8 - Athlete Mental Health: What Coaches & Parents Get Wrong (Expert Roundtable)

Athlete mental health can't be fixed with a slogan, a one-time awareness day, or "toughen up." In this Talkin' with the AD roundtable, five professionals — mental health counselors, an athletic trainer, coaches, and a mental performance specialist — break down what today's student-athletes are really facing (anxiety, depression, perfectionism, burnout, recruiting pressure, and the loss of identity when a career ends) and the well-intentioned coaching habits that quietly do damage. If you're an athletic director, coach, or sports parent, this is the practical playbook for putting the person before the athlete.

The panel gets into the coaching behaviors that hurt without meaning to — public criticism, indirect communication, unexplained lineup changes, and correcting an athlete who's still highly emotional — and what to do instead: build the relationship, communicate directly, give athletes room to process, and make sure young people know their worth isn't set by their stats or their spot in the lineup.

The core message: when adults build environments where athletes feel seen, heard, and valued beyond the scoreboard, they don't soften competition — they build healthier teams, stronger athletes, and better people.

MEET THE PANEL

Liza Simrell, LPCC-S — Licensed professional clinical counselor and certified mental game coach (Toledo, OH); former collegiate basketball player, varsity coach, recruiter, and official. (Liza Simrell Counseling)

Bill Hoopes — Navy veteran, former educator and coach, founder of Lead Your Journey; leads Florida Premier Girls Fastpitch and has helped hundreds of softball players pursue college opportunities.

Danielle Vallas, LMHC, M.Ed. — Licensed mental health counselor, former school wellness director, author, and founder of D&G Wellness Consulting; creator of The Inner Game: A Mental Health Journal for Peak Performance in Sports and founder of Buffalo Believes.

Meghan Johnson, MA, LAPC, LAT, ATC, NCC — Licensed associate professional counselor, certified athletic trainer, and mental performance coach with Next Level Mental Performance; former collegiate softball player.

Kim Griffin, MHC-P — Mental health counselor and former NCAA Division I softball coach; nearly two decades at Canisius University, including 11 seasons as head coach. (Core Mental Health Counseling)

MEMORABLE MOMENTS

"Put the person first — not the athlete." — Liza Simrell
 "You're not building a softball player. You're building a strong, powerful woman who can use the game as a vessel." — Bill Hoopes
 "It doesn't take a special certification or a fancy degree to be an active listener." — Meghan Johnson
 "Our brains are prediction machines." — Kim Griffin
 Athletes often don't need a coach to fix the situation — they need the coach to stay present.
 Be the thermostat that regulates the environment, not the thermometer that just reflects it.

ACTION STEPS FOR ATHLETIC DIRECTORS

Create a written mental health emergency action plan for home and away contests.
 Set clear procedures for when school counselors aren't available.
 Build mental health awareness and referral steps into preseason coach training.
 Connect coaches, counselors, athletic trainers, administrators, and nurses before a crisis.
 Keep a vetted list of local and telehealth mental health professionals.
 Explain mandatory reporting and confidentiality boundaries to every coach.
 Create recurring athlete check-in systems across every program.
 Model help-seeking, emotional regulation, and healthy boundaries from the top.

PRACTICAL STRATEGIES FOR COACHES

The Percentage Check-In — Athletes name the energy they brought that day ("I'm at 60%"); the team answers, "We've got the other 40%." Builds a habit and surfaces patterns.
 Weekly Athlete Journal — Short reflection (what went well, what challenged you, what support you need) — an easier route for athletes who struggle face-to-face.
 Shoulder-to-Shoulder Conversations — Many young people open up more while moving and looking ahead, not in direct eye contact.
 Post-Competition Feedback Rule — Right after a game, lead with effort and connection; save technical correction for when everyone's regulated.

⏱️ Chapter timestamps go here once you pull them — chapters boost both watch-time and search.

MORE PODCASTS FOR ADs, COACHES & SPORTS PARENTS

If you care about education-based athletics, these are worth a follow:
 Educational AD Podcast
 Hangin' with the ADs Podcast
 Pure Athlete Podcast
 Youth Inc with Greg Olson Podcast
 Healthy Sports Parents Podcast
 AD 360 Podcast
 Middle School AD Podcast
 AD Insider Podcast

—

Talkin' with the AD is a podcast for athletic directors, school leaders, coaches, parents, and athletes — built around education-based athletics and the people who make it work. Hosted by Morgan J. Sullivan — athletic director, coach, and author of Coach on Leadership.

LEAD · TEACH · GROW

🔗 Free resources and more at betteryouthcoaching.com
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 ⭐ If this one helped, leave a rating and review — it helps more ADs, coaches, and families find the show
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Welcome to Talkin' with the AD! 

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Better Youth Coaching
Mission is to improve amateur sports through education of parents, coaches, and athletes

Better Youth Coaching
Mission is to improve amateur sports through education of parents, coaches, and athletes

Transcript

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SPEAKER_04 0:49

All right, everyone. Welcome back to the Talking with the AD podcast. We're really excited for this episode. We've got five uh outstanding guests here who are mental health professionals, and they're going to educate us on the inner workings of coach and athlete relationships and how we can the coaches can better help these athletes through some mental health challenges and support their efforts through uh junior high and high school uh athletics. So we've got uh Danielle Vallas from DD Wellness, uh Megan Johnson, Liza Simrill, Kim Griffin, and Bill Hoops. So uh so I don't butcher any of these uh introductions. I'll let uh each one of these uh uh guests here introduce themselves, starting with Liza.

SPEAKER_07 1:33

Hi, my name is Liza Simrel. I am a licensed professional clinical counselor with a supervision designation. I've about 20 years of experience doing that, and then I'm also a certified mental game coach, and I have about eight years of experience with that. I own my own private practice in Toledo, Ohio. I see people in person through telehealth, and then I also do some team or group settings, trainings, things like that. I played basketball at Heidelberg College a long time ago. Um, I've also done coaching at the varsity girls' varsity level. I've recruited for colleges. I have I did ref basketball for eight years. Um and I I currently play in some amateur golf events as well, and I've used a lot of the stuff that I've learned with the mental game coaching to take my handicap from a 14 to a two. So um when I tell you I have experience with this stuff and it really works, that's how I can prove that it works. So um that's a little bit of my background, and I work with all different types of sports as well.

SPEAKER_04 2:45

Yeah, fantastic. I didn't know uh didn't know you were into golf now.

SPEAKER_07 2:49

Very much.

SPEAKER_04 2:50

Yeah, I play a lot of golf. Uh when I play golf, I play a lot of golf for sure.

SPEAKER_07 2:55

Back the bird team next year.

SPEAKER_04 2:57

Yeah, awesome. Awesome. All right, Bill, would you go next?

SPEAKER_03 3:01

Yeah, well, I go to top golf and play Angry Birds. That that's what I do. Yes. Uh yeah, my name's Bill Hoops. I am uh started out in uh sports as a as a dad. Uh you never really played sports. Uh went to college uh untraditionally uh as an older person. I spent most of my adult life in the United States Navy. I was a chief petty officer in the Navy where I went back to school and and got a degree in child psychology as well as a master's degree in youth policy development writing programs uh for kids, which is what I've spent the last 10 years uh kind of doing. After I got out of the Navy, I became a school teacher. I'm a licensed school teacher uh in civics and social studies in the state of Florida, uh, where I worked primarily in the middle school uh levels for four or five years. Um then I started coaching softball where I ran a 20-team organization in the state of Florida. And more recently, I own two companies in sports called one's Florida PGF, Premier Girls Fast Pitch. I own the biggest, most competitive girls fast pitch softball organization in the Southeast United States. We work with about 700 teams, about 10,000 female athletes every year through our tournaments and event. Uh, and then the other company I own is called Lead Your Journey, which is a mindset performance and recruiting company where I help female athletes feel good about playing the game that they're playing, uh, but primarily working on building that parent-player relationship. Uh, because I believe you can fix the swing, you can fix the run. But if you don't fix what happens on the car ride home, uh the kid has a lot harder times. So that's primarily what we work on. Um, I've I've not played, uh, but I have coached. I'm a high school state champion in state of Florida in softball, have a couple state uh and national titles, and have helped just about five, uh, five to six hundred girls get to the next level uh and play collegiate softball to further advance their life and their career.

SPEAKER_04 4:54

Wonderful. Thanks. All right, Danielle.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Hi, everybody. Super excited to be here with you guys today. My name is Danielle Vallas, coming to you from Buffalo, New York. Um, my athletic career really started way back in the day where I uh played soccer, ice hockey, and lacrosse forever. Um, and then I played uh college lacrosse and college ice hockey. Um, I went on to be a teacher. Um I was spending decades in this school as a director of wellness, coaching sports, and that actually what led me to go back to school to be a therapist. It was really my athletes who drove me to be back to go back to school. After finishing a master's in license uh to be a licensed mental counselor, I started uh my own private practice where I specialize in training athletes. And that's been about uh 15 years. Um, a handful of years ago, I started DG Wellness where we created programs. We work with high school and college athletes, coaches, and parents around mental health. So we go in and do workshops and keynote speaking uh to address mental health and sports. Um, we're not so much performance-based, we're really about mental health-based. I really believe that when this is taken care of, the performance stuff will come. Um, a little bit of a different approach and just sports performance, but I think that those two things definitely go hand in hand. Um, I'm also an author of two books about mental health and sports. I just published a journal uh specifically for athletes called The Inner Game, and it's got 11 different themes around sports and mental health stuff that um athletes can work on a hand uh written journal. I also teach at the University of Buffalo. Um, and last thing I do is I own a sweatshirt company called Buffalo Believes, and we actually have a whole line based on mental health and sports. And then we donate back to a community mental health organization with each uh each purchase. So we have uh check on your teammates' sweatshirt, more than an athlete sweatshirt, really this idea to start this conversation about mental health and athletics, uh, to break down that stigma, break those barriers, and just kind of get this conversation going. We really want to prioritize mental health as much as we prioritize the physical health in sport. So I'm so excited to be with these other experts um on the podcast tonight. I'm excited to hear what everyone has to say and just kind of start this conversation and learn from each other as we kind of walk walk through these questions tonight.

