We Protect Athletes. Who Protects Coaches? | Sophie Parr

For years, conversations about athlete welfare have rightly transformed the way we think about coaching. But there's another side of the equation that receives far less attention:

Who protects coaches?

This week I'm joined by coach Sophia Parr (@swim.coach.sophie) for one of the most vulnerable conversations we've ever had on The Swim Brief.

Sophie shares the story of being removed from a high school coaching position after months of conflict, isolation, and feeling unsupported by leadership. Rather than focusing on a single moment, we explore the culture that can push good coaches to their breaking point—and why so many talented coaches quietly leave the profession.

Together we discuss:

• The emotional toll of coaching under constant scrutiny
• Parent dynamics and organizational support
• Why female coaches often face a different standard than men
• The unintended consequences of well-intentioned safeguarding systems
• How coaches can establish healthy boundaries without losing compassion
• What schools, clubs, and parents can do to create healthier coaching environments

This isn't a conversation about avoiding accountability. It's about recognizing that healthy coaching environments require healthy support systems for everyone involved.

Whether you're a coach, parent, athletic director, or athlete, I hope this episode encourages you to think differently about the people who dedicate themselves to developing others.

If you enjoy conversations like this and would like to support The Swim Brief, you can do so at ChrisDCoach.com.

Want to tell your story to Sophie? Click below

https://storiesfromthedeck.base44.app/

Follow Sophie:
Instagram: @swim.coach.sophie

Follow Chris:
Instagram: @chrisd_coach
Website: ChrisDCoach.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to the swim brief. I am Chris DeSantis, and I am very, very excited to be joined today by uh Sophie Parr, aka swim coach Sophie, on Instagram. Uh I found your account a little while ago. We're going to get into the context of everything in a second, but first, welcome, Sophie.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Yeah, we're both, we're both excited, right? We're a little nervous. We're both excited. We're going to be talking about some stuff today that's, I think, a little bit more personal and vulnerable, but I think it's like a really, really important conversation for coaches to have. I want to give context to how I came across you and some of what you're putting out there in a second. But before we get into that, just for anybody, I also just want to give context to your background in the sport. So uh for my audience here, talk about, you know, your lifetime up to this point in the sport of swimming.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Yeah, I'll go up to kind of the point where this story that we're going to be talking about starts. I grew up swimming in Illinois. Uh, Illinois swimming, I HSA, pretty much swimming was, I was the kid that swimming was my life. I have an identical twin sister as well. And we both swim. And we're we were pretty well known. It's hard to miss, you know, identical twins on a pool deck. Um, so it was just a fun environment to grow up in. I had great coaches, absolutely loved my team. I did not choose to swim in college. I was at a decent level, like a senior state level, but just chose not to continue that. But I went to Purdue and I actually coached all four years with Boiler Maker Aquatics. And that was an awesome experience. And then I came back to Chicago. I got a degree in just business and I worked at a PR agency and I coached with my club team that I'd grown up on off and on for about seven years. And then in that time frame, I got a master's in urban planning. So that is actually what my career is in. So I'm an urban planner. It has absolutely nothing to do with swimming, and I absolutely love it. It's, it's, it's a great, it's a great place for me. I'm I just love my job. So my job took me to a lot of places once I left Chicago. So I moved to Minnesota for a little while and I coached for a YMCA up there. I moved to Madison, Wisconsin. That was my first time being the head coach of a high school girls team, which I absolutely loved. That was in a new environment for me, and it was awesome. And then I would probably still be there if COVID hadn't happened, but COVID made me relocate to Northeast Wisconsin, where my family now resides, to a community called Door County. It's a very popular tourist community in the Midwest. And there, my sister was there, and we were teaching lessons at hotel pools and things like that. She now actually built a new indoor training facility up there, which is really neat. And I was helping her just coach kids and we were doing triathlon stuff. And I've just always kind of been in a coaching role. So my job, you know, my full-time job is not anything to do with swimming, but it's always taken me to places where I've been, you know, I got into swimming. So I got into a coaching role. And so coaching has been pretty much one of the most consistent things in my life for the last, I would say, about 20 years. I've been coaching. So I love it. It's, and I think high school is where I've I found my my favorite piece of it is coaching high school girls because I saw so much of myself in them. And it's it's been really rewarding to get to to coach, especially in Illinois. It's been really rewarding to get to coach back in IHSA. And I'm really grateful for the opportunity. And yeah, that's that's what led me back to Illinois and and kind of to the point at which this story sort of begins.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

Yeah, and I I just want to, you know, something I think that resonates with me and in what you're talking about. I I have been doing this podcast for gosh, like it's almost been 10 years. And before that, I was writing. So I've been doing media for a long time and just thinking and putting thoughts out there into the into the world. And uh at one moment I I tried, I I didn't try. I just I'm naturally provocative in a lot of contexts. And I just, you know, I've I've coached uh at the international level, at the collegiate level, at the club level. High school swimming's number one for me. It's the best. It's the best. I'm sorry, everybody.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

