How Alec Pierce's family keeps track of three sons playing high-level sports

INDIANAPOLIS — Half a world away from each other, Alec Pierce’s brothers sit down at the same time to watch Colts games.

His older brother, Justin, plays professional basketball in Japan. The youngest, Caden, plays basketball at Princeton.

Because of the way their schedules work, Colts games almost always happen on an off day.

“I’m not mad about that,” Caden said. “I’ve got a good routine going.”

A routine that sounds like Sunday for a lot of college students, save for the soreness that comes from putting up 15 points and 10 rebounds in an NCAA game on Saturday. Caden sleeps late, takes his time through brunch, then does a little laundry before sitting down to watch his brother play at 1 p.m.

Justin’s routine is a little more complicated.

First of all, Japan is 14 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. A 1 p.m. Sunday kickoff at Lucas Oil is a 3 a.m. Monday kickoff in Yokkaichi, the city where Justin is living and playing this season, halfway between Tokyo and Osaka. Making it more difficult, the Japanese basketball schedule asks teams to play a back-to-back every weekend, a Saturday game followed by a Sunday matinee, leaving Justin exhausted when he walks off the court, averaging 16.4 points and 4.6 rebounds of his own this season.

He heads home, eats something and then goes right to bed, trying to get in five or six hours of sleep before his alarm goes off at 2:50 a.m.

Then he heads right to the TV.

“It’s probably not the best habit,” Justin said. “(But) I have the day off Monday, so I can kind of have a lazy chill day. It’s family. You’ve gotta support.”

Alec knows. He’s the same way.

The second-year Colts receiver has to watch Justin’s games on delay, thanks to the time difference, but he loves it when Princeton plays a midweek game at night.

Watching the weekend games can be a little harder, especially if Indianapolis is on the road, but Pierce has Colts staffers in his corner. When the team plane took off for Charlotte in the middle of Princeton’s thriller against Furman, a Colts employee kept the Gamecast on even though they could no longer stream it; on the rare occasions that Indianapolis and Princeton are playing at the same time, Pierce will ask for a quick update once he’s back in the locker room.

“I love following along with their games,” Alec said. “Whenever I can watch them, I do.”

'The biggest stress is not being able to be at everything'

The night before the Colts played the Bengals, the Pierce parents, Greg and Stephanie, were wide awake in a Cincinnati hotel room at midnight, eyes glued on a basketball game happening half a world away.

Veertien Mie, Justin’s team in Japan, finished knocking off the Toyoda Gosei Scorpions at 1 a.m. The Pierces headed to bed, got a little sleep, then headed to Paycor Stadium to watch their middle son take on the Bengals, all while their youngest got ready to lead Princeton against Saint Joseph’s in Philadelphia.

It's the first time in years the Pierces have been forced to deal with a football game and a basketball game happening at the same time.

“That’s our life,” Greg said. “And it’s a fun life.”

There was Stephanie in the Cincinnati stands, AirPods in both ears, the basketball game on her phone, watching both games at the same time while Greg stole glimpses over his wife’s shoulder.

“The biggest stress is not being able to be at everything,” Stephanie said.

They still try.

A little more than a month ago, Greg packed light, stuffed everything into a backpack and carry-on, flew to North Carolina to watch the Colts beat the Panthers with Stephanie on Nov. 5, then got on a plane and made it to New Jersey in time to watch Princeton beat Rutgers in its season-opener on Nov. 6. Two days later, he boarded a plane for Japan, washed his clothes at Justin’s home and spent a week there, catching four Veertien Mie games before coming back home.

He won’t be the only one. Stephanie’s planning to go to Japan in April.

This is just what they’ve always done.

When Justin was in his final college season at North Carolina and Caden was playing high school basketball, Greg remembers showing up to a Glenbard West-Wheaton North game, only to have the other Glenbard parents ask him what in the world he was doing there.

They knew Stephanie was hundreds of miles away, posted up in the stands for a North Carolina-Duke classic that went into overtime. Justin was playing for the Tar Heels; he’d become a graduate transfer to play for Roy Williams after three years at William & Mary.

“We considered every sporting event equal weight,” Greg said. “Obviously, one’s a little bit bigger, but we don’t treat it like that.”

'Alec reestablished the food chain'

The Pierce family schedule might seem remarkable.

But the calendar they keep is essentially the only one the family has ever known.

From the moment, Greg, a quarterback and tight end at Northwestern who was good enough to get Division I scholarship offers in basketball, fell in love with Stephanie, a Wildcats volleyball player with a vertical leap high enough that she could dunk a tennis ball, the Pierce offspring were going to have the genes to follow in their parents’ footsteps.

Then they had three boys.

Justin, 25, is two years older than Alec, 23, and Caden, 19, is the youngest.

“I only know my boys, so I can’t say all boys are like this, but they needed to move,” Stephanie said. “They needed to run around.”

The Pierce boys channeled their energy by playing sports.

Any sport.

“My parents encouraged all of us when we were young to do everything, not to specialize in a sport at too young of an age, because they feared we would burn out if we did that,” Caden said. “You name it, we played it.”