SPEAKER_04 7:04

Wonderful. Thanks. All right, Megan.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Yeah. Hi, everyone. I am Megan Johnson. Um I started my athletic career really playing any sport that you can think of, but ended up playing softball collegiately through medical hardship and the pandemic. I got a couple extra years back of eligibility, so was able to go back and get my master's degree. Um, I was originally by trade in the world of sports medicine, so coming at this from a little bit of a different background, but um really felt, you know, compelled to fill that gap of the mental support that my athletes very clearly needed and that I very clearly needed when I was going through this myself. So my master's degree is in mental health counseling, and I am a licensed associate professional counselor and mental performance coach at next level mental performance in the Philadelphia suburbs.

SPEAKER_04 7:54

Thank you. And finally, Kim.

SPEAKER_08 7:58

Hi, everybody. My name is Kim Griffin. Um, I'm also coming to you guys from Buffalo, New York. Um, I spent the first part of my career as a college softball coach. I love that we have such a softball thread with people. Um, I played collegiately at Merciers University. Um, didn't really know what I wanted to do after that. So I was lucky enough to get a grad assistant position at Kenetius University in my hometown of Buffalo, New York. Um, while I was there, I got a master's degree in school counseling, and then I got sucked into the coaching world and I coached at Kenesius for another uh for a total of 18 years. I spent my entire coaching career there. Um, 11 of those years I spent as head coach, um, where I made all the mistakes that you can make and um and and grew and learned and figured things out. Um, I decided to leave coaching um a few years ago. I made the decision that I was gonna leave coaching. Originally I said I didn't want to coach past 50, mostly because of the travel and the grind of the work was taking a toll on me. Um, but once I figured out my path out, I my timeline quickly moved up from 50 to 40. So I left coaching right after turning 40. I ended up going back to school while at Kinesia's and got a second degree in mental health counseling. So I'm now working as a licensed mental health counselor at a private practice here in Buffalo called Core Mental Health Counseling. I see clients across the lifespan. I work with kids as young as 12, um, all the way up through um adults. Um I see couples, I work with families, and um I also work with a lot of athletes, high school athletes, college athletes, um, on the mental game as part of my work there too. So it's been a very cool journey to get to combine uh all the things that I've I've kind of done in my life into what I'm doing now. And I'm about a year into the um profession working as a therapist, but the work is incredible. I'm really enjoying it. Um and I do miss coaching from time to time, but not as much as I thought I would.

SPEAKER_04 10:10

Yeah, good. Good. One admin note for all the audience here. We have quite a few businesses, books, and organizations across the uh the panelists here. All of those organization books, uh any websites, they'll all be linked in the show notes. So anything we mention here today, uh chase those and and uh get some more information from uh the panelists here. All right, y'all ready to go? All right. So from where where you sit in each of your professional lives, uh, how has the conversation on mental health and athlete mental health changed over the last few years? And do you think we're making progress or are we just kind of talking about this more?

SPEAKER_07 10:52

Yeah, I mean, I definitely think we are making progress, um, especially in the last five years. I think it's really started like at the professional level with the professional athletes who have kind of come out and said, Hey, I've got this going on. And again, those those guys and gals are role models for kids, right? And so when they're saying that, the kids are like, Oh, wait a minute, I feel this too, or I have this as well. So I think it's really more accepting, especially at the professional and college level. Um, I still think we have a long way to go at like the high school level, um, and and just trusting like what kids are saying and and telling you. Um, so I think two big things that will help it to keep growing are awareness and education of, you know, hey, these what kids are feeling are is is real, you know, and we don't want to be dismissive of those things. We don't want to say, again, like just toughen up or, you know, um, you know, just kind of suck it up or whatever that is. Boys, girls, you know, it doesn't matter. And so I do think I definitely think there's there's a lot more talk around it. It's definitely getting to be more and more accepting over the years. I mean, just again, started doing this in 2018, and I I've exponentially seen more and more kids because people are like, A, this works, and B, like, you know, I want I I understand now that that the mental part of sports will also help me to get better, not just as an athlete, but as a person too.

SPEAKER_04 12:29

Yeah. A question I ask my coaches is do you think these three things will impact your athletes? Uh a good positive mental health strategy, sleep and nutrition.

SPEAKER_05 12:44

And how often do we practice that? Challenging. All right. Anyone else want to hit on that one?

SPEAKER_04 12:56

All right, let's go to what do we believe is the biggest misconception uh that people still hold on to from years past regarding athlete mental health.

SPEAKER_03 13:08

Yeah, I'll take that one. I I think for me, still still being out in the coaching field every day, um, I see a big misconception that people think that it's just gonna fix itself. If I go, if I go and I get her a better hitting coach, if I go and I get her a better fielding coach, if I go and I, you know, uh whatever, that that it's just going to fix itself. That if I talk to her in a in a in a way and I say, you know, pull your your your tail out of where you're going and and keep moving forward, just, you know, that hard coaching line. I was having a conversation online with a couple of travel ball coaches the other day, and and they were like, well, if you can't handle tough coaching in today's environment, and what is tough coaching? Is tough coaching yelling and screaming, or is tough coaching making a plan, making them accountable, and then holding to a process they said they wanted to do, right? If I'm just yelling across the field, be louder, right? If you a lot of you are softball, right? If you ever the the you're yelling at the girl at right field from the third base dugout, be louder. She's like, what am I being louder about? Right. So the misconception for me that I see boots on the ground is that it's just gonna fix itself. Um, that mental health is not necessarily the priority right now. I think it's changing. I see a lot of travel ball organizations that are now hiring mental health people and and doing organizational talks. I'm involved with a lot of those in the softball side. So people are opening up and some of those conceptions are changing. But I hear every day that I don't need that, I don't need that, she'll be fine, it's just a slump, no big deal. Yeah. And they just don't put all the things together that they're doing as parents, as coaches, to create the problem in general.

SPEAKER_04 14:55

Yeah, yeah, great point. Okay, uh, for everybody, if if we could uh talk on this one, um from where you sit here, what is one message that you would like to get out to every coach and parent that's listening today um regarding athlete mental health and what you see uh before we get into the rest of this.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

I can speak to that. I know when I work with uh teams, we give out a pre-survey, um, and I've surveyed um probably over a thousand athletes that I've worked with, um, and I asked them, have you ever experienced anxiety, depression, eating disorder, substance abuse, gambling addiction? Um, and people are always shocked to hear that. Um doesn't matter if I'm in a city, uh, rural area, big school, big school, small school, boys' team, or girls' team, about 88% of the kids report experiencing anxiety. Uh, it's pretty standard. At least 65% will report depression. Eating disorder numbers will vary uh place to place, but those can those numbers for anxiety and depression are consistent, which tells me that we have to be doing this work, right? This isn't just it's happening to a few of the kids on each team. It's happening on most of the kids on the teams. And so we can't sit back and wait. We can't wait till our kids are in distress to get them the help that they need, right? We wouldn't do that for a physical injury. You wouldn't wait until somebody has a torn ACL to be like, oh hey, maybe you need to go to see the athletic trainer, right? We we we have early intervention for physical health, but we're not doing that for mental health. And so then what do we see? Then we see you know, a handful of those collegiate athletes, you know, maybe five, six years ago dying by suicide death by suicide. Right. We don't want that. And so it's it's it's we can't wait. This conversation, this education, this awareness needs to be happening yesterday, right? It's it's like it's happening to all of our kids. It doesn't matter where you're from or what sport you play, our kids are struggling on and off the field.

SPEAKER_08 16:51

I'd like to speak on that as well. I think uh one of the things that I'm seeing the most, and I I'm seeing my younger athletes struggle with is um they're they're um having this identity uh foreclosure, right? Their identity diversification isn't isn't happening or it's not lasting long enough. And so they're specializing in sport very early. They're identifying themselves as an athlete that plays this one sport. And what happens then is they've they foreclose on that identity. And then when that one thing isn't going well, um, they they feel like they've lost everything. And so I really urge parents to keep their kids in um a variety of sports, a variety of activities, like let your kid play the trumpet, um, uh have them play other sports, do other things other than that one sport. And I I see it every day. I have nieces and nephews that are competitive athletes. They're 11 and 13, and they that drive to play on the travel team and play on the elite team and play on the national team. And um, it takes away from their ability to do all of these other things and and maintain this rich, diverse life. Um, but what we're seeing now is these kids are getting to um the high school and the college level and they're really burnt out on it. And so my message to the parents would be to really try as long as possible to maintain that diversity in your kids' life and to allow them to explore and to grow in all these different ways because that's ultimately what's gonna help them in the long term.

SPEAKER_05 18:27

Mine kind of piggy. Sorry, go ahead. Liza, go ahead there. Go ahead, Liza.

SPEAKER_07 18:30

I was gonna say, my kind of piggies backs off of that is you know, you're talking about the the identity. And I think coaches and parents need to put the person first. Like the focus has to be the person, not the athlete. And I always tell people like you have to imagine them, like, okay, when they go to play the game, they're putting on the athlete hat. But the minute that game's done, that that hat's off, and they are just a regular kid. Because let's let's really put into perspective. So let's say you play your sport from the age of five to twenty two, right? Most people are not going to be professional athletes. That's just the reality based on statistics.

SPEAKER_04 19:10

And even 22 is a great timeline for that.

