Debrief: Jordan Cordry

The head coach of Women’s Swimming and Diving at UCLA joins to talk about single gender coaching, making her way to UCLA and sharing knowledge.

Debrief: Jordan Cordry Chris DeSantis

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Hello and welcome to the swim brief. I am Chris DeSantis, and today on the debrief, I am welcoming Jordan Cordry. Jordan is the head coach of swimming and diving at UCLA and somebody that uh we're gonna be doing a little thing at CSCAA in a couple months. We're gonna be on stage together. Uh so this is like the preview. This is like the sneak preview of what you are gonna get if you uh show up to the annual meeting. Jordan, how are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:53

I am doing amazing. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:55

I'm tired. I told you that beforehand, but I am now energized by your presence. I know I'm excited to do this one. So you promised that you're ready to carry me through this entire podcast before we Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Yeah. I said I am I am fully caffeinated, I'm well fed, I am well rested, and so I am we had a great practice this morning. The sun is out, so I'm ready to rock.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

You're well rested, and we're recording this the week after your conference championships. You snap back quick, huh?

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Yeah, I I will say, and it's not just me. We were talking about this at practice today, partially, it's the sunshine. We uh while the rest of the country is getting the worst winter ever. Yes. Yeah, over there, over there in your neck of the woods. We've had just a like knock on what we've had just the most beautiful winter, and we got a week of rain while we were at Big Tens, and it is beautiful and sunny. Our team is crushing it in practice, and this is a hard week. We told them yesterday for practice, hey, it's okay, don't worry about your times. Like, we're gonna go fast, but don't and they were just going fast, and so we were like scrambling to get the times because we thought they'd be hurting. No, they're crushing, they're in great moods. I'm in a great moon. My staff's in a great mood. Weirdly well rested for this week for sure.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

You got a last chance meet that you're bringing any people to you're done. Nope. With besides the NCD. Stay and pray, baby. Yeah, stay and pray. Wait for those psych sheets, those come out uh next week, yeah?

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Yep, yep. We're not thinking about that. There's nothing we can do.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Oh, sorry, I brought it up. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

So yeah, no, we just uh it's definitely not the thing that comes into my brain at two o'clock in the morning when I do wake up. No, we're in some really good side. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. There's some bubble. We are bubble issues in a few places for sure, but we're we're, I think we're gonna fall on the good side of of the line. And so nothing we can do except train and enjoy the sunshine.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Yeah. Okay. Let's let's get to the biography part that uh we usually lead these podcasts off of because I always want people to know like, who is this person, right? I think, especially even though the swimming world is small, and I think people who listen to this, you know, I know who my fan base is. It's swim coaches that listen to this, so they probably have many of them a sense of who you are. But I think even like myself, I feel like I'm pretty well tapped in. You sort of like entered my consciousness as the coach of UCLA. And I know more about you now that you and I had a chance. We had quite an introductory phone conversation that was nominally for for us getting ready for CSCAA, but um is gonna help for this as well. I guess walk the audience through like, you know, the narrative. Could we have a narrative of like how you came to be where you are today? What were the what were the sort of landmark moments in your story coming up to uh coaching this major college program in beautiful, sunny Southern California?

SPEAKER_01 4:03

Yeah. How did I wind up in this lucky spot? I you know, I've had uh conversations with a lot of people, especially since being here, where they'll say, Okay, how how do I get to that endpoint? How do I build that career? And I don't think until I got here that I knew I was getting to here. You know, I I swam collegiately in Division II at St. Cloud State University. Absolutely loved my experience. I was an okay swimmer. I was not the best on the team, but I was a team captain. My last two years, I was really involved and um I studied math, which is not a direction for many jobs. I was the only, I was one of maybe four math majors in my entire graduating class. And I was the only girl. And I had no idea where what I was going to do. But my coach, Coach Jeff Hagley, who is still one of my best people in the whole world, he connected me with the person who had been his high school coach, who now was a division three head coach, uh, the next town over. Um I took an assistant coaching job for $5,000 a year. But maybe the luckiest piece of that move was that that job also came with a camp counselor position at Stanford University. And so right after I graduated, I sat down, I had an interview with Coach Kathy in the building where our pool was at St. Cloud. She came over there to chat with me and she goes, and by the way, I need another counselor for this June. What are you doing? I was like, I'm unemployed. So whatever you want me to do, went out there at the time. Lee Maurer was the women's head coach, Skip Kenny was the men's, um, and and Ted Knapp. I got to spend a bunch of time with them with a whole lot of other coaches who that is one of my like primary spokes where I've met so many people in this.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Yeah, you networked like crazy at what at that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

It it played out for me. So I worked for Kathy for four years or for three years at uh the College of St. Benedict, a private Catholic school in St. Joseph, Minnesota. Absolutely loved it. I took over as the interim head coach for my last year there when Kathy retired. And I had kept going to swim camps every single year. I worked out at Stanford for a couple of weeks every year. And and I had other jobs. I was getting my MBA. So I was going to grad school. Um, I had a retail job. I taught swim lessons, but I also had a consulting job. Like I worked in tech and business. I was a consultant in like food manufacturing. Like I had a other job. I was really hustling, I was really hustling.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

But I would always take three, four weeks off to go work out at um Stanford for a few weeks. And 2013, when I went out there, it was the end of Greg Mann and Tracy Slessers' first year with the women's team. I went out, worked their camps. And specifically, Tracy and I like a rom-com, like eyes across the room. We're like, you're my people. And by the end of that week of working that camp, I sat down with Tracy. I said, How do I make this a sustainable job? Like, how do I, how do I be you? You know, that's what I want, I wanted to do this permanently. And she said, Well, nobody does this, but you could come work for us for free. And at the time I was living in Minnesota, I was living with my then boyfriend, now husband, working these million odd jobs. And I said, Okay, done. I'll move out here and I'll work for free. She's like, You might need to make some arrangements. So I mean, I made some arrangements by by the time I called my lovely boyfriend now husband and told him I had already found him a new roommate to split the rent. I had lots of people. Wait, back in Minnesota.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

You were leaving him in Minnesota or back in Minnesota.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He had things going on and I now had places to be. And we had a lease. And so he um I called him up and I said, here's the deal. I'm moving to California. It's probably for a year. It pays nothing. I'll be all right. I'm dropping out of grad school. I'm quitting my other jobs. Just trust me on this. And so I took a volunteer job with those two. Turned out to be a pretty good move. We broke move three or four American records that year. We finished second at NCAA's. There were a couple of pool records still holding. And when we were back in Minnesota for Big Tens the other year from that NCAA's, like my Dorado's 400 IM was still holding. It was awesome. And I learned a lot. They let me be a part of everything. They let me coach a group. They took me everywhere and just committed to we'll teach you everything we know. And then you're gonna have to go fly. Like you're you're gonna go on your own. So at the end of that awesome year, and when I ran out of money, and I ran out of money, I got a call from Bill Dorncott, who I had never met. I did not know. I didn't even know what city Ohio State was in. And he said, All right, I'm gonna bring you out for an interview, but just so you know, I'm gonna hire you. And I was like, Okay.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

That's not what I was expecting.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Nice to nice to meet you too. And sure enough, he was not lying. I went out there for an interview. I essentially already had the job. I had some good references along the way. And then I moved to Columbus, called the uh boyfriend, now husband, and said, Hey, now I'm moving to Columbus Ohio. So you can join me there.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Yeah, can you come down?

