Related Content
•
CoSIDA.com/CoSIDA360 Magazine Archive
Note: This story appeared in the Fall 2020 November edition of CoSIDA 360 Magazine. To view the full magazine, click here.
Communications Love
Four CoSIDA families share their stories of adoption.
by Rob Carolla – CoSIDA Past President @RobCarolla
Courage. Selfless. Blessing. Gift. Miracle. Love. Priceless. Rewarding. A Dream Come True. All words and phrases that have been used to describe the adoption of a child.
It’s been said that adoption is one of the most selfless acts an adult can embrace. To pledge to care for a child, to help them grow, to encourage and discipline them — but most of all, to love them unconditionally.
November is National Adoption Month — a time set aside to raise awareness about the urgent need for adoptive families for children and youth in foster care. The lives of several CoSIDA members have been touched by adoption. We talked with four of them, including:
Cassie Arner, University of Illinois
A graduate of Southern Miss, Arner has spent her career in communications at Virginia Tech, Mississippi State, Houston, Auburn and Illinois. She has one son, Cleve.
Cassie Arner and son Cleve.
Mike Robles, California Community College Athletic Association
Robles, a member of the CoSIDA Executive Board of Directors, has been at the CCCAA since 2016. He attended Cal Poly, working there after graduation. He has also spent time at UC Davis prior to his current role. He has one son, Ivan.
Mike Robles with son, Ivan, and wife, Linda.
Ryan Davis, Missouri Valley Conference
Davis graduated from Indiana University in Bloomington and is active on multiple CoSIDA committees. Prior to the MVC, he worked at the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference. He has two children, Nolan and Caroline.
Ryan Davis with family, Kristin, Nolan and Caroline.
Chad Jenkins, MidAmerica Nazarene University
A former baseball student-athlete and graduate at Bethel College, Jenkins has been at MNU since 2007 after serving full-time at Bethel for two years. He has four children – Isaac, Jalen, Micah and Chelsea.
Chad and Christa Jenkins with children, Isaac, Jalen, Micah and Chelsea.
For any parent, caring for a child can be hard and easy at the same time. Parenting in the daily grind of working in sports communications can also present its own challenges. But, it also has its own special rewards. Read along to learn more about the experiences of four of our peers.
How and when did you decide adoption was the right thing for you?
Arner: All the signs seemed to come together around 2005 for me. During a 3-year period while I was working with the Illinois football team, we had quite a few players who had spent some time in either the foster care system or with individuals other than their biological families. After getting to know their stories, I felt that I had the room in my life and heart to foster. We also worked with a local children’s home for a big fundraiser and in doing so I learned a lot about the process. But it wasn’t until I went to Africa to work at an orphanage in 2008 that I realized it was time. I watched a woman much younger than myself adopt an HIV-positive little six-year old and that’s when I knew I didn’t want to put it off any longer.
Davis: My wife and I were in the process of starting our family and were having difficulty. Rather than go through costly medical options, we decided adoption was the path we were led down. Adoption was something I never really thought about growing up but ended up being a pretty incredible and unexpected blessing.
Jenkins: My wife and I both have adopted extended family members, so adoption as a concept was relatively normal. When we were dating, we both expressed a desire and a calling to adopt at some point.
Robles: My wife and I were both in our late 40s, so adoption became the logical option. We had talked about it before but did so more seriously in 2014. We went to our first information session in April of that year and things proceeded from there.
Cassie Arner first considered adoption after getting to know the stories of many of her student-athletes who had been fostered.
What unusual things occurred during the adoption process that having your job in athletics made even more challenging?
Arner: Certainly, I knew that being a single parent working in a seven-day work week industry was going to be a challenge, but in hindsight it was a lot of fun. Cleve was 5 years-old when he came to me, so after his school day he would come up to the practice fields and play, while I was working football practice. One of our Illinois cornerbacks taught him how to tie his shoe, one of our track athletes would come braid his hair at night and when I was at Houston I found him sitting in the middle of the field with the entire offensive line talking about his behavior at school. There was a time when I felt I wasn’t doing either my work or my parenting very well and I was ready and willing to quit my athletics job, but I believe fate intervened and provided me an opportunity to stay in the business with a position that required less travel so I could be home with Cleve more.
Jenkins: To be licensed in Kansas as a foster parent, you have to attend a class to learn about the process, expectations, etc. Our path was foster-to-adopt, so we had to attend once a week for three hours or so. One of those nights conflicted with a softball conference tournament doubleheader, so I had to plan accordingly. It turned out that I saw game 1, left for the class, and was back in time for plenty of the 17-inning game 2.
