2008: Jobey Thomas (fellow professional basketball player)
2009: Cara Smith (fellow basket wife)

To join click on the above link and enter our group’s password, which is “crispinhoops”.  Once you have your account set up you can make your picks after the selection show.  If you have any problems join, please shoot me an e-mail @erin@marriedtoaballer.com.

Please don’t be shy to join if you don’t know us very well personally (or not at all).  The game is open to all, so invite your family and friends.  Hopefully I can stay out of the bottom half this year, but history has proven otherwise!

1. Paying off as much debt as possible. Currently our only debt are our mortgages, but we would like to be rid of that debt by the time he is done playing basketball.  This would give us the freedom to not have to put pressure on him to find an equal paying job as soon as he is done.

2. Being a student of the game, as well as a player now. Joe is using this time to constantly learn more about basketball, not simply play.  He often writes down notes for the future, reads books on basketball, watches instructional videos and records plenty of basketball just to watch and observe what other coaches are doing.  He is also going to begin meeting with coaches in the summer to gain insight into the profession.

3. Completing more school. Joe received his undergraduate degree from Penn State in telecommunications.  This is not exactly the ideal degree to have to be a college coach, so he is looking into doing some masters work that would further his knowledge of coaching and also give him a degree that he could use for other things like being a phys. ed. teacher if need be.

When the transition comes to Joe retiring from playing basketball, it will certainly be a change for our family (and one worth blogging about).  Currently, he is in the preparation stage for that time, while still focusing the majority of his energies on being the best player he can be right now.

Obviously there is much that he cannot control about how much longer he plays.  There are career-ending injuries that can take place.  There are also the possibilities of a team not picking him up for a season.  These situations would obviously force him into retirement, but his desire is to play until he is ready to call it quits.

He is also open to the option of playing shorter seasons towards the end of his career.  Many basketball players as they get older and their bodies begin to breakdown opt to wait until after Christmas for their agents to look for jobs.  At this point many teams are looking to make changes and bring different players in.  Obviously there is a pay cut when you do this, but it can prolong a career and still be a substantial income.

We have also been asked if we have a line in the sand that would determine whether we would move back to the States permanently and do something else. Again, this can be hard to answer when you don’t know all that could happen. There are a few things that we could see would cause us to move back permanently to the U.S.:

1. A health issue. If there were to be a serious health issue with me or one of the kids, we both agree that we would feel more comfortable with having treatment for that issue in the United States. In that case, if the treatment were something that needed to be done on a continual basis, we would move back to the U.S. and Joe would do something else.

2. A financial issue. If it would get to the point where Joe was no longer making enough money playing basketball to support us on one salary, then it would be time for him to be done. He would have to take a significant salary cut for that to happen though. As of right now there are large amounts of luxuries in our lives that we could easily cut out to live on much less than what he makes now. We have lived through Joe only playing half a season twice with adjustments in our budget and spending. We also have money put away in an emergency fund and other places to deal with times of financial hardship. A book that has served us well in living relatively simply, paying off debt, following a budget and saving with the future in mind (for example having money set away for the transition time between the end of Joe’s career and beginning a new career) is Dave Ramsey’s “The Total Money Makeover“.

3. An involvement issue. Obviously as the kids get older, it will be harder and harder to have them overseas and away from community, friends and activities.  One of the hardest things for us as a family is being away from our wonderful network at home.  If it would ever come to the point where we feel we are not thriving as a family anymore being out on our own, it would be time to stop.  We also consider the activities the kids want to be involved with.  So far, we have been able to supplement them with things overseas and may consider some extra time at home to do so.  Although we used to spend the entire season overseas with Joe, recently we decided to come a few weeks after Joe, spend about a month home at Christmas and possibly leave a few weeks before Joe at the end of the season.  This allows our connections at home to stay stronger and for the kids to be involved with activities at home (for example, maybe being a little late for spring activities like t-ball but still being able to participate), while still having us away from one another as a family for no longer than a month or two.  If it comes to the point where we feel like that time at home would need to be longer in order for us to be a part of the community and the kids to be involved in things we think should be priorities, we would need to be done with overseas basketball.  Once again, the option of Joe playing shorter seasons could be something that could be done in a few years to alleviate this problem while not totally quitting basketball.