SPEAKER_07 19:13

Right. So, you know, again, so five to twenty two. People are living to be 80 years old. I think the average age. So what are we doing for those six the rest of the 60 years that we're living, right? I mean, this is such a small portion of these kids' lives that if we're not focused on the person, that becomes their identity, then, as this is who I am. I'm an athlete and nothing else. So then when they turn 22 or even when they're done at 18, there's a crisis. There's a six.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Well, what about what about if they get injured?

unknown 19:47

Right?

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Let's talk about injured athletes and that's well, right? So now I yeah, I like I mean, Megan can probably speak this as in your athletic trainer world. Now you're an injured athlete. If it's a season engineering injury or a career-ending injury, now I have nothing. And then that's where you know depression and substance abuse and all this, you know, gambling addiction, all that comes in because they have no other way of figuring out who they are and what makes them feel good.

SPEAKER_03 20:08

Yeah. Yeah, we we work on this a lot. Uh, a lot of the things I work with with the athlete is, you know, parent-athlete relationships, right? And and the the first thing that I tell a parent when I start working with their athlete is you want to raise them and coach them like you want to watch your granddaughters play. Because if they don't love it, they're not gonna bring them back to the game and you're gonna miss that whole second part of your life watching your granddaughter play, right? Too often we put so much pressure. I think somebody else said it, it's it's almost institutionalizing them. Now, you know, what did you say? Five to 22. Well, at five years old, I didn't choose this. You put me in this. You told me this is what I was supposed to be doing. Now at 13 years old, I wake up and I realize, whoa, I'm standing in a batter's box. That means it matters. Now I start creating perfectionism, I start getting all these problems. And when I come to you at 15 and I tell you I don't want to do this anymore, you put so much guilt on me for something that you chose because I might waste a path that I didn't ever even really want to do to begin with. And this is a huge part that, you know, we don't ever talk about. This is why when the game is over, because you see it every, if you follow any kind of sport, especially softball, at the end of July, the game's over. All these parents make all these posts, oh, Jenny had her last game. And coach, 18 years at the college level, you've done enough senior days and handed off enough plaques. You know, so I seen it with my own daughter. She played the game from 10 until 22. And when the game was over, it was like when I separated from the Navy. It was almost PTSD like, right? Like, what do I do now? I've been left, right, left, and in two, four, six in my whole life. And now there's nobody to swing with, there's nobody to throw with, there's nobody telling me I got to show up for one of days. And that's the part that I want parents to realize is that the game ends. And you're not building a softball player, you're building a strong, powerful woman that can use the game as a vessel to go get whatever she wants. That's what we should be raising in the game.

SPEAKER_04 22:13

Yeah, wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

I definitely want to bounce off of Bill's point there for a second. Um sorry to cut in, but I think that's such a great point, too, that these are not just performance skills, they are life skills. And um, you know, that's something I talk with parents and athletes a lot about, especially with some of that hesitation to go into like performance psych or, you know, mental health support is, you know, is this a sign of weakness? Like what am I inviting in? Am I um is this antithetical to, you know, competitive atmosphere? But I think, you know, all of us in this professional space. Can probably speak to like two truths can exist at the same time. Like we can be in competitive, we can love the sport that we do. But you know, to everybody else's point, where do we land with our identity when it's all said and done? And what does this do for us long term when we're no longer on the field? So definitely looking forward to continuing conversation.

SPEAKER_04 23:07

Um, so this is for the parents that are listening to this. How many of us have coached an athlete who didn't want to be there, but were there because the parent wanted them there? And how good of a situation is that?

SPEAKER_03 23:19

Right. And not only did the parent want them there, but the parent drops them off, tells them you better go work hard, you better go outwork anybody, while they run to Starbucks, sit in the parking lot, have a cheeseburger, drink a latte, and then yell at the kid about the one ball she dropped on the field.

SPEAKER_04 23:34

Yeah, because the car ride home is worse than a practice. Okay. We that's a whole nother whole nother talk that we could uh we could spend a lot of time on. Okay. Uh Danielle, when uh when an athlete comes to see you um because something that happened with them in their sport, uh what's the most common presenting issue that you see? And how often does that go back to the coaching relationship or something that happened with the coach?

SPEAKER_00 24:05

I mean, kids come to see me for all different reasons, athlete for all different reasons. I would definitely not say it's the coach, right? It's sometimes it's parents, right? It's just this parent expectation. It could be their own pressure that they're putting on themselves. It could be um, you know, they they don't know who they are, they feel they feel bad about themselves, they can't regulate their emotions. A lot of times I'll get referrals from coaches because their kid, you know, I work with a lot of hockey players. So it'll be, you know, someone's throwing their stick, uh, you know, making, you know, making big out like emotional outbursts. A lot of times it's for uh emotional dysregulation that these athletes don't know how to manage their emotions. They don't even know what an emotion is. And so a lot of the work that I'll do is like just really basic. What is an emotion? How's it going to help you? Is it an enhancing emotion or an inhibiting emotion? How do we use emotions to make us perform better on the field or on the ice, but also to regulate before a test, right? Before a hard conversation, before when you have conflict with a teammate, right? To uh Megan's point too, it's so much of the sports that is transferable, right? It's like the sports is a vehicle to learn these skills, but it's really the life skills that it kind of goes full circle. But when they come to me, it's it's I mean, once in a while it'll be about a coach, but in the therapeutic setting, in a clinical setting, it tends to be more um deeper rooted, right? This is where I'm working more with kids with anxiety or depression, more clinical mental health issues. When I work with uh athletes as an athletic wellness coach, that's more a little bit more performance-based. That's more I want to get better at my sport. Um, I have uh having confidence issues, you know, I'm not performing to the level I want to be performed from. That's more of a coaching, like a short-term approach. Whereas a clinical therapist, I'm doing more of like the, you know, more of the diagnosis, more of the anxiety, the panic disorder, uh, depressions, eating disorder, substance abuse. Those are the and throw some gambling addiction in there. Those would be the five things I treat most when I treat my athlete athletes, either current athletes, but especially when athletes are done with their career. Those athletes, when they're 22, they have no identity. What do you what do you do? Right? Um, I don't know how to exercise. I don't know how to eat. I don't know how to make friends. I don't know how to cope. Like when that sport is gone, these athletes are so lost. Being 22 or right out of college is hard enough, let alone when your entire world that is your support system is now gone. And so that's when these athletes I find are falling into these negative coping things, you know, again, substance, shopping, eating, disorders, whatever, um, gambling, it's a huge, huge problem. So, you know, it just it's I don't think it's a one-size-fits-all. Athletes show up on my couch all the time for all different reasons. And it's not specific, it's very seldom about the coach, honestly.

SPEAKER_04 26:43

Great. Um with regards to coach and athletes' uh relationship, what is the clinical line that uh coaches could look at between an athlete that is just stressed because of what's going on in school or what's going on in the sport and something that actually needs to be addressed? Bill?

SPEAKER_03 27:07

I'm gonna just speak from a coach's perspective, right? I mean, if if you're harming yourself, you're harming others, you're you're talking about harming yourself, it's outside of my scope of responsibility. I'm not gonna be the, you know, we used to say in the Navy, don't be the lowest ranking official with the secret, right? Like you need to let somebody know if it's outside your scope of responsibility, you know, and even sometimes when it is, if a kid's saying to me, hey, I've had a slump, I've had a rough couple of weeks, I'm kind of feeling down in the dirt, okay, I'm gonna talk to you about that. I'm gonna coach you about that. If I see you start to become depressed, withdrawn, okay, now I might bring in a school counselor or a therapist or talk to a parent or make that extra step, but you don't ever want to leave the kid as just, oh, okay, you're good, you're all right. I work with, you know, it sounds like a couple of the panelists work with older athletes. My primary athlete is is 13, 14, 15, 16 years old, right? So, so I get a lot of coach issues. Travel ball coach said this, this coach said that. Everybody's being mean to me here or there. So we have to decipher, you know, what's real coach, I don't want to use the word abuse, but bad coaching practices, right? And and what's I need to toughen up a little bit and mentally mature a little bit and where's kind of that fine line, right? So um, yeah, that's as as a coach, uh seeing it from that point of view, I don't ever want to be the lowest man on the on the totem pole or lowest coach on the totem pole with the secret. If it gets outside of, you know, balls and strikes, I want to get uh one of these ladies, a licensed mental health profession, come into the game, right?

SPEAKER_00 28:47

And I think what happens a lot of times we're not training our coaches about this stuff, right? Like they don't know what those early warning signs are, they don't know when to pass it off. As a coach, you know, you have an athlete that's doing a warm-up and they roll their ankle. I might be like, okay, I I can sit down, I'm gonna grab you some ice.

SPEAKER_05 29:04

I'm gonna call the athletic trainer.

SPEAKER_00 29:06

Or right, or I was gonna say, or your athlete's warming up and they roll their ankle and now the bone's sticking out and blood's all over. You know what to do. You you call 911, you call your athletic trainer, right? We all kind of know in physical health what I can handle as a coach, right? Like a little bit of a rolled ankle, I got that. Sure. A scrape on the knee, I got that. But something bigger, I know when to call Megan, the athletic trainer, or call the school nurse, or call a medical professional. But our we're not training our coaches to understand that line between, hey, I'm a coach, it's solution focus, it's a one-time thing that's happening versus ongoing things, you know, ongoing behaviors, ongoing panic attacks, ongoing mental breakdowns, um, or a major change of behavior. You know, if you have an athlete who's your hype person, always super bubbly, outgoing, whatever, and now they're withdrawn. Ooh, that's a major change of behavior, not just a one-time change of behavior. It's over time that this athlete has changed, their personality has changed. Maybe they're always late for practice, maybe they're super negative, right? So looking for consistency, positive or negatively, and then figuring out when do you pass it on, just like we would for that physical injury, like knowing that line. Um, and sometimes coaches want to do more than they should, which is admirable because they care about their athlete, but they also need to know if this is this is the handout.

