I never thought I'd play again," Tammy Douglass said.

It was December of her sophomore year at the University of Cincinnati and the middle of basketball season. The discovery that she was nine weeks pregnant rocked her world.

"How am I going to take on the extra responsibility of taking care of another person?" Harnish asked herself.

All are student-athletes.

Williamson's daughter Rhiana arrived before she set foot in college and long before she found stardom on the University of South Carolina, Columbia, track team. Westbrook's basketball career at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania came to a screeching halt. Ross, a track athlete at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said she could not think straight for several weeks.

Dealing with a new life

Martin, a member of California State University, Fullerton's cross country team, survived a horrific accident midway through her freshman cross country season that sidelined her from competition. Her sophomore year was dedicated to rehab, and her return in the fall of 2000 was triumphant. Not only had she healed, she had claimed team MVP honors.

So when she discovered she was pregnant and would have to leave the team again, it was unwelcome news. Since her faith forbade terminating the pregnancy, Martin braced for the challenge ahead.

"I remember thinking 'I just got over one thing, and now it's another,' " she said. "I was in the best shape of my life and I was like 'There's no way this will get in the way.' "

For Wisconsin's Ross, the decision already was made. She was too far along to terminate the pregnancy. "My first scare was that I'd lose my scholarship," she said. "I had just come off a great season, and it had taken so much to get to that point."

Williamson was the first person in her immediate family to have graduated high school. "They were hurt and disappointed (when they learned of the pregnancy)," Williamson said. "They thought I fell into that cycle that no one could seem to break. I was getting a lot of 'I told you so.' "

In a matter of weeks, their bodies -- which had served them so well for so long -- changed rapidly.

Martin's sent her a message to slow down. "Right away I noticed I couldn't keep running the same," she said. At two months, she competed in a race and won but "felt terrible" afterward.

She still searches for the energy she once possessed -- the energy that allowed her to keep an almost unreal pace. At the height of her activity, she practiced with the team every morning, worked 30 hours per week as a waitress, put in 20 hours per week as a residence hall advisor and carried 17 credit hours.

"It's hard for my teammates and friends to understand how much (being pregnant) drains you," she said. Now she can muster only 20 minutes of cardiovascular exercise each day.

At 23 weeks, Ross was diagnosed with pre-term labor. Her plans to work out and stay active up to birth were shelved. She was remanded to bed rest. Even walking to class would have put the baby at risk, so she took cabs everywhere, at her expense.

Wisconsin academic advisor Christine Butler said student-athletes like these in the

early stages of unplanned pregnancies require careful attention. With so many physical, emotional and financial issues suddenly present, such young women may be vulnerable to poor or incomplete decision-making, feelings of guilt and physical danger.

"There are so many decisions involved that often need to be made quickly," she said. The surge of conflicting emotions can be especially dangerous "if someone does not have a trusted advocate with whom to discuss options and gather information."

"It's tempting to want to take control, fix things and 'make it all better,' but then it would end up being my solutions to another person's problems, not their solutions," she said.

Challenges everywhere

Wisconsin's Ross turned her fear into action and researched NCAA regulations regarding scholarships and pregnant athletes. "I needed to know the statute that said I couldn't lose my scholarship," she said. Only after she renewed her scholarship papers did she finally tell her coaches she was pregnant.

Pregnant student-athletes will find no regulations in NCAA legislation that mandate denial of a scholarship because of a pregnancy. Grants-in-aid are annually renewable. The types of issues that the student-athlete should familiarize herself with are the rules about taking time off or redshirting, satisfactory-progress rules (maintaining course load and staying eligible), and how long they must wait before rejoining the team after giving birth.

Butler said such a meeting benefited Ross and the athletics department staff.

"This was critical in that everyone heard the same information and the same agreements and protected Cathy in that she knew what she needed to do and that her scholarship couldn't be taken away, and finally, that there is support for her from many sources," Butler said.

"I don't know if I can be on scholarship because then it would be my job," she said. "I can't be on a leash when I have a baby."

To receive insurance coverage, Cincinnati's Douglass withdrew from school and returned home. She worked the third shift at a grocery/department store into her eighth month of pregnancy. Public assistance helped cover the other costs of living before and after she gave birth.

Though it's not the responsibility of the NCAA or an individual institution to pay for a student-athlete's child, it doesn't mean administrators don't want to help.

Joking, she added, "There should be an exception to the 'extra benefits' rule that if a student-athlete has a baby, then unlimited, free babysitting and baby supplies are allowed to be given to her by willing staff people."

Going it alone

"I was distracted and hindered because of his stress," she said. They separated but remained friends.