Again, we have no idea what the future may hold, but those are situations we have discussed that may lead to Joe being done with basketball.  For right now, the plan is to continue on this path until the two of us are in agreement that God has called us elsewhere.

So the next question people usually ask is “What would you want to do?”  I mentioned that I had done some work towards starting my masters in nutrition.  I have not ruled out going back and completing that degree at some point.  And that may even start before the kids are older.  I am interested in not only nutrition, but also fitness.  So I have also looked into studying more on personal training and possibly getting a certificate or two there.  Both of these areas are subjects that appeal to me for a variety of reasons:

1. I am already interested in these areas and get really excited when I think about helping people with their health.

2. In working in these settings, there is often flexibility to work part time or set more of your own hours.  Just because I work outside the home, I still want to be available for Joe and the kids.

3. These are areas where I could serve Joe, as his desire is to coach when he is done playing (more on that in a later post), and also the rest of our family.  Being well-informed in the areas of nutrition and fitness is a way I help to better the lives of our kids.

So we will see where the Lord leads us in the coming years.  For right now, I am trying to stay on top of the areas of nutrition and fitness in simply reading and learning while Joe trains.

Currently Joe typically plays overseas from August until May/June.  For the first year of our marriage, Joe started off in the minor leagues.  He had just finished up his rookie season in the NBA and wanted to give it another try to get back to the NBA.  At that point we knew there would be a possibility of either him being called up or us heading overseas after a few months.  So this did not lend itself to me finding a job where he was playing.  And me staying home was not an option for us in our first year of marriage.  We felt the first few years of marriage to be crucial to be together as we worked through issues and figured out what we were going to be about as a couple.  Since we did not believe in living together before marriage, the turning point of the wedding was a time when now we were in a covenant relationship with one another and could live together.  We spent the first few months in the states and then headed to Greece from February until June.  It was a great time to learn about one another and store up lots of time with the Lord through private devotions, reading and listening to sermons.

The next season I was a month pregnant when Joe began the job search.  At that point I was a bit scared to head overseas to have a baby, so Joe went the minor league route once again.  If he would be called up, at least we would still be in the States, but otherwise we decided to stay put in  he minor leagues for the season.  Thankfully, he had a great situation with a team in Kansas City and we spent the whole season there.  Once again, I choose not to work, which we were able to do comfortably from a financial stand point.  I did decide that since I was not able to further my speech-pathology career that I would get some education in another area that had interested me: nutrition.  So for the next three seasons I did online classes to fulfill some prerequisites in order to do a masters program in nutrition science (consequently I never began the program because of the workload.  By the time I was ready to start the masters program I was pregnant with our third child in three years.)

Once we began having children, the decision to stay together for the majority of the season became an easier one.  Before we felt it extremely important for our marriage to be together the majority of time, but now we feel it to also be important to the welfare of our children to be with their father as much as possible.  Even with the moving, different cultures, being away from family and friends, to be together as a family we believe is a much greater benefit to the kids.  There are so many ways the role of the father is undervalued in our society, but we don’t wish to go along with that trend.

We also feel that the benefit of having Joe and I together as husband and wife to be of greater value than having a steady income back home provided by me.  Obviously not everyone is in the financial situation where they can have the wife at home, but for us, we are committed to go to whatever lengths to make it happen (an issue I will deal with in a later FAQ).  Although we aren’t against a woman working outside the home, our conviction is that a woman’s main role is to be a helper to her husband (Genesis 2:18) and a worker at home (Titus 2:5).  We also recognize that in order to keep our marriage as a priority we must protect it from temptation and that requires us to be physically present together (1 Corinthians 7:5).  As a mother it is crucial that I be at home as well.  Especially when the children are young, we want their primary care to be given by their parents.  I know that I could not fully do my work at home, support my husband and raise my children if I had an outside job that took the majority of my waking hours.

In regards to issues like will I ever work or what might cause Joe to stop playing or having socialization for the kids, I will try and answer those questions in other FAQ posts.

**Obviously I realize in this day in age, the issue of working mothers and families who live separately are touchy subjects.  I am not trying to get into debates on those issues, but just to share where we stand since it is a question that is often addressed to me.