There was a permanent Wiffle ball field in the Pierce’s backyard, a makeshift disc golf course down the street, a hoop in the driveway. Being only two years apart meant Justin and Alec always had somebody to compete against, and their best friends were always over, filling out the Wiffle outfield or the rosters for two-on-two.

Caden wasn’t far behind.

When the youngest Pierce was in the middle of the terrible twos and threes, he spent so much time going to his older brother’s games that he started taking his own basketball, just to have something to do. The referees would stop the clock, the teams headed to the bench and Caden would head out onto the court.

“The basketball’s the size of his body,” Justin said. “He’s like 2 years old, he can barely walk, and he’s hucking a basketball into the hoop at the timeout. … Everyone’s cheering, and it’s my little brother, making shots.”

A household like the one the Pierces built breeds competitiveness.

The kind of competitiveness that’s hard to quantify.

The kind so intense that it’s almost impossible to say which Pierce wants to win more.

“Alec was probably the most competitive kid I’ve ever seen,” Caden said. “He had, like, a temper to him.”

Alec’s not so sure about that.

“My older brother, he’s the most serious, I’d say; he’s about his business,” Alec said. “(Caden) might think I’m the most competitive. … But I always went against my older brother.”

The competitive tension boiled over at least once. The way most of the Pierce family remembers it, Justin was picking on Alec, needling him, finding ways to rile up his younger brother.

“I’d be a hothead if I got to a breaking point,” Alec said. “One time, he took me over the edge a little bit, and I got him. I chased him across the street, dropped him in the neighbor’s yard.”

Alec kept running, all the way to a friend’s house, knowing he’d be in big trouble once his mom made it out of the house and across the street to find Justin on the sidewalk.

His parents eventually found him.

But the moment also changed the family dynamics from that point on.

“The food chain was reestablished that day,” Greg said. “I’m the oldest of three boys, too, and my middle brother played linebacker at Stanford. Our food chain was reestablished, really similar to how Alec reestablished the food chain here, so I can speak from experience, that’s no fun. As a result, they didn’t really fight.”

'I’ll never forget that battle'

Stephanie and Greg sat the boys down at the dinner table in September of 2011.

Justin was 13. Alec was 11. Caden was just seven.

Their parents had news.

Stephanie had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

Their mom, the only girl in a house of boys, the woman Greg still calls the best athlete among the five Pierces, joking that he’s accepted he’s only the fifth-best.

“She’s the rock of the family,” Justin said.

The news hit hard.

Even though Stephanie and Greg tried to soften the blow.

“It felt like they really tried to keep us calm,” Alec said. “They said, ‘They got it early, she’s going to be alright. We’ve just got to get some treatment.’”

The Pierce parents tried to keep life as normal as possible. The boys kept playing sports, kept competing against each other.

Normalcy was never quite there.

Stephanie started chemotherapy right away, finished the regimen in January, underwent surgery in February or March, then had a reconstruction in July. The chemotherapy wreaked havoc on her body. Her hair fell out. She dealt with fatigue. For months, friends and families from the Glen Ellyn, Ill. community brought dinners to the house, a mountain of lasagnas, enough to feed three athletic kids and help carry the load for their parents.

“Basically, (getting healthy) was my whole priority in life, so Greg really handled the boys’ activities,” Stephanie said. “I tried to do as much as I could. … We have a great community we live in, and lots of support. It’s a small town where everybody kind of knows each other.”

Stephanie eventually recovered. Life returned to normal. The kids kept playing sports, Stephanie and Greg got back to their rotation, making sure they were at as many games as possible.

The boys grew up a lot in that year.

“They were all old enough, except for maybe Cade, to understand the magnitude of it,” Greg said. “I think it gave them perspective.”

For years, Alec wore pink socks and pink gloves during October, the month the NFL used to dedicate to breast cancer awareness. When Justin was at North Carolina, he wore pink shoes with Stephanie’s name on them, and she was in the stands.

“We don’t talk about it a lot as a family now,” Justin said. “The perseverance she showed us, the lessons she taught us, even though we were young, I’ll never forget that battle.”

’Oh, but he’s not going to lose’

The Pierce boys finally started specializing as they got to high school.

Justin picked basketball, bringing all of what his parents call a “healthy intensity” to bear on his primary goal, landing a scholarship to play college basketball.

“Straight self-made,” Greg said. “He’s a bit of a pioneer in our family.”

Alec, the shortest at 6-3 — his brothers are both listed at 6-7 — but the Pierce blessed with the freakiest physical gifts, took another route. Football was his primary sport, and he dropped basketball after his sophomore season, focusing his time on club volleyball — his mother’s sport — where his status as a lefty came in handy.

Then he ran track as a senior in high school. When Stephanie showed up for Alec’s track meet, he was penciled into the anchor spot on the 4x400-meter relay, and she couldn’t believe it. The coaches planned to put Alec into the anchor spot over three guys who’d been running track and field for years.

