10,000 a season,” Gorden said. “I had to live with my parents in Elk Grove. I had no other choice, my checks were like $800 a month. I was trying to pay for his daycare, but it wouldn’t even cover the cost.

“I was a rookie, I didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes, and I didn’t know if I could bring him to practice. It was a mess, I was a wreck with anxiety, thinking, ‘I can’t do this.’ ”

Gorden didn’t feel secure enough in her position with the Red Stars to seek the assistance she needed to do her job. No other teammates at the time were mothers, and she didn’t know another woman in the league who was raising a child.

So during her rookie season, she went without support from the league or her team, and got by with help from her parents.

The NWSL does not have a league-wide policy on providing childcare and support for travel to working mothers and their children. Each team is different, and establishing that support within the Red Stars organization took time.

“Shame on us for not having anticipated and thought through that,” Red Stars owner Arnim Whisler said. “This is a great example of why our league has to have a formal policy and our teams have to have formal policies. We won’t miss it again. I won’t let the next Sarah wonder if they’re secure enough that they can ask for childcare.”

Their journeys through motherhood have been drastically different, but Vasconcelos and Gorden are tethered by the stark reality that juggling being a great mom and a successful working woman is no easy feat.

The Red Stars are the only team in the NWSL with two players who are mothers. This season, Gorden and Vasconcelos have been provided a babysitter at practice during the summer months when school is out. When Caiden and Scarlett travel with the team, flights and extra hotel rooms are covered, and when the kids aren’t able to travel with the team, childcare is provided when needed.

“Arnim has done a really good job of giving us what we asked for,” Gorden said. “I asked him to pay for a babysitter, and I asked him to pay for Caiden to come on the trips. This year I asked him if he would pay for Caiden to be watched when my parents can’t. Honestly, my reasoning was if you want us to be here, this is what we need.”

As Vasconcelos left practice on this particular April afternoon, she held a green water bottle in one hand while using the other to cradle Scarlett, who was fitted in a full soccer uniform, including cleats. It wasn’t the plan, but it’s right.

Scarlett and Caiden are growing up on the sidelines their mothers command, and that’s a plan Vasconcelos and Gorden couldn’t have dreamed up.

“I hope that a woman never has to second guess that she’s worthy of being somewhere just because she has a child,” Gorden said. “She should feel supported financially and that she has the right things in place that she can pursue both. Because being a pro athlete, how many people are even able to do that?”


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