Trusting the Process with Coach Keenan Hickton

Today’s Play: Amy and Keenan Hickton explore how parental support rooted in trust, humility, and awareness can unlock an athlete’s full potential. Keenan reflects on how his own parents supported his late transition to golf with unconditional encouragement—while also resisting the urge to overstep as knowledgeable former athletes. The conversation highlights the critical importance of letting coaches coach, staying grounded in reality, and helping student-athletes learn to take ownership of both their progress and setbacks. 

Today's Coach: Keenan Hickton is the Head Men’s Golf Coach at The University of the South, Sewanee. He spent the last six years as assistant coach at Emory University, where the team achieved a No. 1 national ranking, placed in the top 5 nationally for most of his tenure, and won 22 tournaments—including three UAA championships. As a student-athlete at Emory, Keenan was a three-time UAA team champion, Tournament MVP, and two-time All-Scholar Team honoree, graduating in 2018 with a degree in Business Administration.

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Picking Teams: A Playbook for Parents is produced by: Amy Bryant and Sasha Melamud

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Transcript

Amy Bryant  0:04  

I really think what it boils down to is there's just two things, if we can have like one mantra that parents just kind of repeat in their head, it's a trust the process. And my players know this. I used to say this to them all the time, trust the process and trust the coaches process, and that's actually a go on a tangent real quick, but one of my biggest regrets in coaching is that I didn't do more coaching of the parents. I was incorrectly operating under the assumption that if I distanced myself and created a wall between myself and the parents that that would be better for my players and that would allow me to coach them better and cleaner without all of that noise. And actually, in looking back, I think the better way to have handled that situation would have been to do some meetings with parents and talk about my process and to talk about my expectations for them as parents and to teach them how to support their players, because there's no way you can separate the parents and the players. Like we definitely had team meals where I said no parents, because I was concerned that a parent was going to sit down next to their child and mess up the whole plan or destroy the confidence that I had built in this player for X amount of months or years in one comment sitting at dinner. So there were definitely meals where I'm like, this one is a team only meal. And then again, in retrospect, I really think that if I had done some coaching, I could have prevented some of that. Now, honestly, sometimes our efforts, they're all in vain, like we can't we can't change everyone, right? But I think that all of the parents that I coached over the years were really willing to learn and wanted to support their kids in the best way possible, and I think they would have appreciated having a little bit of coaching from me. So anyways, all that to say, I would say trust the process and trust the coach, whether or not they're an A coach a minus Coach B plus Coach B, Coach average coaches, they can do better, but if they're learning trust the coach, right, they're not going to be perfect again, they're not making that much money and their intention is the best. They are coaches, because they love the game. They love molding young people. They love being out there with your child like trust the coach. Those are the two mantras, trust the process, trust the coach. Then it would make it so much better for not only for us as coaches, but would make it so much better for their kids, would make it so much better.

Keenan Hickton  2:43  

I think that's spot on. And I'm curious what it might have looked like if you went back in time and changed that approach. I would probably challenge whether or not it would have been as successful as you might have dreamt, dreamt of of changing that because I think it's just it's hard. And I do think, especially at Amy and at salwani, we've been blessed with tremendous parents by and large, but it's a difficult proposition. I think they just it's hard to fight that incredible love they have and blindness and love that they have for their own child and kid. And you know, I've just seen that so many different ways from the time I was 10 years old, it's hard to coach someone that's blind. I would say, Yeah,

Amy Bryant  3:24  

I agree. I mean, do you have this romanticized notion of how I could have done everything better, but we'll never know should have, could have worked, right? We'll never know can only do what I'm doing now, and I, you know, do believe passionately in what I'm doing now. And I hope these conversations that we're having, I hope that parents find them useful and helpful. And there's a lot of things to think about. Let's talk about your parents for a minute. What was the most helpful thing that your parents did to support you as a two sport athlete picking up golf later. I mean, you said before they were athletes, not, you know, not, not all parents that were athletes, especially at a high level like yours were college athletes, not all of them are willing to trust the process or trust the coach also. So sometimes it's better ignorance is bliss, right? Sometimes it's better not to know a lot. So what was it, what was the one thing that your parents did, or how did they support you that really led you to your spot today?