SPEAKER_01 9:41

Yeah, not not as big a move, but he was like, I don't want to move to Columbus, Ohio. I was like, too bad. We're going to Columbus Ohio. And I was there for five years first as the assistant coach, then associate head coach for the women's team, then we combined programs, and it was awesome. I learned so much. I got so much experience.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Wait a second. Who I want to back up to this point in the story. Who told Bill to like who told provided that reference where where Bill was just like, that's it?

SPEAKER_01 10:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

I'm targeting her. I'm gonna hire her. It's done.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

This is this is kind of a common thread in in in my coaching career for sure. But it works at levels that I'm not sure everybody out there recognizes. But there's there's not a lot of women on the collegiate coaching pool decks, even on the women's side. There's there's not a lot of us. But we take good care of each other. So at the time my my position at Stanford had ended. I was bunking at Tracy's house in exchange for some child care for her toddler while I was figuring out what the next step was gonna be. Steph Williams called Tracy and said, My old boss Bill is looking for a new assistant coach. How about that girl that works for you guys? And that those two now extrem, I mean, extremely powerful women in the coaching world, right? But the conversation between those two two, Bill got me the job. Bill called Steph and said, I'm I'm gonna be hiring somebody. You worked for me, you know what it looks like. Steph called Tracy, said, Who's that girl that works for you? And I had the job. People I also interviewed Grey.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

I also think I knocked it out of the park, but I didn't have to. I had the time.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

I mean, I guess if you had shown up and been totally awkward and weird, he might have been like, okay, why? Why did you tell me that you're not sure?

SPEAKER_01 11:27

I think I was as promised. Um, but yeah, I was I was young and hungry and willing to work and willing to learn and had shown that by selling off all my possessions and, you know, moving across the country. And I think more than anything, Bill had a deep respect for that, for that hustle. For like, I'm all the way in. And in being all the way in, I got to just learn from from two of the best out there who have great coaching legacies on their own and just got to be a part of something really big. And so it was like, okay, she's gotten to see some good stuff, but also she's she's clearly ready to work. And so I don't know what gives you the the kind of confidence you have in yourself at 24, 25 years old to just sell everything and move across the world and like, but you know, God bless it, because it led me to some cool things.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

Yeah, I definitely I've spoken about it a lot of times on this podcast too. I had peak confidence in myself at age 25. 100%.

unknown 12:25

No.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Never just slowly you you learn more and you realize you don't know why, but it's magical. That moment, like you have to seize it.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Yeah, and you have that brashness and you just you just freaking go for it. And, you know, you bust down some doors, and it's the right time, I think, for it for a lot of people developmentally to just go for it. I I talked to a lot of people too. We you know, I actually did a podcast on here with one of your assistants about how to get a college job. And I think one of the things that comes up, and I hear it in your story, right, is all how important networking is. And sometimes when I'm talking to people, they go, Well, like, when's the best time to start networking? I'm like, today. Actually, the best time was yesterday, but it's over, right? I mean, it's like really like just do something today. Yeah, try to create an opportunity for yourself because now is the time where you will maybe have the overhead. When you get to my age, my place in life, it's it's harder to do a lot of the things that you need to, you know, do to advance your career. It's harder to move, it's harder to have no income for a year. All these things are they get harder. There's a very, very limited, if you're lucky, right? There's a limited shelf life for them.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Totally.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

To be able to do them.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

It's that, yeah, seizing those times when because when people have asked me, like, okay, how what recommendations do you have? Them, the only one I have is, yeah, if you need if you're trying to make a serious move. And I was trying to go from um an an unknown division three up into the D1 world with with no swimming contacts in the way. I didn't swim at that level. I didn't know I had a big gap. The only thing I had was my the only capital I had was trust and relationships that I had built. But then the only advice I had for anybody is like, take that huge risk. Like that's there is no shortcut except for that. Go. I I thought that when I went to Stanford, I would be stacking kickboards and like packing snack bags, and that would have been good enough. And I got so much more than that, but it was that networking is not just meeting people and not just handing them your resume because however many years later this is now 13 or so. I spent an hour on the phone with Steph Williams yesterday. She entered my life in that way as a person who helped me get that job. But now she's my she's one of my people. And it's let's talk about ideas. Where were your wins? Where were your misses? What are you proud of? What happens next? What do you think about this? Um, those are what support you in this thing, but they're also what what help you move forward. It's that that's the capital for sure.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

And shout out to Steph Williams. I have a podcast with her, and people really responded to it. And I think one of the reasons is what you're pointing to. She like, she 100% is that person. I mean, like, I I listened to it and I thought, like, oh gosh, did I really get to her? Because she was so kind and like so, she has this positivity about her. I'm like, is that really who she is? And then once I put it out into the world, like the people that knew her were like, yeah, no, that that is who she is. That is 100% who she is.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

I'm gonna edit myself. I met her as Steph Williams. I still have her in my phone as Steph Williams. She's Stephanie Moreno.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

But yeah, it's she's she is that, and that's why she had my back early on, and it's why I'll have hers forever.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

Yeah. I think another thing that I I want to return to from your story, I think is really key insight, and I think people miss this sometimes in the networking because you can run into brick walls. Obviously, like the way we just told that story, like, you know, it sounds magical. You got to be in a volunteer at Stanford, right, from a div Division III school. People are going, like, oh great, great. Like, am I going to be able to model that? And what I would say to a lot of people is, and we were having this conversation before we started recording. There are people out there like Greg Meean, like Tracy, that are developmentally minded about other coaches. Those are the people you want to be with, and those are the people that are going to take that chance on somebody. The people who have no time for you are probably also not the people who are gonna put any effort into helping you level up as a coach. So you don't want to work for them anyway. You don't want to be involved in those places. And that can be hard to hear because you go like, oh, I just want to get to this premiere program or this place. But there is a huge, you and I both know this, there's a huge variance within the system of how well not just people coach the athletes on the team, but how well they are a leader and and developmentally focused of the coaches on the staff. We're gonna talk about that with your program later as well.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

Yeah. It's it's so true though. And like I think that when you look out there, there are there are the kind of people who have really impressive coaching trees in that they've brought in people who were talented, and then then those people have gone out into the world and built their own programs. And yeah, I was lucky to be the beneficiary of a number of those folks. And because of that, I'm a part of a big network of there. Are a lot of college coaches, a lot of college coaches right now who swam for my college coach. So who swam for Jeff Hegley. There's a bunch of us, and that's not by accident, it's because it's it's who he creates. There are a bunch of us who worked for for Bill Dorncott.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

A lot of volunteers of Bill Dorncott that go on.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

A lot of volunteers, a lot of volunteers, and a lot of my good friends, right? But it's because of that, and that I miss, and I'm going to continue to miss of the volunteer coach system, however, you feel about it. To me, it benefited me. I know some other pretty big names who went through those same spots. And so, yeah, yeah, that's a loss to me.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

So you made your way to UCLA. I mean, we we haven't really gotten to that part of the story yet. Was that also did uh did some somebody magically just offer you the job? Did you have to elbow a few people on the head that time?