I know like the culture, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

It's just too much fun. Like I and my one of my most recent jobs, I coached a uh high school boys team, and I had the time of my life doing that. I just think, yeah, I think on some level, it's just the purest distillation of the sport. I wish that we could port some aspects of it into other parts because I I do think it would solve some of the problems we have. But okay, let's let's get to the hard part here because, you know, this is a wonderful story. You somebody that swimming's been a part of your life and and coaching, you know, I think there's a lot of people out there in the country who are coaching, but also, you know, they're doing something else with their lives. And for a lot of those people, it's because they find the coaching work so meaningful and so rewarding, right? Otherwise, they would just be going to their day-to-day jobs and and not coaching, right? But part of what motivated you, and I don't want to step on your story too much, right, to develop the presence that caught my attention online was you had a pretty bad experience. So let's talk about that a little bit and and what led to you starting to do a little bit of storytelling around that.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Yeah. So my story is very complicated. And honestly, I think most of these stories are. There's a lot of layers to them. You know, what happened to me isn't unique, which is one of the reasons I have become a lot more comfortable talking about it. So, like I said, I came back to Illinois um about two years ago, and I was the head coach of a high school girls team in the Chicago suburbs. My first season was fantastic. My second season was very different from my first. The year sort of started out with some challenges that kind of put me in a survival mode, like almost immediately. We lost pool access because of repairs. I didn't have an assistant coach for the first four weeks on a team of 36 girls. And then I just kind of found myself navigating increasing conflict with like a small group of parents that I didn't really experience the year before. Um, and so in a very a very important piece of context that I've never ever shared on social media or publicly is that my athletic director had previously been a girls coach, which is not very it's not very common for a girl's swim coach to become the athletic director. So when he got promoted, they hired me, the timing, you know, I was coming back to Illinois. And so he had coached many of the athletes and had long-standing relationships with a number of the parents. He is still a club coach in the area today. And looking back, that was something that really negatively impacted me. So as the season progressed, one parent in particular became just unhappy when I wouldn't make special accommodations for her daughter. I became aware that she was speaking negatively about me to other parents, and I constantly just felt like I was under scrutiny, which I know a lot of coaches feel a lot of times. And what made the situation especially difficult was that I had sought support from my athletic director, who I felt really understood what I was going through, like really had my back, knowing the parents and having been the coach before me. But I never felt like I received clear guidance or any meaningful intervention. You know, he would tell me that parents were unhappy, but he wouldn't help me figure out what that meant or resolve it. I felt like there were a lot of private conversations being had behind my back. And looking back, I just spent months feeling very confused and just increasingly worn down. So the other thing that I don't really address publicly is kind of what happened, right? To make me be removed from my position because that's ultimately what happened. So eventually the pressure from all of this kind of like behind the scenes stuff that was building up just caught up to me. And nearing the end of the season, I was asked to address a bullying issue amongst some of the athletes. A parent had reached out to ask me to address it. And I did not handle it well. I became emotional, I raised my voice, I reacted in a way that was completely out of character for me, like something that I had never ever done before. I'm not proud of that moment. I would absolutely handle it differently today. But that moment then became this like justification for removing me from the program. My athletic director pursued termination, which immediately placed me on administrative leave for the remainder of the championship season. And it was probably like one of the most devastating things that I've ever experienced in definitely coaching. It was the most devastating, but just in my life. I mean, the relationships that you build with your athletes. And then to feel like that's just taken away is is truly heartbreaking. So for a long time, I focused almost entirely on that moment when I yelled, like feeling that that was proof that I was this terrible coach, right? That I was all of these things that this one parent had been painting me to be. I was so embarrassed, so ashamed. I felt like I would never coach again. The swimming world is small, as we all know. It's it's a small world. And I yeah, I felt like every coach knew what happened, every parent, every girl, and that I would essentially be blacklisted from IHSA and Illinois swimming. That's how I felt inside. It was, it was awful. So what I've what I've come to understand over the last eight months is that the question isn't why I reacted. It's, you know, the more important question is what was happening for months that led me to react in a way that was so unlike who I normally am. My reaction to the bullying incident was in many ways a reaction to being bullied myself by parents and my athletic director. I spent months feeling isolated, undermined, criticized, unsupported. I spent months trying to navigate conflict without clear leadership or intervention and, you know, you can reach that breaking point. It doesn't excuse behavior, but I think that it provides a lot of important context because I think things like that, like what happened to me, are happening to happening to coaches all over the place. And one of the things that I've started to have the courage to talk about, which is I think what caught your eye, is that the react there there is a reality where coaches are experiencing emotional and psychological harm and abuse from these working environments that they're in. We often talk about athlete well-being, and that is so important and something that I care about even more now. Um, but we don't spend nearly as much talking about what happens when coaches become the target of unhealthy parent dynamics, organizational dysfunction, or just a lack of leadership support. And I think the biggest lesson that I took away from what happened is to trust myself as a coach. I think for a long time I questioned my judgment, my abilities, whether I even belonged in the coaching world, which I had never questioned, you know, the 16 years prior. Um, but what I've learned is that one difficult season, you know, mistake doesn't define who I am as a coach. And I'm, you know, not a perfect coach. I never will be, but I know my values, I know my intentions, and I know the kind of environment that I want to create for my girls. Um, and I feel very confident and like convicted in that. So more than anything, I, you know, would want other coaches to hear my experience and trust themselves and stand up for themselves. Coaching can be an incredibly, you know, rewarding profession, but it can also be very isolated when constantly being criticized, you're constantly being second-guessed. It's easy to start believing that you are actually the problem. And, you know, sometimes there are things that we genuinely need to improve. And sometimes we need to have the courage to say, no, this was not right. What the what happened was not right. And that is kind of what has led me to starting to share my story publicly.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Yeah. I mean, I I and I'm touched listening to you because I mean, there's parts of that, right, that I've heard you speak about in in snippets, but but putting it all together, it's definitely making me realize why I was drawn to your story. I mean, for listeners of my podcast, uh, some of them have probably heard from me in in a in a similar context. Uh I mean, the the the last time that I was truly full-time in the coaching world, I was uh I was over in Denmark. I'm a I'm a dual citizen of the United States and Denmark. Are you really?

SPEAKER_01 12:45

I don't look it. I don't look it, but yes, I'm very Danish. So that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Well, we're gonna have to talk about that off-air because we could get completely off off the rails with the Danish piece, right? But I I went on an adventure, you know, my wife and I, my daughter was born there to coach in Denmark. And in many ways I had, I mean, one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had in my life, and I am I am very, very grateful for it. But boy, did it end in a in a pretty traumatic way for me. Um, I was coaching on a team that uh, you know, I I took over when I was about 30 years old. I had some really good success with athletes. I had gotten up to the level where I was representing Denmark internationally, I was on junior national coaching staffs, but I inherited in this program age group coach who I did not click with on any level. And I mean, uh just to give a couple examples of sort of how that relationship went, I think he had had a very different relationship with the previous head coach to me. And just to be perfectly honest, I think there was a lot of misogyny in that relationship. So he constantly wanted to talk to me about, like, he wanted to kind of bait me into saying derogatory things about my wife. I love my wife so much. Anybody who meets me will know that like within 60 seconds I'm talking about her and I'm saying something really positive about her because I genuinely like feel like I married the absolute best person in the world for me. So that's just not me. I mean, you're not gonna connect with me on a level if you want it to be like an 80s sitcom where we go, oh, my terrible wife, you know, what a drag. It's just not me. Right. So that was maybe a just a way in which we weren't getting along. But even on the level of, you know, how we ran things, he was just kind of doing his own thing. He was not making any attempt to, you know, get on board with what I was trying to change and affect. And in the second year, I I ended up with some athletes coming up, and we were we were the best junior team in Denmark. We were dominating on the medal table. We had some really talented athletes coming up, but also those athletes were going through a tough transition because they were transitioning from him as a coach to me as a coach. We were quite different.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

