Coaching While Pregnant

Michael Kramer

The Central Lyon High School volleyball team, fittingly named the Lions, finished its

season in a second place in the Iowa high school state volleyball tournament last Friday,

November 14th. Their head coach Jamie Schar finished her pregnancy’s second trimester

just last month.

Schar coached the entire 2014 volleyball season with a baby on the way after she found

out she was pregnant in early May. The volleyball season started three months later in

the second week of August.

“We do a lot of summer workout, so I knew the whole summer,” Schar said.

Despite the fact that she was coaching a majority of the season during her second

trimester of her pregnancy, Schar never thought about taking the season off.

“I really enjoy my job, and I’m very active. So when talking with my doctor, I was pretty

confident that it would be a pregnancy that would, knock on wood, go as planned. So I

thought, you know, with coaching it would still keep me really active, and it has, and it’s

kept me busy, and it’s been a great season,” Schar said.

Jamie Schar with her team

Schar is currently in her third trimester of her pregnancy. Her soon to be baby boy is due

December 30th, and, while many women might take it easy on their bodies this far along

in their pregnancy, Schar was doing the opposite.

“I didn’t really think about it, I will when the seasons completed. To carry a full term I

have about six weeks left, so I was just hoping that everything would go as planned,”

Schar said. “But knowing that I have an assistant coach that would have filled in just fine

was good to know too. But I didn’t really over think it. I kind of just took it day by day

and hoped that everything would go well.”

For the most part, she never stopped doing what she had always done as a head coach. It

was only around playoff time when she started delegating some of her more physical

responsibilities to her fellow coaches and players.

“When you hit the end of that second trimester you get pretty tired, and I also teach first

grade so that’s a little exhausting… For the most part, it’s been pretty good. I’ve found

that just staying active really helps with keeping the energy level,” Schar said. “We joke

that he’ll come out bouncing because that’s all I do is jump around.”

While coach Schar didn’t think about it much and didn’t change her routine, her players

noticed some change in her coaching.

Ivy Sieperda and Sarah Halse

“Sometimes when we get a little stressed out, she calms down first,” Sarah Halse, the

now former senior captain on the Lions said. “She was really calm at our last game, and

it think I was all due to her pregnancy.”

Schar had coached Halse for her entire high school career along with fellow former

captain Ivy Sieperda, who said, first and foremost, coach Schar “wants to win.” “She

does a really good job preparing us for each match and she’s a really good coach,” Halse

added.

Regardless of who you are and what your relationship to her is, though, Schar is keeping

her mouth closed when it comes to what the name of her baby is going to be.

“We’ve given a lot of name suggestions,” Halse said. “She doesn’t like any of ours…She

said it’s going to be a different and unique name,” Sieperda added.

But that’s all the information that the girls could get out of their coach.

Despite losing in the state championship game, Central Lyon’s road to get to the title

game was one Schar and company will remember for a long time.

The Lions finished the regular season with 38 wins and only three losses. After dropping

only one set out of 16 in post-season play, the Lions met up with Janesville in the semi-

finals on November 13th. Janesville was the defending national champion and beat

Central Lyon the season before in the semi-finals. This time it was a different story.

Central Lyon lost the first two of the five set match and had to win three sets in a row in

order to keep their season alive. With plenty of their home fans making the trip to see

them, the Lions did just that in only their second season ever making it to state.

Without even knowing it, baby Schar went along for the whole ride, too.

“It’ll be a good story to tell,” Schar said