Ross said Trinity's father helped during her difficult pregnancy. His transfer to another school was his way of trying to improve himself and the financial future of their child. "All he has is football," Ross said. "He wasn't playing a lot here. He figured transferring so he can play and maybe get to the pros is the best future he can offer us."

"I had to look straight ahead. I could not look sideways," she said.

Ross also chose to raise her child by herself. When she is not at class or practicing, she is with Trinity. She fights to get through a daily strain and still feels the lingering effects of post-partum depression.

"I was going crazy," she said. "I'd just sit around and cry. I wasn't eating right. I was losing weight and passing out. Being the only one with her, I can't type or do homework or just get up and go outside for air."

But she took on the role of mother and discovered she was reluctant to leave it. When she decided to rejoin the team, she struggled with leaving Khrisma with her mother and grandmother in Indianapolis.

"At first, I was being selfish," she said. "I wasn't thinking about her best interests. I just wanted her to be with me."

But her mother and grandmother convinced her it would be best to keep her in Indianapolis. "I didn't want to pass her around day care from stranger to stranger and her be an unloved baby," Douglass said.

"I feel like I'm the only one," she said. "No one really understands."

Her sentiments are typical of the isolation pregnant student-athletes feel and the perceptions they have that no one can relate to them.

Mike Miller, an academic advisor at Cal State Fullerton, was the person Martin turned to for advice and help.

"I am glad Jenifer came to me," he said. "She admitted she was scared to see me because of what I may think of her. That is the danger because then a student will 'think' instead of 'know' what the options truly are."

Together they worked through the misconceptions Martin had about her circumstances. "I take into account everything that has a realistic relationship to the situation and not the made-up obstacles that the student creates," Miller said.

Most importantly, he said someone in his role must understand that "the student just wants someone to talk to who will just listen and not say 'what were you thinking?' when you already know the answer to that question."

Sacrifice and reward

Westbrook commuted to practice at Mansfield University of Pennsylvania, where she walked on to the team after spending a year off from college to have Morgan, and then transferring from Bloomsburg. She played with the stipulation that if something happened with Morgan, she might have to miss a practice or possibly a game. She thought her teammates supported the arrangement, but she "found out later a few of them felt I had special treatment. I did. I had a special case. I had a child."

Since returning to Southern Maine, Harnish has noticed a different relationship with the team. "The new ones don't respect me as much," she said. "They respect that I came back. But they hold some type of stereotypes because we're unmarried and young. I just don't worry about it."

Not every team bond suffers. In the case of Douglass, she has used her role of mother as a motivational tool to her teammates.

"When we've lost a few games or workouts get hard or something, I tell my team 'I did not leave my child for this! I did not leave her so we can lose or come in third at the conference tournament,' " she said.

"I was afraid she would forget me," Douglass said. "Every time I go home, she's doing something different. When she's sick, I just want to hold her, but I can't be there. Those are the hardest parts."

Harnish's boyfriend, Peter Corbett, had to hang up his track shoes for good and go to work full time. Though he said he had plenty of time to come to terms with the situation, he said, "At times, it's tough. I miss (athletics), but it's something we had to do."

Martin said in the time she has been pregnant, she has been trying to "get over my own selfishness. I used to just think about me, me, me. Now, I think about the baby."

Westbrook said her daughter changed her life. Morgan is the reason she walked on to Mansfield's basketball team, finished her degree and made a better life for herself.

"I wanted Morgan to be proud of me as she gets older, to show her it's important to do what you originally set out to do," she said.

Indeed, the motivation to succeed -- for a student-athlete to reach for things that perhaps she wouldn't have if she hadn't become a parent -- can be surprising and rewarding. In the best of cases, the child can become the means for an athlete to pull it all together.

"I used to look at courses and say 'I can get a C in that.' Since I've been back, I've won a top scholar award, something I never thought I'd do," Douglass said.

When her mother saw the award, it was a special moment for Douglass. "I don't want my family to think they're keeping my child while I'm up here half-stepping my academics," she said. "The only way I can repay them is by doing well in school."

Williamson repaid herself by posting a fourth-place finish in the hurdles at the 2000 Olympic Trials and joining the professional track circuit.

No wonder South Carolina has a file with Williamson's name on it, considering how she started out and how she ended up. She said her coach plans to refer to it when someone like her walks through his door in the years to come.

"I was the guinea pig for my coach," she said. "Through me he could see if taking a chance is worth it."

Though student-athlete parenthood is not much discussed, perhaps it should be. Tammy Douglass, Hollie Harnish, Ellakisha Williamson, Heather Westbrook, Jenifer Martin and Cathy Ross surely are not the last to face a difficult situation.

In any case, Williamson wants future student-athlete parents to understand that they need to have hope.

"You will have burden," she said. "You will have tough times. But these things will make you better."