SPEAKER_04 30:21

Yeah. Yeah. Uh one of the things Ohio has done in the last few years is required a mental health block of training for uh education-based athletics coaches uh to get their pupil activity permit. That's required for coaches to coach in Ohio. Uh it's a good step. We're just not quite there yet with uh with regards to that block of training.

SPEAKER_08 30:44

I think something important for coaches to also be able to do is to have the skill to ask the hard question and to be able to check in with their athletes. Um and it all comes down to the relationship that you have with them and that they know that you're somebody who cares about them as a human being, not just as a player. Um, and that's such a hard line to walk when you're a coach because um athletes don't always want to tell you when they're struggling. But when they know that you care about them as a human being and not just, you know, for their performance, they're gonna be more likely to open up and and let you in on it. Um, but approaching them with that curiosity to just say, like, you know, here's what I'm noticing, right? This is what I'm seeing. And um, I'm just wondering if if there's something going on outside of here or within the team, within the within your sport that is um that's causing this. Um and I've I've done that so many times with athletes. And sometimes they'll say, you know what? No, I'm just I'm I'm having a bad day. But then what you're doing is you're just opening the door and you're letting them know, like, you know, I'm here for all of it. I'm not just here for the two and a half hours that we're practicing. I'm here for all of it. Um, and I think one thing to really look for is is is this behavior, is this something that's kind of pervasive across their life, right? Um, are they just kind of down at practice right now, or are they also struggling with attendance in school? Are they, is there something going on at home? Um, are their friends concerned about them? Are their roommates concerned about them? So um looking for that, if something's pervasive across all aspects of their life, I think that's when coaches should kind of run this up the chain, um, get a counselor involved, um, do what they need to do to kind of, like you're saying, like, you know, go to the next level is when they're seeing this across the athlete's life.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

Kim, I love that language, noticing, right? I've noticed this, right? Because as a coach, you're not diagnosing, you're not treating, like, hey, I've noticed. And sometimes just for the athlete to know, hey, my coach did notice. Wow, they see me, right? And because we know that's a big thing for kids to feel seen in her. And so I sees me as other than just my performance is huge. But that noticing where I I teach it to the coaches and teach it to parents too, just like, just hey, no, what's going on with that? And check in and check in more than once. Sometimes kids, you know, they'll wear that mask, they have to be top. I can't tell my coach, no, I'm fine, coach, I'm fine. But I always say, trust your intuition. We we go into coaching, we go into working with youth because we care about them, right? And we we have some sort of connection to them. So figuring out like if my gut says something's off, check in again and check in again, right? And figuring, figuring out what's going on and figuring out the time and place to do those check-ins. Like obviously in a private setting, not in front of everybody, not calling somebody on the team huddle, like, hey, you seem really down lately. What's going on? Right. Like figuring out appropriate language and and time that is, you know, safe for the athlete, hopefully, to open up if need be.

SPEAKER_04 33:37

Yeah, that goes back to a conversation we had earlier about the coaches knowing your athletes and knowing what motivates them and how to approach that athlete. Uh, Megan, you got something for us?

SPEAKER_01 33:46

Yeah, I think um to bounce off of everybody else's point, um, when I talk to other athletic trainers or being in a school-based setting now, talking to like our other support staff and coaches um about their hesitation and just dealing with, you know, the current age of, you know, sport and what the conversation around mental health looks like is I think there's even just a hesitation to Kim's point of like asking the hard questions. And I think some reassurance that I give coaches all the time when they're like, what can I actually do about this when it comes across my desk? Is it doesn't take a special certification or a fancy degree to be an active listener and to just be there and be in the moment to support the athlete sitting in front of you. Um, those aren't skills you need to learn in school to, you know, know how to be a good person. And that's really where a lot of this starts is, you know, tap into that natural empathy and care. You do this for a reason, you coach these kids for a reason. Like you have those skills already, and so many people feel so fearful to implement them that it takes something extra special to get that point across when they just want to know that you care.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

And I think the kids don't want you to fix it, right? As a coach, you don't have to fix it, right? Just be there, hold the space for them, right? Just be there to listen, an empathetic listener. Like they don't want you to fit go in and fix it. Right? Like, so I think it's you don't need all the answers.

SPEAKER_07 35:04

I I would say two things on that. One, like if you notice something, don't assume as well as a coach. Um, I know kids who have had family stuff going on and then they're upset during a game and a competition, and this the coach just assumes like it's because they're not playing well. Like, don't assume. Don't assume that that's the reason, right? And and I've heard those kids then say, like, well, they don't care about me. They they just they didn't say anything to me, right? The other thing about that too is I know that some coaches are afraid, especially if it's like a male to a female or a female to a male coach, right, those dynamics, are afraid maybe to talk one-on-one with some of the players. So I think it's okay to invite either like an an assistant coach in to have that conversation, or maybe it's a player that you know that this person is connected to, and and invite them in so that they feel also safe to maybe open up and talk about things that they need to talk about too. So that's just another technique that that coaches can use. Um, if again, if if they're like, I don't know if I want to have this conversation, or okay, I don't want to assume these things. You know, again, you don't want to do it publicly, but like it's okay to pull a safe person in or an assistant coach. Now you're showing unity that, hey, we really care about you.

SPEAKER_05 36:23

And athletes rarely get that from coaches, I believe.

SPEAKER_04 36:28

All right. Let's go into a next section where we're gonna talk specifically to the coaches here. What coaching behaviors do you see that you think are well-intentioned but are actually psychologically damaging? Yeah, Kim, go ahead.

SPEAKER_08 36:43

I think oftentimes coaches will say, I'm I need to send a message. And they do it in a way that feels um they don't they don't send the message directly, they do it through indirect means. Like, um, I'm gonna send a message, I'm gonna move this kid down in the lineup, I'm gonna put him on the bench, I'm gonna, um, I'm not gonna start them in the next game. And what we know about not just athletes, but human beings is our brains are prediction machines. We're trying to figure out like what's coming next. We're gonna fill in the blanks, we're gonna read between the lines. It's human nature. And so what these athletes are doing then is they're filling in the blanks. They're making an assumption about why they're moved down in the lineup, why they're on the bench. Um, and the stories that they create are often way worse than the than the actual what's actually going on. Um, and so I think that tends to be that lack of communication. I'm as I'm guilty of it too. In my early uh years as a coach, you know, I I would often say, like, I don't have time to explain every single move that I make. And that is true, right? Like you're making a lineup in between a doubleheader and you don't always have time to have that conversation with every player. But I think making an effort to have those conversations and to let a pitcher know, this is why I I had to take you out. This is this is this is why I made the move I made. Um, it's it's a tough thing to have to do all the time as a coach, and it's not always going to be possible. But the more that you can be direct in your communication and intentional about what you're doing, I think the better it is for the athlete.

SPEAKER_04 38:15

And I would just say I wrote this down. Just uh make sure, make sure you said it right. Our brains are prediction machines.

SPEAKER_07 38:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:23

That's fantastic. Yeah, it's fantastic.

SPEAKER_07 38:27

So I would also piggyback off of that. And like, I think, you know, yelling and screaming like without a purpose or yelling without intention. Um, and especially if coaches, again, I'm not I'm not against coaches like yelling or like, hey, getting on kids about things. But if you don't have a relationship built with that that kid and you don't have praise, you're not praising them. So it's like 101 is for every one negative, you need four positives. I guarantee that, I guarantee that's not happening, right? Like in most places. And so if you don't have those two things, if you don't have a relationship built and you don't have praise, that yelling and screaming about whatever it is is not going to land, even if it's well intentioned. And so I think as a coach, day one, you know, every year, you have to start with building that rapport and that relationship and knowing that they are going to get praise from you, boys or girls, doesn't matter. Those are like, I would say, two of the most important things that you can do as a coach. Um, I just had a meeting today with a guy that coached, has coached my high school baseball team for I don't even know. I I mean he was I graduated in 2000 and he was there for like 10 years already, and he's still there. And I can't tell you how many people I encounter just out in public that's like, oh yeah, Coach Mel Carrick coached me, and I still talk to him to this day. And it's like that's what it's about. That's that's the person first, the relationship building. And look, they've always been very good at baseball. And it I don't think it's because they're super talented. I mean, I think it's because he has always put those relationships first, and and he has like praised those kids. And so he's built that really healthy foundation.

SPEAKER_00 40:22

I think that's the point. If you want kids to work harder, like you know, like they have to know you care, right? It's that connection. Caring connection is if you want kids to give it your all, that's what you need to do. It's 100% the relationship building, that trust, that safe space, all of that. I can show up as my true authentic self and know I'm gonna be okay and be careful. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 40:42

Wonderful. All right, let's move on and give coaches and athletic directors some warning signs. Let's talk, uh, talk on that topic real quick. Uh so regarding uh specifically seventh grade through senior and high school athletes, uh, what are some of the warning signs that a coach can look for to recognize an athlete may be struggling?

SPEAKER_03 41:06

I I think uh when you hit that 13-year-old phase, for me, that's that's the second phase of athlete development, right? Like I've kind of laid it all out to where 12 and under, that's the you're told to phase. I'm on this team, I play this position, eat my broccoli, clean my room, right? At 13, 14, I start getting a lot of my own ideas, and and then it becomes serious. Well, when that happens, the first thing that fractures is the parent-player relationship. They withdraw. Parents become overburdened, and now it's about a scholarship. It's no longer about being a weekend warrior. Now you got to do the lessons, you got to write the emails, you got to get involved with the whole process. And what happens is kids withdraw. They they start to get quiet. This is typically when I get a call. She hasn't hit in the last three tournaments, she's not playing the field the right way, her errors have increased. She hasn't talked to us. We don't know what's going on. She's told us she wants to quit. She doesn't love the sport anymore. Why am I here? Like, I don't even want to do this. These are some of the signs that and they typically start to happen between that 13 to 14-year-old phase. This is why you get the the I call them false statistics of only 1% of kids ever make it to the college level. Well, that's because 99% of them leave before they're 15, right? If they're still in it 15, 16 years old, that number gets increasingly higher. But we lose them all in that 13 to 15 range because of all the added pressure. Am I on this ranking list? Am I going to this tournament? Am I on this national team? So withdrawal, overwhelming anxiety, perfectionism increasing. You know, if I'm not 10 for 10 on the weekend, then I'm terrible at softball, all these things start to add up.

