Eryn Lee hopped from plane to plane on Thursday so she could make it home. Why? Today is perhaps the biggest professional moment of her husband’s life and she wanted to make sure she was there to be a part of every second.
Along with daughters Blaire, Alexa, Madie and Shelby, Eryn will be at Doug Kingsmore Stadium to watch her husband, Monte Lee, debut as Clemson’s new baseball coach when the Tigers host Maine in the season-opener at 4 p.m.
“It involves our whole family. It is a lifestyle,” said Eryn as she was boarding a plane from Detroit headed to Greenville. “Clemson baseball is a Lee Family lifestyle. We will go to every game and I will work my schedule around it. If I’m not there, I’m on the radio listening and the kids are coordinated to go. It is definitely a family occupation and experience.”
Eryn, a senior account service specialist for Johnson & Johnson, says the last seven months has been a smooth transition moving from Charleston to Clemson. Really the only bump was finding a home.
“The move was not hard, it really wasn’t. The difficult part, when everyone comes to Clemson they don’t want to leave, is finding somewhere to live,” she said. “There are not a whole lot of open options because all the good stuff gets scooped up really quick.”
Eventually that even panned out as the Lees found a nice home in Seneca at the last minute and have since settled in.
“The move was a fairly easy transition. It was good timing,” Eryn said. “We were able to get up here and get the kids settled before they started school. So that was good. That was very important to us for them. They did not want to move in the middle of the year and we did not want to have our family separated. It’s hard enough during the year because he is gone so much between events and appearances. Then when he is not gone, I’m gone so we our very limited on the family time that we have just with his lifestyle. Then when you add my lifestyle in then we have a whole other dynamic.”
Making it work
When you have four daughters and both parents have successful careers, stretching the limits to balance it all can become difficult at times. But Monte and Eryn will go as far as they can to make sure everything works out.
This past October, Monte agreed to host Tigerama, Clemson’s annual pep rally the night before the big homecoming game. At the time he committed to host the event at Clemson, he had no idea Blaire would be voted as part of the Homecoming Court at Seneca High School, who was holding its Homecoming Game that same night.
Of course Monte wanted to be there to escort his daughter across the field at halftime so he kicked off Tigerama then hopped in his car and drove the nine miles to Seneca High School where he walked Blaire across Tom Bass Field. After he escorted Blaire across the field, he got back in his car, drove back to Clemson in time to close Tigerama.
“I was there in enough time to say thank you to the crowd for coming to Tigerama,” Monte said smiling as he thought back to how he was able to be in two places at once.
“I saw the very beginning and the very end. That was it. I said, ‘Thanks for coming. What a great show tonight!’ That’s the truth.”
And that’s who Monte Lee is. He wants to try and do everything he can to help anyone that asks him to do anything.
“I’m one of those guys where it has always been hard for me to say no,” he said. “I feel like, and I have said this before. I feel like I live a life of servitude as a coach. If somebody wants me to do something for Clemson University or speak here or do an interview here or a radio show here or whatever the case may be, I try to do it. If I can, I will try to be there and do what I am supposed to do as the head baseball coach here at Clemson, but I also have to try and balance that with my family life and make sure I show my kids and my wife that I appreciate them as well.
“It has been a balancing act and it has been tough. I don’t see my family as nearly as much as I would like to, but it is part of it and it is also part of it in year one. Once you get used to a year of this, I think year two will be a little easier in the balancing act.”
Eryn has no doubt he can balance it all. She says one of the best things about Monte is his ability to organize and communicate with her. They do a lot of planning and the kids are very active and involved with their whole lifestyle.
“We knew coming into making this transition the importance, especially in this first year, of him being able to be present and out there doing those things he needs to do to promote the program and build the confidence and get some excitement going,” she said. “You don’t glean excitement out of fan base unless you are involved with a fan base. He believes that fully, and I do too. Having a coaching background, I understand the demand.”
It has helped that their girls are very self-sufficient as well. Madie, the oldest, is in college, while Shelby and Blaire are both 16 years old and thriving at Seneca High School. The youngest, Alexa, is 12 and right now tags along with her older sisters so everything just seems to work out.
Shelby is involved in a lot of school activities, but most of her events happen in and around the school day. Alexa plays softball, but her schedule at this point does not conflict with her parents’ busy schedules.
Only Blaire, who is a varsity cheerleader at Seneca High School, has events that occur after school, and because she is the only one that really has after school activities, it is been easy for the Lees to be there for her.
“Luckily, most of their events, correspond where all of them can be involved,” said Erin, who used to be the cheer and dance coach at the College of Charleston where she first met Monte. “Shelby is highly involved with student affairs and wanting to go to the games and be in the student section. They have made quite a bit of friends. Then Alexa is at that age where going to the high school functions are fun, and they all get along, so Shelby and Blaire will take her with them.
“So it has worked out really easy for all of us to kind of participate in whatever functions are going on and centered around the school because they are all involved together. It’s worked our nicely. It may not work that way next year, but this year, it has worked out great.”
A dream come true
Eryn says she has two great bosses who understand what her home life is and what expectations and responsibilities lay there. She says she is very fortunate to have their blessing for flexibility.
“Minus major projects, I really can adjust my travel schedule around the baseball season,” she said. “I do a lot more traveling in the off-season than I do during the baseball season. So it has worked out really well.”
Eryn arrived home on Thursday in more than enough time to be a part of something she has always hoped would happen. Since her and Monte got married five years ago, she secretly wished he would get the opportunity to be the next head coach at Clemson. Last June it became a reality as he became just the third man since 1958 to lead the Clemson baseball program.
“I actually have been a Clemson fan longer than just when I came up here so I was not disappointed or hesitant at all because I didn’t want to leave South Carolina. Now, there are parts of the state I prefer not to move to and live in just for various other reasons,” she said laughing. “Selfishly, I have always kind of had a hope that Monte would end up coaching at Clemson.”
And just when she thought today could not be any more special than it already is, Clemson found a way to do it. The Lee women, the rocks of support that have allowed Monte to become one of the hottest young head coaches in the country, will throw out the first pitch before the Tigers take to the field to begin the Monte Lee era.
“That is the rumor. It’s exciting,” Eryn said.
And they will do it as a family. And why not, this is their lifestyle after all.
Photo by Craig Mahaffey, Clemson Athletic Communications
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