How Lindsay Gottlieb blends family into USC’s ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ season

A 3-month-old child sleeps peacefully in an nearly silent room within the tunnels of CU Occasions Heart. Whereas music thumps on the courtroom, the place USC and Colorado are warming up for a important sport within the Pac-12 convention race, the one sound in a room usually supposed for movie research is the rhythmic suction of a breast pump.

Lindsay Gottlieb scrolls via her telephone whereas her breast milk drips into small clear bottles.

“It might be good to get this one on the highway,” the USC head coach says, the anxiousness creeping into her voice.

From prime, USC girls’s basketball coach Lindsay Gottlieb pushes her daughter Reese down a lodge hallway earlier than a sport in opposition to Colorado on Jan. 29. Gottlieb talks to her gamers earlier than a sport in opposition to Colorado.

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Whereas placing USC in place for its first NCAA event look since 2014, the 45-year-old Gottlieb can also be adjusting to life as a mom of two. The second-year head coach gave start to daughter Reese on Oct. 15, was again on the sideline for USC’s season opener 24 days in a while Nov. 8 and lifted the Trojans into the Related Press prime 25 for the primary time since 2016 on Feb. 13.

It’s been, Gottlieb mentioned, a once-in-a-lifetime season.

The household journey will proceed in Las Vegas, the place Gottlieb will take Reese for the Pac-12 girls’s basketball event. With its greatest convention file in additional than a decade, USC (21-8, 11-7 Pac-12) is the No. 6 seed going through No. 11 Oregon State at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday on the Michelob Extremely Enviornment.

5 years after having her first little one, Gottlieb has seen the elevated dialog and understanding surrounding working moms in sports activities.

Arizona head coach Adia Barnes was the topic of a viral ESPN sideline report after she pumped breast milk throughout halftime of the nationwide championship sport in 2021. Within the WNBA’s 2020 collective bargaining settlement that elevated salaries to an all-time excessive, it was the expanded maternity and household planning advantages that had many out and in of the league most impressed.

It’s an indication that mixing household and training is “extra normalized,” Gottlieb mentioned, however when she spoke to different moms final summer time, quietly voicing her plan to return in time for the start of her second season with the Trojans, she acquired cautious encouragement. There will probably be loads of seasons, she was reminded. She had just one probability to boost Reese.

However to her, this season, when USC welcomed seven new transfers, additionally deserved ample focus. To strike the steadiness, Gottlieb’s prime objective is to easily be current, whether or not on the baseline at observe or whereas getting her youngsters prepared for mattress at residence.

Sitting within the nook of her front room, Gottlieb feeds Reese on a latest weekday morning. They’re bathed in mushy morning gentle filtering via floor-to-ceiling home windows overlooking a manicured yard. Gottlieb’s five-year-old son Jordan eats a light-weight breakfast of bacon, fruit and eggs at a small desk close by and watches “Pinocchio” earlier than going to kindergarten.

The picturesque begin to the morning is the results of a choreographed dance of assist.

The household lives with an au pair who helps get Jordan prepared for college within the mornings and picks him up from faculty. Gottlieb’s husband Patrick Martin works from residence as a finance entrepreneur, offering distant work flexibility. A doula helped Gottlieb via her start and accompanied Reese throughout highway journeys for her first 4 months.

Gottlieb is aware of her delicate balancing act isn’t an simply attainable blueprint for each mom. She acknowledges her success to work in a job that, whereas consuming and difficult in its personal approach, has versatile hours, pays sufficient to afford childcare and permits her kids to hitch her within the enviornment, at observe or on the highway.

“To have the ability to do each on the prime of my life, it’s one thing that I don’t take with no consideration,” Gottlieb mentioned. “It’s additionally as a result of I’ve unbelievable folks round me permitting me to do it.”

From prime, USC girls’s basketball head coach Lindsay Gottlieb, second from left, meets along with her workers at halftime throughout a house sport in opposition to California on Jan. 13. Gottlieb, left, with husband Patrick Martin, proper, spend time with daughter Reese, heart, within the arms of doula Ofelia Aragon on Jan. 13.

Whereas interviewing for the USC job in 2021, Gottlieb, who spent the earlier two seasons as an assistant for the Cleveland Cavaliers, made it clear to USC athletic director Mike Bohn she needed alternatives to combine her household into work. She wasn’t pregnant on the time, however she and Martin had hopes of increasing their household.

Touting the facility of the “Trojan Household,” Bohn had no reservations about welcoming Gottlieb’s rising household. At Cincinnati, he labored with volleyball coach Molly Alvey, whose two kids had been additionally born near the start of the Bearcats’ seasons.