SPEAKER_05 42:52

Yeah, Megan.

SPEAKER_01 42:53

There's a quick stat that I did want to throw in there. Um, I think it was the American Academy of Pediatrics had published that 70% of youth athletes leave the sport by the time they turn 13. So I think to Bill's point, like it's huge at that age, especially when they're getting into like they're starting to formulate like their own independent identity. And sport now looks very different. That that should be like really a, you know, hot age for us anyway, to kind of focus in on and look to see how we can support these youth athletes who, you know, realistically rely a lot on that adult support and adults to kind of guide them in the right direction while they're still figuring themselves out and they're going through like the most transformative time in like a young athlete's life. I think that is like such a hot button age for us to really focus our sights on.

SPEAKER_04 43:41

Yeah, uh completely agree. Uh I believe uh the majority of my coaching has been at the middle school level across a few different sports. And I it's it's fascinating. Uh I love that age, the uh the development, the eagerness that they have. Um and it is a huge transition point in life. Uh and I believe uh unfortunately, we don't necessarily put as much as athletic administrators, uh, emphasis on those coaches and that age group. But at the middle school level, that's where we need to put more emphasis on those coaches and what is appropriate and how to help uh navigate the sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade uh transition and get those athletes at uh on into the high school.

SPEAKER_03 44:35

Can can I add one more point for coach? Yeah, sure. As a coach, as at the older ages, let's go 11th, 12th grade, it's really important that you understand your student athlete recruiting timelines. Because, like for sophomore, We're get we're we're summer's over, the month of August now. Every 2027 in the world or 2028 in the world is now an anxious young lady for the next 30 days to see if she's gonna get that call on September 1st. Kim, you were a Division I softball coach. You know what happened September 1st, right? So September 1st, this is the day that it opens up. And if you don't get that call, and all of your friends did, now for the next four months, we're rebuilding this athlete because everything she's worked on her whole life, even though she's still gonna get scholarship, she doesn't go to the power four school. Maybe she goes to a mid-major, maybe the power four school is just watching her a little bit longer. Maybe she plays Division II softball, whatever, or whatever her sport is. I keep diverting to softball because that's mine. But, you know, uh understanding as a coach or an athletic director your recruiting timelines because for I don't know what lacrosse and soccer and all the other ones are, but for my sport, it's September 1st. So September, October, November, December, you may have a all of your juniors, you know, if they were expecting to get phone calls, now they're deflated, now they've got to go back to the drawing board, now they've got to pick themselves up and kind of recalibrate sometimes their whole thought process. So I think for coaches, if we're speaking specifically as a coach and athletic director, how can I fix some of these issues, or what signs can I look for, understanding your recruiting timelines of when your kids may come into a dip by not getting the results they want that they've been working on since they were 10 years old.

SPEAKER_04 46:24

Because if you understand that, you understand when that athlete might come to your practice a little more stressed and be able to more appropriately work with that athlete.

SPEAKER_05 46:32

100%.

unknown 46:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:34

Okay. As athletes are uh just young people in general, are experts at masking their their symptoms, their feelings. Um how's a coach gonna tap into that? How's a coach gonna recognize that? Yeah, Megan?

SPEAKER_01 46:50

I think one of the biggest things that honestly was really difficult for me as an athlete and then as a coach, um, kind of recognizing what maybe maladaptive behaviors or things that um can be quite harmful off the field serve a really important or crucial role on the field. There are a lot of like adaptive behaviors and coping mechanisms that look phenomenal for athletes that might cause harm in other places. Um, perfectionist tendency is like one that jumps immediately to the top of my head. Um, and being like aware of those things that those are like your celebrated athletes. Like you want that kid who's gonna run through a brick wall for you, but where is that showing up in their life elsewhere? I think is a huge consideration. Or, you know, it kind of um disrupts like, you know, what we look for in athletes, but I think it's worthwhile noting like this might look really good to me as a coach and watching them on the field, but is this serving them in other places or is this harming them in other places?

SPEAKER_05 47:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:52

I I always I always say that things that make people elite athletes are also making them more predisposed to mental illness, right? Perfectionism, uh intensity, determination, like all like people pleasing, all these things that we often celebrate on our athletes are often like, ah, often red flags for mental illness. So um we have to be be aware of that. So exactly things that look right on the field might be uh not helping them off the field.

SPEAKER_04 48:19

All right. Let's talk about two different uh two differentiation uh situations here. First, with regards to an athlete that uh may be struggling with something, if you're talking to a seventh grader, how would you recognize that in a seventh grader? And how would you have that conversation versus a junior or senior in high school?

SPEAKER_08 48:40

Okay, so one of the things I see more with my younger clients, my middle school age kids, is it's more emotional regulation. And so I think that is one of the most important things that we should be working on and teaching our younger athletes is how to have big emotions because sports elicit big emotions, right? It's why we do it. We wouldn't, we wouldn't play sports if it didn't make us feel a certain way. Um, and so how do we have these big emotions? But then how do we also be able to regulate and still perform in our sport? Um, so I think that's probably the number one thing that I'm seeing in my young athletes, right? Um, but then in my older athletes, I think it kind of comes back more to what Megan was saying and what Danielle was saying about these um the things that make us really, really great athletes often become behaviors or adaptations that don't work for us in our life outside of sport. Um, and so I'm seeing more of those things that like perfectionism, that uh that just drive to to achieve at all costs, right? Where we can't relax, we can't take a day off, and we go to work even when we're sick. We uh we we just can't shut it down. And so um I think that that's kind of the difference that I'm seeing, at least in my practice where I'm I'm working with these young kids, and then I'm also working with um college athletes and uh beyond into adulthood. Um, so I would say that's the biggest difference that I'm seeing.

SPEAKER_04 50:08

All right. How about the difference? I think Liza brought this up earlier, the difference between coaching young women and coaching young men. What do we see differently? What presents different there, and how do we approach that?

SPEAKER_07 50:23

Yeah, I think I think obviously like there's there's always exceptions to the rule, right? But for the most part, this is this is very generalizable that um just some qualities in girls that I think you have to be aware of is one girls want connection and emotional safety. Um, and they they girls tend to internalize what is being said to them, right? And so that kind of means like, okay, if I'm if I'm publicly criticized, like they are internalizing all of that. And I think Kim said it before you're just creating this narrative that definitely isn't true, but it is running wild in their head. Um, and so I think that really tears down their confidence. And so, you know, hey, you're doing a drill and you know, they they make a mistake, pull them off to the side. Hey, did you see this? Did you see this here? Instead of that, what are you doing? How could you be doing that, right? Like pull them off to the side, correct that, right? Because again, criticism shouldn't be embarrassment, it should be like helping them learn how to do this more efficiently. I don't even say like saying right or wrong because there's 20, yeah, there's 20 ways to do it, right? Um, they tend to girls tend to be harder on themselves than anybody could ever be on them themselves. I know I was a teenage girl once, absolutely, you know, the hardest person in the room. Um they also are very motivated by chemistry and supportive environment. Um, and they really love fairness. And what I mean by that is if you are a coach and you are showing favoritism, whether you're aware of it or not, to other kids, because oh, this is our best player. So, you know, girls want fairness, they want to feel like you're treating everybody equally. Um, so I think I think that's a girls' perspective. Boys are a little bit different, they're a little bit more motivated by like high energy commands. Um, they like the the competition to show their status, whereas girls like kind of don't want that, they don't want that that status piece. Um boys tend to overestimate like their skill level so that when they do make a mistake, it's easier for them to brush it off because they're like, oh, I got this, I'm I'm still really good, right? Um whereas girls are just beating themselves up all the time in their head, and and so it's a it's a constant like negative. Um, boys like really clear role definitions, um, and sometimes they like to be challenged um when they make a mistake because it helps them to bounce back. So if you know all these things and you're aware of all these things, right, it can help you to coach from a different perspective and maybe change your behavior to fit the generalizable statements of girls versus boys and what that looks like.

SPEAKER_03 53:19

Just from the guys' perspective, right? Like we I didn't make this up, we've all heard the old adage, right? Boys gotta play if boys gotta play good to feel good, girls gotta feel good to play good, right? I mean, that that is I've coached primarily girls the last 20 years, right? I I coached the middle school basketball team for boys one time, but other than that, my coaching career has been girls. And if if the audience listen is coaches and athletic directors, right, men primarily coach boys, men primarily coach women and girls. It's it's that so we have to fill that gap between being a men and coaching boys and understanding the language for girls. And and I've experienced this firsthand. I wrote my book, Leading Her Game, specifically for parents on how to raise females that are high-functioning, high academic, high-moving, high-powered girls, right? And and you, you know, I'll add you have to meet them exactly where they're at and guide them exactly where they're telling you they want to go because they do kind of get all over and brought down by everything around them. A boy will run through a wall just because you tell him to go through the wall. A girl's gonna ask you why, right, and what the calculations are and how much that's gonna impact everything around her once more information, right?

SPEAKER_02 54:34

So, and if she has that, she'll go run through the wall for her if that's the best angle of attack.

SPEAKER_03 54:39

So, really, just as a as a man, as a as a guy coach, taking the time to understand female psychology can change their whole path. You know, I was a chief petty officer, still active duty in the Navy, coaching 10, 10-year-old girls on a little league field. This was not a pretty sight. I mean, we were left, right, left, marching doing left.

SPEAKER_04 55:03

You get wrong with you.

