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At Las Vegas Aces point guard Chelsea Gray‘s most recent WNBA championship ring ceremony, her two-year-old son Lennox walked into the arena with her in matching brown suits. He had a blast in the spotlight, loving his outfit and checking himself out in the mirror. He’s grown up in the Aces’ locker room high-fiving some of the most decorated basketball players in the league, like A’ja Wilson, Jackie Young, and his own mom; excellence is part of his everyday life, and Chelsea wouldn’t have it any other way.
The next day, Mother’s Day, looked a little different. Chelsea left on an eight-day road trip with the Aces, their first of the season, and it was her first time spending the holiday away from her family. When she walked into her hotel room in Los Angeles, she was greeted by fruit and balloons sent by her wife, Tipesa, as a surprise to lift her spirits. It was just what she needed.
“She’s amazing,” Chelsea tells me of her wife at the Women’s Health Lab event in New York City, the final stop of her journey. Being away from Lennox for extended periods during the WNBA season is tough, Chelsea says, and Tipesa has really been holding it down at home—managing Lennox’s schedule, her own, and everything in between. “I don’t think I’d be able to do it without her. I would be lost.”
When she’s on the road, Chelsea calls home as often as she can, whether that’s for five minutes or an hour. She shows him where she is so he feels like he’s along for the ride. “Sometimes I’m just up on the phone and watching him play, and I’m interacting with him on FaceTime, just so we don’t lose those moments,” she says. “You miss so many moments when you’re gone.”
Lennox’s interests change all the time—currently he’s into trucks, dinosaurs, and obviously basketball (he “absolutely” has a leveled-up kids’ hoop at home, Chelsea says). He’s potty training, and he grew half an inch while she was on this trip. The conversation around working moms usually centers on ensuring you’re there for the big moments—birthdays, holidays, firsts—but Chelsea says the toughest part is missing the everyday happenings in between.
There’s another layer to it, too: As the non-carrying partner who also works, Chelsea is extra intentional about carving out her place when she gets home, knowing that time and proximity mean he naturally gravitates toward Tipesa. It’s a dynamic she doesn’t see talked about much. “That’s the aspect of my life that I’ve had to adjust to,” she says. “There’s some nature versus nurture. There’s this struggle and balance that I have to do.”
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The flip side of being both an athlete and a mom is that Lennox has helped the four-time WNBA champion be more present in the time they do have together, a topic we got into on stage later that day on the Sport & Motherhood: The New Playbook panel.
“After a hard game, he doesn’t care if we won by 20 or if you had a game-winner,” says Chelsea, who actually did make the game-winning bucket in Atlanta the night before our conversation. “He’s just like, ‘I want to play with these trucks.’ So it’s like, IQ kind of goes out the window and allows that freedom in your mind to take over.”
That’s not to say Chelsea’s basketball IQ hasn’t also served her well in parenting. As a point guard, her job is to control the floor and think several steps ahead, and that responsibility extends into the locker room. “You have to compartmentalize, and you have to take everybody into account, make sure everybody is okay—and it’s constant,” she says. “I take that to motherhood, because when you go home, you make sure everybody’s on the same page.”
Motherhood has also influenced the way the 12-year WNBA veteran shows up at work—especially this off-season, when the Women’s National Basketball Players Association negotiated a historic collective bargaining agreement with the league. Chelsea serves as a player representative for the Aces, and fought for better protections for players who are also mothers. In the new contract, the childcare stipend has nearly doubled, and teams are now responsible for the cost of an extra hotel room if a player chooses to bring childcare on the road with them. There will also be a playroom for Lennox at every home game if he doesn’t feel like being in the arena that day.
Getty Images for Hearst Magazines / WH illustration
“Those things are super important, because it’s like, you don’t want to choose between spending time with your kid, but also the financial burden that it could have,” she says. “It’s kind of evened the playing field in that way.”
One thing that hasn’t changed in the last two years is Chelsea’s drive to “win everything possible,” she says—and she’s proud to show Lennox what’s possible for him in life, in the same way basketball opened the world up to her. “The coolest thing is now he’s able to be a part of it,” she says.
He’s already been to the Olympics, two ring ceremonies, and countless tunnel walks, and along the way he’s seen Chelsea be a leader who plays with everything she has. Those are the qualities she hopes he picks up on, and so far he is. “Everybody wants to be around my son, because he just brings this light,” she says. The best compliment she’s gotten lately had nothing to do with basketball—it was that Lennox is such a joy to be around.
At Chelsea’s last ring ceremony, Lennox was not even three months old, present in the photos with no idea what was going on. This time, he stepped out on the court, yelling familiar players’ names and knowing exactly where he needed to stand—next to his mom, of course. “For me, it was surreal,” Chelsea says. “The last one he was in my arms, and this one he’s walking out. You can see the difference in the growth.” In Lennox, for sure, but in Chelsea, too.
The 3rd annual Women’s Health Lab was hosted by Hearst Magazines in partnership with Northwell’s Katz Institute for Women’s Health. Lilly served as title sponsor, with additional sponsors including Altra, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Ipsen, L’Oreal Paris, Organic Valley and WaterWipes.
Amanda Lucci is the director of special projects at Women’s Health, where she works on multi-platform brand initiatives and social media strategy. She also leads the sports and athletes vertical, traveling to cover the Paris Olympics, Women’s World Cup, WNBA Finals, and NCAA Final Four for WH. She has nearly 15 years of experience writing, editing, and managing social media for national and international publications and is also a NASM-certified personal trainer. A proud native of Pittsburgh, PA, she is a graduate of Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. Follow her on Instagram @alucci.