“It comes right down to making an attempt to ensure that our coach has assist, has the encouragement from the administration that hey, all the pieces’s going to be nice,” Bohn mentioned. “Having kids round our elite athletes and round our establishment as an entire is a superb blessing.”

For somebody who half-jokingly mentioned she as soon as had plans to have 5 youngsters earlier than 30 years outdated, USC assistant Nneka Enemkpali sought affirmation that being a mom and a coach was attainable by selecting to work on staffs with moms. After beginning as a video assistant at Gonzaga, the place head coach and mom of three Lisa Fortier led the Bulldogs to seven 20-win seasons in her first eight years, the three-time All-Huge 12 choice from Texas is in her second 12 months at USC with Gottlieb.

“It could possibly appear very unattainable due to the extent of time that we put into watching movie and we journey on a regular basis,” Enemkpali mentioned. “A variety of our time is devoted to our younger girls, which, is the job that we selected, the job that we signed up for, however to have the ability to watch her do it and do it at such a excessive degree, it makes it really feel rather a lot much less out of attain.”

From prime, Lindsay Gottlieb will get able to take her son Jordan to high school as he performs along with his cousin, Jack. Gottlieb heads downstairs throughout a crew observe to pump breastmilk in her workplace.

Gottlieb, the youngest of 4 kids, felt empowered by her dad and mom to pursue any profession. She watched her mom function a stay-at-home mother for 10 years after Gottlieb was born, then make a profession as a stockbroker. Her father was a lawyer. They particularly targeted on displaying their three daughters that there was nothing they couldn’t do due to their gender.

Gottlieb hopes to do the identical for Reese.

“I need her to be in a state of affairs,” Gottlieb mentioned whereas holding Reese in her arms, “the place she’s in a position to make no matter decisions she desires and it doesn’t damage her means to achieve success, both as a mom or as a working individual, no matter profession that she chooses.”

Success is all Gottlieb is aware of in her teaching profession. After main California to seven NCAA event appearances in eight seasons, together with a Ultimate 4 berth in her second 12 months, she joined the Cavaliers workers and have become the seventh feminine assistant coach in NBA historical past in 2019.

So the truth that the Trojans are a projected No. 8 seed within the NCAA event by ESPN doesn’t shock Gottlieb, at the same time as she’s tending to her rising household.

“We’ve put ourselves thus far in place [for the NCAA tournament] and that was at all times the objective,” Gottlieb mentioned. “Simply because I’m having a child, I’m not going to take any of our sights off the objective.”

On a latest weekday morning at 7 a.m. whereas Reese slept upstairs and Jordan confirmed a customer round, Gottlieb already had sport movie loaded up on her laptop computer arrange within the kitchen. Whereas she spends much less time within the workplace now, she makes probably the most of each minute.

Gottlieb feeds Reese within the morning, drops Jordan off at college, packs for an upcoming highway journey, holds Zoom conferences along with her workers and even squeezes in a brief Peloton exercise all earlier than the crew’s 1 p.m. observe. It’s commonplace for her to slot in a couple of calls on her drive.

From prime, USC’s girls’s basketball crew warms up earlier than a sport in opposition to Colorado on Jan. 29. Lindsay Gottlieb squeezes in a brief Peloton journey at residence earlier than heading to observe.

“It’s exceptional to see what the feminine physique can undergo but additionally how we will proceed to adapt,” Enemkpali mentioned. “She simply continues to empower us as coaches to assist lead and put our gamers in place to achieve success. However on the helm of it herself, she simply continues to do exceptional issues as a mother.”

After Gottlieb gave start to Jordan in Could 2017, he was sufficiently old to hitch her at work when the season began. Jordan got here to campus nearly daily, taking naps and enjoying within the coaches places of work. He was a fixture at practices and even took his first steps in entrance of the crew as he adopted the gamers out onto the courtroom someday.

However the timing was trickier for Reese.

After asserting in April to her gamers that she was anticipating, Gottlieb executed an in depth plan to maintain the Trojans on observe and reduce time she would spend away from the child who would have been too younger to repeat Jordan’s each day commutes to the workplace.

The workers re-arranged the preseason coaching schedule to put in performs through the summer time earlier than Gottlieb left. Gottlieb coached till the ultimate weeks earlier than her due date, generally sitting on an train ball within the fitness center because the crew went via drills. When she was out, affiliate head coach Beth Burns stepped into the pinnacle teaching function, and director of participant personnel Courtney Jaco served as an extra assistant.