It's tough.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

Danish kids get go through a confirmation process. They were all going through that in that year, which involves them missing a lot of practice to sort of get ready for this big party. I think it's an important cultural part of life. I wasn't gonna get in the way of it, but obviously it had an impact.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

And people were starting to get disappointed in in results. And he was feeding a narrative that was like, you know, actually has nothing to do with this other stuff. It's Chris's fault. You know, he's he's messing it up. And and I will say, yeah, I think you're very vulnerable to admit the the and mature, to admit, you know, that you had a part that you really regret that, you know, where you made a mistake. For me, I changed something training-wise. I went, I took a drastic right turn. For people who are familiar with the uh ultra short race-paced training methodology, I went strict orthodox USRPT. And to be honest with everybody, part of it was this is the part I regret was ego-based. Because I was like, this guy's gonna hate it. He's gonna absolutely hate it, and these parents that are on my case are gonna hate it, and I'm gonna do it anyway. And it certainly, it certainly expanded things. In the end, he started dating his assistant coach, who was a high school student who was, you know, in class with a lot of the athletes that I was coaching as 28 years old. This is kind of like more socially accepted in Denmark. I find it totally weird culturally, and I was like, okay, it's enough. Like I I would like to fire this guy. I, you know, was walking through the process of of you know putting him on an improvement plan and all the steps that you have to do. And he completely politically outmaneuvered me. He got my entire board. Uh they had an extraordinary meeting. They they threw out my entire board of the club because they were unanimous in their support of me. He got a whole new board put it put in and they put me out on the street. And in a matter of, it was like in a matter of weeks, right? I went from in in July, I was representing Denmark at the European Games as a coach in September. I was out. I was I was out in the street. And I think, you know, something that you point to that I think uh I know resonates with what you're saying, and I I think is really important for coaches to hear. And I I've talked to lots of people who, you know, you face a similar position, you get fired, you get squeezed out. My my wife likes to say I have to say that I was wrongfully terminated. Um, because I was. There was a there was a settlement in the end, because they didn't really fire me with any cause. But still, on the end, there was so much of me that just felt guilty. I just felt like, God, is it, you know, I I of course I could find places where I made mistakes where, you know, I I had, as I said, acted with my own ego and acted out of character for myself. Like I don't make a habit of making decisions based off like, oh, I'm gonna stick it to this other person. Like that's that's not normally who I am, but you know, I had a to spend a lot of time reflecting on how I got to this position. And and here's care sort of where I want to pivot, because you spoke to it when you were telling your story, especially towards the end as well. And I'll I'll I'll tell one more sort of short aside before we get into it. I have spent a lot of my media time covering uh the topic of abuse in sports. I'm really passionate about it. I I think that uh there's a lot of reform that has to happen, that some of it has already happened, but we have a long way to go as well in terms of the environments. And uh, especially in the beginning, I was thinking about it for athletes. I think a lot of athletes are subject to really poor and frankly abusive environments that they shouldn't have to. But the more time I spend thinking about this topic, the more complexity and the more multifaceted I realize it is. And one of the things that I have been thinking about that you speak to is that, you know, a lot of the reforms that we have made in my coaching lifetime, especially over like the last 15 years, have been about regulating coach behavior and setting down boundaries. Okay, this is appropriate for a coach to do towards an athlete. This is not. And I think that is wonderful that we have gotten that stuff in there. But coaches exist in an ecosystem and and you're pointing to it. There is absolutely like no attention given to the coaches and their the treatment that they are subject to. There is no strictures made on the way a parent board or a parent group on a high school swim team or an employer can can treat a coach. There's simply just no attention given to it at all. And I just think like, okay, if we're really serious, if we're really want to create this different environment, we have to look in all directions, not just from the coach down to the athletes. Okay, I've talked for a long time. Oh, I know you probably have a lot of thoughts about what I just said. I'll give you a chance to respond to to some of that.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Yeah. I think, yeah, you're absolutely right. And I know that a lot of coaches will will be able to resonate with what I'm about to say, but I need to, I felt like an object, right? I felt just like I wasn't actually a human. I wasn't a person. I was just this vessel, right? To get these kids here, right? And I think that that opens up this door of abuse because my parents and like my athletic director didn't look at me as like a real person. They just looked at the decisions that I made. And if someone wasn't happy, then they could treat me a certain way. Right. Because oh, Sophie's not like a real person. She doesn't have feelings. Yeah. So I think a lot of coaches feel that way. And one thing that I've actually learned recently that I just because this never gets talked about, there are teams that have like parent code of conduct. Well, I would have loved to have that, but like I didn't even it's like it's a it's that's the thing that's exists. More people should know about that and put it in place and have it be enforced, right? And now I have a parent code of conduct. Now I have one that I can point to. And I remember my sister I mentioned has a new training facility in in Door County. And I told her, she's like, Well, my parents are great. I don't have problems with parents. And I'm like, Well, Rachel, one day you could. Like you have almost it's almost like, I mean, I went my first year, it was great, no problems. Second year, total nightmare. I mean, it was like a different environment completely. I was the same person. I was the same coach, right? But all of a sudden, I'm like this monster. I'm this like horrible person who, you know, people would say the the the one parent that I had issues with would say that I treat her daughters so terribly. I mean, that that makes me feel awful. Like I, you know, it's these things that get said about us, about coaches. And I I do want to kind of go into the Instagram page and like what I've been hearing from people, but you know, I mean, I'm hearing stories because people will message me based off the things that I post and they are heartbreaking. I mean, every time I get a message, I used to be scared that I was gonna get a mean message. You know, like a parent was gonna message me something mean. Now I'm just like, no, what other heartbreaking story am I opening? And I mean, my story seems tame compared to some of these that I'm reading, where women are getting sued by parents or by an assistant coach, right? Like in your case, an assistant coach that didn't like them and an athletic director just doesn't have their back. Or, you know, it this there's so many different types of stories, but they all come back to this common thread of these coaches are just looked at as objects and we're not really looked at as humans. I think a lot of times parents want what they want from us, right? And then the afterthought is to say thank you. You know, like at the end of the season, we'll say thank you. Instead of the I'm showing up every single day for your children, I am putting in hours, especially high school, and I know high school coaches will agree with me. We do not make enough money to, you know, constitute what what is being said about us, what is being done to us. You know, I know coaches in my messages have said I make like five dollars an hour when it all comes down to it. I mean, we're we're doing this because we want to be there. And then when we are, you know, our characters are assassinated in the stands, it's a really, really hard environment to be in. Um so yeah, so it's it's ch starting to share my story helped open up my eyes to the depth, right? It's like you sort of always know. Oh, yeah, you know, coaches get, you know, abused. Yeah, like their parents are mean, but I didn't really know the depth, right? I mean, I went from 35 followers to I think I'm almost at 3,000. Yep. I started posting mid-February. And has my page blown up crazy? No, but that's a lot of people. That's a lot of people, and the depth of it is is is crazy.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