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Yep, that one. It was my dream job. I had a very short list of places that I would ever leave Ohio State for. I was incredibly happy. I got to do a lot of leading, I got to do a lot of coaching, I worked with amazing people. I loved my job. I then fiance and I were right about to get married. We had just bought a house. We were like, I was like, we are here. We combined programs, I got a raise, I got a title, like we're here. And then me, like a every, you know, Cindy Gallagher years before she retired from UCLA, I was at a a coaching summit with her. And there was her and her, what we called the OG coaching summit, which is every big name of women, some coaches you could ever imagine, sit in a room and brought their brilliant minds together. 100%. And they had my little coaching summit over for dinner. They made us dinner, they sat down, they answered all of our questions. Super generous. It was incredible. And Cindy said, I know all you are gunning for my job, but I'm not leaving yet. And so it was just well known that there were a lot of us out there who thought, that's the job I want. When Cindy's done, that's the job that I want. And for a lot of reasons, it's a it's an incredible institution. It's in a beautiful location. It has this beautifully rich legacy. And for me, I wanted to coach a single gender program. I knew that if I was going to be a head coach, that that was the vision I had for myself. I loved that model. From St. Bend's to Stanford to when I started at Ohio State because I liked the the intimacy of it in that it's not seven staff members. At the time it was two. It was two of you, right? When I when I first got the job at Stanford, Greg and Tracy were partners and I was their hope. And when I first signed on at Ohio State, it was Bill and I were partners. It was the two of us. We made decisions together. I apprenticed, you know, he taught me everything he knew. We were always in that together. And I really, I like that. But then there's this bigger piece to me, which is 18 to 22-year-old women and 18 to 22-year-old men, they have different physical and physiological needs for sure, but culturally, you have to do different things to nurture those programs. You talk to anybody who had to do one week at the women's meet and the next week at the men's meet, they'll tell you, like, you have to code switch, you have to, you have to be in a different place. And and I so deeply believed in creating that that I could tap into what that looked like for just a women's team. And I wanted to protect it. And there's a lot of pieces to that. So to me, this was a dream job. There were two or three dream jobs that I had I thought that would never come open and that they were such a long shot. But I knew them and I had them written in a note in my phone. And so one morning I'm showing up to practice in the summer of 2019, and I, like a whole bunch of us, got this email. From Cindy, and she said, You guys are gonna find out that I'm I'm retiring. I just want you to know that. And I walked onto deck, I walked over to my good buddy Michael Hume, and I said, It has been nice knowing you, man, but I'm moving to LA. And he's like, No, no, you're not. This is my one shot. This is my dream job. I'm getting this job. And then it was a really long process. And I was in it with some of the best of the absolute best. Best of the best. It was the most stacked field. It was really hard. And again, I had this confidence at that point. I worked really hard on building my vision for the program. Bill had taught me so much. Tracy and Greg had taught me so much. Kathy and Jeff had taught me so much. And I just I had this vision. And it for whatever reason, it was the right moment for me and here and UCLA. And um yeah. And so I I got this job. We moved out here within a couple of weeks. It was within two weeks of my wedding. Just a lot of changes, and it was pretty awesome. But yeah, dream job. Absolute dream job.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

Want to follow up on one of the things that you mentioned in there because I I I think it's a really interesting vein. I have a feeling you have a really good answer to this. I have spent a lot of time thinking about, you know, you you were you referenced this conversation about single gender programs and being able to first off the intimacy of it. I love that answer. I mean, I think a lot of people speak to this that they say you get to do more coaching in a single gender program. You're less of a administrator, for lack of a better term. That's what the role happens to gravitate towards when you combine the teams just by virtue of how many people you're responsible for, you know, and all the coaching help that you have. You know, you you you gotta gravitate towards that. But I also think one of the biggest problems in women's sports that I can see is so much of women's sports, which has grown. I was reading this article this morning all about ACL injuries in the New York Times and you know the explosive growth in women's sports post-Title IX, right? Which I think I view as a huge positive. Most people view as a huge positive. There's only a few cranky dudes mostly who don't view that as a huge positive, right? And yet I think there was in many cases very little thought put into what is what are women's sports going to look like, right? In terms of like, are we building something from the ground up for women? Instead of just going like, well, why don't we take men's sports, copy paste it into women doing it, and that'll be good, right? That'll work.

unknown 24:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

Yeah. I mean, like, you know, the the games should be the same, right? You know, we play with 10 foot foot hoops in basketball, we sw swim in a 25-yard pool, all that stuff. But there's there's details that I think just get like they get they get missed. Um how do you think about that as you approach coaching at UCLA?

SPEAKER_01 25:03

I think so. One of the things that has been said about the reality of Title IX is when Title IX came about from a coaching perspective, it just kind of doubled opportunities for men and didn't really increase the opportunities for women. And that that's continuing to shift. But the more programs we have that combine, and most, not all, and then the number is growing, the vast majority of the head coaches of combined programs are men. And the vast majority of the coaches on those staffs are men. So I swam on a combined program. And then my first job was at not only a single gender program with only women on staff, but at a only women's school. And it was attached and is attached to a men's school. They take classes together, but they have separate pieces. And what I learned there was some of the elements of pride that really go into what it means to be just truly women's sports. We were a part of an athletic department that only had women's sports. And that was really powerful. It was powerful in the language that we used, that we used the female words for alumni, right? We referred to our alumni and alumna. It was important that we said women, not girls. It was just like so many of these small things, and it took a lot of pride. So that was one piece that I took like, while you can really elevate and protect the experience for young girls feeling strong in being in a women's athletic environment when you're aware of how male-dominated it is and you and you remove that. But then also the first thing I noticed when I got to those practices as an assistant coach was how vocal the girls were. The women. See, it's broken in me again.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

I've done it way too many times as well, and I cringe when I notice myself. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

How vocal they were, how there were no men leading the lanes. It was only the women, right? That they raced each other really well, their leadership was stronger, they were a little more comfortable in how they spoke. And I just started to have this vision for like, I was a captain on a team of men and women. And if I would be loud and vocal, I got called certain things.