Workers communication via Zoom conferences, textual content messages or emails substitute for in-person talks, permitting Gottlieb to overlook only one feeding on days when she goes into the workplace.

One 12 months into her USC tenure, Gottlieb felt she had already built-in Jordan into her work. He was at an age the place he may simply come to video games or go to the workplace after faculty. Including Reese to the combo compelled the household to discover a complete new routine.

Jordan, an outgoing kindergartner who’s already engaged on dribbling a basketball between his legs and draining long-distance pictures on the household’s Pop-A-Shot sport within the storage, had basketball video games and a whale watching journey deliberate at residence through the weekend Gottlieb took Reese to Utah and Colorado. He referred to as on FaceTime to say howdy to his sister and inform Gottlieb concerning the 17 dolphins they noticed.

She would have hated the bumpy journey on the boat, however feels a tinge of guilt for not at all times being there.

From prime, Lindsay Gottlieb’s husband, Patrick Martin seems to be over their kids Jordan, left, and Reese at residence. Gottlieb runs observe along with her crew.

“I made the choice to not be the mother that has a 9-to-5 the place you’re at each exercise on the weekends,” Gottlieb mentioned, “however he will get to come back with me rather a lot and he will get to do some cool issues.”

Jordan nonetheless talks fondly of changing into greatest associates with former Cleveland Indians first baseman Carlos Santana’s daughters, who lived subsequent door to Gottlieb in Cleveland, and loves sampling room service when on the highway. Jordan can convey his associates to his mother’s video games, and after massive video games like USC’s upset over then-No. 2 Stanford on Jan. 15 when the Trojans beat the Cardinal for the primary time since 2014, Jordan will get to leap into his mother’s arms in a celebration that makes up for another misplaced moments.

“The feelings of a sport, no matter they’re, and so they’re actual and intense, it pales compared to seeing your child,” Gottlieb mentioned. “It’s simply so grounding in that sense of as necessary because the video games are to us, they’re not the be-all, end-all.”

In her time with the Cavaliers, Gottlieb realized that sitting round all sport day and specializing in it for hours earlier than tipoff supplied diminishing returns over the course of an 82-game season.

As a substitute, Gottlieb says, evidently effectively focusing her psychological vitality on a pregame routine that features pumping breast milk in between addressing her gamers and finalizing the sport plan has introduced out the perfect in her. She trusts her assistants and gamers and enjoys the quiet moments she will get to herself whereas feeding Reese.

From prime, Lindsay Gottlieb pumps breastmilk in her workplace throughout a crew observe. Gottlieb watches movie along with her gamers.

Gottlieb was pumping breast milk after feeding Reese a ultimate time earlier than tipoff. The infant slept in a sling wrapped across the doula’s torso.

Ofelia Aragon is “the child whisperer.”

The doula packed Reese’s baggage for the highway journey to Utah and Colorado, making certain that whereas the Trojans play two top-25 groups in one of the vital tough highway journeys within the Pac-12, Reese can have bottles, toys and blankets on the prepared. She arrange Reese’s altering station on the desk of a lodge room and hung the child’s favourite toy overhead by attaching it to a lamp.

Aragon, who stays along with her purchasers for as much as 4 months after start earlier than serving to every household discover one other full-time nanny, bounced Reese on her lap whereas Gottlieb coached on the sideline.

Gottlieb needed to cease on the lookout for Reese behind the bench through the sport. USC outlasted the then-No. 25 Buffaloes to keep away from getting swept on the highway and comfortably keep within the top-half of the Pac-12 after being picked to complete ninth within the preseason. Gottlieb subtly pumped her fist on the ultimate horn.

Within the locker room, tears welled in her eyes as she addressed her crew. She joked that she used to have the ability to blame her feelings on being pregnant, however no, she’s at all times been a crier.

The psychological stress has been at an all-time excessive for her. The Trojans had seven of their first 9 video games after Christmas on the highway. Highway video games take rather a lot out of her, Gottlieb informed her gamers. However with a 6-3 file through the tough stretch, the Trojans had purpose to rejoice.

Gottlieb praised the person performances of her stars, celebrated the crew’s defensive effort and reminded her gamers that their journey wasn’t achieved. To the joyful screams of her gamers, Gottlieb broke out the Griddy dance. Then she walked down the corridor, opened the door to a quiet room and broke right into a smile when she noticed Reese.

“You’re our good luck allure,” Gottlieb whispered because the child ate.