Yeah, I mean, I think it's it's one of those, I'm really grateful for instance, the last last coaching job I had. I'm I'm in New Jersey and I I worked with a Jersey Wahoos, which one of the top club programs in the whole United States. And my boss there, Paul Donovan, a friend of mine, I talk about him a lot here. I think probably the number one lesson that I learned on here that I think is tough for a lot of coaches, I do think that this is not what I'm about to say is not putting all the onus back on coaches. But like as an individual, there's a certain extent to which you have to go, like nobody else is going to come and save me in this situation. I have to figure out what I am going to do, given that these are the circumstances that I find myself in. And probably the number one thing that I learned coaching at Wahoos is because I've always been just kind of naturally, I would say, especially in a coaching context, a nice person. And that niceness has caused me in a lot of respects to get plowed over by people who just want to be mean, rude, selfish, right? And I had to learn to stand up for myself. And Paul taught me that because I always thought, like, if I stand up for myself, like I'm just like them. I'm I'm mean, I'm rude. And he was the first person I worked with that I could see. Oh, you you actually can do that and stay true to who you are. Like you can still be kind and and respectful, but you don't have to take shit from from people. And I I mean, I have all these memories of, you know, he was so on point. He knew what he was going to do. And parents, you know, they could say a lot of things that, you know, weren't particularly nice, but definitely weren't crossing the line. But he had a line, and if you crossed it, like he would offer people on the spot, he'd be like, you can have all your money back and and leave right now. I I don't, you know, I don't need to have you here. And it was very clear to people that like there was a line of acceptable behavior within the context. And I was so grateful for that, right, when I was working there. Because you speak to the situation that that you had. I felt like I had somebody that, you know, would have my back if somebody tried to be abusive towards me, it was not going to be tolerated in that situation. There was a very, there was a very clear boundary. And as you say, some coaches are lucky enough to work in an environment like that. Many are not. So I I know you wanted to talk about you know some of the things you're running into. I I would love to hear too, because you know, in my job, I coach coaches, and the risk that I always run into is because I'm not doing not on a pool deck day to day. I'm not in that environment with athletes. I am constantly fighting. Am I gonna lose touch with what it means to be in that environment? What are the situations people are finding in? So I'm really curious to hear what is some of the feedback that you're getting, what are some of the things you're hearing about? And I'm I'm scared as well, because I knowing from my background, I I think, and I think you spoke to this, it can get overwhelming, right? When I started writing about, you know, athlete abuse, I I had moments where I had to take a step back from it because I thought, you know, once you know this stuff, you can't unknow it, right? And it haunts you in a way. So what have you run into?

SPEAKER_01 27:05

So going to, you know, the leadership in the leadership direction, right? Of working in an environment where you're supported and when you where you feel like your your person, your boss has has your back. In the high school world, you know, that's the athletic director. And it is very obvious to me that coaches are struggling with egos from athletic directors, athletic directors who allow parents to bypass the coach and go directly to them. I don't really know why athletic directors want parents coming and complain to them, but I have gotten so many messages from, and I'll speak mostly to women. Um, I get messages from men, and I'll speak to that to you.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

Well, let's let's talk about the gendered aspect of this as well because it's it's not unimportant. It's very important part of this.

SPEAKER_01 27:49

I can talk a lot about that. But yeah, so athletic directors are really not empowering coaches. I mean, there are some really awesome athletic directors. So I, when I worked at Madison East in Madison, my athletic director there was had my back. He was a football guy. He knew nothing about swimming, but he knew that I cared and he knew that I showed up. And so he was gonna have my back because that's what he needed in a coach. He needed someone who cared and he needed someone who showed up. And I felt like he always had my back. And then going into my last school, I remember this gives you a little context. One of the conversations that I had with my athletic director, I said, you know, I'm really struggling with this family. And they had a senior and a and a freshman. And I said, I don't know. Like, I know the senior will graduate, but I feel like maybe the freshman, maybe high school just isn't for her. Like she might need a swim cluby around. Like, I think they have too high of an expectation and club might be a better fit. And I just kid you not, he looked at me and said, You're the one that's gonna lose. And I it was kind of at that moment.

SPEAKER_00 28:49

That's a gut punch.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

I just was kind of like, okay, so you know, you just it's blatant, right? No that he does not have my back. It's just blatant. And I think a lot of coaches are experiencing that. And it's really hard because you just feel like you can't do anything, right? Like you can't even have a conversation with a parent because they're just gonna go back and complain to the athletic director, or they're gonna write a letter to the school board, or they're gonna do something, right? And your athletic director is so, so important in your success, whether you, you know, deal with parents or not. Like they are so important. And I I think I actually had a um I had an athletic director out in Oregon message me and he said, please keep posting. I am losing so many good coaches to parents. Like, I this needs to stop. Like, thank you for posting. And you know, that's been a that was a unique one, right? This like guy is like this athletic director, and they scare me now, right? I've I'm scared of athletic directors now. And I'm like, yeah, like they, you know, the good ones are also struggling because parents are driving coaches away. It's it is like you mentioned earlier, it's such an ecosystem. It's so wild and diverse, and there's so many nuances. But yeah, so that leadership aspect, lots of messages about the lack of support from the school administration. And then, yeah, we can dive into the gender disparity. I mean, the messages that I get from women and the messages that I get from men are so different. The messages that I get from men are very like they are very kind of attacked for the performance of their teams, right? So, like there's justification that they're a bad coach because of the way the team is performing, or you didn't play the best athlete, or you didn't, you know, do this with the best athlete. And before I talk about the women, I do want to talk about one more thing with men that I really, I really do feel for them on. I have gotten messages from men who unfortunately have athletes who don't like them and create or manufacture inappropriate situations that the coach has put them in. While we know that there are those situations that exist, we know that that abuse is happening. I do think that there are manufactured situations. And I think that that can be very difficult, especially for men as opposed to women. So I have gotten some messages about that. But then the women, so on the women's side, we tend to be attacked for like our characters.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

Yeah, it gets personal, right?