“’Oh, but he’s not going to lose,’” Stephanie remembers the coach telling her. “’He is not going to let someone overtake him.’”

Caden, according to his oldest brother, is the family’s best overall athlete, a scratch golfer who played varsity tennis and was a pretty good quarterback before concussions ended his career prematurely, making it an easy decision for Caden to pursue basketball.

“I probably had a pretty advanced basketball IQ just from going to so many games,” Caden said. “And then just seeing my brothers, how hard they worked as they got older, kind of showed me what I had to do to get to the next level.”

The COVID-19 pandemic gave Caden a chance to see his brothers work firsthand.

By that point, it had been hard to get ahold of either of his older brothers for years. The life of a college athlete is nonstop, leaving little room for communication, but when COVID-19 shut the world down, the older Pierce brothers came back to the house in Glen Ellyn, Ill.

For most of the spring and summer, it was like they were kids again — playing HORSE in the driveway with their dad, playing Wiffle ball, passing the time by competing.

And every morning, they’d go to work on the weights in the basement. Justin was getting ready to go to Finland for his first professional season overseas; Alec was preparing for another season at the University of Cincinnati. Unlike a lot of other kids his age, Caden suddenly had access to two collegiate strength and conditioning programs, and he soaked in all the lessons he could learn.

Even if he had to take some guff to do it. When Caden was young, he was always trapped under a bean bag chair, locked in a closet, held down at the mercy of his older brothers.

During the pandemic, the family always ate dinner together, and when the call came, Justin and Alec would bound up the stairs, ready to eat.

“Where’s Cade?” the Pierce parents asked.

“’Oh, he’s responsible for cleaning up the weight room down there,’” the answer inevitably came. “’Before he can eat dinner.’”

In the meantime, over the years, the youngest had already taken on the Pierce family’s defining characteristic, the trait that links the brothers together.

“They’re all fierce, in their own right,” Greg said. “Watching Cade be a top rebounder in Division I at like 6-6, he’s fierce. Alec’s always been fierce; he would have a little temper in the youth stuff if things weren’t going perfectly. … Justin still has it.”

Making the most of every moment

The older they get, the harder it is to stay in touch.

Especially with Justin overseas. He’s played in Finland, Germany, Montenegro and now Japan, and the time difference makes it hard to schedule a FaceTime. Alec’s locked into his NFL routine. Getting ahold of Caden might be the hardest task of all, given the academic and athletic demands of a Princeton athlete.

“Well, thank God for technology, honestly,” Stephanie said.

Justin and Alec FaceTime at least once a week. The family group text is always going; Justin wakes up in Japan sometimes to a flood of texts about Princeton’s last game, Alec chiming in from his place in Indianapolis. Alec sometimes calls up Caden, asking if he has enough time to play Xbox.

There are times they take lessons from each other. Alec picked Justin’s brain about the difficulty of dealing with a disappointment of a season like the one he had at North Carolina. Caden has taken note that Alec’s strengths in college are his strengths in the NFL, that his brother can rely on the same skill set even at the next level.

Somehow, Greg and Stephanie keep track of everything.

“Their schedule, their logistics are crazy,” Justin said. “Most people would be overwhelmed.”

When all five Pierces do get together, a rarity that happens only a few times a year, they never take it for granted. There will be four or five days together in the summer, a few chances in the spring.

It happens so rarely that it’s like a comet passing in the night sky.

But they’re as close as ever, as committed as they’ve ever been to making it to each other’s games, following in the footsteps of their parents. The night before Justin left for Montenegro in 2022, he was at Lucas Oil Stadium, watching Alec make the first catches of his NFL career in a win over the Chiefs. Caden typically makes it to at least one Colts game a year.

Watching Justin’s a little harder, obviously — his first two seasons were played in crowdless stadiums due to the pandemic, and it’s not exactly easy to get to Montenegro or Japan on an athlete’s schedule.

But every once in a while, the family gets to be together for a moment, sometimes small, sometimes big.

The last big moment was in March.

Princeton upset No. 2 Arizona in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, then bludgeoned Missouri, making it all the way to the Sweet Sixteen. Alec was in the middle of his offseason; Justin made it back from Europe.

For the first time in a long time, the family was all in the same place together, all there to support Caden.

“That was the coolest moment, I think, that our family has had,” Justin said. “Cade, he was dragged to all of Alec and I’s stuff, he had no choice, so it was a very special role reversal for Alec and I to be there for him in person, to see him make history.”

A lot of families live a life dominated by sports, parents ferrying kids to games and tournaments on different sides of the state, divvying up each trip, sometimes making sure one of the kids has a ride because there’s just too many games in too many places.

Few get to live the life as long as the Pierces, traveling all over the world to watch their three sons play big-time sports as adults.

“It’ll probably really set in, more so, once we step away and we’re done,” Justin said. “I’m just enjoying the ride for our whole family. We all know it’s not going to last forever.”

Until that day, they’re going to make the most of every moment.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: How Alec Pierce's family keeps track of 3 sons playing high-level sports