Even after four successful years at Iowa State, Christy Johnson-Lynch had to come up with a new game plan this season.

With the birth of her first child, Jamison, on June 20, Johnson-Lynch has had to adjust to a new daily routine, playing dual roles as a NCAA Division I volleyball coach and mother.

Although her son wasn’t born until this summer, she experienced the first effects of her pregnancy while making history with the ISU volleyball program. Along with all the emotions the Cyclones brought out with their Elite Eight NCAA Tournament run last season, fatigue and nausea began to set in for Johnson-Lynch at the same time.

“It was challenging at the end of last season,” Johnson-Lynch said. “In the spring it’s easier because we don’t have to work quite as much. I definitely delegated a lot in the spring; I told these guys I was becoming ‘master delegator.’ And the nice thing is that I have really good assistants, so I felt totally comfortable about that.”

While Johnson-Lynch could rely on her assistant coaches last season and during the offseason, things began to change in the 2009 season as possibly the toughest factor of it all began to set in: lack of sleep.

“It is really challenging just sleep-wise,” Johnson-Lynch said. “I think maybe the biggest thing is you just can’t believe how many days you can go without hardly any sleep.”

Although Johnson-Lynch functions day-to-day on a very small amount of rest, her job allows some breathing room as far as her schedule goes. While the demands of a Division I coach are high, her day doesn’t always have to start at 8 a.m.

“My job is flexible enough where I feel like if I want to take a couple hours in the morning to stay at home I can do that … It’s nice that I can make it work,” Johnson-Lynch said.

Making her schedule more accommodating is something Johnson-Lynch had to rearrange, but her husband, Joe Lynch, had to make the biggest schedule modification.

Lynch took a step down in the program to become a volunteer coach, rather than the paid assistant he had been in the past. With fewer duties in the office, he now gets ‘the best of both worlds,’ his wife claimed, as he spends time with Jamison during the day and still makes it to practices and games.

If the challenges of balancing a rigorous practice and recruiting schedule with parental duties in Ames aren’t enough, the two also have to make arrangements for the baby when the team travels. Since both parents play an active role with the team and travel to the same places at the same times, road trips have turned into a family affair.

“I feel lucky to have this option to take him with us,” Johnson-Lynch said. “I probably would have been filled with guilt if I would have had to leave a newborn baby at home.”

It was originally feared that having Jamison on the road would provide another distraction to the coaching staff, but instead, weekend trips to small Big 12 towns have become some of the most enjoyable times for Johnson-Lynch.

Since a busy work week in Ames prevents her from spending significant time with Jamison on a daily basis, their time together increases when she takes him on the road.

“I don’t see him a lot during the day usually, so, honestly, travel days are the days that I look forward to because that’s the time I get to spend with him the most,” Johnson-Lynch said. “If we’re on the bus for four hours, that’s four hours I don’t normally have with him.”

Like other first-time parents, the Lynches have been put on a crash course in parenting, but in their case the challenges have been amplified by constant traveling. Along with the process of making the trip, packing and preparing for the road has become an adventure in itself.

“When you charter fly and you bus it’s not too bad, but I thought the first commercial trip with him was going to do us in,” Johnson-Lynch said. “It’s so hard to get through security with a baby — it’s insane.”

After the first few trips the couple had to start making a checklist of necessary items, and as the season progresses the list continues to grow.

“We’ve definitely made some amateur mistakes,” Johnson-Lynch said. “But there’s so much stuff to take and we have three bags for him alone. It’s all the clothes and diapers and bottle warmers. I honestly don’t know how you could travel alone with a baby. It takes the two of us plus our baby sitter to drag all of the stuff with us.”

To assist them, the couple has enlisted the help of a number of college students’ experiences as a nanny to help during home matches and road trips. Student trainer Jacquelyn Stortenbecker has been just as much of a baby sitter as a trainer this season, as she became the main caretaker for Jamison on the road.

“I was an athletic training student with volleyball last year and got to know Christy really well,” said Stortenbecker, a senior at Iowa State. “It just seemed logical for me to watch Jamison since they were comfortable with me and I was comfortable with them. But we had to work out my role responsibilities because now I travel with the team as the nanny and not as an athletic training student.”

While the three handle the major responsibilities of taking a baby on the road, they also have a team of 15 girls with them, the majority of whom are more than willing to entertain him as well.

The couple originally feared that having a newborn child go everywhere with them may turn into a distraction, but, thankfully for the staff and players, Jamison has seemed to handle the extensive traveling without a problem. The four-month-old rarely cries and doesn’t cause much of a commotion when players may be trying to sleep or study.

Instead, the newest addition to the Cyclone volleyball family can provide an enjoyable diversion from the challenges that a Division I sport can create.

“Sometimes I think it’s a good distraction,” Johnson-Lynch said. “You know, if you’ve got a huge match coming up and everyone’s nervous or it’s tense, sometimes having a little baby around to make you laugh and forget your troubles for a little while could be a good thing.”