SPEAKER_00 27:32

Yeah, the behavior codes differently for people.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

It codes differently. And and here, that wasn't there. And and so they could speak to each other differently, they could have a different level. And so I just started to see, wow, what could this be? Then I went to Stanford, both a men's and a women's team, but we ran completely separately. And and to see that, to see that level of elite in this field, I was like, nobody here needs a male training partner. There, these are the best in, these are the best in the world. Maya Dorado didn't need um a boy to show her how to swim at a 357, 400 im. Like so those things and I just felt this empowering. And when I got to Ohio State, we were a single program. We were separate programs. And when we combined, I was very vocal about the pieces I wanted to make sure we protected and and kept of the women's team's culture, what was important there. And so I just I I really developed a really strong feeling for not just the swimming piece, but the life piece about what it means to create environments where women can be loud and competitive and angry and strong and confident and silly and soft and all of those pieces where they could be that it's just that. And it was celebrated. That was a huge piece about why this was a dream job to me.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

I've been thinking about the other side of the coin this past year. I worked with the College of New Jersey's men's program. And I think to speak to some of the same stuff that you're talking to, I just knew that there was things that I I people I'm not gonna specify this, and certain people are gonna listen to this and and be suspicious of what I'm about to say, but like there were things I could discuss with just a male audience in the room that that like that I knew that I wasn't going to run into the same kind of like defensiveness, you know, and and lack of vulnerability. Like we could be much more vulnerable in a room, in a single gender room, than we could. And I when I go out and and work with teams all the time, coaches will ask me, like, hey, you want to divide this up? I'm like, Yes, please. And I say, sit in, you'll see it's a it's the same content presented quite differently because the audiences just have different experiences. There's different contexts.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

That's exactly it. They live they live different experiences in the sport. And when when we were at Big Ten, so Big Ten's is still uh women's meet and a men's meet. Some of the other ones have combined. Yeah. I think eventually ours will probably combine.

SPEAKER_00 30:16

That's where things are headed.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Yeah, it's it eventually will go there. We need to save the money. It's not my ideal for obvious reasons. But I will say, in this current model, some of us single gender teams have an edge when we get there. My team doesn't act any different. They're not waiting for somebody else to start the cheers. They're not deferring to somebody else's energy. They are exactly the same team that they are in practice. And every other time we travel, when we go there, their energy is the same. That's different when half of your training group is at a different championship meet for those to and and when half of your staff is my whole staff is there, my whole team is there. We we get to only focus on that. I don't miss a week of training for for somebody else's thing. And and there are plenty of benefits. And and let me say very clearly, the fact that UCLA does not have a men's team is one of the greatest tragedies of the sport. It is absolutely criminal. I will, as much as I love what we have here and I believe in it, I will recruit to it, I will coach the hell out of it. I will never stop fighting to bring back this legacy of this men's team. And if that money is there, if that funding is there, that opportunity is there, I will be the first person there to work my butt off to make sure that it works. And just like I did when I was at Ohio State and we went from separate to combined, I will fight to preserve the pieces that I think need to be preserved. But if if this came back, I would fight for it to be two separate programs. The history of men swimming at UCLA, men swimming and diving at UCLA is so rich and is part of the reason that this athletic department is where it is. I mean, it for those that don't know, it produced an NCAA championship team, a number of NCAA champions, NCAA records, pool records that still exist in a bunch of places.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

Brian Goodell swam for UCLA, Tom Jager. I mean, we're talking about like Olympic legends of the United States, Olympic record holders, Olympic gold medal. World record holders.

SPEAKER_01 32:22

NCAA champions, world record holders, people that broke through. And I get phone calls from those men all the time, wanting to support our program, but also wanting to fight for the thing that they built to have a future here. And so if that were an option, I would bring it back. And I would still fight for that. That men's team was a men's team.

SPEAKER_02 32:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:48

And those guys have their traditions and their legacies that were separate from the women's team at the time. And I just think that's that's huge. And yeah, I I get to do more coaching than I would if I was the boss of seven coaches. And so there's a lot of pieces, but I I just I love the model of those two things getting to be have their own identities. And I think it is important in developing those young people on both sides.

SPEAKER_00 33:16

Yeah. Um I want to ask you about another aspect of this. You spoke to it a little bit, some of the ways we said, like, you know, coded, the way athletes are socialized. Something that has always bothered me from the beginning of my coaching career. Coming up as a male coach, most of the other people I interacted with in power, I was at Georgia Tech and Power Conference Swimming were men. You know, a very typical setup would be you in a lot of these combined programs, one female on staff. In fact, I I kind of have in my own mind like it's a little bit of a tell if you have a combined coaching staff and you have two women on staff, because then I'm like, there's a boss who like has put above the minimum effort into like recruiting and and finding women who suddenly you're a feminist if you if you hired two old ladies on your staff. Well, I wouldn't go that far, but I I know we're joking a little bit. But it's and I I have I've written about this. I think people are missing an opportunity that's just like a talent pool. You just take in 50% of the talent pool and you go, Yeah, I'm not really interested in that. I'm just gonna recruit from the other 50%. That's stupid. So so if you want to leg up, you should uh you should change that pattern. But I want to speak to some of the socialization, something that has always really, really bothered me. I don't want to get your take on it. I can just remember, I'm not gonna name any names, I'm not gonna embarrass any of these guys, but I can just remember guys basically being like, you know, here's the coaching wisdom on how to coach women versus how to coach men. And looking back, if I had to paraphrase it, it was like, yeah, you can just be a bully to the women. You can just order them around, you know, they're more compliant, they're more like gonna do what you say, you can be meaner to them, et cetera, et cetera. And I didn't I was uncomfortable with it at the time. The older I get, the more I'm like, that is so messed up. Like it's just so it's so messed up, and it goes back to this like socialization, where I think in a lot of these combined structures or just sporting structures in general, women get socialized towards obedience, for lack of a better term. And then we're wondering why, you know, why aren't they more aggressive and confident and having a better time?

SPEAKER_01 35:34

Why aren't they getting this job or moving into this position or fighting for it? Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_00 35:39

Yeah. How do you think about that? Because you must have, I mean, I would bet you have people that come into your system every year, athletes that come into your system that came out of a club environment where that's how they were treated. And some part of them may even think, like, oh, this is how I should be treated.

SPEAKER_02 35:59

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:01

So I never figured out how to deal with that, honestly. When I was coaching at Georgia Tech, I wanted to change it and I couldn't figure out how to do it.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

So there are a couple of pieces to this, and I think it's a really insightful question. We run a program here that is very much built on empowered, individualized thinkers. We want our athletes to have strong opinions, to say them out loud, to tell us how they feel. That's really important. And so we have to recruit athletes that we think will be able to grow into that. Doesn't mean everybody is exactly in that place, but I do not successfully coach athletes who rely on a dynamic where their coach told them absolutely everything to do and everything to think. If they come from this real compliant, kind of overmanaged, in my opinion, dynamic, what I've learned is they they are really gonna struggle in our program. I was I was talking to a recruit and her mom the other day, and they were good sports, and I said, Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take a stab at the fact that I'm gonna guess that you've been been called stubborn before. And her mom laughed really hard. And I said, I said, okay, so I'm guessing I'm right. I said, You and I are gonna fight and it's gonna be so good because I want to recruit strong, opinionated, powerful young women, and I want to raise them up into a position where they can take that into the into the world. So all that to say it's it's like it's in our DNA. And there are people that could look at my team and think that that I'm soft or that we don't have a certain respect. Our respect with our athletes is built on trust, it is built on connection, competency, and character. It is built on those pieces and it goes both ways. And that is a different dynamic. It is a much more traditionally feminine version of trust and respect and power and a less masculine one. And we get to have that because of our gender dynamic, because we have a group of just women. If I was trying to coach a group of 18-year-old boys with that exact same way, I'm not gonna have the same success. And I I've spent a lot less time doing it, but I know this version, but it looks different, and I'm really passionate about it. But it means that yeah, our dynamics are they look a lot different than they do in other places.

