Olympic Gold Meets Motherhood

By: Greta Stuckey

As captain of the W.N.B.A. Seattle Storm, Breanna Stewart helped lead the United States team to Olympic Gold in Tokyo this summer. What most people didn’t know was that she was also going to become a mother just two days after winning that gold medal halfway across the world.

Stewart asked her partner Marta Xargay to marry her over the summer and on July 6 of this year, the couple tied the knot atop their Seattle condominium. When stuck in the W.N.B.A. bubble during the 2019 Covid season, Stewart and Xargay decided that they wanted to have a child. Only 26 years old, Stewart was nervous about the big step but knew it was what she wanted.

“This is about controlling my own destiny,” Stewart told The New York Times. “It’s about making decisions that fit me, fit my family and where we want to go, where we want to be, and not waiting.”

The couple decided that their best option for having a child was surrogacy. While recovering from an Achilles injury in 2019, Stewart and Xargay interviewed surrogates and sperm donors. Stewart and Xargay’s gestational surrogate carried an embryo that had been created with one of Stewart’s eggs.

“I’ve always known I wanted to have a family, always wanted to be a younger mom,” Stewart told The New York Times. “It will not be easy, but why can’t I be the best player, a mom and have a child in the way we have done?”

While playing on the biggest stage in front of the world at the Olympics, Stewart was also thinking about her soon-to-be child and the new life she would have just two days after returning home. Stewart is regarded as one of the best female basketball players in the W.N.B.A. and possibly one of the greatest basketball players of this era.

In 2020, the commissioner of the W.N.B.A. created a contract with the players’ union to give players more benefits. The agreement went into effect right before, Ruby Mae Stewart Xargay was born. The agreement provides maternity leave with a full salary, gives players s stipend for child care, and allows players to get reimbursement of up to $60,000 in costs related to adoption, surrogacy, egg freezing, and fertility treatment.

“We have several mothers in the league, and we had players that talked to us about what they realized they needed while they were playing,” Nneka Ogwumike, the W.N.B.A. players’ union president, said to The New York Times.

Arriving in Boise Idaho on August 8, Stewart made it home just in time from Tokyo to see the birth of her daughter. Ruby was born 9 pounds and 4 ounces. Stewart and Xargay soon sat with the baby in complete awe of their experience.

“I was in shock, seeing a baby being born in front of me,” said Stewart to the New York Times. “I felt like crying. I also just felt the love that was in the air.”

With a gold medal fresh off the plane from Tokyo, Steward slipped the medal out of her pocket and laid it perfectly next to her newborn baby. Ruby Mae Stewart Xargay was the second gold medal Stwart earned on that summer week in August.