6 minute read
Having It All
BY ADAM LUCAS // PHOTOS BY HEATHER O’REILLY
Being a new mother hasn’t slowed down Heather O’Reilly’s transition into the coaching world
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Heather O’Reilly imagined herself as a world class soccer player. She imagined herself as a national champion and as a Women’s World Cup champion, and of course as a Tar Heel.
But imagining herself as a mother?
“I couldn’t wait to win a World Cup,” she says. “I couldn’t wait to go to Carolina. But being a mommy? That was far down my list of life dreams.”
Which has made the past year such an awakening. O’Reilly and her husband, former Tar Heel lacrosse player Dave Werry, welcomed son William on June 18, 2020. In the middle of a global pandemic, it wasn’t exactly an easy situation for a firsttime parent. But O’Reilly found that it changed her world—in all the best ways.
“I love being a mom,” she says. “He is so stinking cute. A few of my peers who had kids told me that you come back as a better player after having a baby, because you have a whole new perspective. I’m not still playing, of course, but there’s no question it gives you more of a balance in life. Sometimes as a pro athlete, you can have tunnel vision and lose perspective. I still have certain ambitions and drives. I want to help the Heels make a run and player development is very important to me. But I have a newfound appreciation for family life and raising a healthy baby, and I feel my marriage is stronger than ever. Being a mom has been a wonderful addition to my already full plate and exciting life.”
O’Reilly was a part of two national championship teams at Carolina, and she won three Olympic gold medals and a World Cup in 2015. She isn’t lacking for accomplishments, which makes her voice so respected on the Tar Heel sideline.
That highly decorated career meant she was always on the move to somewhere else, and “home” was a very flexible concept. William’s addition has given a new permanence to home, with O’Reilly finding for one of the first times that being away for more than a couple of nights leaves her missing the familiar family routine.
During Carolina’s unusual spring season, with COVID-19 travel procedures in place and travel spacing requirements, she occasionally flew to road games instead of traveling on the team bus. That gave her a few more hours— or sometimes even a whole night—at home with her family.
The balance between family and work— something every coach at the college level eventually has to confront—reminded O’Reilly of a very good example she observed during her Tar Heel career.
“I remember practicing at Finley Fields, and (women’s lacrosse coach) Jenny Levy would be out there with her daughter in a stroller,” O’Reilly says. “I remember thinking that was so badass seeing Jenny do her thing with her baby there. There are times I bring William to practice because of conflicting schedules or whatever, and our players do love it.”
Virtually every Tar Heel on the team was well acquainted growing up with O’Reilly’s incredible career. They’ve already patterned their games and their career path after her. And it just might be that they can now see her as an entirely different type of role model.
“I’ve got 20 built-in babysitters, so that is nice,” O’Reilly says with a grin. “And if I can show the girls it’s possible to do both, and it doesn’t have to take away your drive or competitiveness, that’s even better. You can be a wonderful mom and a great competitor who is involved in high level sports.”
DAILY DIALOGUE
BY PAT JAMES // PHOTOS BY JEFFREY CAMARATI
Makenna Jones and her mother make a daily connection
Growing up in Tampa, Florida, North Carolina women’s tennis graduate student Makenna Jones and her mother, former Stanford All-American and WTA Tour player Tami Whitlinger-Jones, had a deal.
Three times each week, the mother and daughter practiced together, whether the former wanted to or not. Tennis, after all, was just an activity to her, and she never quite had the same passion for it as her mother. As the years went on, though, and Makenna established herself as one of the best junior players in the country, that began to change. So did her respect for Tami’s teachings.
“It was very cool growing up, and the older I got, the more I learned and appreciated how amazing she really was – and still is,” Makenna said. “I realized that I really was learning from someone who I wanted to be, and I think that was something I probably took for granted a little bit, but also something that’s just so incredibly cool. It was just really awesome to see the way that we could foster her experience into my game.”
And to see how it brought them even closer together.
Throughout Makenna’s juniors career, she and Tami traveled to every tournament together. Even now, about five years later, they still talk fondly of their favorite trips. They also
joke about the ones that were memorable for all the wrong reasons.
“For a while, it was really she and I against the world, basically,” Makenna said. “I think it just made us so close to the extent that my mom was my person.”
As is common, Makenna said she and Tami butted heads as she neared the end of high school. Once she arrived at UNC, though, and got her first taste of the freedom she’d been seeking, she started realizing what her mom truly means to her.
“I call her every single day,” she said. “If we miss one day, it’s usually very weird. She’ll text me at night and be like, ‘Sorry, we missed each other. Let’s catch up tomorrow.’ It’s so cute because there’s not that much to say that happens in one single day, but somehow we’ll find things to talk about. I talk to other people and they’re like, ‘Oh, I haven’t talked to my parent in two weeks or whatever.’ I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, if I don’t talk to my mom once, it’s twice a day.’”
At times when she was younger, Makenna said her relationship with her mom felt more like that of coach and player than mother and daughter. That couldn’t be anything further from the case now.
“I’m just so lucky to have the relationship that I do with my mom, and I honestly don’t know how I would go about things without her,” Makenna said. “She’s my rock, my best friend, my everything. I just think that’s so cool to have in a mom, and what a special, unique relationship we were able to foster out of what could have been kind of a difficult situation managing the sport and the parenting at the same time.”
