Meet the Basket Wives: Angie Sears

I am so excited to introduce you to this month’s Basket Wives profile, Angie Sears.  Many of you probably don’t know her because Angie has managed to stay away from Facebook, Twitter and all the blog circles so many of us get sucked into (I can say this because I am one who deeply has).  Angie faithfully encourages her readers on her private family blog with her love for Jesus and her care for her family.  She not only encourages in that medium, but has been one of the most special friends I have personally ever made in this basketball world.  If all I would ever get from being a Basket Wife was to have met and been lifelong friends with Angie, than the journey would be well worth it.  She has been a consistent source of strength for me throughout the years.  So let me give a little quick background to share a little more about Angie before I let her share her heart, which she does so well.

Angie and I started our friendship as many Basket Wives do: through our husbands.  During the 2003-2004 season, Joe was playing with the Kansas City Knights in the ABA minor league.  The fact that Joe and Ryan were both point guards on that team could only have been orchestrated by God because never since have I seen a team sign TWO six-foot tall, white American point guards to the same team.  Thankfully Ryan was the defensive, scrappy type to balance out Joe’s crazy, offensive style.  Anyway, not only were they both teammates and point guards, but were both Christians and quickly became good friends (they had actually met earlier on an Athletes in Action tour).  So they would room together on road trips and Ryan would talk about this girl Angie.  After a few talks, Joe decided they were supposed to get married and used to bug Ryan to just call her and ask her right then and there (Angie was in Japan at the time).  By the end of the season, Angie was back from Japan were she had been student teaching and came out to Kansas City to visit.  I met her two days after I gave birth to Abby and we were packing up to drive back across country the next day.  We sat and ate some pizza and enjoyed our visit.

After that Angie and I kept in touch via e-mail and she and Ryan were married shortly after.  We really started e-mailing when she became an international basketball wife as well and we would encourage and pray for one another.  In 2007, Ryan’s season was over early and she and Ryan came to visit us in Spain where Joe was still playing.  It was at that point where I knew I had found a friend “after God’s own heart”.  She and I were two peas in a pod and could have just sat and chatted for hours on end.

Since that time we have been able to visit in person one other time, but have e-mailed, talked and Skyped numerous times.  We went through a pregnancy at the same time when she was pregnant with her first and I was pregnant with Naomi (she gave birth one month after I did).  And then a few months after she got pregnant with her second, I found out I was pregnant with Isaiah.  God has used her as a vessel for love, grace, encouragement, and challenge in my life time and time again.

Ok, enough from me.  Let me allow you to read more about her experiences from her own writing.

How did you and your husband meet?
My husband Ryan and I both grew up in the same town in Iowa. He was a year ahead of me in school and my best friend and I thought that he was about the dreamiest guy we could imagine He remembers first seeing me at a AAU basketball practice of mine–he was there with his friend, whose sister I played on the same team with. I don’t remember the first time I saw him, but I definitely knew he was out of my league! By divine arrangement Ryan asked me to a dance his junior year–we honestly have no idea how we both started liking each other, but the rest is history…a long, heartbreaking, and then heart-mending mess, that only God could make beautiful!

Where was the first place you lived after getting married? Can you tell a little more about the experience?
The first place we lived was Pristina, Kosovo. God orchestrated Ryan playing on an AIA (Athletes in Action) tour to Albania & Macedonia at the last minute, and he was picked up by the club from the tour. He called me from the tour, his new bride of just about 8 months, and said, “How do you feel about moving to Kosovo?” Well, I didn’t know much about that, but I was just so excited to go on an adventure together as a married couple! The experience was a gift. Our apartments were ever-so-shady–I mean ants crawling up your shower curtain, a stove that NEVER was used because it was so disgusting, trash everywhere in the areas surrounding the building, and sporadic-at-best electricity & heat. That’s not even mentioning the basketball–3-4 months late on payments, playing in unheated gyms where you literally saw your breath, flares being thrown out on the court during games…it was CRAZY, but we loved it!! The people were incredibly hospitable, the culture fascinating, and our little church family we met with–priceless. God was so good to us in the midst of a hard place to live and play.

How many years has/did your husband play(ed)?
Ryan played for a year and a half in the ABA before we got married and then 4 seasons overseas.

What cities have you lived in internationally?
Pristina, Kosovo Nijmegen, Holland (2 years) and Antwerp, Belgium

If you had to pick a favorite city, which one was it and why?
That’s a pretty tough question, and I will dodge it by saying this…Pristina was my favorite year of actual basketball in a city–the people were crazy about basketball, and the team had a lot of success so it was a really fun atmosphere to live in the city during that season. I loved living in Nijmegen because we lived so close to a canal that had a beautiful place to jog/walk. I spent many hours on those paths, smiling, laughing, crying, thinking, praying, and sweating. Antwerp was probably the best city in terms of things to do–the population is so diverse and we had great friends from our church there that we enjoyed spending time with.

Please share one funny moment in your life as a Basket Wife?
Oh dear, there have been many. I tend to embarrass myself quite easily. Not so much one single moment, but unfortunately many times, I would get a little excited (read: out-of-control, just plain mad at the referees) and yell things. I know, I know, it’s ridiculous and quite funny to watch those crazy Basket Wives getting upset –I actually got a player laughing at me one time in Holland after I believe yelling something like “He’s riding my husband like a pony! Get him off!!” Embarrassing, funny, and true.

What was the toughest struggle you encountered in your life as a Basket Wife?
My toughest struggle then, and now,was/is to trust God. Being a Bastket Wife brought all sorts of interesting circumstances and temptations to fear and not trust God. I struggled to trust that God had put them in our lives for our good and for his glory. From shady living conditions, to having to get ready to move overseas in the course of a week or two, to giving birth in a foreign country and learning how to take care of a newborn there, to having a rough year basketball-wise that makes for a less-than-happy husband …all of those things can and did rock my boat. There are new things that do the same for me here in America. It’s always a battle to trust God and what he promises in the Bible.

What is the greatest lesson you have learned as a Basket Wife?
Flexibility and Adaptability. You women doing this thing as Basket Wives amaze me…supporting your husbands/boyfriends in unfamiliar environments with high-stress jobs, raising families without the “comforts” or support of people at home, having to drop everything each summer to pack all of your things into 2 suitcases , making new friends every year or two, navigating new roads, it’s all amazingly stressful when I look back at our experiences or look at you all currently. But by God’s grace, I did, and you are and have been, learning to be flexible and adaptable. To roll with the punches a little more day by day. Know that there are many people who pray for you…that you might live lives of great significance even though it is most often not an easy road. Thanks for interviewing this retired Basket Wife, Erin! Love you, friend.

Love you too, friend.  Thanks so much for sharing,