SPEAKER_00 38:47

You know what I was thinking of? This is a story that I've told a couple times in this podcast, but it's stuck with me. I have certain things. Um, early on in my coaching career, I was my my boss said, I want you to come up with a manual for new coaches. And I was looking through these old like Ask talks. He had literally prints out, printouts, transcripts of old Ask conferences. And I found a presentation by Tom Tutko. Anyone who's in the sports psychology world, if you want to go down a rabbit hole, start looking at Tom Tutko stuff. You will love it. That guy was, and first off, he's just a brilliant speaker. You can find speeches of him online and stuff. But I was reading this speech by Tom Tutko, and I think it speaks to what you're talking about. He's brought in to work with a basketball team, and they had a center on the team. This guy was gigantic, you know. Like physically, when you looked at him, the other team would be intimidated by his size. You would think this guy's gonna physically dominate every player, you know, that he comes up against. And the coach came to Tutko and he was like, but he's just so passive. He's passive in everything. And Tutko was like, okay, well, let me let me come to practice and let me see how he's doing. And this player, every time he would make a mistake in practice, his teammates would be berating him, his coach would be berating him, and the guy would just sort of put his head down and take it. And so Tutko came back with a very unconventional suggestion. I always think about this, and I every time, yeah, I could sort of like uh another evaluation for me when I tell this story to coaches, because some of them will go, like, well, that's crazy, I would never do that. And the ones who are like, I think I could think of a version of that, and I hear it in your stubborn, your stubborn recruit. Tutko was like, We're gonna tell this guy every time somebody pisses him off at practice, he can go off, including the coach. He can just let he can just let loose, right? And he can tell them to F off and like get off his back and et cetera, et cetera. And what do you think happened? The guy started playing aggressive, he started showing up to the games and actually like embodying that character. Awesome. And I see that. I see that in some of your coaching philosophy, but it takes a lot of like, I think confidence is almost the theme of this podcast. I mean, it takes some security to do that because there's uncomfortable moments. There's moments where you're like, gotta be like, gosh, am I am I maintaining, I don't know, the proper level of authority in this environment, right?

SPEAKER_01 41:14

Totally.

SPEAKER_00 41:15

Where I'm letting people just express themselves to me.

SPEAKER_01 41:19

It takes a lot of security in your and your coaching and in your team culture to invite challenges or invite contrary opinions or to invite good arguments with an athlete. Like somebody asked me the other day at Big Ten's, what was the difference with Rosie Murphy? Rosie's one of our seniors this year. She's absolutely crushing it. So she finished third in the 400 IM, second in the 200 back, second in the 200 I am and the two back and two I am on the same day in school records, which she has broken four or five times in each of those events this year. She's just been on a tear and it's continuing. And they asked me what was the difference. And I said, Rosie is a person to maybe the highest degree I have coached in this exact way. There have been times in Rosie's career where she has told me, I need to take a little time. And or I need to take this weekend, or I'm only gonna swim a couple of times this week, like in the off seasons, right? That's really it. Or I need this change. And I've had to earn a lot of trust with her to allow her to feel safe in asking for those things. The number one thing I've done though is just not crush it because every time she comes back from one of those things where she says, I need to do this, she gets better. The biggest thing this year is she said, I've fallen in love with rock climbing. I want to do more rock climbing. So I pulled a couple practices off the schedule so that she can go climb. And for a 400 IM er, it is not in my DNA to pull some practices out.

SPEAKER_00 43:01

Right. Take some, take some volume out of the program, but you did.

SPEAKER_01 43:04

Totally. She does a lot of singles and a couple of small doubles. And but all year she's climbed a couple of times a week. When we're talking about getting ready for NCAAs, what are we gonna do getting ready for NCAAs? She's gonna, I'm gonna climb a lot because my arms died in my 400 IM, and that's not gonna happen again. Great. So I'm going to build that around her because she and I have earned this level of trust. But she knows she can tell me this isn't working, here's what I need. And she knows that I'll push back on her as well. She can trust that I'll say, No, that's not right. I've got your back. I I can take care of this, but that'll treat her like a human. And I listen to her. That's really important in how we run our program. Everybody's got a voice, and it's a they've got loud voices. It's not a soft group. You come to one of our practices, the music is loud, the yelling is loud, the comp competition is high. Uh but it's also sunny and joyous and it's the best.

SPEAKER_00 44:04

I'm regretting listening to this description. I am regretting. I had an idea in the back of my mind. I'd never told you about this. You and I even hadn't even met each other, but I worked with Chapman University this year, and I was flying in and out of LAX. And I was like, gosh, I could have just there was a version of this trip where I was gonna ask to come visit UCLA. And now listening to these stories, I'm like, I'd have missed what a missed opportunity. Next time. We'll figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 44:33

Next time.

SPEAKER_00 44:34

Let's not get too distracted. I know both your assistant coaches, so I have extra involvement in this. Uh Bex uh Freebird and I worked together when I was doing some stuff with Washington State. Graham, of course, been a guest on here. I met him when he was a volunteer at Ohio State. Talk a little bit about, I have an idea of where this conversation is going based on some of your own history, but like talk a little bit about what's your approach to hiring. And then, you know, when those coaches get there, what are, you know, what are you trying to do with them?

SPEAKER_01 45:06

Yeah. I've gotten better at this over time. I've I've I have I have hired, I've always looked for similar types of people when I've been hiring, but I've gotten better at giving them what they need when they get here.

SPEAKER_00 45:18

So what are you looking for?

