Steph Cox on Balancing Motherhood and Professional Soccer

Balancing a career with parenthood is no easy feat. OL Reign’s Steph Cox knows this better than most. The defender joined the club during its inaugural 2013 season shortly after giving birth to her first daughter, Kaylee. After eight years and welcoming her second daughter, Grace, to the family, Cox is embracing the challenges and rewards that come with juggling motherhood and professional soccer.

“When I got pregnant with Kaylee in 2012, I had decided that I still wanted to play,” Cox said. “I wanted to come back and was very motivated. I remember coming out to practice at Starfire a couple days before I had Kaylee. I wanted to be prepared to come back and start the season and build those relationships. As a mom, though, you come to realize that you don’t have control over everything. I knew what my goal was, but who knows? Kaylee was born early, but she was healthy, adaptable and sociable. She loved the environment even from a young age, but it was a lot to manage. I’m a pretty level person, but the stress of being a new mom was intense.”

For Cox, who won Olympic gold with the U.S. Women’s National Team at the 2008 summer games, soccer was an outlet from the stress of having a newborn.

And Kaylee quickly became a team favorite.

“I think that it was a pretty cool experience for her to travel around the country with me,” Cox said. “When I was with the U.S. team for a little while, she got to come to Portugal with us. My husband and my mom shared the duties as nannies. It was a pretty cool first three years for her to have that experience and be exposed to so many special people. She’s always been really comfortable around people. I remember one game in particular when Laura (Harvey) was the coach. We were in D.C. and we lost pretty badly. Kaylee was the one person that could go anywhere near her. They had a water bottle fight and were squirting one another. It really puts sports in perspective.”

Laura Harvey and Kaylee Cox

After helping the club win its second consecutive NWSL Shield in 2015, Cox hung up her boots for good—or so she thought. She, her husband Brian and Kaylee welcomed Grace to the family in April of 2016 and Cox settled into a routine of balancing coaching and raising her two daughters. She even spent 2017 as part of the club’s technical staff under Harvey.

Still, when she rejoined OL Reign as an assistant coach under Vlatko Andonovski in 2019, she found herself missing her time on the pitch.

“One thing I had to work out was the heart of ‘why would I want to go back and play?’” Cox said. “Even when I was on the coaching staff, when I would get out at practice, I would have a big smile on my face. Not that I didn’t enjoy the coaching. I liked that as well, but I just realized ‘I’m still healthy. I’m already here.’ The thing that was holding me back was fear. ‘What if I come back and I can’t do it? What if my body can’t do it? What if I’m not good enough?’ I realized that I don’t want fear to hold me back from something that I could enjoy and that I love. That’s not an example I want to pass on for my girls.”

Cox talked things over with her husband and the two decided it was feasible to give a return a shot. A conversation with Andonovski later, Cox was signed to the team as a National Team Replacement Player during the World Cup.

On June 15, 2019, Cox got to officially start her latest chapter as a player, starting and playing the full 90 minutes against the Washington Spirit in front of her parents, family, neighbors and both of her daughters.

Cox and her family (from left): daughter Kaylee, mother Cindy, Steph Cox, daughter Grace, father Rob and husband Brian/ photo courtesy Steph Cox.

With Mother’s Day just around the corner, Cox says that playing in front of your parents never stops being special, even at 34 years old. Playing in front of your children, however, is a different feeling.

“It’s fun to play in front of your kids,” Cox said. “They’re still so young, I wonder if they get it. Rather than something I want them to be in awe of, it’s something I want to be a part of. As a mom, you want them to be proud, but you also want them to see the hard work. They were there at the track with me last weekend, standing in the rain as I was running laps. They see that it’s hard work and that I need to do it. I want them to see both the hard part and the joy that you can have from doing something that you’re passionate about. It takes hard work but it’s also a lot of fun. At the games, they probably want to run on the hill or go play at the playground, but the special part for me is that after the games they get to run on the field and give me a big hug, since I haven’t gotten to see them for a couple hours. That’s a special moment.

“And I think it feels pretty cool to them that they get to come sign autographs with me,” Cox added, laughing.

With the world thrown into turmoil by COVID-19, Cox and her husband, who coaches boys’ basketball at South Kitsap High School, have welcomed the chance to spend more time as a family.

“Throughout the year, we have different seasons of busyness,” Cox said. “The fall was pretty hectic. I was finishing coaching my last high school season, we had playoffs with the Reign. When winter came, it was my husband’s first year as a head coach at South Kitsap. We were at his games cheering him on. This spring, being able to embrace all of the family time has been really nice. We got new bikes for the girls because they’re growing so quickly. We get to go outside and play. It’s been a lot of sweet time and simple times.

“Sometimes as an athlete, you want to be busy, but taking time to breathe and enjoy the simple things matters. Last week, Kaylee made homemade mac and cheese and they made a chocolate pudding pie, but they wanted to sit at our formal dinner table and have a fancy dinner with proper placemats. It’s been a really sweet time that we’ve really been embracing as a family, because we know it will eventually come to an end. Hopefully there are still some good routines that we can make a priority when more commitments come in to the picture.”

Cox knows that balancing her family and her career isn’t easy, but she’s glad she has a chance to play both positions.

“It’s a challenge,” Cox said. “You have to have the right support structure. My husband and community is super supportive for that. You also have to get a little bit lucky with the temperament of the children. Grace wouldn’t have been a good traveler. I don’t know if I would have been able to come back to play with her if she had been born first. She needed a little time to come around. You have to have the passion for it. It needs to be something that you really love to do, because it will test you. There are sacrifices that have to be made. Nothing is ever quite the way you want it. You have to know what your limits and boundaries are. At OL Reign, everyone on the team knows that everyone else is in a different situation and will do their best to give everything they have. My recovery day is walking around the neighborhood with my girls. I have to come to grips with the fact that it doesn’t look the way that it did before. But I get to give everything that I have for both my team and my family and I really cherish that.”