The Perspective Series, Part 2: Kaleb Oliver juggles fatherhood during emotional week

Editor’s note: This is Part 2 of a series highlighting the various perspectives of those most closely affected by the emotional backdrop of Georgia Tech’s upcoming game with Temple. Part 1 focused on the Georgia Tech coaches returning to Temple less than a year after leaving.
All of the planning and preparation had been done. The appointment had been set. The day on the calendar had been marked: Sept. 17. All Kaleb Oliver had to do was be there.
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For nine months, he knew this day was coming. It was the day he had been envisioning. It was going to be the day he became a father. You see, Oliver and his longtime girlfriend, Maia, were expecting a little girl. They knew the pretty bows and flowery dresses were in their future when a cloud of pale pink confetti rained down on the couple in May on the day of their gender reveal party. They felt blessed, too, because they were having a little girl and she was set to enter into the world the week of Georgia Tech’s bye week. So, the couple made the plan: If she didn’t come early, the appointment would be set for them to go in together to have their little girl during Oliver’s off-week. All Oliver had to do was get the OK that he could be there for the birth of his baby girl.
A couple of weeks ago, he sat down with Geoff Collins one-on-one to discuss taking a few days off from practice to be there for Maia and his daughter. For Collins, who has a 3-year-old daughter, the decision came without any questions.
“No, of course, you’re going to be there,” Oliver remembers his coach saying. “This is your child. Football is going to be here. This is football, but that’s not life. This is life.”
Ask Oliver, and he can give you an hour-by-hour breakdown of the 12 hours leading up to his daughter’s birth. The couple went to the hospital around 9 p.m. on Tuesday. By 5 a.m. on Wednesday, Maia was about halfway there, dilated about five centimeters. As the sun started to peek over the horizon, the nurses called in her doctor. The doctor came in and asked Maia to do a practice push, with an emphasis on the word “practice.”
But that supposed practice push turned into the real thing when the baby started to crown.
“We were like, ‘No. No. No. Stop. Stop,’” Oliver said. “The doctor wasn’t ready. She didn’t even have her scrubs on.”
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Quickly, the nurses and doctor prepped for the coming infant and just one … two … non-practice pushes later came a beautiful, healthy baby girl. Kaleb and Maia welcomed Karter Grey Oliver into the world at 8:21 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 18. She has her mother’s lips and smile, her father’s nose. The couple is still waiting to see what color her eyes will be once she transitions out of the newborn eye color of a gray/blue.
Karter Grey Oliver 💕
"I will guide you in the way of wisdom & I will lead you in upright paths. When you walk, your steps will not be hampered & when you run, you will not stumble." ~Proverbs 4:11-12
"I promise to always love you & do everything to make you & mama proud ❤️" pic.twitter.com/ev9Km890rD
— The Kale🅱️ Oliver™ (@_K2tha_0) September 25, 2019
Oliver has seen many physically strong people in his life. On the football field and in the weight room, he is surrounded by strength. But what he witnessed from Maia was a completely different type of strength, one that can’t be measured in weights lifted or pads cracked.
“She’s amazing, wonderful, beautiful, strong, so strong, stronger than she even knows,” he said. “I can’t thank her enough for it. And she always tells me, ‘Don’t thank me for this. I love you, and we’re in this together.’”
The next couple of days whizzed by for Oliver in a blur of errands. He said with a laugh that Karter wants to do only three things (those who have had children can easily guess what those things are): She wants to eat, sleep and poop. He said he really can’t help with that first one right now, so his sole job those first few days was about helping to make Maia as comfortable as possible.
He said the first couple of days ran into one another with him going off of little to no sleep (parents reading this are likely thinking “Get used to that”).
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“I was just trying to be there to help my girl and help with Karter,” Oliver said. “I know I can’t feed her because that’s really the only thing she wants right now. I can’t feed her personally, but just to be there to run the errands for my girl; go get whatever she needs. If she needs something to drink, get that. If she’s hungry, bringing her food. Just being the one to cater to her right now as she transitions into this role, and we transition together.”
It was a blissful and whirlwind passing of night and day for the young couple and their little girl. But then, just two days after Oliver and Maia welcomed baby Karter into the world, Oliver received the news that his grandmother had passed away. In that moment, emotions waged a war inside his mind.
“I, honestly, didn’t know how to feel,” he said.
There was the joy he felt for his daughter’s birth and the mourning he felt with the passing of his grandmother. In the span of just two days, the best and worst of emotions bombarded Oliver. Looking back on his first seven days of fatherhood, Oliver said the notion of family and the bonds a family shares were reinforced in his mind. He spoke with his mother and other family members about his grandmother, with everyone coming to the conclusion that they believed she had passed on to a better place, without suffering. Oliver said the emotions come in waves. Some moments are absolutely fine, but the very next breath can bring sorrow.
But it’s because of Karter that Oliver said he gets through that sadness.
“Having my baby girl to look at and talk to and hear, man, it really helps,” he said. “Honestly, it tremendously does.”
Georgia Tech’s bye week meant a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For the Yellow Jackets coaches, it was a time to get back to the basics, back to the film room to dissect where exactly the team is three games into the season. For the players, it was a time to focus on the little things, to take a look at their own attention to detail within their individual roles. But no one’s bye week can compare with Oliver’s.
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Oliver always has compartmentalized football into life, not life into football. He said the events of this past week leading up to the Temple game reinforced that notion. Oliver isn’t one to bundle up emotions. He says they come out either way. Oliver uses those emotions, like the joy of his daughter’s birth and the heartache of his grandmother’s passing, on the football field. It’s in the fierceness of his run and in the smack of each hit. Out on the field, Oliver knows what he wants to do, and he knows how to make it happen.
The Temple game means something different for everyone involved, and Oliver’s perspective makes football not the biggest part of life. Football is important, he said, but life outside of football can trump that.
“Yeah, we get stuck in football because it’s our everyday thing, so we think that football is our life. That is, until something in life happens that’s not connected to football,” Oliver said. “Then, it’s almost like, ‘Whoa, what is this?’ But the thing is, it’s real life.”
(Photo: Adam Hagy / USA Today)
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