SPEAKER_01 31:13

It's very personal. So we get attacked for the way that we look. We get attacked for like the things that we say, right? So, like, for example, I know a lot of the things that I would say on my last team would get twisted. So I could say, like, we need to work on your flip turns. And it would, you know, go through the chain and get home. And all of a sudden the parents, like, what do you mean, Sophie tells you that she suck? You know, like it was like all this like twisted words, right? Everything was getting just like completely manipulated and changed, so that by the end, I look like I'm really mean, right? When I'm when I'm really not. And I also think the idea of being mean is different from men and women. So men, if a male coach is mean, he's tough, right? He's, you know, he's working you hard, he's like doing a good job, you know, a little tough love, right? If a female coach is mean, we're like, excuse me if I swear, we're like a bitch.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

You know, you can do one swear per podcast.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

Okay. You know, so we're these like awful people because we're so mean, right? Yeah. And and that is hard. I mean, you really, you really feel as a woman, you really feel like you're a terrible person. You know, these these these parents paint you to be these terrible people when you're like, I love your kids. Like, I love them. I just want to give them hugs all the time. Like, I'm a very emotional coach. Not that I can't, you know, do a good job. I mean, my girls, my girls were fast on my last team. And, you know, I loved that. I love winning. I'm motivated. I want to win. But I also like, I'll sit down with a girl and she'll tell me a story about what's going on at home and I will sit there with her for 20 minutes and let her cry. Like, I will do that if I need to. I I'm that I'm very much that emotional coach. And so to be painted as such like a monster and treating the girl so terribly is very, very heartbreaking for me. And I know I the messages that I get from women who, you know, mention their own trauma and you know, not wanting to coach again. And I just feel for them because I know what they're feeling and I know how hard it is. And I can't tell you, I mean, I've gotten probably over a hundred messages from coaches, mostly women, talking about how the the trauma they went through. And, you know, some will give me more of a detailed story, like some will tell me, you know, they were sued, like I mentioned. I mean, that's wild to be sued, right? You know, and and then then these then some of them stay on with their team. They're sued or their parents, you know, the parents try to, and then they stay. And then what environment is that creating, right? I tell a lot of in my responses to a lot of uh the women, I try not to take on their emotions and their feelings. It's it is hard, it's very overwhelming to get these messages. But I tell them a lot of times, you know, you you're you're a great coach if you have not heard that, right? This is something I say on my posts a lot. You're a great coach, you know, just keep showing up for your girls and that they are lucky to have you and you have to remind yourself of that. But at the same time, your girls are not worth sometimes what you're going through. And I think as coaches, we want to keep showing up for the girls, right? We want to keep being there. It's like the, you know, we don't want to give up because we feel like we're giving up on our kids. But there's a point where sometimes the lesson you have to teach your kids is to step away from an environment that is abusing you and that you hope that as they get older, they can step away from environments that they find themselves in that are unhealthy or toxic. And that is always going to be a lesson that I'm going to want to teach all of my girls, all of my girls going forward.

SPEAKER_00 34:43

Yeah. I mean, I so much that I want to respond to there. I should have been taking notes the entire time. But I, you know, I interview a lot of women for this podcast. And one of the things that keeps coming up that I think that you're speaking to, and I I phrase it sometimes as, you know, I just think women operate in the coaching world in this much narrower band of acceptable behavior. Whereas as a male coach, you know, you have obviously boundaries on what you can and cannot do, but the aperture is much wider. And for women, in some places, it's literally it, those the two walls between like, oh, you're too soft, you're too touchy-feely, you're too, you know, sensitive and and caring, and you're not really competitive. And as you say, like you're mean, you're a bitch, right? On the other end, is like there's no space between those two. There's nothing you can do that is right. And I I hear that from so many women where they're trying to calibrate, like, how do I, you know, how do I exist in this environment when literally e any direction that I go in, it's wrong, it's wrong, or somebody is capitalizing on it. And I I I the reason I say that capitalizing on it, I the thing that I think the gender difference is, is I just think many women are in a more vulnerable position. It's just easier, right? The reason why those narratives get started, as you say, and they they go personal is unfortunately because of the environment, because of the ecosystem the way it is right now, people feel empowered to start those narratives. They feel like they can get away with it, they they gain traction with it. So they they get that feedback like, oh, this is working, you know, this is having the effect that I want it to have. And as a as a guy, the the thing that I want to communicate to coaches is sometimes we can look at something like this, and you can look at this across all sorts of you know gender issues we have in sports, because we're not gonna cover all of them today in a podcast. We don't have, you know, 24 hours to to give a basic overview, right? But sometimes you can just go like, yeah, I mean, I get that that's unfair, but you know, like, you know, I got my own shit to worry about. I I think as a male coach, when I listen to that, like I want to do something about that because I know if we can change that ego ecosystem, e I almost called it an ecosystem. Ecosystem. It's a bit of an ecosystem too.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