SPEAKER_03 55:05

You need to about face, take your leave. Thank God I was able to stay in the game long enough and learn from my own mistakes. But the difference between coaching boys and girls is not slight. It's not small, it's huge, and it will really make the difference on how long they stay in the game, what they do. Boys still just as much as the girls do. Um, but I agree, girls, girls will work harder if you coach them the right way. Like they will, I love coaching just a strong, powerful young lady that has figured it out, that will just move mountains for everything around her. So um the difference is paramount. And and if you're a coach and an athletic director, you should spend a ton of time, money, and and training hours on coaching specifically girls because very little time or effort is put into it, uh, which is why we have a lot of these major issues.

unknown 55:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 56:00

I will say someone who's go ahead.

unknown 56:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 56:03

Just uh as someone who has coached boys and girls uh quite a few seasons in quite a few different sports, I think it is easy to coach boys. Uh it's it's pretty easy. Um coaching girls is challenging and it is so rewarding. Uh it's it's fascinating um and just so much fun.

SPEAKER_03 56:24

It's funny. I think the exact opposite. I think coaching boys is the most frustrating thing in the world. I'm like, what do you mean? Because when you if you don't get them like when they're in their prime, it's like, ah, whatever. It's all right, we'll get it. It's all right, here we go. It's like, what are you like? And the the girls are just ready to go. So I get very frustrated after you spend 15 years coaching females and you see what they can do and their capability and how amazing they actually are when they play, uh boys just sound like complainers to me. It's very hard. It's very hard. Yeah, Liza?

SPEAKER_07 56:59

I was just gonna say the one similarity between them both, and again, I can't harp on this enough, is that they they they both want the coach to to invest in them and to have a relationship with them. So whether it's a boy or a girl, like that doesn't change. Like that that one thing doesn't change. So I just want to go back to that, that that's an actual similarity that they both have.

SPEAKER_04 57:27

Okay, we got into this just a little bit earlier, but let's go a little further. Uh when a coach notices there's something going on with one of their athletes, what are some actual uh questions, phrases, uh, approaches that they can take to get to this athlete? Oh whether it whether they refer them on or not, but just initially breaching that conversation. So what's something a coach can actually say to this athlete?

SPEAKER_00 57:59

Well, that's I I guess that's um I think someone said earlier and I echoed it as well, that kind of I'm noticing, like, hey, just want to check in, I'm noticing what you know, what whatever it is that you're noticing without judgment, without, you know, assumptions. Like like Liza said there, like we don't want to assume anything. It's like, hey, I'm just what's what's up? Like just checking and I'm noticing. I think even just saying, hey, I'm I'm I'll sit here with you. I'm not going anywhere. I could just sit there and be quiet. Again, you don't have to say anything, right? I've I've got you, right? We'll get you through this. What asking them, what do you need? Right. I mean, every person needs something different when they're going through a struggle. It's like, hey, what do you need right now? Do you want to go for a walk? Do you need some cold water? Do you want to go talk to your parents? Want me to go with you to talk to your parents? Like, give the athlete that agency to help them instead of meeting another adult saying, this is what you need to do. Oh, you're panicking, do this. Oh, you're breaking down, do that. They don't want to be told what to do. Ask them, what do they need? Empower them in that moment, right? And sometimes just, I'll just sit here, okay? We're not going anywhere until they're ready. You know, you can, you know, throw always those basics, take a deep breath, put a cold ice pack on the back of their neck. There's some, you know, easy self-soothing things you can do. But again, the there isn't a magic thing. It's just that that relationship. Again, the relationship, the relationship, the relationship. That is the key. Um, and just holding that space, letting them know that you care for them and you're not going anywhere. Because their fear is that the coach is gonna judge them. Like I've heard from athletes so many times. I can't let my coach know I'm struggling. They won't let me be the captain. They're gonna take away my starting spot, my my scholarship. And if my coach knows I'm panicking, I'll lose my scholarship, right? Or if I'm in, you know, that it's gonna be like I'm injured, and then you know, a younger athlete's gonna take my spot, all that stuff. And so it's like, no, the coach, you know, that relationship, like I've got you. Like, you know, good, bad, early, it's not about your performance. It's about who you are, the human before the athlete, person before athlete is the biggest thing. And who cares about wins and losses? Like, we're all competitive athletes on this call. We've all been there, done that. But at the end of the day, does it, in my opinion, it doesn't matter, right? We're there to support young people. We're there to support humans becoming the best human that they can be. So as a coach, is there a specific thing to say? I don't, yeah, I can give you a bunch of five different go-to one-liners, but you have to be honest with like it's authentic. Like it's that relationship. Like I could tell you what to say, but if that's not the language you use, the kids are like, What did you do? Read that in a book? Did you hear it on a podcast? It's BS. That authentic relationship is the key. And I think as coaches, we got to leave through vulnerability. Say, hey, you know, sometimes I get really overwhelmed too. And when I do that, this is what helps me normalize struggle. Hey guys, you know, I'm having kind of an off day today. I gotta need your support. I'm not coming in at 100% to you, guys. Hey, I can, you know, what what do you think? You know, read the room. What where's their energy of the day? But also being honest with yourself as a coach. If you're not feeling it, own it. Model that vulnerability and that authenticity. That's the key. Be a human. Our athletes are putting coaches up on these pedestals for the good or for the bad, right? And so take yourself off the pedestal, be real with them. That's what they want. That human connection is the key.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:00

Wonderful. Uh back to the point Liza brought up about uh uh your school's baseball coach. When you build that relationship, uh, those wins, they seem to come.

SPEAKER_08 1:01:13

Yeah. I couldn't agree with you more, Danielle, on that point because um early, I I always kind of look at my career as like, you know, the early part and the later part. And in the early part, as a a young head coach and someone who was trying to prove themselves, there was like that insecure leadership. And um, it always felt like I had to be 100% on all the time. I couldn't let them see any sort of struggle or any sort of emotion in me. And what I learned over time was that they needed to see that. They needed to see me as a human being so that they could also then trust that I could handle them being human beings. Um, and that made a huge difference in the culture of our team over the course of, you know, a decade of doing it was um creating that culture right from the start that we're all human beings on on and we're all here together on the same mission, but we're all gonna have our own, our own struggles and throughout the throughout the the journey together. So building that culture, I think, right from the start, it's not gonna work if you don't have the relationship, if you haven't built a culture where there's um clear and open communication to just say, like, hey, tell me your deepest, darkest secrets, what's going on? Right? That that's not gonna work for a kid. Um, and oftentimes I would just think about if you if you're doing that, that I'm noticing this, you're opening the door. And that that kid might not spill the beans right there. But what they do realize is, okay, when I'm ready, this person's gonna be here for me. And I've had that happen many times in my career where I've said I'm noticing this, the kid, it's denied, deny, deny, because that's what they've always been taught. Don't let your coach know you're struggling. You gotta be strong, you gotta put on a brave face, suck it up. And then a week later they come back and they say, you know what? Yep, I actually am struggling, and here's what's going on. And um, and so sometimes it's just kind of planting that seed, opening the door, letting them know that you can give them that safe space. Um, that's when they are gonna come to you and and let you know what's really up.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:13

I I think we've been talking a lot about like building relationships. And I think a great way to build relationships, especially at like the junior high and the high school level, is to ask for feedback as a coach, right? Like a lot of times coaches will do this in an exit interview, and then the year's done, right? It's it's over with. And what what we know is that if a kid has a say in something, they have a buy-in.

unknown 1:03:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:40

So if you ask for feedback, the coach then listens to them and say, okay, maybe we can compromise on that, maybe we can do it this way. How what do you think about that? Now, not only is a kid bought in, but the kid feels like you've listened to them, and now you're building that rapport and that relationship. And so, so you're gonna get even more out of that kid, right? Versus like, I don't want to hear what you have to say, we're doing it my way, this way, and now we're in a box. And and that's not building the relationship, right? So these are just like some things that I think coaches can do, you know. So asking for feedback frequently, maybe having some time at the end of practice or the beginning of practice, say, hey, whoever wants to come or whoever wants to stay, we're just gonna talk about our days. We're just gonna say, hey, what what was good today, what was bad today? Again, just small things like that, and we're gonna stay after for 15 minutes, or if you need to stay longer, cool, I'll be here. Right? Like, I think just little things like that like can help, or you build that into practice time sometimes, right? Again, it's the person is more important than the athlete or the wins and losses.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:47

I and I think we said it earlier too about the identity. We're talking more about from the parent perspective. I think from the coaching perspective too, of getting having making sure the coach can talk to the athletes about something other than their performance or what's happening on the sport. Like get to know, hey, what's your what are you watching on television? Like, oh, tell me about your siblings. Oh, you have a summer job, or you know, just to get to know them as that person, right? To build that. So then also the the athlete will say, My coach cares about me other than my my score, you know, my my stats, right? That identity piece, I'm more than an athlete, um, not just from the parents, but from the coaches too.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:20

So we always had a percentage check at the beginning of every practice, right? There's only 12, 15 kids on a softball team. So it only took 30 seconds. Hey, I'm at 60%, hey, I'm at 80%, hey, I'm at 100%. I'm feeling really good today. So therefore, we already knew when practice started who needed support. Now you that doesn't start on day one. You have to build that culture to make a kid comfortable enough to say, hey, I'm really only showing up with 50% today. I just got a bad test. My mom yelled at me on the way to practice. So I I, you know, and then you ask them again at the end of practice, where are we at? And typically that percentage will go up. Sometimes it goes down, maybe they had a bad bullpen or you know, practice didn't go well for them. But we always did a percentage check. Like, where are you at? Okay, you're showing up at 80% today, I'm at 100, I got your 20%, and now we're gonna go attack this together. And it just kind of gives everybody an even playing ground where we started from, and that's how you build championship culture over time, trust and communication.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:14

Interesting idea. I like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:16

It gives an opportunity for the kids to support each other. So, you know, Sally's coming in at a 20% today. Well, hey, I know I'm gonna go check in with her, right? I'm gonna make sure she's got a partner for that warm-up, right? I'm gonna notice what's happening with my teammates. I'm checking in on them because I saw that she was a 20 and I'm at a hundred. So I got something, I have some energy to give to her, right? I can, you know, so just for them to pay attention to one another. And it's it's not an individual sport. It's we are a team, right? We have to bring each other up. And I think even for the coach to say the same thing, and like, hey, I'm at I'm at a four today, guys. And so they can. Can say, okay, hey, coach, we got you. Like again, we're all in this together.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:52

Fantastic. We get to notice trends. And kid shows up a 50% every day. Now I need to lean into that.

