The senior, now a mother of daughter Oakley, is ready for her first season as a Tiger after a tumultuous 2024
Mother’s Day may have come and gone, but it’s important to remember that becoming a parent takes many different paths. For senior Mizzou soccer player Hailey Chambliss, her pregnancy with her daughter, Oakley, took everyone by surprise.
“I found out beginning of April, and my plan was to just not say anything,” Chambliss said. “I didn’t really know how far along I was at the point; that was difficult.”
The only person she decided to tell was her head coach, Stefanie Golan.
“She came up [to my office] and I was the only person up here, and she came in, got really emotional, and shared with me that she and her boyfriend were unexpectedly expecting a baby,” Golan said. “My first question to her was, ‘Are you okay?’ Because that’s a heavy thing at that age, especially when it’s something that you know you weren’t planning for.”
Hailey managed to complete the entirety of spring training alongside her fellow teammates without drawing any suspicion. This included the intensive “Beep Test,” meant as an extreme test of conditioning and physical fitness.
“None of the other coaches knew; obviously, they were still as hard on me as they were before,” she said. “Ran the beep test, passed the beep test… that’s something I’ll never forget.”
“I was waking up for 6am lift. I was exhausted,” Hailey said. Throughout all of it, she never wavered.
In addition to her work out on the soccer field, she continued her studies. If juggling all these things seems tough—that’s because it was.
“I feel like I was just going through the motions at that point, which was difficult, but I think that you’re kind of just in a different zone,” Chambliss said. “I still did what I needed to do, but I think that going through Finals was probably the hardest part.”
“But once I started to get towards the end whenever Steph knew, I did start to feel a little better about it and coming to terms with the fact that this doesn’t mean soccer has to end,” she said.
“It’s just got to take a little time managing…I honestly blacked out that whole two months. I don’t really remember too much from that [time period].”
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After spring season ended, Chambliss was able to reveal the good news to everyone. Somehow, the news was slow getting around to Ana Menendez Nava, the Assistant Director of Athletic Performance, however, who did not find out until texting Hailey in June about her progress with summer workouts.
Ana is an integral part of the soccer program, helping design workouts and plan trainings for the athletes. She monitored Hailey’s progress carefully, as it was the first time that she had worked with a pregnant athlete before.
But Hailey stayed hard at work throughout her pregnancy, lifting weights until the day she went into labor. While her body was in the midst of change, her focus and confidence never faltered.
After giving birth to Oakley, it was time to get back to work; Ana was right there with workouts ready to go.
“I took some guidelines from the professional soccer world,” Menendez Nava said. “There are guidelines out there from professional soccer that tell you from week zero postpartum to week six— this is what you need to be focusing on, just very like, simple movements…at the beginning it was very basic movements as far as the weight room goes, kind of learning how to move your body again… Obviously she had to be pain free, and if there was any discomfort, she had to be careful with that kind of stuff. She was great with it. Didn’t really have any problems.”
Menendez Nava raved about Chambliss’s work ethic.
“If anything,” she said, “Sometimes I’ll have to be like, ‘Hey, look, slow down a little bit, like, you just had a baby, okay.’ But that just says a lot about her. How bad she wants to be back and with the team.”
Life has changed for Hailey so much more than just a physical perspective. With Oakley now attached to her hip, it has led to a major lifestyle change. Currently she is living with her boyfriend and Oakley’s father, Drew Townsend. The two met at Missouri State before Drew transferred to Missouri Southern. Now they all live in Joplin as Drew finishes out his senior season as a member of the baseball team.
“She (Oakley) like, hangs out with all the boys and lots of the girlfriends,” Hailey said. “At games she gets passed around to everyone. It’s been super fun. I love watching Drew play, but the socializing aspect, I’ve made a bunch of friends here, a lot of people who are always willing to take Oakley and help, the same way people at Mizzou are. You know, everyone’s willing to help me out and or just hang out with her, which is super cool.”
Like Hailey alluded to, the team has been extremely supportive. Now that she has been back in action as a part of the Spring 2025 season, the rest of the team has become fast friends with Oakley.
“The girls, they’re awesome,” Hailey said. “Morgan Schaefer, Jess Larson, any of them were like, ‘Can I hold her, like, while you go change?’”
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But by and large, her biggest supporter has been Coach Golan. As the head coach of the program, she has served as a beacon of stability amidst a life filled with change for Chambliss. At first, Hailey had no idea if she’d ever be able to play soccer again. But under the guidance of Golan, she has quickly worked her way back to becoming a major player for the 2025 season.
“She’s been so accommodating, she’s always willing to try to help me figure something out,” Hailey said. “For example, [she sent me] a bunch of links for daycares and stuff like that. I feel like she’s done quite literally, way more than I could have ever asked.”
She continued. “It [would’ve been] so easy for her to go in the portal and get someone, and I mean, she had three semesters to do it…And I think that just speaks to the type of person she is.”
Previously I wrote about the way that Golan inspires young women as a coach and how she balances that with life as a mom herself; I think this story combines the best part of those two pieces, as Coach Golan has been the perfect role model for Hailey since arriving at Mizzou.
“There’s that understanding of some days are way easier than others,” Golan said. “I think the hard thing about being a mom and being a high-level athlete, or being a mom and being a coach is that you’re constantly torn…when you’re putting your time into your kids and into your family, you feel like you’re taking something away from the team. When you’re doing the reverse and you’re investing in the team, you feel like you’re taking it away from the family. So being able to help her integrate family into the team is a big deal.”
“The teammates love when Oakley is around,” Golan said. “I think it’s a great opportunity for the entire team to kind of grow with her through this experience.”
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Everyone has nothing but good things to say about Oakley—and rightfully so. While still only five months old, she manages to make a lasting impression on everyone she meets.
“I love her hair and the fact that, no matter what Hailey does, it seems to want to stick up straight and just be all over the place,” Golan said. “I think when they put bows in it that are as big as her whole entire head, it’s just so stinking cute…If you’ve seen pictures of Hailey in her uniform with Oakley and Oakley decked out in all Mizzou gear. I mean, those are moments that you only get for a certain amount of time. And I think it’s really, really cool because there’s a tremendous amount of love in that setting, and there’s nothing like that.”
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Between her parents, the Mizzou soccer team, Drew, and his parents, Hailey has built quite the healthy support system around her over the last two years. This support system has been extremely helpful, as unfortunately not all of the responses she has received have been positive.
“I think there’s a lot of stigma around having a baby out of wedlock, which, you know, I get it,” she said. “My disappointment almost came from what others [were] going to think…people talk about quite literally everything. I’m going to be the talk of the town right now, and then in a week, someone else will do something, and then it’ll be their turn…I had some pretty horrible things said to me while I was pregnant, just things that I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, like I can’t imagine saying that to anyone or let alone someone that I knew’.”
But after the initial sting, Chambliss has since shifted her mindset, refusing to let the opinions of others affect her.
“I feel like I have gotten to spend way more time with her than anyone normally gets to spend with their kids…she gets to spend every second with me, and I feel like that’s super awesome,” Hailey said. “She hasn’t spent a day away from Drew or I or our parents, and I feel like that’s super cool. I feel like just changing my mindset…it doesn’t matter what other people think. If I’m happy with my life, that’s really all that matters.”
You can catch Hailey out on the pitch – and Oakley in the stands, with her massive bows – when Mizzou soccer returns to action in August.
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