SPEAKER_01 45:19

I'm looking for people who can build relationships. That's it's number one. I need to be able to trust anybody on my staff in a one-on-one meeting with any athlete on this team. And and it's not that I'm overly concerned with like what they're teaching them, right? Sometimes we disagree on where your hand goes in this stroke or whatever, but it's good information. They're good qualified coaches. That's a guarantee. Um, but I'm looking for people that can earn the trust of those athletes. That if that athlete needs something, needs someone to rely on, needs somebody to ask a hard question to, needs somebody to confide in or ask something of, that it can be anybody. That's that's it is the number one thing. Because this is the thing I've gotten better at is I know I'm doing my best coaching when I can give a lot of autonomy to the coaches that I bring out here. We do still a lot as a whole team. I still get to be plenty involved with a lot of pieces, but the more autonomy I can give in coaching and programming and recruiting and all of those areas, the better I am and the better they are. I was the recipient of that in a lot of places. But that trust and the ability to build those relationships, one, it's the number one most important thing to me because a lot of the things that I've shared with you about what my philosophies are and how we run our program. But in this era, it's it's the way you protect yourself. Like your athletes have to trust your coaches. If they don't, you're gonna get fired eventually. Like you, it's and and so I don't want to micromanage every single area. It's the beautiful thing about having 27 athletes and and four coaches. I don't have to micromanage everything, but they have to be good relationship people. It's the biggest thing.

SPEAKER_00 47:09

Yeah, I think you're pointing to something that I've talked a lot about on here as well. When when you reference like even the existential part of this, right? Like you have to be good at the relationship part or you're not gonna be employed. I mean, I have spent so much time in my career looking at cases where you know coaches were accused of abuse, and I think there's been a lot of heinous behavior out there, no doubt. There's some cases, like there's some edge cases where I think maybe even us as like a culture of coaches, we start to get defensive. We go, that's not really fair, that's not really what happened. And I go, that may be true, but also if your team is ganging up to to w you know, ride you out of town on a pike, it is a failure as a coach. It no matter what. It it it is you've lost your team one one way or another, and they don't want you as their leader. And whether the specific behavior they don't trust you. So whether the specific behavior was out of line or not, at the end of the day, that's part of your job as a coach. Like you you have to earn the respect of people. You have to earn it. You don't just get it automatically. It's not 1975, right? You can't just walk in and go, well, you just need to respect me or else there's because for the most part the the you know punishment hammers are gone, and that's a good thing. It's good that you know you can't just act capriciously, uh, you know, mm, uh with malice towards people that you coach. That's making us all better as coaches, but I think there's an underdevelopment, you know, writ large in s in terms of the skills of you reference, you know, sometimes people say it's soft skills. I I I say like soft power skills. How do you influence people to do what you think will help them? Because it's in it's an influence game now, it's not a hard power compulsion, intimidation that you know was was a big thing in sports for a long time.

SPEAKER_01 49:23

Totally. And it's I I think that's it's exactly right. I think when you see a great performance across a whole team, when you see teams where everyone is getting better and it's just elevating and you can feel that and they're on a rise, something in there shows that there is there is trust. Those athletes trust each other, they trust who's in charge and they they trust the direction. And the way you see that is like you have to have a lot of trust in the system, in your coaches, in your teammates to go take big risks. And you don't get to go do big things if you don't take big risks. And in sports, those big risks are physical. It could hurt, you could fail. Like, but the the ability to take those huge risks, take big swings, because you trust your training, the people, and you trust that you'll be okay and still safe and loved if you fail. To me, that's the way you unleash sustainable greatness. You're not tricking them into that, you're not bullying them into that, you're teeing them up, making the space and promising to catch them if they fall. And like when we do that, you see people really, really start to take off in in a way where it is sustainable and it's and it's internal to. And that, yeah, that trust when we're recruiting and I tell people the number one most important thing in this relationship is going to be that trust doesn't always mean we're always gonna agree, doesn't mean we're always going to like each other, doesn't mean any of that. What it means is that I'm gonna be able to push you really hard because you trust me, and you're gonna be able to trust yourself enough to push yourself to that limit. When you can do that, we're gonna be on fire.

SPEAKER_00 51:21

Let's let's get to the home stretch. I'm gonna hit you with some of these open-ended questions that I love. The personal questions that you can fill in with. You've been pretty personal already on this podcast. I don't think like you've been terribly guarded.

SPEAKER_01 51:34

I'm not a very closed book, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_00 51:37

That's why you're a great podcast guest. You're you're doing amazing. Because that's the kind of podcast I like to record. Okay. Number one, what what does being competitive mean to you? Because I think about this a lot, right? The definition of competitive, there's a lot of assumptions in it. What does it mean to you?

SPEAKER_01 51:54

Two things that come to mind when you ask me this question. The one, and they're more visuals and memories than a specific answer. But I'll give you some things that I think illustrate this in in my mind. The one is that, like I said, because we're a single gender team, right? We train in a 14-lane pool. So 14 lanes across will be our women lined up against each other. So when we're doing a team set, so like Wednesday afternoons, we do a pace and flutter kick set. So it's always stroke pace into hard, hard flutter kick. And it doesn't matter what stroke you're doing, you're always going flutter kick on a board at the end of it. And what I love about those sets, we did one last night that was actually a repeat from one we had done in January because our team did so well with it then. And I thought it again. Watching 14 lanes across of these women pouring their souls into trying to beat one another because they love the team mission so much. That kind of competition, to me, that competitiveness where it's, I'm gonna use what I'm good at to make you better at your thing. I'm gonna use what you're good at to make me better at my thing, that kind of internal competitiveness where it's just driving greatness up and down the pool is something I love so much. So we try to create ways for our team to be competitive with one another all of the time, to practice for those moments when we have to be competitive with another team. And the other thought that came to mind. So we were getting ready for a meet against a back-to-back, a Friday, Saturday against Stanford and then Cal this year. That's a tough dual meet for anybody in the country. That's a tough one for me. It's a tough one for us. Getting ready for that meet, we're having a team meeting, what we call our strat chats. So we're having a strategy session. I'm talking about here's where they're good, here's where we're good, here's where our opportunities are, here's what this looks like. And one of our seniors raised her hand and she said, Here's the deal, guys. This is not the time to worry about your personal race strategy. If you're going to get in the pool in the lane next to somebody who might be the best in the world at what you're doing right there, do not talk yourself into, I'm just gonna stay relaxed on the first 50. She said, This is not the time. This is the time to take it out with her and see what happens. One of the things we try to instill in our team is just the courage to go stand up there and be competitive against anybody, even if it includes like a touch of delusion at the moment. Go do that to practice being the best against the best. And then whatever happens, happens. Right? Worst case scenario, you lose. But you had the chance to get better. At UCLA, I am in an athletic department that is the definition of competitive, right? We've won 125 NCAA titles. The expectation is simply that you compete with the best and you win. Right. And with fewer resources and no big football money, and but the the legacy is being competitive. And I think it's that. Be scrappy and be willing and use the greatness of the people around you to make yourself better.

SPEAKER_00 55:03

Yeah, I think that you're you're speaking to that in an element with the the Cowl Stanford dual meet as well. I think, you know, it's perhaps something that is I see leaving the culture a little bit. I I would love to see it make a comeback. This, you know, idea that I think when things get out of control competitively, we can all lapse into like, gosh, I kind of hope that whoever I'm up against just like really falls flat on their face and then I can sneak in there and and win, you know, and get it.

