Yori's in a zone -- coaching and being a mom
The last place Connie Yori expects to have a mom moment is while she's running her Nebraska women's basketball team through a workout.
Understand now, it doesn't matter what Yori's up to - when she's zoned in on something, she's completely into it. For example, while her unbeaten squad was in the midst of knocking off ninth-ranked Baylor in Waco, Texas, last Sunday, the heckling Bears fan who was determinedly trying to get the attention of Yori with some overly personal, inappropriate rants was the one who left red-faced. Yori, you see, was in tunnel-vision mode and didn't hear a word.
And so one day last fall when her two favorite guys - 5-year-old son Lukas and husband Kirk Helms - made a rare visit to practice, Yori was undaunted by the section of bleachers that had come unlocked from its stacked position and chattered into rows.
Until, that is, she felt the thud from someone having abandoned those bleachers for safe ground.
LUKAS!
"He jumped off there and the whole thing collapsed, and we thought something happened to him," junior guard Dominique Kelley said. "Everybody stopped and (gasped). But he was fine ... (and) when she saw he was fine we went on about practice."
OK, let's not throw mom under the bus. If there's one thing that could distract Yori from her job, it's her only child.
The one she gave birth to the summer following her second season at Nebraska - when she was three months shy of her 41st birthday.
For her, the experience is so rewarding that she makes up words trying to describe it.
"It's the awesomest, awesomest thing," Yori said. "I think of myself as a mother before I think of myself as a coach. That's way more important. And I don't mean coaching isn't, but ... "
Her situation definitely creates a special appreciation.
"I'm not a normal mom. I don't get to spend as much time with my child as a lot of parents do, so I really try to value that time," said Yori, who declined to have her family photographed for this story. "But it helps, because Kirk is home and he can be consistent with him ... so it works out good."
Yori and Helms were married for nine years before Lukas came along. The two met at an Omaha Racers game when she was the coach at Creighton, and his initial introduction as she walked by in a group didn't exactly make her heart flutter. But at another Racers game, Yori's friends, spotting Helms again, told her if she didn't go talk to him, they would.
She then discovered he had a huge interest in basketball (he officiated games, too), and a relationship blossomed.
Before Lukas arrived (fittingly, mom was officiating games at one of her summer camps at NU the day before he was born), most of Helms' days were spent juggling projects as an independent contractor.
For the past five years, he's made major cutbacks to that schedule to be a stay-at-home dad.
"Your life kind of happens," said Yori, who speaks glowingly of her two years coaching at tiny Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, but also remembers thinking, "How am I ever going to meet anybody there?" when she was trying to decide whether to stay or take a job at Creighton.
That choice, as well as one to leave her alma mater for Nebraska in 2002, worked out smashingly.
"I got an awesome husband, I know that," said Yori, joking that if anyone in their home is serving dinner at 6, it's going to be him. "Frankly, there's not a lot of men who would do what he does, so I'm very thankful that I met the right guy and got married at the right time."
Yori also is grateful that the career opportunities presented to her have allowed her to remain near her central Iowa hometown of Ankeny and Helms' Omaha family.
In other words, being at Nebraska is about as good as it could get. Especially now.
The Huskers, now 17-0, have never been ranked as high as their current Nos. 6 and 7 positions in the national polls. And all of this has happened during the last year before Lukas starts school.
"He stays up a lot until 10 or 11, where most kids that age are fast asleep," Yori said, "so that's the time I try to spend with him, when I get home and I've got that hour or two-hour window. That'll change next year."
What won't is her love of parenthood and home life.
"Her favorite movie is ‘It's A Wonderful Life.' That should tell you a lot about her," said Omahan Bridget O'Brien, one of Yori's college roommates. "People think she's just this competitive coach, but she's so ... generous and warm. Her home is always open."
And should you decide to drop by, Yori will even share her family. Well, some nights, anyway.
"One of the things she tells us is that wherever you are and whatever situation you're in, you have to devote 100 percent of the time to that, and you can't think about anything else," Kelley said. "So she gives us her undivided attention for these two-and-a-half, three hours (of practice), and then she sets it aside and goes home and spends time with her family. She emphasizes how important family is and how much meaning that has to her life."
Considering his wife's line of work, "It's like she has teenage daughters every year," Helms said. "But giving birth and being a mom, it's just on a totally different plane.
"As soon as practice and games are done, the first thing she wants to do is spend
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