If we can change that, it's a better environment for me to operate in as well. Like I don't I don't I don't want to exist in a in a place where that's the case. And I was really interested actually to hear you talk about the male aspect of it as well, because I I was just on the pool deck at uh at the Indianapolis Pro Series. I was actually pretty geographically close to you last week there at the the Nat. And you know, I anybody that knows me, anybody that's really friends with me, you'll know that I am like a I'm a big-hearted, very like loving person. Uh, you know, my kids are are 12 and 8. I have a 12-year-old daughter, eight-year-old son. My son and I probably hug each other like 10 times a day. We kiss on the lips. Like we're very, very affectionate family. Um, and it's so interesting to me now when I'm out at these meets. Like when I run into uh, you know, a female friend of mine and they see me and they just open the arms for the hug, there's such a sense of relief for me. Because I know I've internalized at this point, like, Chris, it's 2026. You're not gonna hug anybody that like has any remote chance of not wanting to be hugged by you. And by the way, again, to to rewind back, I think it's good in many ways that that's the in that's the environment. But what it speaks to, and having seen the sort of long arc of a lot of what we're talking about here is really kind of like safe sport stuff, you know, those boundaries came into place so that we can set the, you know, the reason why we're policing hugs is because we know that like somebody who's gonna sexually abuse an athlete, the grooming process, you know, the hug is like five steps back from the really serious sexual abuse, right? And so if we can stop it there, there's much less likely chance of an athlete getting like really abused. And and so that's that's a positive. But unfortunately, there's no like clean solutions in a lot of this. And and you're talking about coaches getting sued and this, that, and the other thing. What I have seen in my lifetime watching the arc of this is that that safe sports system has in many ways gotten weaponized against coaches. Yeah, it's it's it's become a a cudgel, right? That people who don't like a coach can go like, you know, such and such and such. I mean, I ran into a coach friend of mine who I really want to have on this podcast. And, you know, we were about to do an interview, and as we were prepping for it, an article came out on Swim Swam about, you know, that they that basically that a safe sport complaint had been filed against this coach. And I read through all the, you know, they had details of of the complaint. There was maybe one complaint that actually cited behavior from the coach. And let's say that was like one out of ten. Nine out of ten were like, I came to practice every day and I was miserable and like I just didn't want to be there. And I'm like, that sounds terrible. My heart goes out to you. I don't want you to have a terrible experience in the board swimming, but what does that have to do with the coach? I mean, we we're not we're not crossing, you know, there's some there's a logical leap to make here. Maybe it has something to do with the coach. Maybe there's other things that are going on in your life that, you know, have nothing to do with your coach. And so I don't know, do you want to you want to speak to the what you've seen in terms of the weaponization? Because I know you're ready, you you looked at least ready to jump on that point a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 40:47

Yeah, I was just thinking about that word when you brought it up. But I think, you know, safe sport, yes, but also just the kids get weaponized against code. So the parent, you know, well, you well, this is for my child. This is what is in the best interest of my child. And that's supposed to convince you to, you know, give special treatment or do some, you know. And if you don't, then you're hurting the kid, right? And an athletic director, like in my case, when they removed me, oh, well, you just created a mess. And, you know, I need to protect the girls, basically, like from me. And I'm like, this isn't making sense, right? It's like you're weaponizing these children to get what this these adults want. And I see that a lot, a lot. And it's really, really sad because and I I speak to this a lot in my posts, the girls should not be carrying the weight of what is happening at an adult level. Like the girls should not be having to deal with parents. They should not be having to deal with what is happening at the school administration. Like they they have enough there dealing with being freshmen, you know, being seniors, planning to go to college, just dealing with the high school environment to begin with. Like they just need support being kids. And then we add on all of these layers of adult problems, is what I call them. Like kids should not be dealing with adult problems, and yet they are because parents project their feelings and emotions onto the kid who then goes to practice, who then projects the parents' feelings and emotions onto their teammates or onto the coach. And it's it all trickles back to these parents' feelings and emotions that they're channeling and weaponizing through their child. And it's very obvious. Like now I think it's even more obvious to me that I've experienced it, experienced the consequences of it, and now can look back and see it. But there's a lot of feelings and emotions that need to get managed that need to stay away from the kids. And the kids need to be stayed, you know, stay out of the conversations with adults. I mean, for me, I don't bring a child into a conversation with with a with an adult until it's absolutely necessary or to provide needed context. Like I keep them out, I don't involve them, I don't talk to them about what's going on with parents, I don't talk to them about what's going on with other swimmers, I don't talk to them except about them, right? What's going on in your life? I want to know about you. What's that? How are you feeling in practice? What's going on at home? How are you doing? You know, they don't they're carrying these kids are carrying so much. And with social media, they're carrying even more than like what you carried and like what I carried. I mean, we didn't have social media. You know, they have Meet Mobile where they can compare themselves to kids that aren't even at the swim meet that they're at. You know, when you have a high school team, you got all these kids swimming club and they swim on different clubs, they're looking up everybody's times and comparing themselves virtually, not even like in the water. I mean, the stress, the anxiety, the level of overwhelm that these girls are going through. I mean, I I carried a lot of the adult problems on my last team to keep it away from them. I I mean, it was it was a lot and it just but you still can't. You know, the kids know what's going on. Kids are smart. Know it, they see it, they know who the p problem parents are, like they know.

SPEAKER_00 44:05

Yeah. Yeah, I think uh, you know, one of the things you're speaking to, and this is just me attempting to give one, because we're gonna pivot to some positive, like some of the stuff that you're doing to move forward, but just uh just a again, a learning, a lesson that I learned in my time at Wahoos that I'll carry with me. And again, Paul was a master at doing some of this stuff. If if a parent tried to come in and talk about another kid on the team, he would stop them immediately. He'd say, Would you like me to be discussing your kid with those parents? And the parents were like, Oh, no, no, no. You know, they'd be like, Okay, well, we're done. We're not talking. Like, we're not, we're not. We're not gonna, I'm not gonna let you sit here and talk about what's going on with this child that's not yours. Yeah. Because you have no idea what's going on there, and I'm not gonna tell you what's going on there because you wouldn't want me to do that in any other any other situation. But it's as you point to, it's it's challenging. You have to find a way to move forward. And I think that's again where I want to go at the end of this, because as we speak, you're preparing for another high school season. So talk a little bit about that. Talk a little bit about how you're orienting yourself, you know, to come back to this, even though you've had this experience, and and as we talked about from a lot of aspects, it was not a good experience. It was a it was a really hard experience. How are you how are you thinking about coming back to it and sort of getting back in touch with with your values and and moving forward in a positive way?