SPEAKER_08 1:07:00

I think, Bill, what you're really speaking to is like you're creating a system where it's not just when you notice something's wrong that you are checking in with an athlete. You're creating a system where they can be honest and and that they're sharing. Um, and I the we used uh I I think it's also important to recognize that some kids aren't gonna be able to just talk about their emotions flat out. Some they're not good at that. They don't want to be emotional. Um, and so we would do a just like a uh weekly journal. We called it a grit journal. And the last question in the grit journal every week, and this is college, so I know this is gonna be different for middle school and high school athletes, but finding ways to communicate with your kids that aren't just face-to-face conversations can also be helpful, especially in the day and age of like texting and um social media, like that face-to-face conversation, especially from a kid to an adult, can be hard. Um, so we always gave our athletes a chance to say, is there anything that you need from the from anyone on the coaching staff this week? And that would be their chance to put in there, like, you know what, my grandma's sick at home. I might need to miss a practice. Like, because it just gave them another avenue to let us know if there was something going on. And um, that was utilized a lot. And I think it it just created a just another line to the coaches that could be helpful.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:19

Yeah, wonderful. Okay, let's uh talk specifically to uh high school, middle school athletic directors uh who run their athletic programs. What is something that we could do, myself included, um that could be a systematic change in their department across the coaching staff to better support athlete mental health?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:49

I am definitely happy to jump in on this one. I feel like I have that unique blend of like the private practice lens and then the school-based setting hat. Um and definitely being an athletic trainer, this is um a question I talk about with our coaches and our administrators a lot is how can we even take it a step above the coaches and support them in, you know, a more integrated way? Um, I don't think it's any surprise to any of us that sport is a very historically reactive environment. Like we wait until somebody's suffering or struggling to step in very often. Um, or that's kind of the status quo or the old, good old way to do things. But um, you know, I think there's plenty of supportive measures now. I think Danielle had mentioned earlier to like doing like screening processes, like in my role, maybe I'm implementing mental health screening in our preseason like evaluations. Maybe we're doing that with our physicals. Um, mental health EAPs has been a huge one for athletic trainers, making sure that there's policy and procedure within the athletics department for how do we handle things when the school counselors are gone? Like what actual active steps am I supposed to take? Um, because I think there is a lot of gray area and a lot of intimidation for coaches and for faculty and staff members where it's like, I just don't know because I haven't dealt with this before. And providing those guidelines at a more systemic level and integrating it into the culture of your department, I think is huge just by taking this step to implement policy and procedure, um, formulate, you know, those relationships with your counseling department, even if that's not a typical relationship for you. And having those connections, I think are huge. Um, you know, I consider Sports Psych to be an active member of the Sports Med team. Like I don't view those things as separate entities. And I think the more and more that we can move into that direction, the better off it'll be for our athletes. Kate Fagan, the author of What Made Maddie Run, had like a great insight to the otherdom that athletes feel when they're kind of sent away from campus to the counseling center and how that separates that athletic identity. So incorporating it in a trusted environment and keeping it like in that athletics wheelhouse or having those opportunities there, I think really bridges that gap for people, especially athletes, to, you know, make that vulnerable jump to talk about some of this stuff because we're putting it right there for them to support them in their everyday experience and not just waiting for them to suffer to fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:15

Can I jump in? I want to echo um policies and procedures, right? Again, I go back to the comparison of physical injury versus mental health injury, injury. Say, you know, coaches know what to do if they're at an away game or an away tournament if an athlete tears their ACL or has a broken bone, they probably know, okay, can we call the athletic trainer? This is what I do. But what does that coach do when they're off campus and there's a mental health crisis? Right? What how do they handle it? Who do they contact? Is it, you know, what are those steps? I think having a policy procedure in place is huge. Um, so those coaches feel empowered if and when that were to happen. The other thing I think athletic directors need to do is we need to focus on our coaches' mental health, right? Our coaches are struggling.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:54

Good, great.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:55

I know here in Buffalo we lost um uh um a high school football coach, I believe it was this fall, a beloved uh phys ad teacher, high school coach, and everyone, and you know, it's kind of rocked uh community here outside of Buffalo here. Our coaches are struggling and we need to help them with their own mental health. They need to learn how to manage the stress, the pressure that they're facing, the backlash they're getting from parents and um, you know, just the stress that they're under. And so we we want to look at our kids' mental health, but we also have to look at our coaches' mental health and provide support for them and services for them and education and tools and resources. Because our coaches, I mean, how many coaches leave coaching, right? Because it's just changing. It's yeah, right, it's changing so much. Um, ironic that some of us were coaches and now we're therapists, right? It's very funny, like that connection. Uh, I think most of us here. Um, but again, we can't overlook that because our kids are looking at our coaches, you know, again, putting them on pedestals for good or bad. You know, coaches dysregulated, a coach is coming in hungover because they're abusing substances to cope with the stress that they're feeling. Coaches are having their own issues with food or with whatever is going on. The kids see that. They're watching everything. They pick up on every little thing that we do as adults or coaches in their lives. So we have to take care of the coach's mental health as well as the kids as well. It's you know, both of them.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:12

At the last national AD conference, I had a lunch, had a conversation with a handful of athletic directors, and we got onto the topic of conversation regarding coaching retention and how many of us are searching for coaches and coaches leaving after one to two to three years of coaching. And uh the topic got onto the coach's mental health, and one athletic director said, uh, yeah, we we need to focus on the that a little bit because I'm I'm tired of uh hiring new coaches. And uh I asked the question, is that why? Like, is that why we need to focus on their mental health so we don't have to uh you know, so we don't have to find new coaches, or do we care about their mental health? And uh that changed the conversation a little bit.

SPEAKER_08 1:13:58

I I Danielle, if you didn't say that I was gonna pipe up and say that, when we the coaches are like the middle managers, they're the people that have the most uh hands-on time with our athletes, and so there we do need to take better care of our coaches. Um and athletic directors are stressed to the max right now. I've I've seen it firsthand. Um, but our coaches need that support. There's a lot of pressure on coaches to meet roster minimums, to um to win win games, to fundraise, to um we're wearing a lot of hats as coaches, and um I relying on the other coaches in the department to mentor and support. Um, that's just another hat that your veteran coaches are wearing. And so I do think we need to do a much better job of supporting our coaches um so that they can be at their best to then support their student athletes. Yeah.

unknown 1:14:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:14:52

I I think one way you can do that, right? Because again, you know, if if adults are struggling, coaches are struggling, they may not want to tell their AD who's their boss, technically, right? So I think what ADs can do is put a list together a list of people, whether they're just mental health professionals or whether they're mental game coaches too. Because I would I would see a coach happily, you know, to help them with both, right? And and you know, so you know, maybe put a list of people in the area or a list of something that you have, you know, again, of any of us, we do telehealth, whatever that looks like, um, so that they can maybe go to that list and say, okay, I need to turn to this. And and I think you can still encourage them from that perspective of, hey, I support this fully, I support your guys' mental health, you know, I'm gonna give you this list. You don't have to tell me if you're using it or not, but I wanna I wanna give you guys resources. Again, I think somebody, Megan said, reactive or interventions. Let's be preventative. Like, hey, this would be a good idea if you guys just started doing these things. I fully support that, you know. Um, you know, and so maybe just creating like a list of resources for them so that they don't have to come to you and ask at times, right? Like some some coaches may not feel comfortable with that too. So I think I think it's a good thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:14

Yeah, that's removing that barrier.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:16

Yeah. I think you gotta train that barrier, right? If you're in the athletic department, train that it's okay to ask for help as an adult because as guys, as coaches, right? I'm you know, I I have asked for help a ton in my life, which is probably why I'm still, you know, moving in the direction I'm moving. But a lot of people don't do that, right? 17 years in the Navy, left, right, left. I gotta now I'm in charge. Everybody's relying. I have to be the one to bear everything. So training that it's okay to talk uh out loud about what's going on, I think not just the resources, not just providing things, but actually speaking about the fact that it's okay to talk. Man, woman, indifferent. We as leaders have been put in leadership roles, so we feel like that's finite. And that's what I have to be, and I can't ever deviate from that or I'm gonna lose everything. Right. So so allowing that door to crack open and somebody to feel secure to be a little bit vulnerable and insecure is huge too.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:15

You have to model the behavior that you want to see in your athlete. So it starts with us at the top for sure.

unknown 1:17:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:23

Yeah, that's when we work when I go in and do coaches' trainings. It's not one of one of the programs is not just about how to support your athletes, how to support yourself, right? All these types of like, you know, we do, you know, just talking about boundaries, self-care, advocacy, communication, conflict resolution, like just basic skills that coaches need to sustain their career their careers as coaches. Um, because they don't know. We don't like, you know, think about who we're hiring as coaches. A lot of times it's young people right out of college, and we're like, hey, go go be a lead head coach. I'm like, wait, they might have been a great athlete. Doesn't mean they have the skill set to be a great coach, and then we just kind of throw them to the bulk. I mean, wonder why they only last two, three, four seasons, right? Burnout happens, or that we don't they don't have the tools to coach and also how to support themselves or support the kids.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:05

I love that you said burnout. I just want to touch on that. Burnout, yes, burnout is real, right? I I I started coaching, I was 160 pounds as a as a 34-year-old young man. I stopped coaching at 42, I was 220 pounds, right? You see me wearing my 60 for me stuff, right? That's that's a whole methodology that I had to build to get my whole life back together. 60 minutes a day in order to focus just on me, right? What's my mind doing? What's my body doing? What's my relationships doing? What are you know finances doing? What is my faith doing? What are these five things doing, and how do I fix them? Intentional effort, being the example, and consistency over time. I didn't get this way overnight. I'm not gonna get out of here overnight. Uh, but but really leaning into yourself, you can't make a single athlete or a single athletic department better if you're functioning on the wrong wavelength. So self-help and and being in charge of your own self, uh, that's really where it's got to start. You can't do anything for anybody else if you're not caring for yourself.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:06

Yeah, fantastic. All right. Well, I really appreciate uh everything you guys have done. You guys have uh given uh a lot of resources for the athletic departments and the coaches. Uh before we head out of here, um, if each of you have about uh about a minute or so to talk to ADs and coaches, um, what do you want to tell them? Anything that we've not talked about here, um let's go. Give us all the goods. Liza?

