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August 15, 2012
It’s Friday afternoon and Nicholls State volleyball standout Sierra Lyons is making the drive from Thibodaux to Houma in her self-proclaimed “granny car.”
Sitting at the wheel of the vehicle, it doesn’t take long for Lyons to realize that she’s dog tired.
Lyons says her arms and legs feel the burn of a fierce morning workout. Her abs sting from the countless hours she’s put in on the floor in recent weeks to prepare for the upcoming season.
Her entire body is laced with bumps and bruises – she says she cannot wait until her daily ice bath.
“I’m so sore,” she says with a smile.
Part of why Lyons’ body is achy is because she is just rounding back into playing condition.
A former standout at both Terrebonne High School and Xavier University of Louisiana, Lyons sat out the entire 2011 season.
Working to get back her cardio is proving to be quite the challenge.
But as soon as she arrives home, the aches subside and a smile is embedded onto the volleyball player’s face.
The reason Lyons keeps pushing through the soreness is who’s waiting to embrace her with open arms – 1-year-old daughter Londyn.
Being a full-time student-athlete and a mother is no easy task, but the Nicholls State volleyball mommy said she wouldn’t trade places with anyone in the world.
Lyons said she draws inspiration from her biggest fan.
“I love being a mommy,” Lyons said while shining a bright, pride-filled smile toward Londyn. “It’s not what the TV makes it look like. It’s not all good, of course, but it’s not all bad, either. I love it and I love her and everything is just great.”
The truth is that Londyn’s mommy is one of the best volleyball players in the past decade to come out of the Tri-parish area.
An All-State performer at Terrebonne, Lyons signed with Xavier and made an immediate impact.
As a freshman with the Gold Nuggets, Lyons recorded a team-high 323 kills and earned First-Team All-Gulf Coast Athletic Conference honors.
Lyons was also an elite performer in basketball and track.
She was a state champion in the shot put during her senior year.
“Athletics are pretty much my life,” she said with a laugh during an interview while in high school.
But in the past year and half, Lyons said God has forced her to juggle around her priorities.
A week after fall semester final exams in 2010, Lyons was in Houma visiting family and friends.
While traveling on Martin Luther King Boulevard, she was hit head-on by a car that had ricocheted into her lane after being in an accident in another lane.
After being rushed to the hospital, doctors told Lyons that they had some unexpected news.
“The doctor said, ‘I have good news and I have bad news,’” Lyons remembers – a moment she said feels like yesterday. “He said, ‘The bad news is you have a sprained wrist and some mild whiplash. But the good news is that you’re pregnant.’
“My mouth hit the floor and before my bottom jaw hit the ground, tears were everywhere.”
Lyons is the first person to admit that she had apprehension initially when she found out about her pregnancy.
But through the support of her parents, sisters, friends and the baby’s father, Tremaine White, she was able to stay strong and persevere throughout her pregnancy.
“I have so much help,” Lyons said. “I couldn’t do it without them. And looking back, this was the biggest blessing of my life. She is my motivation.”
Little Londyn didn’t exactly make things easy on mommy in the earliest days of her life.
After finding out about her pregnancy, Lyons said she returned to Xavier in the spring of 2011 – a semester that spanned her first two trimesters.
Lyons said she battled morning sickness throughout the entire semester.
“I was puking in the morning, in the middle of the day and at night,” Lyons said. “I puked for a good three months straight. School was hard.”
Lyons persevered and made it through the spring semester, despite now being several months pregnant. After a summer back in Houma (where she worked multiple jobs until the final days of her pregnancy), Londyn arrived on Aug. 3, 2011.
The timing was perfect and allowed the young mom to return to school in the fall of 2011.
But knowing she wouldn’t want to be away from family with a child, Lyons decided to walk away from Xavier and transfer to Nicholls.
With preseason volleyball camp having started when Londyn was born, it was impossible for Lyons to get back into shape in time for her to try out for the team before the 2011 season.
It marked the first time in her life that she’d have to watch from the stands.
“It was a little weird for me to not be playing,” Lyons said. “The year away was hard.”
The Colonels posted an 18-14 record in 2011 and had one of their best seasons in recent years. They did so while Lyons worked feverishly to get back into playing shape.
Lyons is now ready for full-time action again.
With Londyn now more than a year old, the outside hitter still has a lot on her plate to make it happen without a hitch.
Lyons said her normal day begins anywhere from 4:30 a.m. to 6:30 a.m.
Londyn wakes and plays for a few hours and then naps until 9:30-10 a.m.
“During summer school, I’d use that time to catch up and just do school work and everything,” she said.
From her 6:30 a.m., wake-up, Lyons said she gets dressed and combs both she and Londyn’s hair.
“I’m getting her ready for her day while I’m not there,” the mom said.
After depositing the baby with either her father, grandparents or aunts, Lyons then rushes from Houma to Thibodaux for a three-hour volleyball practice, which begins at 8 a.m.
When 11 a.m. hits, Lyons is then off until 3 p.m., when she has a second volleyball workout.
She trudges the “granny car” back to Houma for her break.
“That’s lunch and playing with Londyn for as long as I can,” she said. “Lately, she’s been sleeping during my break, so that’s kind of a bummer. But I play with her and then head back to Thibodaux around 1:30 for my second practice.”
After the 3 p.m. workout, Lyons heads to Houma again around 6:30 p.m.
From there she bathes and takes care of any school work that needs to be done.
“And then I play with Londyn until either I pass out or she passes out,” she said with a laugh. “Then we wake up at 6:30 a.m. and do it all over again the next day.”
She makes it sound simple – she even shrugs when asked about the difficulty of her day.
“With me being a teenager, this is supposed to be 100 times worse, but I have so much help that it makes it so much easier,” Lyons said.
For Lyons, the big challenge is the future.
On one hand, she wants to help the Colonels make a push for the conference championship.
“We want to go farther than they went last year,” she said.
But she also will have to battle the challenge of being away from Londyn.
With a season-opening road trip to Missouri it will mark the first time mother and daughter have been separated.
“We’ve never been apart for more than like six or eight hours,” she said. “That’s going to be so hard for me.”
But then again – it will make the return trip even sweeter.
Because when she gets back home, mommy’s No. 1 fan will be waiting with open arms.
“That baby means everything to me,” Lyons said while making a bottle for a fussy Londyn. “I love her with all of my heart. Her daddy and I already have the discussion about her playing sports. We both want her to play basketball. I’m trying to incorporate a little volleyball in there, too, with some gymnastics.” We’ll see how it works.”
Nicholls State sophomore volleyball player Sierra Lyons shares a moment in the gym with her daughter Londyn. Lyons is balancing volleyball, school and her job as a parent in her busy schedule. The student-athlete said she wakes up as early as 4:30 a.m. on some days and doesn’t go to sleep until close to 10 p.m. Lyons is majoring in education.
