Brittany Logan: A mom at home in the paint

She returns home most nights by 7 p.m. when it’s straight back to mommy mode again: homework, cleaning, cooking, making sure the kids have everything they need.

It’s an abnormally long day, made moreso because Logan is a very different type of working mom. A senior at Georgia State, Logan is also the starting center on the women’s basketball team. Her mornings are filled with classes, lifting weights and conditioning. Her afternoons are basketball practices and more classes as she works to complete her bachelor’s degree in religious studies.

Not only is she fighting time each day, but she is fighting time each year: She will turn 27, making her one of the oldest, if not the oldest, college players athletes, during the NCAA women’s tournament next March.

It is, as she, her coach, teammates, fiancée and dad, all describe as a different situation.

“I had kids in high school,” she said. “You do make mistakes. You can find other avenues to still find your dream. That’s what I want to show my kids: If you want to pursue it, it’s something you can do. By all means, pursue it.”

Twins at 17

There were slightly more than 276,000 babies born to mothers between the ages of 15-19 last year, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The twins Jeremiah and Mariah Logan were born on Feb. 14, 2005 , in Greenville, S.C. But just a few months earlier, Logan’s life was truly just beginning.

Just 17 years old with quick feet carrying a 6-foot-4 frame, she earned the nickname of “Baby Shaq” and she was a high school star at Lane Academy with her pick of colleges.

She chose Alabama, making it official on Signing Day in November.

A few weeks later her high school coaches took her to see a doctor. They thought she might be pregnant.

Logan had no idea.

Because of the exercise and basketball, she said she didn’t put on weight. Looking back, she said she did have a slight baby bump, but she didn’t think much of it.

The doctors confirmed what the coaches suspected: Logan was seven months pregnant. The date: Dec. 3, 2004. There would be no senior season at Lane, no college. Basketball was replaced by bed rest.

“Life as I knew it was over,” she said.

But that wasn’t the hardest part.

Next came the nurse’s phone call to Logan’s father, Lafayette, to tell him the news. Lafayette said he howled with anger. A career Army man, he couldn’t understand how his daughter could make such a poor decision.

Alabama coaches stopped returning her calls. All the school and coaches who couldn’t say enough kind things when they thought she could help them left her in virtual isolation. The twins were born on Valentine’s Day.

After the shock, Lafayette Logan told his daughter that he and her mother, Betty, would help take care of the babies if she promised that she would one day earn a college degree. Brittany knew the statistics for attending college, much less graduating, weren’t good.

“I wasn’t going to be a statistic,” she said.

A third child, TreSean, was born the next year. Brittany said the children have the same father, but he has chosen not to be involved in their lives.

Playing basketball, her dream since she was 8, seemed as impossible as making a full-court shot.

Logan immersed herself in motherhood and providing for her children. They moved from South Carolina to Atlanta to be near her mother. She found work. The woman who used to take care of her when she was a child agreed to take care of her children, even offering a discount for her services so let Logan make ends meet.

But Logan never stopped dreaming of basketball. She wanted not only to merely play, but to use the game to provide a better life for her children.

“I left it so prematurely,” she said. “I never wanted to stop playing basketball. I knew I would always play basketball. I just didn’t know how.”

A 23-year-old freshman

Less than 2 percent of teenage mothers earn a college degree by the age of 30, according to www.dosomething.org.

Logan’s new life began at a college, but it wasn’t on the basketball court. It started in the parking lot.

After sending letters to every school that recruited her when she was a high school darling — and even to those that didn’t — just one responded: Georgia Perimeter.

Logan met Jaguars coach James Waldon in the parking lot of an elementary school near Stone Mountain and she told him her story. Recognizing her size and appreciating what she was trying to do, Waldon offered her a scholarship on the spot, without having seen her play. She was 23.

“Anybody with that sort of persistence, wanting to get a degree and play ball with her circumstances, you’d have to be cruel to not stick your neck out for her,” Waldon said.

Logan dominated right away, leading the Jags to a 31-3 record in 2011-12. As a sophomore, she had 17 double-double games while She followed that with 17 games with at least 10 points and 10 rebounds while Perimeter finished No. 12 in the country.

She also met her fiancée, Andre King, in a math class and credits him with helping her work toward her dreams.

After proving the she could still play, some of the big schools — Alabama, Kentucky, Louisville, Tennessee and others — began to contact her, illustrating the “what you have done for me lately” mentality in recruiting knows no age.

But Logan connected with a Georgia State assistant coach, Jonathan Barbaree, who stressed how the university would work with her to make sure that she could balance academics, athletics and family.

And it has. Coach Sharon Baldwin-Tener, a mother who also understands the demands of time, gives Logan advance notice of practice schedules so that she can make sure her kids are where they need to be when they need to get there.

“I didn’t become a statistic,” Logan said.

Team Logan on game night

Brittany Logan’s night begins when King and the kids arrive at the GSU Sports Arena.

They take up their usual spots a few rows behind Georgia State’s bench. When their mother is introduced, all three stand and cheer. When she scores, the boys pull their shirt open like Superman. When they can’t be there for road games, they call and the kids tell her how much they love her and that she is a blessing.

Jeremiah and Mariah are tall like their mom. They all three want to go to college. It’s clear that their mother’s desire to fulfill the promise she made to her father has influenced them as well.

“I’m honored to have a mother that plays college basketball,” Mariah, the chattiest of the children, said. “It’s making her smarter.”

They cheer their mother’s every move on what turns out to be a rough night. Logan is so much bigger than the defenders on the other team that she is whistled for a charge even when it appeared she did nothing more than turning with the ball.

Baldwin-Tener said Logan isn’t playing as well as she practices and that they are working on that.

“She handles coaching better than some of the younger ones,” Baldwin-Tener said. “She gives good effort in most things she does, I think, because she’s been out in the real world, understanding the things you have to do to be successful. And I think that’s helped the other players.”

Logan isn’t treated any differently by her teammates because of her age or because she’s a mom. In fact, it’s sometimes hard to tell that her situation is any different. She can be as silly as a 6-year-old, one time tying the ankle braces, practice uniform and shoes of a teammate into one gigantic bundle.

But she can flash her sterner mom side too, particularly when her teammates aren’t doing what they are supposed to in practice or games. She won’t hesitate to prod, not that she often needs to. Remembering what she is doing is sometimes all they need.

“If she can do this with all of her responsibilities, then surely I can,” teammate Gaby Moss said. “It’s motivation to see someone that determined. She could have stayed (at home). To come back and finish her college career, it’s inspiring.”

‘Follow you dreams’

Now a senior, Logan’s next step hasn’t yet been decided. She is considering playing overseas. Lafayette said teams in China have shown an interest. Despite her age, Baldwin-Tener said bigger players can make it overseas.

Logan would love to be drafted by an WNBA team. She’s not ready for her basketball journey to end so soon after it started again.

But if her playing career ends, she is considering coaching. She is interested in using basketball to help the deaf, an inspiration from a summer school teacher who made Logan aware of problems that some deaf children have with learning. One of her afternoon classes is learning sign language.

Her determination doesn’t just focus on basketball. Wherever she and her family lands, whatever she ends up doing, she wants her children to learn one lesson from her experiences, a lesson for many.

“Whatever adversity you think you could face, find something that makes you happy, give it 100 percent,” she said. “Effort you give may not seem like much. You may feel like you want to give up. But follow your dreams.”