SPEAKER_02 55:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 55:35

But that's to me, that's not competitiveness. You actually want everybody else to crush it. You want them to crush it, and you hope that in some shape or form that's gonna elevate you and what you're doing, and you're ultimately like, I don't know, now here's where I'm gonna lose some people because I'm gonna go like, you know, all existential, but you're part of a bigger project, which is just like how far can we push it? And you might you you know the chances of you being the person that pushes it the farthest at any given moment is so tiny, right? And you'll be surpassed, even if you are that person, even if you're Michael Phelps, your records will be surpassed quickly. But you're still you're still part of it. There's still there's still a role for you to play, right? I think so.

SPEAKER_01 56:16

Why not you?

SPEAKER_00 56:17

Why not you? You've been talking about we don't talk about community a little bit here, but you had a nice anecdote. I have an anecdote that I want you to get to. Hopefully you remember what that is. Rachel Stratton Mills features prominently in it, but where do you where do you find community in the sport and and who do you rely on? This is something I ask a lot of coaches too. Like, who who are your people that you call when you're in a pickle? I I think I asked Bill Doringcott this question too. Uh I will have to look back.

SPEAKER_01 56:43

One of the it that's interesting. One of the things that I really learned and appreciated working alongside Bill was how many people he called in a week and just said, What'd you do this week? What'd you learn this week? What's something new you tried? What's something that sucked? Where did you get better? And to me as a young coach, that sounded so vulnerable to me. Like, I thought we were all supposed to have all the answers. How do you know to call people and ask them for theirs? Like, that's scary. I have developed a really good circle of people that I can talk to really regularly. I'm trying to remember the anecdote that you're telling me, and I don't think I'm going to, but um but Rachel's one of those people, Tracy Sluster's one of those people, Steph Moreno is one of those people, Mandy uh comes to sell is one of those people. I as I'm saying the list of the people. So yesterday I talked uh for an hour and a half to Margot Gere and I talked for an hour to Stephanie. And I over at Big Ten's the other week, I I spent hours talking to Gina Kemp and I spent a significant amount of time, significant amount of time talking with um Coach Rachel. And I had somebody a number of years ago ask me, why do all the women coaches only talk to the other women coaches at these meets? And as I'm saying this list, people will be like, well, that's that's the thing. Why are they all Yeah?

SPEAKER_00 58:20

Where are your bros at, Jordan?

SPEAKER_01 58:22

Where are you my bros? And here's the here's the answer. The the the first two male coaches that I I ran into on deck tens, the first ones I stopped and had really good conversations with, the first one said, Here's some pictures of my kid, and the other one where it said, Where's your baby this week? And you're gonna make them self-conscious now.

SPEAKER_00 58:41

They're gonna listen to this podcast, Jordan. People are gonna stop doing this to you. I hope.

SPEAKER_01 58:46

But here's that's the thing. Rachel's a mom and Gina's a mom, and I don't have to be a mom when I talk to them. I get to be a coach. When I talk to Rachel for a really long time, she said, What's going so well with this kid? Why is she so strong? What are you doing right this week? We can be so vulnerable. And in that group, in that group of women head coaches that I just named, that I call a lot, and I am very vulnerable with, and I ask them a lot of stuff. We don't talk about being women's head coaches. You don't talk about babies.

SPEAKER_02 59:15

No.

SPEAKER_01 59:15

We don't talk about babies. We don't talk about our partners. We don't talk, we talk about swimming and we talk about coaching and about leadership and new ideas and what we're gonna change. And and how do we get on the right committee to make the right change for this thing? And how do we get all of us at this convention to have this conversation about this thing? Like, how do we make those things? And I just get to be a coach, and like that gives me a lot of confidence. That same group of people is the ones that got me all of these jobs. They backed me into these in into these roles and had my back and call me and ask for help. And they're the same people that that I exchange workouts with, um, Demoray at Columbia. We we trade workouts all the time. Um, I've got a thank you card here from Abby Breath Hour at Princeton from just one time I told her, good job on your relay. Like, this is the person who I I maybe recruit directly against more than anybody. One of my biggest competitors. She's we're recruiting all the same people. And she sends me a thank you card. And hey, same with Rachel. That could be the most dangerous person for me to share all of my coaching secrets with. I lose recruits to her, she loses recruits to me. We are in direct competition with one another. We knew that we were gonna be tight at big tens. No, we're going to be competitive by making each other better, hoping each other are better. So, you know, without standing on my high horse and making that about something else, or, you know, spoken so much about women and coaching and single gender, blah, blah, blah. It's not to be like divisive, just about to be a those people are my circle because that's where I just get to be a coach and to get to that point, to not talk to somebody who thinks that I'm being too soft or too emotional, or that I, you know, has feelings about the time I took off when I had a baby or any of those things. I don't have to worry about any of it. Um I hope every coach out there has that kind of community, whoever it is for them, because um, it's powerful. It's powerful, especially when you can look around and you only see 20% of the people in that job look like you do. And I'm a part of at least a stronger minority. There are other groups that that they don't see any representation for them. And anyway, that community, it's my people. I make those phone calls all the time. And I I did learn that from Bill.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:34

Yeah, I um I think you got to to what I wanted to get there. I think the reason why I wanted you to tell that story is it's a it's actually quite an optimistic message. And I think sometimes, you know, you and I talked about this on the phone, coaching could feel very lonely, especially when you become a head coach, and regardless of who you are. You just kind of you you're up there, you feel like you're up on a mountaintop and there's nobody there with you. And I think I work with a lot of coaches and I remember my own time when I became a head coach, and just like how it just the the collegiality kind of just evaporated underneath me, and I had to recreate something intentionally on my own. And so to talk with somebody who has kind of an optimistic vision of how it can be, I think I wanna I want other people to hear about that. Last question.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:27

It's so true.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:29

Yeah. Okay, last question. How or where do you think you've grown the most as a coach? From the start of you, you know, just being that sort of low-paid, low-level, jump in and and maybe I'll get to do a little bit more of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:45

Camp counselor.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:46

Yeah, camp counselor to now where you're a big shot, you get interviewed on the swim brief podcast, you know. This is the pinnacle.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:56

Um this is this is at the top of the list.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:00

I in the past couple of years, now I'm gonna get there. In the past couple of years, I have gotten dramatically more comfortable in my own skin as a coach and as a leader by a function of getting so much more comfortable being okay, not knowing what I don't know. Last year at CSCAA convention, I had a group of coaches pull me into a room. Again, Rachel being the leader of that. And I said, Rachel, I feel really unsure about this topic. I want to know why you know so much about periodization and this piece of physio physiology. And she said, Great, I'll order dinner. And she invited six of us up to her hotel room and sat down and said, Ask me any question. Here are the books that I read, here are the things that I listen to, here's my current strategy. What about you guys? And we sat out a social to eat dinner.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:02

I would have so much rather been at this event than the social. I know, I know I may not get invited, but listen, just I just want to throw it out there. If you're doing something nice as again, just know that I would like to be invited. I don't need to be invited, but I want to be invited.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:17

