CHICAGO — Erin Dickerson might be the happiest 29-year-old living with her parents ever.
Dickerson, a Hyde Park native and Whitney Young and Northwestern graduate, for the past year-plus has been on the Towson University women's basketball coaching staff. The associate coach also serves as the school's director of recruiting. Some days she's away from home from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m.
A few weeks before she took the job at Towson, Dickerson gave birth to her daughter, Lyla, who's now 15 months old.
Balancing the rigors of full-time coaching — a stressful, time-consuming job — with raising a child has been a challenge for Dickerson, but her mom and dad have helped immensely. Dickerson spends most mornings with Lyla, a nanny takes care of the toddler during the day, and Dickerson's parents — Kimberly, a financial consultant, and R. Bryan, an AAU coach — usually put her to bed.
"Everybody has sacrificed so much time for me to be able to do this," Dickerson said. "We have a great system right now."
Dickerson was an assistant coach at Illinois State when she delivered Lyla in Bloomington. But staying in central Illinois was not the best option for Dickerson with her parents lived in northern Virginia, and Lyla's dad, Thomas Davis — a head coach of ASA college's women's hoops team and executive director of the AAU program Exodus NYC — was based in New York.
Dickerson said it was perfect timing that an assistant position opened at Towson, which is in Baltimore and about 1 hour an 20 minutes from her parents' home. Towson's head coach, Niki Reid Geckeler, also understood Dickerson's situation as she has a 7-year-old daughter, MaKenzie.
"We share a passion for the game, we share a passion for watching our student athletes grow, mature and develop, but most importantly we share the experiences of being a mom in such a demanding profession," Geckeler said.
Dickerson said Geckeler will tell her some days not to come into the office and instead spend time with Lyla, who attends all of Towson's home games — sitting with Dickerson's parents right behind the team bench — and traveled with the team on trips to Florida and Minnesota last season. She also was a fan at all of the home hoops tilts for her uncle, recent Delaware State graduate Aric Dickerson.
"She loves basketball," Dickerson said of her daughter. "She has so many basketballs. She's kicks them. She'll start to pick them up, but then drop them and kick it."
Said Kimberly Dickerson: "She has a special bond with Lyla that is so clear when they are together, and when Erin has to be away, she knows Lyla is in good hands with her grandparents. As a family, we travel to as many of Erin’s home and away games as possible so Lyla can see her mommy at work, but when that’s not possible, we use FaceTime, Skype and share videos so Lyla knows that her mommy is there any time she needs her."
Little Lyla shares her mom's passion for the game. Kimberly Dickerson said Erin has been obsessed with basketball most of her life, starting when she played at St. Thomas the Apostle in Hyde Park. She was a standout player on Dolphins coach Corry Irvin's first few teams, earning a scholarship to Northwestern, where she was a three-year captain.
Dickerson has moved up the coaching ranks with stops at Furman, La Salle and Illinois State.
"As a player, and now as a coach she has always been the type of person who follows her heart, cares about others and is very loyal," Irvin said.
Dickerson said she's not sure yet if she wants to be a head coach. She'd relish the challenge but doesn't mind playing the role of Robin, she said. Her biggest joys are seeing Lyla taking her first steps, bumping into things and admiring her persistence to solve problems, like putting a cap on a bottle.
"She's very competitive, just like me," Dickerson said. "Right now is the coolest stage ever, and now she's sleeping through the night, 10-11 hours. And that's when I do my work."
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