SPEAKER_07 1:19:33

I think I think one of the things we haven't really touched on a whole lot is um focusing on the positives after a competition. Um, a lot of times coaches and and maybe even ADs, right? They'll they'll want to talk about, okay, here's all the things that we need to work on and practice tomorrow. Save it for tomorrow. The kids will remember. But if we can focus on all the things that they did well, we're gonna build confidence. And again, I just keep going back to what are we trying to do? We will we wanna we wanna build these kids up and and focus on the person and get them to be confident in themselves and who they are so that they have a healthy self-worth and a healthy identity. And and that's one way we can do it is I can't tell you how many times I've been you pick the sport, it doesn't matter at a sport, and a kid comes off the floor or off the field, and they're so upset about how they played. And I'm like, but you did this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this well. And they're like, oh my God, I might have had the best game I've ever had. It's all perspective, right? And so we as humans are going to focus on the negative. That's just where the way our brains operate, and we're gonna we're gonna ruminate on that mistake. So I think as coaches, don't allow that to happen, right? Like focus on the good things that we did. You know, hey, you you got your butt back on defense that that last time that really helped us, right? Did anything actually happen? No, but that's that's still a huge part of the game and something positive that you did that you have to focus on instead of, well, I made that turnover, you know? And so I think I think the more positive we can be, the more confidence we're gonna build, and then the better humans that we are fostering um throughout life as well, too.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:18

Love it, love it, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:20

Can I just jump in because I I agree with you 100% the positive psychology approach, what's working? Let's let's build on what's working. However, at the same time, I I think it's important that we teach kids how to fail. I think part of life is learning how to fail, learning how to get negative feedback, right? How to receive that. What do we say? Like fail and fail fast. How do we reset? Because I so many of our kids are afraid of making mistakes, right? And that can lead to a whole other you know, down a really bad path. So, okay, you're gonna like like the best basketball player doesn't hit every single shot he he or she takes. Like mistakes are part of the game. Mistakes are part of life, right? And you don't grow unless you're making mistakes. So I tell kids like let's learn how to do it. Let's like embrace the mistakes. It's not a mistake if you learn, it's a learning opportunity, right? And so it's it is kind of taking that mistake into something positive. Yeah, but it is, it's like this is not a bad thing. Don't beat yourself up. Say, oh, okay, what do I learn? Like it's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:11

And that's why I say save it for the next day, because we can't correct mistakes after a game. Right, right. And so that's yeah. So I'm all for like, hey, it's okay that you miss a shot, or it's okay that you had five turnovers. Like, okay, so how do I help you learn how to slow the game down or how to do this differently? But save that for the next day.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:30

Yeah. Great. Because that's highly emotional after the game if they've made those mistakes if they're beating themselves up. There's no learning happening, right? They got to get back to that regulated space to actually reflect. It's the growth is in the reflection. That's for journaling and all that type of stuff. Like, let's process it the next day when you actually can think clearly with like both your rational brain and your emotional brain. You're just not acting out of emotions. That goes back to that, you know, the good old car ride home. Talking to your kid, highly emotional the car ride home. Don't waste your breath. No one's listening. Right? Like, it's like we really want to have that meaningful conversation. It's the next day. It's when you've processed, when you've thought about it, when you're regulated. And one last thing I was thinking about earlier is like you want your kid, parents, coaches, you want to talk to a kid. That one on one, I think Kim was talking about it earlier. Sometimes it's scary for kids nowadays to have that like face-to-face combo. Go for a walk. Shoulder-to-shoulder conversations are what you're going to get. The kids are going to talk more to you. They're going to feel safer. They're not staring at you, feeling like you're interrogating them. Right? Figuring out those ways, throw the ball around, like figure out other ways of connecting with them. Um, because otherwise they might shut down.

SPEAKER_08 1:23:35

I have a spot that's kind of some like a middle ground, I think, between Liza and Danielle. Um, and one tool that I used with my athletes, and it's specific to softball, but I think you can use this in a lot of other ways, is um, whenever and I was I was always the dugout coach, I was a pitching coach, and I had another assistant that coached third base, which was a wonderful uh luxury that I had for most of my career. But anytime a player came back in the dugout, they always got a fist bump and they always got eye contact. They couldn't avoid me because I was right there. But what I also knew was that they weren't gonna be ready for feedback after they just struck out looking with the you know, runners in scoring position. And so I would say, I've got some feedback for you. Come see me when you're ready for it. And and because what I what I learned a lot like throughout the course of my career was that some kids want that feedback right away because they're gonna, they have to flip and go out on defense and they want to know right away what's coach gonna tell me. They don't want, they don't want to wait. Right. And then there's other kids that they need time to process. They're having a big emotion and they are kind of shut down. And so I would, I would have kids that would say, give it to me right now. Like it's fresh, give it to me. I want it. I would have kids that would come back to me after a couple minutes. I'd have kids that would come to me at the end of the game. I would have kids that came back to me the next day. The only rule was they had to come back. But what we called it was the mental permission slip, right? It's a way for them to say, I'm ready for this feedback now. It was a way for them to check in with themselves and to to know, you know, I need to be able to accept this feedback. It's gonna be critical feedback because I didn't do my job, but I'm gonna get myself ready for it. And some kids just needed a longer to get ready than others.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:18

That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:20

Um, I'm I'm gonna take that tool. Absolutely fantastic. All right, Megan?

SPEAKER_01 1:25:27

Yeah, I think you know, if I was to kind of leave some final thoughts for, you know, ADs, coaches, support staff out there um navigating this, you know, conversation and like the changing landscape is um like a little useful useful pearl one of my mentors gave me is it's okay to know what you don't know, and that there's a lot of value in that too. And um, to mirror the earlier point about like authenticity and transparency, um, you know, I don't think I expect every coach and AD and support staff member to have this conversation figured out. It's constantly evolving, it's constantly changing. Um, there's always going to be newer, better ways to support our athletes. And I think just taking an opportunity to kind of recognize when something's a little bit bigger than what you can handle or is maybe outside of what you're comfortable or familiar with, lean on those supports around you, lean on your higher ups, like take it above you if you need to, like know what your limits are. There's no shame in not being able to figure it out right in the moment. Like take it somewhere else if you need it. There's a reason why therapists seek out supervision and mentorship. Like we're constantly picking the brains of somebody smarter and you know more experienced than us. Um, and I would hope that my coaches and support staff members would feel comfortable doing the same. So create and foster that environment where your coaches can come to you and be like, I have no idea how to handle this and let's figure it out together. So um, you know, I think supporting the adults in the conversation has that trickle-down effect for sure.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:03

Awesome. Bill.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:05

Yeah, I think just training and education to your staff, your coaches, of what they're really doing, who they're really in charge of. You know, Danielle said regulate, you know, several times this evening, right? And and I and I teach that a lot. Recognize what's going on around you. Am I elevated? Is the player elevated? Are the parents elevated? What's actually happening, right? And then regulate, right? I don't want to be the thermometer, I want to be the thermostat. The thermostat's gonna tell me how hot it is, but does nothing about it. The thermostat's gonna know how hot it is and bring it back down to temperature. It's gonna know how cold it is and bring it back up to temperature. And then reinforce, reinforce the good things that we're doing, the positive things that we're doing. What did you love about the game? What did you learn today? What can we go back, you know, and and work on the next day to Eliza's point, right? And then grace. We didn't talk about grace at all, right? Grace and consistency over time. You didn't get where you are in one day, you're not going to get where you're going in one day. So whether you're a coach, an athletic director, a player, a parent, understanding that today is today, right? I can't do nothing about yesterday. I can live in today and I can plan and prepare, uh, which cure, you know, is the cure for anxiety, preparation for tomorrow. But I can't worry about it. I don't know what's going to happen. So, really just understanding, educating the process, taking those three steps, and then giving yourself grace and knowing that it's going to take consistency, showing up every single day over time in order to achieve your goals. And finally, just making adjustments, right? If I have a plan, I can make adjustments, right? A ship out on a stormy water, we grab the wheel, we calm it down. But when the storm lets go, we let go of the wheel, not realizing the current underneath it pulls us off track. So if we keep our hands on the wheel and we're constantly adjusting, we have a better chance of getting where we're going.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:57

Awesome. Well, thank you all so much for this. Uh, I know uh many uh athletic departments and coaches have uh have improved now after listening to uh the wisdom that you guys just threw at us. So uh much appreciated. Thank you for all the coordination over the past uh couple weeks for putting all this together. And I really appreciate what you do for coaches and athletes uh in your own lives and your own practices. So um for everybody out there listening, thank you all for tuning in to talking with the AD. We'll see you again next week.