Skip To Main Content
Skip To Main Content

Kentucky Wesleyan College Athletics

Scoreboard

Football Family: KWC's Holsclaw juggles coaching, child care duties
Max Holsclaw looks out an office window while his dad, football coach Brent Holsclaw, works on opponents’ videos Sunday at Kentucky Wesleyan College. “He’s spoiled,” Holsclaw said. “He loves to be held.” John Dunahm, Messenger-Inquirer

Football Family: KWC's Holsclaw juggles coaching, child care duties

The message board outside Kentucky Wesleyan College football coach Brent Holsclaw's office lists practice times and emphatic motivational notes written in bold strokes with a black grease pen.

Inside, the walls are covered with action pictures of KWC games and assorted memorabilia.

But in a corner of the head coach's inner sanctum sits a green portable crib with a bobbing toy-animal mobile, and child's car seat. A couple of months ago, they may have looked out of place in the team's war room, but now the people who drop by are used to them.

The items are for 4-month-old Max Edward Holsclaw, the first-born child of Lexie and Brent Holsclaw, whose shared child care arrangement includes having the infant spend a few hours a week in the football office.

"I'd like to stay home and take care of Max, but it's not really an option," said Lexie Holsclaw, a special education teacher at Daviess County High School. "We're not the only parents in America doing this. Tons of coaches and their wives have more children than we do, and they make it work.

"This was Brent's idea. He's been a great dad."

Brent Holsclaw keeps Max from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Monday, then Lexie Holsclaw picks up the child after her school day is done. Her mother, Donna Blue, baby-sits on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The only day the Holsclaws, who have been married three years, have to pay for a sitter is Friday.

But there are baby-sitting gaps most days, and Brent Holsclaw plugs them by picking up Max and keeping him at the office anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes until his wife takes the boy home. Occasionally in the early evening, the coach takes his son with him to a team film session on campus, where the infant is mesmerized by the blue screen that shows game highlights.

Max Holsclaw 2
Brent Holsclaw got permission from KWC Athletics Director Gary Gallup to keep the littlest Panther in the office. Gallup said it's not interfering with his coach's job.

"Brent works very hard, and now he's juggling another aspect of his life," Gallup said. "I think it's pretty neat. We're getting to watch the little guy grow up."

Max Holsclaw was born June 22, six weeks before football camp began. The Holsclaws shared child care duties until camp, then Brent Holsclaw was gone most of the time -- from 6 a.m. to midnight daily -- for two weeks. After camp broke, the Holsclaws got into their normal work routine and instituted the baby-sitting schedule.

"I'm constantly on the go," said Brent Holsclaw, 38. "I've got 130 other kids I call my own that I'm responsible for, too, but I've got to make sure Max is taken care of first.

"We don't have a great record this year (1-7), but (Max) isn't the reason why."

Brent Holsclaw carries a small audio monitor with him in case he's called to a meeting down the hall. The device allows him to hear the infant's sounds, although in the cozy KWC football office, an assistant football coach is close to the crib.

"With our football staff, it's like Max has eight uncles, and they all love him," Brent Holsclaw said. "I'm not crazy about having a newborn in the office, but it's a convenience thing.

"Being a college football coach means you have a pretty full schedule, but so does being a dad. When I'm here, though, I'm in football mode."

When the need arises, the coach feeds, changes or holds his son, but mostly Max sleeps or stares at the mobile.

Defensive coordinator Dave Arnold said he doesn't mind lending a hand.

"I have three children of my own, so putting him on my shoulder for burping, or changing a diaper is nothing new to me," Arnold said. "I can change a baby in a heartbeat."

In John Madden-speak, that's, "Change diaper. Boom! Done."

"He's a good baby," Brent Holsclaw said. "He doesn't cry. But sometimes he gets here and he's angry, and I feed him, and then he's happy."

The team has even responded to having a baby in its midst. When Max is at the office, the players tend to be quieter. At game uniform handout time at noon on Thursdays, a player will approach the head coach and whisper his number when he sees the baby sleeping nearby.

"It's amazing what an infant can do to an 18- to 22-year-old young man," Brent Holsclaw said.

Arnold said it's a good, real-life lesson for the players.

"It shows taking responsibility," Arnold said. "It's not just having baby then not paying attention to him."

Brent Holsclaw said he doesn't know what, if anything, Max is absorbing in the football atmosphere. At home games, Lexie Holsclaw watches with Max in one of the field's skyboxes.

"I want him to be around athletics," Brent Holsclaw said. "It's great for all kids.

"When he grows up, I can see him standing beside me at practice, or being a ballboy. But if he chooses not to take to that, then whatever he takes to, we'll be right there with him."
Print Friendly Version