Aimee Lavignette grew up in a basketball family. Most people do in Indiana. Her brother played basketball at the University of Evansville so, she said, “We were always in the gym.”
It was different for Cheryl Welter. Athletics were not on the radar at her home in Glenview, a Chicago suburb.
“I had one brother and he didn’t play sports,” she said. “We just were not a sports family at all.”
That said, Lavignette and Welter shared this: they found love – and football – in college, Lavignette at Purdue, Welter at Illinois Wesleyan.
We now know them as Aimee Spack and Cheryl Eash, the first ladies of Bloomington-Normal college football. Aimee Spack has been married to Illinois State head football coach Brock Spack for 40 years. Cheryl Eash married Illinois Wesleyan head coach Norm Eash 48 years ago.
In saying “I do,” they signed on as football wives. That has meant sacrifice and single parenting, navigating highs and lows of winning and losing, adjusting and readjusting family schedules, driving young children to and from activities, flying solo for their dinner time, bath time, bed time.
It can be a lot, too much for some.
Not these two.
“You just accept the fact that they’re not there most of the time,” Cheryl Eash said. “Their schedules are not regular. They might plan to be home at 6 o’clock, but you have an injury or an issue or whatever and you’re not home.
“The biggest thing I had to get used to when he went to Illinois Wesleyan was the recruiting season. I like football season better because it’s regular. It has a rhythm to it. Recruiting is just all over the place.”
Norm Eash is in his 38th season as head coach at his alma mater and 49th in coaching overall. He is the winningest coach in Illinois Wesleyan and College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin history.
Brock Spack has been coaching for 41 years, the past 16 as ISU’s head coach. He has the most wins in Redbird football history and his 2014 team was the FCS national runner-up.
Along the way, their wives have gained a working knowledge of football – “I know just enough to be dangerous,” Aimee Spack said – and an appreciation for the impact their husbands have.
“I think football coaches are negatively stereotyped,” Cheryl Eash said. “At least with Brock and Norm and many of the coaches we know, it’s the exact opposite. Of course they want to win. But they mold and affect young men’s lives in a way that I don’t think any other profession does. That’s huge. It’s not all about winning by any means. That stereotype is just wrong.”
Aimee Spack has seen her husband light up when former players return as successful, and grateful, men.
“They may not like that you’re kicking them in the fanny and saying, ‘You need to be accountable,’” she said. “But later in life, there’s no boss as hard as Coach Eash or Coach Spack. So they can deal with that down the road and they’re very thankful.”
'The rest is history'
For the Spacks, this all began with a blind date at Purdue. Brock was a standout linebacker on the football team and Aimee a member of the pom pom squad.
A sorority sister was dating a football player and suggested to Aimee, “Let’s get you fixed up with another football player.”
“So we did, and the rest is history,” Aimee said.
She and Brock shared a passion for water skiing and, soon, were in love. The other couple?
“They didn’t get married,” Brock said. “We’ve been married 40 years and it’s been quite the ride.”
Their family includes two grown children – Alicia, who played softball at Purdue, and Brent, a former ISU football player – and five grandchildren.
“It’s been awesome,” Brock Spack said. “She (Aimee) basically raised the kids, especially when I was an assistant and a coordinator. I helped when I could. I remember when I couldn’t be there to help put them in bed or help with bath time. She’s been great and she loves being around football.”
Football has been an acquired taste for Cheryl Eash. A music education major, she and her future husband had an educational psychology class together at Illinois Wesleyan.
Norm Eash also saw her at his part-time job. He was working at Rose Sporting Goods in downtown Bloomington when “she came in to buy a pair of tennis shoes,” he said.
Soon after, he called her sorority to ask her for a date.
“Back in the day there was one phone line and the person at the desk answered it,” Cheryl said. “He said who he was and I remember looking out to my friends and saying, ‘Is he OK?’”
Their first date was at Tobin’s Pizza. The next fall, Norm was a senior lineman on the IWU football team and Cheryl, a junior, started attending games.
“I had no idea how football was played,” she said.
The following year, Norm began his coaching career as an assistant at Streator High School. Cheryl attended a game early in the year and created a buzz among fans.
“She was reading a Reader’s Digest during the game,” Norm said. “When I found that out, I said, ‘No, Cheryl. You can’t do that. You have to be paying attention to the game a little bit.’”
The couple married after Cheryl completed college and has five grown children – Kyle (a former IWU quarterback), Kendra, Kelsey, Kaylyn and Karley – and seven grandchildren.
“Coaching is very time consuming, so you better marry someone who can raise your kids while you’re coaching because that’s what it’s going to come down to,” Norm Eash said. “She was that parent who was representing me when I was unable to get to some of the kids’ activities. As much as you try, it’s hard. There’s going to be some conflicts.
“A coaching career is a roller coaster. It’s the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat as the old Wide World of Sports used to say. The one person who experiences that the most is a coach’s wife. She’s done a great job. I wouldn’t have had any of the success in my career without her.”
Where to watch
Cheryl Eash and Aimee Spack root for their husbands’ teams at games, but not from the stands. They don’t want to make fans around them uncomfortable, nor do they want to hear the criticism coaches receive.
Cheryl watches from a platform at Tucci Stadium with her 96-year-old mother in-law, Norma Eash, or from the visitors side near the sand pit where her grandchildren play.
Aimee Spack and other ISU coaches’ families watch from a veranda outside of her husband’s office at the Kaufman Football Building.
“I just keep my mouth shut and watch the game and say my prayers and hope that we win,” Aimee said.
Cheryl Eash has no game-day superstitions and that’s OK. The Spacks have enough for both of them.
“Brock is so superstitious and now, I’m like crazy superstitious,” Aimee Spack said. “I have to wear the same shirt, I have to wear the same pants. Everything has to be exactly the same.
“Brock has to have his car parked in the same spot, he has to wear the same thing. If something doesn’t go right, he has to change it up.”
An example? Aimee would go to Circle K to get him a Diet Pepsi prior to home games. Then the Redbirds lost. So the next game, he wanted Diet Coke.
“We go through these ebbs and flows,” Aimee said.
Aimee Spack and Cheryl Eash are busy outside of football. Aimee is a director at Special Olympics Illinois – “I love my job,” she said – and also sells real estate part-time for Berkshire Hathaway. Cheryl Eash owns Healthy Cells magazine as well as Nilla’s Tub DIY Dog Wash & Health Food Store in Normal, which she runs with her daughter, Karley.
They are full and productive lives, with football always in the mix.
Norm Eash was an assistant at Streator from 1975-82 and head coach and athletic director at Dwight High School for four years before landing the IWU job. Brock Spack was defensive coordinator at Purdue for 12 years prior to coming to ISU. He also was defensive coordinator at Wyoming and an assistant at Wabash College, Eastern Illinois and Purdue.
Coaches routinely plot strategy and develop game plans. It is more open ended for coaches’ wives, though Aimee Spack offered this advice.
“I would say you just need to be flexible and be really, really happy that your husband has his passion,” she said. “I have lots of friends who I went to college with and their husbands chose a path in college and they were not happy. They’ve job flipped, they’re divorced, they never had that drive or passion that our husbands have.
“From that perspective, embrace that. It can be rough sometimes, especially when you lose and especially when they’re gone a lot. But just know they’re doing what they absolutely love to do. And that’s to coach football and to change the lives of players along the way.”