Keenan Hickton  4:17  

Yeah, I would say a lot of trust for the coaches. I mean, I was lucky. I was also the fourth, the Persian 4.0 so, you know, I was the fourth child, and I think they learned from things they did right and wrong. And they also, they would to say they learned from watching other parents and being like, Oh my gosh. I hope we never do that to our kids someday. So I think I was very lucky, first and foremost, that they let me choose. I mean, they let me switch from hockey to basketball because I loved it more. They let me switch again from basketball to golf because I love that more. Once I found out I wanted to play golf, I was very last minute I was signing up for tournaments at the last the last minute, I can tell you, the best example was my younger brother was doing the same thing. He played college golf at Rochester, and we were in South Carolina for Thanksgiving, because we were going to ditch thanksgiving to play a college recruiting golf tournament. And we thought the tournament was Friday, Saturday, Sunday of Thanksgiving, and it was in Myrtle Beach, about three or four hours away from where we were staying, and we realized on Wednesday evening that the first round of the tournament was actually on Thanksgiving Thursday morning. And we were so scared to tell our parents about how that Turkey that was literally in the oven was probably going to be useless tomorrow, because we need to start driving like right now to Myrtle Beach. And you know, the best thing I can say, we literally waited an hour to tell them, which was wasting precious time. And the reaction was, well, let's get in the car and go, you know, it's like, we just, we got to do it, you know. So I think parents don't get enough credit sometimes for the ends of the world they go to to just go make things happen. And I think that was a incredible story that probably demonstrates more so than any question I could say as to how unconditional my parents were, I guess, in the support of my adventures. And then I would say that they are bright people. They are especially my dad is a good golfer. And I would say he is a candidate for someone who does know more than a lot of coaches, and certainly knows more than a C coach or a D coach, but he went through great lengths to trust the process and trust the coach. When I laughed at your comment earlier, it's really funny when a parent needs educating, there is someone that's trying to break up the play when they have no background. But you've actually coached parents that have played professional tennis, and I have certainly coached players that their dad played college golf. And these parents actually may be more qualified on a certain subject, or, you know, they are qualified to have a conversation about the subject, but their opinion is sometimes actually not the worst opinion, but it's the most negatively consequential opinion. And it's not their fault. It's just because they just missed the private conversation we had at 8am pumping the person up with confidence, because that's what we know they needed, because we've been with them every day for three and a half years, and their parent that knows a lot about the sport thought they needed to be brought down right now, and they might be right, but they don't have the context that we have, and they also don't know that they just undermined our process completely at the most important time. So back to the subject. My dad was very qualified to speak on the game of golf, but very intentionally, he had to work hard on himself, I would say, to do this, and it wasn't because I asked him, told himself to trust the process. And I would say, I'm extremely grateful for that, and in ways that I didn't understand as a player, but I'm grateful for that the more I get older. Yeah,

Amy Bryant  8:04  

and you know what? It's funny because the the player that you referenced, whose parent was a professional tennis player, he did the same. He was very intentional about standing back and just letting his daughter do her thing and allowing me to coach his daughter. Now, when I was coaching his daughter, I can tell you, I was shaking in my shoes knowing that he was watching on the sidelines. I'm like, Oh my God. What is he thinking? What is he in his mind? What is he saying that I've done wrong, you know, but he got it, and I appreciated that, that he knew that when he came to visit and watch, I believe that he knew he was just seeing a snapshot. He wasn't seeing the full picture. There's no way he could. He lived in California. We were in Atlanta. There's no way that he could have seen the whole picture. And he knew that, and he trusted me, and he trusted our process. And what it did is it ended up in a National Championship for his daughter when she was a senior, and he got to sit there and watch it. And I don't know, you know, maybe in the back of his mind he was thinking, Oh, it could have had four national champions. Championships if you've done it my way. I don't know, but he never said it to me, and that's just my imposter syndrome sneaking in there and saying, What's Carl thinking? What's Carl thinking? But he was fantastic. And I think that it really takes an intentional effort out of parents that really know the game and get it to really step back and let other people coach their child and let other people mold their child and let their child thrive. So kudos to your parents and and kudos to Carl too, and

Keenan Hickton  9:31  

sometimes those are the parents that get it the most because they have played they have played sport at the highest level, and they understand the process over the result, and they understand that when they were getting coached. The last thing they need right now is one random pointer from another coach. Even if it's a great random pointer, it's like we're in a one hour process meeting here. The last thing I need is a random thought. Exactly,

Amy Bryant  9:53  

exactly, yeah, it's a really good way to look at it. Well, I want to wrap things up with you. So do you have any other thoughts on, like, values that parents could teach their children as they're bringing them up, from being, you know, a young golfer on the golf course to a basketball player, whatever the case may be, any values you'd like the parents to really kind of focus on, even when they're in college, it's never too late, right?

