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Open Adoption in the News

OSU’s One True Diaper Dandy: Coach Judy Spoelstra fills her daily routine even more now with her young son

By Abby Haight
The Oregonian
Sunday, February 8, 2004

Start in a darkened hotel room in Tokyo. The telephone rings. It is 6:30 a.m. Judy Spoelstra shakes herself awake, listens to the voice on the other end, tries to remember the questions she is supposed to ask.

“What is it?” whispers her roommate, Kristina Rukstelyte.

Spoelstra has tears in her eyes. “I think I’ve got a baby.”

Or start at a gathering in Portland. There are six couples. And Spoelstra.

They are all excited. They are all scared. They have the same conviction- that they have the love and stability to adopt a child.

Spoelstra already has approached the state of Oregon about adopting through its system and was told, flatly, no. Single? No. Over 40? No. The master’s degree? The well-paying job as the Oregon State women’s basketball coach? The strong Spoelstra family ties? No. Sorry.

But Spoelstra is determined.

She finds Open Adoption and Family Services of Portland, which welcomes nontraditional families in its system, where birth mothers pick the adoptive parents and often develop lifelong relationships. Over the months, counselors work with Spoelstra, visit her home in Corvallis, answer her questions. She submits her final papers and, on April 25, 2003, enters the pool of eligible parents.

Now that Spoelstra has taken the step, she wants a baby. Now. But she learns that couples usually have to wait nine to 12 months. A single parent? The wait is even longer.

She is resigned to patience.

Or start, really, at the beginning, 43 years ago. With John and Beryl Spoelstra driving their Impala a little too fast from Everett to Kennewich because there is a 5-week-old girl who needs a family and the Spoelstras – they had adopted their son, Bob, when he was 9 weeks old - want to be that family.

They meet the infant girl at noon, hold her close, make goo-goo faces. An adoption counselor says she never has seen a more perfect match. The Spoelstras are supposed to take the afternoon to think about it.

They are driving west in the Impala, their new daughter, Judy, sleeping to the rumple of the engine, at 12:30 p.m.

Evan Nytanu Spoelstra’s attention was focused on something. The corner of a magazine? A stuffed caterpillar? The television remote? He was on a blanket, on the floor of the women’s basketball office at Gill Coliseum and he really – really – wanted whatever it was he saw. He twisted on his back, reached, kicked his feet for leverage.

The office is part work space, part playpen. There was a tube of Desitin on a table, an outgrown bassinet filled with stuffed toys, stacks of fame videos. Pictures of Oregon State players were interspersed with pictures of Evan on the wall and desks. A bouncy version of “There’s a Hole in the Bucket” floated from a small CD player.

With practiced skill, Judy Spoelstra changed the diaper on her squirming son. “In high school, you know how you’re talking with your friends?” Spoelstra asked. She was in T-shirt and jeans, her 6-foot-1 frame folded as she knelt on the floor with Evan. “And they’re saying, ‘I want two kids. I want three kids.’ I said, ‘I want to adopt.’ And they’d just look at me.”

For the last eight months, Spoelstra has been a single mom to one of the most demanding and stressful professions. She knows she is fortunate to have the income to hire a nanny, to have the support and help of her family and the extended family of OSU coaches and players, to have an employer who is happy to see Evan in the office, at practices, at games.

But becoming an adoptive mom was a given for Spoelstra through high school in East Wenatchee, through college at Washington State and, for two years, at Oregon State, where she was a first-team All-American. Through a professional career in Japan and her first coaching jobs, at Idaho and Montana State.

At Montana State, on of Spoelstra’s closest friends was June Daugherty, then coach of Boise State. Daugherty and her husband, Mike, had twins about nine years ago, and Spoelstra loved holding and playing with the infants.

“You could see she was really natural with kids,” said Daugherty, now the coach at Washington. “You can tell when people are comfortable with children. You could tell she really enjoyed being around little children.” In her last year in Bozeman, in 1994-95, Spoelstra began more seriously investigating adoption and weighing the choice between open and closed adoption. In open adoption, the birth mother meets the adoptive parents and can continue a relationship.

Spoelstra’s adoption had been closed – birth and adoptive parents never knowing each other. She has never met her birth mother. When she was 29, Spoelstra hired an intermediary who found the woman and offered her a meeting. Spoelstra’s birth mother didn’t respond.

Spoelstra pondered the options.

“It’s not like, ‘Do I want diet or regular?’ You have to think about how that process is going to affect your life, your child’s life,” she said.

But the question was pushed into the background when Spoelstra was hired at Oregon State in 1995. It wasn’t until 2003 that she resumed the process.

In June 2002, Spoelstra attended her first meeting with Open Adoption and Family Services. She felt stable in her job and the Corvallis community and, after passing 40, she knew she needed to act soon.

From her parents to her players to her fellow coaches in the Pacific-10 Conference, Spoelstra’s decision came as no surprise.

“She’s always talked about it,” senior guard Leilani Estavan said. “I think it’s neat for her to have Evan. I think she’s the same person. But now I think she’s more happy and at peace.”

Spoelstra joked that she had mothered players for years.

“I’ve always been a mother,” she said. “I just hadn’t had a baby.”

At Open Adoption and Family Services, birth mothers study profiles of prospective parents. They often meet before the baby is born. Some will have close relationships after the adoption. Others are satisfied with pictures or occasional meetings.