But this was the most powerful thing in that is I saw somebody who I thought just innately knew everything that I didn't know. And I saw her say, no, this is how I learn. Here's what I read, here's what I study, here's what I tried, here's what I didn't. What about you? And the power in that curiosity of seeing that being the best is about just wanting to learn more. And that you have to have a deep confidence, like a real true confidence, to be willing to learn at a high level, to change your mind every year, to try new things, to hire new people, to hire people and then let them do their own thing different than you would do it. To let your coaches run a team meeting without you, or to do something with a group or an individual, to build relationships, to try new stuff. All of that takes a security and a confidence and an internal confidence that I didn't have until recently. And it was only once I said, I don't have to have all the answers, I just have to be willing to stay curious that I just got a confidence in like, oh, I can do this. Because I'll just keep asking people questions. And I'll just keep finding out the stuff I don't know, and I'll try this new thing and I'll try it. Okay, three S systems, awesome. Let's go try it. Okay, and I'm gonna find a buddy who's gonna try it with me this year. All right, let's do this and let's do it. Did you really try it?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:40

Did you try Super Sports Systems?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:43

No way.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:44

Yeah, I won't sell out who else worked with me because I don't know if they talk about it. But another head coach that we were like, you want to try this thing? I don't know. Let's try some new ideas, something that feels different from our default. Let's that one it feels like it opened up a long genuine. To me in this sport because I feel like I'm exactly who I want to be in this sport. I I've said to people over and over again, I I made a decision a couple of years ago when I was feeling a little burnt out, just in general, coming out of COVID and screwing up some stuff and having some culture things that I didn't do well, leadership things that I didn't do well. Then I made a decision. I'm gonna do this exactly the way I believe in doing it. And I'm gonna stay really, really true to my values. And I'm gonna stay really curious and learn everything I can to make those values be successful and competitive at a high level. Like it's not instead of being competitive, but it's I'm going to do this in a way that I believe in, that I can stand behind. And if ever that doesn't work or isn't believed in or isn't welcome, then I will stand away. I will back off. Like I will go a different direction and take move out of the sport. But I I can't do this in a way that I don't believe in, in the way that I value trust, in the way that I value independence and and empowering these young people and and helping them build their whole rest of their world through this collegiate experience. If I can't do that and coach fast swimming, then if I find a day that that's not the case, then I'll then I'll do something else. And since doing that, I've been a better coach, I've been a better boss, I've been a better leader, I've been a better partner and a better mom. Um so much more fun, healthier like. Um but it's that that confidence and that curiosity. Those two things are the driving forces in what I have learned and what has been the most transformative for me in the past couple of years. And I think what's gonna unleash the next chapter for this program and on myself, and I'm excited about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:42

Yeah, I mean, I people who are listening to this podcast are gonna see that this one went in almost an hour and 20 minutes, so they'll probably get edited a little bit down when I, you know, get out some of the pauses and stuff. But that you're gonna see that this is a longer one. And I think, I mean, it's obvious, like I'm I'm responding to what you're saying. And I guess the message that I would like people to understand, and it speaks to something that I've been on as well, is I think a lot of times people resist confidence, they resist showing up confident in their own life because they have a sense almost that it's like antisocial, that it's gonna be somehow like the wrong for the environment that they're in. And I just want to say to anyone who's thinking that I don't think you know what it's like to show up confidently yet. Because what I noticed in my life is I used to really think I was like super introverted. I'm not. It's very obvious that I'm not. I really like I love to just be in a group of people and mix it up and talk, especially when I'm in an environment that I'm passionate about. I could do it all day, and I get so energized by it. At CSCIA, I can't go to sleep afterwards. I'm so wired from talking to people all day. It's like for my insomnia, it's the worst, but it's it's amazing. It's just like lightning in my veins in those situations. But I used to think I was introverted, and really it was like I was trying to shrink myself and it was exhausting. I was trying so hard to like, you know, thinking in a pro-social way, like let me let me kind of hem in who I am. And now I notice this too, like when I meet somebody who has that real authentic confidence, not braggadocious, not like this fake kind of like blowhardy bullshit, the real stuff. It's so nice to be around them. It's just nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:39

It's calming.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:40

It's nice, it's soothing because you because you don't realize like your nervous system is picking up on that person, kind of like editing themselves down and you're uncomfortable with it.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:50

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:51

And it actually makes it for me and and what I do, like I noticed it's easier for people to like me when I'm not working so hard to undermine myself. Totally. And as somebody who works for himself, it's pretty important that people like me. That's the number one factor in whether they end up I mean, just to be, you know, blunt about it, that's the number one factor in whether they end up working with me.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:12

Totally.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:13

Whether they like me or not, they feel like a connection with me. Um that's natural. Okay. But we gotta wrap up this conversation. Where do you want to send people? Give a give a social media handle, you know. Oh my gosh, you got a secret blog that people don't know about.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:29

Do you not have a blog? Do you not have a blog for the code?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:32

Instagram is UCLA coach Jordan, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:35

Yep. Yep, with some underscores in there.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:37

UCLA underscore coach underscore Jordan.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:40

Coach underscore Jordan. I think I have the same thing on TikTok, but I'll be completely honest, I don't even know how to get to that TikTok. That is peek behind the curtain.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:52

It's not really you on the TikTok.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:54

It's not really me.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:55

I called it the TikTok because I'm I'm ancient, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:58

Yeah, the TikTok is not me. I don't know what's on there. So if it goes sideways, you can't blame me. That's on gram. I but I get no credit. Yeah, I I work with some cool people that do some stuff, and but you do get to follow along with our team and all of our exciting stuff and the stuff that people post on my behalf on our Instagram. UCLA Coach Jordan, UCLA Simon Dive, yeah. We're pretty fun and it's always a beautiful day at Speaker Aquatic Center. So, like the videos and stuff at minimum, if you're in the blizzard right now, you can soak in some of the sunshine through the screen of some of our sunrise videos or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:39

And get jealous. If you guys want to get in contact with me, Crdesantis at gmail.com. You can go to Christycoach.com if for some reason you want a more inconvenient way to get in contact with me and fill out a contact form there. That's why uh that's what's going through my mind every time I do this. I have a script that I'm reading. I'm not even reading it, I'm just doing it automatically. But I used to not give out my real email address. I haven't been inundated with uh you know people abusing my personal email address, so I'm good. You can you can contact me either one of those ways. You can send me a direct message, Christy underscore coach on Instagram. You'll find clips of this podcast there. The social media pages that Jordan just referenced will be tagged there as well. Tagged as collaborators. You're gonna collaborate, right? And cross-post.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:25

I can I log in on my desktop and I click accept. So I know how to do that part.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:30

You're a desktop user of Instagram. I actually did that.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:33

I'm the worst kind of user of Instagram. Nobody wants it, but it's it's my way.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:40

Thank you, Jordan. Thank you to everybody for listening. And uh I'll be back with you guys again in a week.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:45

That's why. Thank you.