SPEAKER_01 45:42

Yeah, I am really excited, which I didn't think I'd be. I I felt very nervous for a long time. I didn't know that I'd go back to coaching. I was lucky enough to meet another young female coach. She's the head coach of a school downtown Chicago. And she's just been really supportive. And when the opportunity to join her staff came up, we all we both just kind of jumped on it. And I was very transparent with her. I said, I am going to start posting. I'm going to start talking about some things that people aren't gonna like. I want you to be aware. I want your athletic director to be aware, who is now, you know, my technical athletic director. And so they're aware, right? They know what I'm sharing, they know what I'm talking about. There are some boundaries for me, and I respect that. But I was very transparent that my voice is more important to me than coaching. As, you know, sad as that is, right? My voice is more important. And if there is a team that is not going to appreciate that I have a voice, it's not going to be the team for me. And I also am grateful that my sister has her training facility up north. So I always looked back and thought, you know what? Worst case scenario, I can be training with my sister. You know, these I and I do go up there a lot and work with those kids and they are absolutely awesome. I love them so much. And I feel very lucky for that, right? But I kind of set myself up to trust that I would be okay, right? If I never coached again after what happened. And so I think because of that, I allowed myself to be very open-minded to the new environment that I would be possibly entering and also confident that I was gonna be myself and I was gonna be the coach that I wanted to be. And you know what? If that's not the right fit, that's not the right fit. And I would be okay with that. And I think coming from that mindset has been a lot easier to go into this new season. And I'm just excited to meet the girls. I mean, I know there's gonna be coaches out there who resonate with this, but you, especially at high school, you develop relationships with those kids so fast. And they are so rewarding and so like you you just become so bonded to them. And I remember when I left, I was like, I'm never gonna have relationships like these again, you know, with like the girls that I am no longer coaching, who, you know, I I would in a heartbeat want to be their coach again. But then I think, well, I created relationships with those girls so fast. I'm gonna create these awesome new relationships with these new girls. And I think, and I wanted to speak a little to, you know, the fear of posting. It was very scary to start sharing my story, but I am like an external processor. I have to speak out loud, like what is happening to like make sense of it. And by posting, I mean, I was able to process what happened so much faster that I'm now like at a point where I can see all these lessons, right? I can see, I can see the confidence that I have in myself as a coach. I can trust myself as a coach more. And I can, I can also have a little bit more compassion, not a little, a lot, a lot more compassion for my girls who are going through bullying, you know, and and knowing that like I'm just there to show up for them and support them and help them navigate a really difficult time of their life. High school is tough. It's fun, but it's tough. And I'm seeing my role as a coach evolving less into I'm gonna make these kids really fast and we're gonna be the best team ever, and more to I wanna be a really great role model. And I wanna be somebody that these girls feel like they can go talk to and someone who has their back. I always want a girl that I coach to feel like I have her back. And that doesn't always mean that like you say the best things or you don't make mistakes or you know, you say things that the girls get mad at or don't want to hear. But I know that at the end of the day, I know that I am coaching with the right intention of wanting to develop these girls into really successful, healthy, strong adult women and give them tools that I have learned in how to manage my emotions and my feelings and how to be resilient and how to like work through things. I've learned all these things as I've aged, and even more so I'd feel in even the last year. I want to give them these tools so they have a tool belt that they graduate high school with that I just never had. I never had that, right? And I want them to be confident, I want them to speak up, I want them to have a voice. And you know what? Maybe that even means they have a voice with me and they have to put me in my place, right? Sometimes that happens. Like, but I want them to feel confident, I want them to be able to like practice that with me. Practice with me, practice having a voice, practice standing up for yourself. I'm a safe place that you can practice that because I understand where it's coming from and I understand the importance of needing it as a young female. So I'm really excited. I feel like I've learned just so much from this experience. And I remember, you know, when my athletic director was quote unquote terminating me. I was on the phone with him. I was sitting right here, actually. And I said to him, I said, I am a great coach. I just knew it in my heart, like I knew it. And he responded and he said, You'll be a good coach one day. And I just remember hearing that and just thinking, no, I am already a great coach. And I just need to, I need to project that more out. I need to have that confidence that I have inside. I need to show that out to the world. And I think I've really used that comment as a I I and I don't give him credit for that comment at all, but I've used that comment as a driving force to to basically prove to myself that I am the coach that I know that I am inside. And so I I really just want my story to help other coaches like trust themselves. Like you know what's in your heart, you know who you are, you know you're what you know why you're showing up and trust yourself in that. And and really try to not take what people are saying about you personal and recognize that when people are saying something mean or whatever, it's coming from an insecurity they have and all of those things, right? And all of that learning. And that's stuff that I want to teach my girls too, you know, because they're gonna be dealing with bullying, they're dealing with with mean people and and all sorts of things. And what are those tools? What are those tips that can help you navigate those things? I just feel a lot smarter and I feel a lot more confident. So I'm really excited about this new season and to meet all the new girls and they might watch this podcast. So hey guys, I'm excited to meet you guys and all your parents.

SPEAKER_00 52:08

I loved it because I was like, oh, gr I have another opportunity to speak to them. And I I think I can see that in what you're doing as well. I wouldn't say like personally I'm maybe exactly the same in terms of external processor, but I uh what I have found is that I'm somebody who's really passionate about what I think, and yet I like to think I'm pretty open-minded. And so the process of sharing stuff publicly and emphatically, you know, often I run into people who disagree with me and um are have the patience to, you know, kind of like talk me through their rationale. And I learn a lot from those interactions just from being out in the space and being willing to sort of stand up for what I believe in in the moment. And I think there's a there's a great value that, and I can see that as well. Like you're setting an example for the people that you coach. And that's probably, in my opinion, one of the most underrated parts of coaching that that you know you start to think like, oh, well, I'm a coach and I'm I'm gonna tell them, you know, what the sets are or how they should do their freestyle technique. The most important no.

SPEAKER_01 53:21

That's anybody can do that.

SPEAKER_00 53:23

That's basics. The the the the the second level at least, or maybe the third level, is showing every day. Show, don't tell, right? Show how you are in the world and have that line up with what you are trying to teach them, right? Have have their those two things be the same things, be the person that you want them to be. And even, you know, in your failures, in your moments where you come up short of what you aspire to, there's still an opportunity there to show them. And I think uh I think you're doing that. So uh you know, this when we when we get to the rap part of the podcast, it's always the time to uh plug things up. So it's swim.coach dot sophie s o p-h i e at Instagram. Anything else you want to direct people towards?