Once she entered the pool in April 2003, Spoelstra figured it would be a year or more before she got a child. So when she had the opportunity to join several former players, including Rukstelyte, scrimmaging with the Japanese national team in Japan, she jumped at returning to the country where she had played professionally.

But a short time later – May 22 – a young woman gave birth to a 7-pound, 6-ounce son at Legacy Emanuel Hospital & Health Center. She called her counselor at Open Adoption and Family Services.

“Tell Judy that I’ve had my baby and she can come pick him up,” the woman said.

A frantic round of telephone calls followed until a counselor reached Spoelstra in Japan.

Spoelstra few to Portland. Forty-five minutes later, Beryl Spoelstra flew in from a camping trip in Leavenworth. The two dashed to the hospital, which was waiting to discharge the birth mother.

Spoelstra and the birth mother met alone. As they talked, Spoelstra asked, Why me?

The birth mother told her that she liked that Spoestra had lived in Japan and spoke some Japanese, that she was in an athletic community rich in racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. Evan is Cambodian, African-American and Hispanic.

Foremost, the birth mother said she chose Spoelstra because she was herself adopted and would understand many of the hurdles Evan might face.

“Not having that opportunity (to meet before the birth), to both decide, was a leap of faith on my part,” Spoelstra said. “But I thought, ‘She just had a leap of faith with me.’”

Judy and Beryl Spoelstra had arrived at the hospital at 4 p.m. By 8 p.m., they were driving towards Corvallis.

“Now you know how I felt when they put you and Bob in my arms,” Beryl Spoelstra told her daughter. “Instant love.”

Evan is an easy baby.

You expect his mother to say that, but others confirm it. He rarely cries or, if he does, it is just long enough to squeeze out a few tears. He is a seasoned air traveler. Lately, he is supremely content bouncing in his Johnny Jump-Up seat that gives him a view of Spoelstra’s office and the basketball reception room.

For more than a year before she adopted Evan, Spoelstra gathered a list of names. She chose Evan – Welsh for “John,” her father’s name and brother’s middle name. Nytanu means “rainbow” and is the name his birth mother gave Evan.

Evan goes to most home games, sitting behind the Oregon State bench with his nanny, Jenn Toepfer. Fans stop to pat him, to let him grab a finger, to cajole a laugh. Sometimes, the mothers of players take him. If he is tired, he falls asleep, no matter if the band is playing “Hail to Old OSU.” A bottle and diaper at halftime is his only demand.

“Sometimes, it’s like, ‘Is this baby for real?’” Toepfer said.

Spoelstra admitted she was concerned that having Evan would change her, make her softer on her players, take time away from coaching demands such as watching videotape. After Saturday night’s 75-61 win over Oregon, Spoelstra is 122-129 in nine seasons and 12-9 this season. The 2000 Pac-10 coach of the year, Spoelstra and her team are trying to reach the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1996.

But Spoelstra melded motherhood with coaching.

She still pores over video, now with Evan on her shoulder. And her players say Spoelstra has not changed.

“On the basketball court, I haven’t noticed anything different,” senior center Brina Chaney said. “But I have noticed that she has something else in her.”

Assistant coach Jualeah Woods, who insists on 20 minutes every morning for her “Evan time,” said Spoelstra devotes the same energy and focus to coaching.

“I can’t really see a big difference in her, outside her love of Evan,” Woods said. “Amazingly, there’s not much difference in her work habits. But you can totally see the gleam in her eyes when she looks at Evan. She is so happy.”

But Evan’s presence has brought changes.

Spoelstra and Woods think players are less likely to hold only anger or frustration from bad practices or games, to beat up on themselves for a poor performance, when Evan is around.

“He has a real positive effect,” Chaney said. “After a bad game you can hold him and see him smiling and realizing there’s more to life than winning and losing.”

On Evan’s 8-month birthday, Oregon State lost at home to Arizona State. The Beavers never were in sync and squandered a chance to solidify their standing in the Pac-10 race. Afterward, Chaney glumly answered questions from reporters. As she left, she stopped in front of Spoelstra, who was holding Evan.

Evan smiled. He has an affinity for Chaney, who often swoops him up with her big, steady hands. Chaney rubbed Evan’s belly.

Then she headed for the locker room. Smiling.

The nine women who coach the other Pac-10 programs sent congratulations. They sent outfits – none in their school colors – and books. Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer sent a CD of her playing the piano, bright Mozart pieces that Evan listens to in the car.

Spoelstra is the sixth mom among the group. A couple have teenagers. Arizona State coach Charli Turner Thorne brought her weeks-old son to the Oregon State game.

“Well, I gotta feed him,” she said with a shrug.

Some are married. Some are single. They adapt in different ways: nannies, stay-at-home husbands, by setting priorities and managing time.

“It’s so important that people see it as an example of women having careers, having families and dealing with the demands,” Daugherty said. “You can have it all. You have to have great support and you have to have your priorities straight. But you can have it all.

Spoelstra looks to her fellow coaches as role models. But she also looks to her players and the other young Oregon State athletes who wander by to spend time with Evan.

“I’ve had lots of kids come through my program who have had the gamut of family units,” she said. “The kids are solid. They’re comfortable in their own skin. They have a lot of confidence. And that has given me a lot of assurances that I’ve got a lot of great role models among my players and in their parents.”

Spoelstra also looks back at her own childhood and how adoption gave her the gift of her parents and her brother. She already plans to adopt again in a year or two. She will choose a girl, so that Evan will have a little sister.