Keenan Hickton  10:18  

Yeah. You know, I think awareness like, let's just dive into awareness, I suppose. And there's just so much information available about how good you are, the level you can play, what you need to work on to play at a higher level, what type of regimen you need to do to add strength, because that's the weakness you have, especially in a game like golf that is a little bit numbers based, I would just not shy away from awareness. I think some very some people may just not know that yet, they may not have the background we have in sport, but some people also might avoid awareness as a way of trying to encourage their kid to be the best they can be, 24/7 but I would just say, dive into awareness and understand that. Okay, my kid is 15 or 16 years old, and they are likely not on track to play in the NBA someday, but they love the game of golf, and they actually just beat someone that's going to go play at Notre Dame or liberty or Penn State, so maybe they do have a chance of this. And then the next step of that level of awareness is okay, well, we do know that it's really helpful to get better at a sport, to actually play the sport. So now let's have the awareness that playing golf at Emory might be a really tremendous opportunity, because playing golf at Davidson or Georgetown might be overwhelming at year one, and then you get to play in every single event at amyry and actually grow as a competitor and a player, because you have these experiences. You have the opportunity to compete, to shoot the ball, to play the number one player on the other team, and then, you know, again, you could double down on awareness 10 different ways. But okay, I just finished my freshman season of college, and I was the ninth best player. Let's be aware of that. Let's not lie to ourselves about that. Let's double down on awareness. And then, if we don't like that result that we just got after a year, can we change the process to achieve a different result next year? Can we be realistic with our goal to be the fourth best player next year, or are we just going to be unaware and say, I want to be the best player, even though that's completely unrealistic? So I would say there's so much information available online, especially in numbers based sports, and I would really encourage parents and players to be aware, and I will add that confidence and humility are extremely important to me in a meeting. But I actually love awareness. And this may be a golf specific thing. Maybe it's not, but I love when someone's in here and they're like, Yeah, my teammate, you know, from two years ago, went to Auburn or Kentucky, probably not going to beat him anytime soon. Be honest with the coach, you know, I'm just not going to beat him. Probably going to play on the PGA Tour someday and make $30 million playing the game of golf. But, you know, I also know some kids that went here and went here. I'm better than them. You know, I kind of love a really aware kid and a really aware family, and that's why I'm jealous of these recruiting services that and the support that you provide, especially as a former coach, because you know what coaches are looking for, and I just think it is one of the most important decisions you'll make in your whole life, whether you like it or not, so you might as well have knowledge and awareness on your side.

Amy Bryant  13:44  

I love that answer. I think that's a great answer. And I think too, when that awareness comes to fruition, I think it's really important for our student athletes and our parents to avoid the common pitfall of making excuses for a particular result. So if they finish ninth instead of First, let's not place blame anywhere. Let's look within. And that comes with that awareness, like, that's positive awareness. It's like, okay, this is where I am. This is what I need to do to get to where I am or where I want to be, rather. And I own that, and I think that our student athletes that come to us and want to be recruited are driving that value from their parents, no doubt

Keenan Hickton  14:27  

about it. And the best athletes in the world do this even at the highest level. So I mean, just to triple, quadruple down on awareness, Tiger Woods is hosting the Hero World Challenge, and they asked him if he's going to play, if he's healthy from his injury, and he's like, I am not sharp enough to play with the best players in the world right now, I'm training every day that these are the 40 best golfers in the entire world. I am going to embarrass myself on my home golf course if I play golf tomorrow. Now that's maybe the greatest athlete of all time, and certainly in the game of golf, saying that, but he still thinks he's going to win the US Open and the Masters next year. He's still a competitor, right? But he's very aware of where his level is right now, and he knows he might shoot 82 tomorrow morning, and that's he's not going to sign up for a tournament. If that's what he's going to do, he's going to do. He's not going to go to Auburn if he can't play there. I just think I could probably derive a million more examples of why I think awareness is a hugely important trait in athletics.

Amy Bryant  15:33  

Yeah, you said that so well, and I love that. You know, Tiger Woods, he's not bowing out. He's just being realistic. He's just telling me like it is. And honestly, part of my job, a huge part of my job, is managing expectations and providing some realism to this college athletic search. Some of the reasons why families don't have that awareness is because they haven't done the research. They've only seen what they've seen on ESPN, and that's what they know exists. But if you do the research, you will gain the awareness, and you will realize that there are a lot of programs out there, like University of the South Suwannee golf where your child can be successful for four years and not only develop as a great competitor on the golf course, but develop as a great student and as a Great person holistically. So do the research, gain the awareness, and that would be a value that you can provide to your child, that they can take with them for life,

Keenan Hickton  16:30  

and hire, hire Amy to help

Amy Bryant  16:34  

Absolutely. All right. Kenan, thank you so much for being here. Have a wonderful rest of your day, and we'll definitely be in touch. Sounds

Keenan Hickton  16:41  

great. All right.