Robles: I was an Assistant AD at UC Davis and was fortunate to have a lot of flexibility with my schedule. But it became more difficult after Ivan joined us because it was early in the 2015 football season. I got home from a game at Hawai’i on a Sunday night, we picked up Ivan the first thing on Monday morning and I started paternity leave. In reality, though, I worked from home, made most of the remaining football trips and carried on with a pretty regular daily schedule. I had a supportive boss, a great staff and understanding coaches that really helped me do everything I needed to do. After my leave was up, I had to do some more juggling, especially with weekly meetings with our social worker because I live about 30 minutes from campus. But again, everybody was supportive and that was the key.
Did you have any preferences on who you would adopt? (gender, race, etc.)
Arner: I did tell my case worker that I wanted to adopt African-American children. I thought I had the unique opportunity to expose children to African-American college athletes that would provide strong models for his or her future.
Davis: When we first went through the adoption process, we were open to any race and any gender. After we adopted Nolan in 2012, we knew we wanted to adopt again to complete our family. With Nolan being biracial, we wanted to make sure his sibling was also. Knowing this would be our final adoption, we did consider only girls during the process so we’d have one boy and one girl. We welcomed Caroline into our family in 2015.
Jenkins: We had two boys already, so we were leaning toward a girl. While we did have a preference, it was flexible. We learned early on in the process that honesty is the most important part. Being honest with the system, your spouse, and yourself is crucial. Only a few days after getting licensed, we received a call: “We have a sibling set: female 6 months, male 3 years, Black, adoption likely.”
Robles: Our preference was for a girl between 5-7 years old but in the end, we ended up with a boy who had just turned four. In reality, we knew we just wanted the right child, regardless of who it was, and that’s Ivan because he fits right in with us.
In the beginning, did you give thought to whether or not a child of a different race than your own would present unique challenges?
Arner: I think I was pretty naïve to this concept, and maybe a little selfish. I didn’t realize how much Cleve would have to explain having a White mother. Kids in his classes were always so confused when I would show up for events, and Cleve was very sensitive to looking different. He had a classmate tell him he wasn’t wanted because he was adopted. He also has grown up in a White family (my family), and as much as I didn’t want him feeling different from the rest of us, I know he does.
Davis: Our adoption agency, Bethany Christian Services, did a fantastic job during the training process to prepare us on becoming a transracial family. This opened my eyes on what it truly meant welcoming a child of color into our family. We wanted to make sure our children would be in a diverse environment and to do that we needed to make some changes in our lives. Over time, we have become very active in social justice efforts in our community, especially surrounding issues of racial equity. Transracial adoption is an issue that deserves much time and attention and we are grateful to the many people of color and adult adoptees who have helped guide our learning.
Jenkins: During the class, interracial adoption was covered at length. So yes, plenty of thought went it to whether or not there would be challenges. Fostered and adopted children struggle with identity as a rule, so the reality of not even looking like your adoptive family is another layer to consider.
Robles: Those were all considerations that our agency helped with. I’m Hispanic and my wife is Asian, so we felt like between what we learned from our training and with our experiences, that’d we be fine.
Mike Robles had always told his staff that family comes first. In their late 40s, he and his wife embraced that by adopting.
What was the best moment through the adoption process?
Arner: We continued to do sibling visits all through the foster process, and I really loved those times together. I have enjoyed watching his brothers and sisters grow up as well. We’ve stayed in touch with them and his oldest brother has gone on family vacations with us, to the point where my nieces and nephews call him their cousin as well.
Davis: For Nolan, it was when we finally were able to bring him home when the adoption was finalized six weeks after he was born. For Caroline, we were able to be in the delivery room and I was even able to cut the cord.
Jenkins: That’s a tough question. As much as we like to romanticize adoption, all the moments are tragic. The moment when a judge officially terminated the rights of the kids’ biological mother, tragic. The moment when another judge officially declared us a family, bittersweet.
Robles: Undoubtedly, it was the day we finalized the adoption in court. It had been more than two years and we always feared something would happen that would derail the whole thing. Our social worker and others were confident that things were going to work out, but I still tried to learn as much about the process as I could to quiet my fears. When we signed the adoption papers and the judge finalized everything, it was an indescribable moment. And, yeah, I shed a few tears through it all.
How did a career in athletics affect your adoption and having children?
Arner: I genuinely believe my being in athletics brought me to adoption. And I do think that having your children around your job is a great perk of the industry. Athletics has always embraced family involvement. I’m not sure it’s the same in every profession, but because of the hours we work your kids are always around. Everyone knows everyone’s family, and I love that. Cleve has had special relationships with all my co-workers. He’s probably become more independent because of my busy schedule. While I was at Auburn, there were about five families who fostered and adopted from foster care, including our athletic director at the time Jay Jacobs. There was a special bond with all those families.
Davis: I think as always with people in our profession the travel and being away from my family can be a challenge. I travel a lot in the fall for our Valley fall championships and I’m also on the road a ton during our men’s and women’s basketball seasons helping with our television productions. It puts added stress on my wife, since she also works, so we try to find the right balance to handle all those challenges.