SPEAKER_01 54:17

Um, you know, I do have parents reaching out to me about wanting to talk to me, which I find fascinating because I Oh like to get to get coaching, like from you to advice. Yeah, like I think that's awesome. Yeah, get advice on like how to not be the parent I talk about, um advice for how to encourage their kid who is, you know, strup maybe struggling a little bit with their love of the sport. I've got, yeah, just lots of I was fast. That was fascinating to me because I really felt, you know, like I said earlier, I really felt like I was gonna be blacklisted from the swimming community. So to have parents reach out to me, like I would love for you to coach my child, has been very, very just it's been great, but it's also just been a little bit disorient. But I I know it'll I know it'll grow into a great thing. But uh, but yeah, so if any parent, you know, you can always DM me. And if you have questions or you know, I do try to respond to all my DMs and I do coach out of the Peninsula Aquatic Center up in in northern Door County, and we do have a uh indoor two endless current pools that are absolutely amazing for technique work. I mean, so if you are in Illinois, if you are in Wisconsin, like and you are going on vacation and you want to go to Durk County and do some training, like both my sister and I, we we love working with kids up there. It's it's awesome. It's great, it's great training work.

SPEAKER_00 55:30

Amazing opportunity. Yeah, I mean, I I'm I'm I'm at the risk of making this podcast a little bit longer. I am fascinated by the parent aspect of it. And and something that I wanted to say earlier. I mean, I'm I'm a parent. I've got, as I said, I've got I've got two kids, and I feel the pull into crazy like all the time. It's it's really yeah, it's really strong. I mean, I think you're absolutely dead on in terms of it's an emotional regulation issue. Like if I don't pause and take a breath, I look at some of this, you know, behavior where people go off the rails and I go, you know, there, but for the grace of God, go I, right? Because it's it's I mean, you know, I'm probably gonna crack up saying this, but I was there for the birth of both my kids. It was the most emotionally overwhelming thing that's ever happened to me. Right? Like, and every moment since then is like the the emotions of it, you can't even wrap your arms around it. But I think it's incumbent upon people that are parents to understand the situation that they're they're finding. And I think you're actually helping them. If they, if if if a few of them are reading your stuff and you're getting a little butthurt, like just you know, take a breath and like just think about it. I think you actually have a compassionate message to those people. You're you're acknowledging the the situation that they find themselves in, and there's a way out. You don't have to, you know, kind of get caught in this rat race where, you know, you think that you kind of have to just claw and step over everybody else to get the best for your kids. It's not it's not the way.

SPEAKER_01 57:08

It's a journey. And I think the parents that I've seen with the most well-rounded kids are the parents who recognize that the most important thing is their child's development and health and their mental health. You know, like those are the parents who they're and those are also the kids that seem to do better as they age, right? So if you're 14 and you kind of start to plateau and your parents are on you, you're probably not getting out of that. But a parent who is continu or a parent who is continuing to encourage a kid who might be plateauing a little bit at 14, 15 could see a lot of success at 17, 18. Like development is called development for a reason. We're developing kids, they don't get developed to the age of 14 and then all of a sudden they're here, right? It's it's a it's a journey. And so the parents that embrace the journey are seem to be the parents with with the kids who are the most successful, not only in swimming, but also just kind of in life.

SPEAKER_00 58:04

Yeah. Yeah. What I try to advocate to all parents, and this takes discipline. I'm not I'm not saying it's easy, but uh try it. You will you will see the results of it. You know, and I do in in in our family, I do all almost all the interaction with teachers and and coaches and all that piece of it. When when I uh feel like I should reach out to them, you know, let's say there was a period where my daughter just didn't seem like she didn't want to go to school, right? So I'm like, okay, I I I better say something to the teacher. The way that I craft that communication is like, hey, I want to reach out to you because I'm I'm worried about my kid. Here's what I'm observing at home. Can we compare notes? Can you give me some information about what you're seeing at school? And maybe between the two of us, we can figure out what to do in this situation. Just start from that, right? Start from like, I'm just gonna tell you what I know, please tell me what you know. And then I mean, there's a lesson for this. Uh, I've been with my wife over 20 years. It's a good advice for uh relationships as well, you know, to when you have something going on to approach every conversation as like, hey, we're a partnership and and I don't know what you're thinking.

SPEAKER_01 59:18

I don't know what's happening on your end, and I don't have any story that I've made up. Right. Yeah. I also run emails through ChatGPT and I say, can you please take out all of the emotion from this email? And it will just like remove it all, and I'll be like, great done. That's a great tool. That's a great tool. Please take it all out. Don't make me emotional.

SPEAKER_00 59:37

No, it's it's super one of the other things that uh back again, this is my third citation of the Wahoos days, one of the real advantages I had there working with Paul. We were six feet away from each other, and we would get that uh email from parent that one of us, you know, like our blood pressure would would spike. The other person would read it, and the you know, they would c come back, like Paul would read the email that was directed towards me, and he would be like, Okay, what's the one thing in this email that's legit that you really should respond to? Right? Like the the parent could throw all sorts of stuff that's like kind of emotional like what's uh all of this. Yeah, and then and then the Paul would be like, but hey, you know, her daughter's having a hard time at practice, and and we need to we need to take that seriously.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:27

And that's the human version. And I think, you know, I love the idea of AI, but that's the human version of like, okay, how can we find a way to not? I mean, uh what we're really talking about here is, yeah, these situations are emotionally fraught, stakes are high, people are invested. How can you figure out a way on your end to where your actions are de-escalating some of that? And so that we bring the focus back on to, you know, we're all we're all interested in the same thing. We're we want the best for these kids, and we're trying to find a way to do it the best way we can. Yes. Amazing. Okay, if anyone wants to get in contact with me, crdesantis at gmail.com. You can go to chrisdcoach.com. There's a a link there uh to support this podcast, and I'm highlighting that on every single one of these recordings. You can keep listening to this podcast forever for free. I'm not putting it behind a paywall, but I really appreciate donations, stuff like the trip that I made out to Indianapolis, the effort that I put into getting guests on here. That's something I just do. And so I appreciate anybody that's willing to support this. Instagram for me, Chris D underscore coach. You're gonna find clips of interviews like this one that I've done with Sophie, with people all around the swimming world, even some people beyond the swimming world. I also share videos a couple times a week that come out of the coaching that I do with other coaching, some of the insights on there. So you're welcome to come and follow me there and interact with me, send me a DM. I love to hear from people in the coaching community. I want to say thank you once again to uh Sophie Parr and thank you to everybody for listening. And I'll be back with you guys again in a week.