Jenkins: I don’t know if it’s necessarily my career, or more just having an athletics mindset in general, but having a team concept is crucial. My wife and I were both team-sport athletes, so we always knew we were in it together and striving for the same goal. Our son had plenty of trauma during his transition, so there were struggles for three hard years. Three years in the trenches either destroys your marriage or strengthens it, and we came out of it much stronger.
Robles: I felt that having a family was something I was missing because I was living the typical SID life and was constantly chasing the next event or press release, and that had been my life for more than 25 years. I always told my staff that family comes first and I needed to fully embrace that myself. I let my career take advantage of me and I was determined to change that. I was able to find a different opportunity in the same town and that was a blessing. I went from an NCAA Division I school to a community college governing office and was able to stay in the same field, expand my skills and transition to a schedule that would be much more open to me coaching the baseball and soccer teams, not miss as many school events and build much more quality family time. Ivan was the primary reason I switched jobs after 21 years and it’s been wonderful.
What are the unexpected benefits of adopting a child of a different race?
Arner: Perspective and experiences. As a White person, I can never know the true impact of racial tension and racism, but it’s incredibly painful to watch your son experience it. I’ve been exposed to situations I would have never found myself in otherwise. I feel very blessed to have had my mind opened.
Davis: It caused me to open my eyes. I grew up with the colorblind mentality in a very White suburb of Indianapolis. I didn’t have many interactions with people of color until college. Educating myself and close family and friends about race became important to me to ensure my children would be surrounded by people that would care for and embrace their differences.
Both our children were adopted locally here in St. Louis and we’re fortunate to have relationships with their birth mothers. Both situations are different, and the level of openness varies between the two, but we wanted to ensure both our children would know them.
Jenkins: I’m not sure. I guess it’s easy to see that we’ve adopted, so people think we’re interesting right off the bat. We’ve become directly aware of the struggle of dealing with Black hair, which is an issue so prominent that an animated short film (Hair Love) on the subject won an Academy Award last year.
Ryan Davis says educating himself, his family and friends became very important to him as he wanted to make sure his children would be surrounded by people who would care for and embrace their differences.
What unique things have you done to integrate your son/daughter’s race and heritage background into your lives?
Arner: I think the biggest thing that matters the most to my son is staying connected to his biological siblings. He wants them to be as important to me as my biological family is to me. I was also told early on by one of our football coaches at the time that if you want to be a good mom to a Black son, always invest in his hair and shoes.
Jenkins: This is an interesting topic that I’ve thought about a lot, and I’m still not quite sure I have a good answer. When we were preparing for foster/adoption, we came across plenty of articles and blogs about interracial adoption. The consensus encouraged it but stressed not losing their culture. But what does that mean, exactly, when adopting a difference race in America? There are so many cultures here. We have been doing this for almost 10 years and they are simply a part of our family.
Have you had any discussions with your child about race over the last few months in light of what is happening in our country?
Arner: Absolutely, yes. I’ve tried to do more listening than talking. Of course, he’s a teenage boy, so you have to do a lot of prodding to get him to open up, but I’ve been very thankful to have some very frank conversations with him. He turned 16 this summer, so as you can imagine I have a new level of fear when he leaves the house on his own. There is a fine line between having conversations that instill a healthy amount of caution, but at the same time does not scare him and make him more apprehensive.
Davis: We did, and it was unbelievable to see how inspired my son was. We attended local Black Lives Matter marches around St. Louis and following one of the marches, Nolan (8 years old) wanted to say something to the crowd in the megaphone. He said, “Stop hurting Black people!” and everyone cheered. On the way home he said he wanted to organize a children’s Black Lives Matter march in our hometown. We helped him get the word out and there were over 700 people that showed up as the kids led the march (Details here:
http://mvc-sports.com/news/2020/7/7/general-five-questions-with-nolan-davis.aspx)
Caroline was 4 years old when we talked with her about George Floyd. We explained what happened to him and others that have died at the hands of police. She responded with “Like me?”, and it just really puts it into perspective how much work we must do as a country.
Jenkins: My kids are 13, 13, 11, and 10. But we don’t shy away from the truth, so they have seen the videos and I do so without commentary. It has been interesting to hear thoughts from children. We have two White kids and two Black children. We tell them all the same thing in regard to the police. And it was the same thing I was taught. “Don’t run. Don’t fight. Don’t argue. Be respectful. If you feel like you’re being mistreated, know that we’ll deal with it later.” So, when they watch some of the videos through that lens, they see clearly why we say that.
Robles: Ivan’s asked a lot of questions, particularly when the news is on and the innocence of a child comes through. He can’t always understand why what’s happening is happening. We try to answer honestly but in an unalarming way because Ivan does get scared, particularly with things he doesn’t understand. But he’s had friends of many races and we live in a very diverse neighborhood, so that’s been helpful as a starting block.
What advice would you give to others about adopting a child of a different race?
Arner: I would say that you cannot assume you know what they are going through. I thought parenting was parenting and if you used common sense, you would make great decisions every time. I had to stop thinking of his childhood experience in the way I thought about mine. I needed to be educated and surround myself with other African American families so I could understand challenges specific to race differences. I asked a lot of questions, respectfully.
Davis: Educate yourself and make sure you’re prepared to become a transracial family. Do the work necessary to provide your child an environment where they feel welcome in their skin. This may mean moving to a more diverse area, enrolling your child in a certain school, having hard conversations with family, or even, sometimes, cutting people out of your life who refuse to learn and understand. Learn, learn, and learn some more from people of the same race as your child, but don’t put the work on them. Embrace your child’s biological background. Gather books and resources about their background and make them proud of it.
Jenkins: The same advice I would give anyone considering any sort of foster/adoption: Be honest and don’t have unrealistic expectations. We’ve all seen adoption videos with happy tears and dramatic music and slow-motion embraces, but that’s not reality. It’s very difficult, and tragic, and beautiful…all of it. If you go into it thinking that it’s going to be constantly gratifying and wonderful, you’ll be disappointed. It IS, in fact, gratifying and wonderful…but not always.
Robles: Part of our requirements was meeting with another couple who had adopted so that we could ask questions and learn about their experience. We were matched with people that had similar goals to us, were about our age, etc. It was very helpful for us and I think would be valuable if we were adopting a child of a different race.
Has your son/daughter been able to take part in some of the benefits of having a parent who works in sports?
Arner: One time at Houston, we were in my office. Cleve, six years-old at the time, was doing homework or reading, and I ran down to football dinner to get someone on the radio. I came back and Cleve was gone. I sat down at my desk for a minute and heard his voice through the wall. The men’s basketball offices were in the adjacent suite and I found Cleve sitting in Coach James Dickey’s office eating fruit snacks and drinking milk on Coach’s couch while he made recruiting calls. Also that same year, after a football game as we were doing postgame notes in the press box and Cleve comes waltzing in. He had told the elevator operator that his mom “owned” the stadium.
Davis: Funny thing is…neither of my kids are really into sports! Nolan is obsessed with trains and building things and Caroline is into becoming a doctor and princesses. They do enjoy attending Arch Madness every year since they get the backstage access and see what goes on behind the scenes. Doesn’t hurt they get to watch the games in a suite with plenty of popcorn, pretzels and mac and cheese!
Jenkins: I wouldn’t call them great stories, but occasionally they’ve worked a camera or a scoreboard when I was desperate. They know their way around an NAIA press box!
Robles: I was working a televised football game not long after Ivan joined our family and was on the field postgame arranging an interview. I called my wife to make sure Ivan was watching and as it was taking place, I casually walked back and forth behind the interview. My wife said Ivan yelled, “Daddy!!” My goal is to always stay out of the camera’s view, but I made an exception. But, overall, I think working in sports is great because Ivan loves sports and I’ve been able to take him to practices, events, and meet some coaches and student-athletes. And, of course, the occasional swag is always a good thing.
Tell us about a unique and wonderful characteristic your son/daughter has that you don’t which has taught you more about yourself.
Arner: My son has an incredible smile and infectious laugh. I’m not sure how to explain his charm, but even people that have been challenged by Cleve (teachers, coaches, etc.) can’t help but love him. He’s so very smart. I’m in awe of his strength and very proud of the young man he has become.
Jenkins: My adopted son (13) interprets the world uniquely. I assume it was a skill he acquired when constantly surrounded by different adults in his early years. His life was very unstable, so he had to learn how to read people way earlier than he should have. Is this person on my side? Is this person going to hurt me or my mom? What are these people talking about? He can pick up on adult conversations way better than my other care-free children. I don’t know what that has taught me about myself, other than maybe I need to be more aware of what I’m saying around him. He knows when we’re speaking in code or trying to be intentionally vague.
My adopted daughter (10) is very creative and artistic, which is a skill neither my wife nor I possess. She can draw and design and create, and we’ve learned to appreciate that process. She’s also very stubborn and independent, which has taught us to lean into the positives of seemingly negative characteristics. We love that she’ll never get pushed around or talked into doing something stupid.
Robles: I’m usually pretty outgoing in most situations but I still show a quiet side in new ones. Ivan will be shy when he first meets new people but within a few minutes has made a bunch of new friends and, in fact, will call them his friends. He’s taught me to be more outgoing in uncomfortable situations.
Talk about these stories on the
CoSIDA Slack Community.