Life Skills and Program Culture- a conversation with Helena Blair

Today we are joined by educator,  coach, and athlete, Helena Blair.  Helena's an impactful coach and mentor.  She draws from many influences and experiences,  including her time playing touch rugby for New Zealand's youth national team. Join us as we talk about expectations,  accountability,  and building program culture.

*This transcript has been edited for easier reading.

DD– Let's start off, if you could tell us about your background, a little bit about yourself. Maybe what you coach and, I know you played at a pretty high level, what you played as well. 

HB– Yeah. I'm from New Zealand and I come from a big family. Sport was a very big part of our family, our culture– watching it, playing it, going to… you know, cheering it on, watching on TV, getting up in the middle of the night to watch the All Blacks play. 

Once I started playing sport, my main sports were rugby first, true kiwi, and then I played netball, basketball, and I played touch. I also played a little bit of cricket.  

DD– OK, you are an all-arounder.  

HB– I mean, anything, anything I could play, was like, “I'm in.” But I guess the sport that became my sort of number one , would be touch, but then there's always rugby and netball and basketball as well, so it just depended on the season. But touch was where I played at probably the highest level. 

I made the New Zealand high school level team, so I guess like varsity level. You'd go to High School Nationals and then they chose a national team from that tournament. And so that was the first rep team that I had made for New Zealand. 

DD– Just to clarify, it would be like the U18 team, like the National touch team where you're actually playing international competitions off that. 

HB– Yeah, and it was to play Trans-Tasman, so we would play against Australia. So, that was the first team, and then from there, because I was in the mix and I got the feel for it, I was all about continuing that. 

I then went on to play U19 New Zealand team, and I was lucky enough, that that year was a World Cup year. So we played in the World Cup, which I was even, you know, luckier to captain my team that year. That was a mixed level, under 19, mixed level. And then I played under 21 mixed as well.  

DD– So cool. You're kind of a big deal.  

HB– In a past life maybe.  

DD– And so what are you coaching now? What's your coaching background? 

HB– Coaching background for the last… I guess, four years, I've been coaching our varsity girls touch team. I had a year coaching jv as well. And then before living here in Malaysia, I coached my nephew's team, under 13 boys I think it was, with one of my friends who I played New Zealand touch with, so we coached together. And then I mean, I've coached sort of under 9s when I was living at home as well, so…  

DD– I mean, you make that face and we joke like, oh, just under 9s. But having a legit coach at that age and not just some random parent. 

HB– I don't know if I'd call myself a legit coach back then, but I knew how to play. 

DD– But you knew, right, and you still had expectations. Again, other than a random parent who's often hopefully good hearted and doing it just so that the kids can have a coach and play. It's still pretty beneficial. 

HB– Yeah. I mean,it's the love of the game that kind of gets you in there, and it's always fun and exciting coaching, whatever level.

DD– And so this year you're coaching varsity and U15s, correct? 

HB– Yep, middle school and varsity. 

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DD– One of the things I was reading about recently is emotional control, and how we tend to confuse emotional control today with not feeling emotions. As opposed to emotional control is actually– oh, I feel it very much, but I also choose what to show at a specific time. So yes, I'm super frustrated, and I'm disappointed and I'm probably angry and mad, but I have to control that and choose to let that out at an appropriate time in an appropriate manner. Because what happens when you're on the field and you let that out? And then you actually cost the team because you have a red card. 

HB– Yeah, that is a big part of the start of every season. Throughout the season we talk about that so much, and it's not about not losing your mind. Of course, you're playing competitive sport, you're going to come to times when the call doesn't go your way or something happens on the field with a player. 

DD– It's about the regulation though.  

HB– Yeah. Having that awareness first of, that didn't go my way, I'm fuming right now, where I'm feeling whatever way it is and recognizing that first and then having the awareness to be able to say what do I need to do to get back in the green zone. I'm no good to anyone right now and teaching that team first mindset.

Because if I'm hot-headed and I've lost my mind, then you're useless to the team. And you're not thinking about the team, you're thinking about yourself.

DD– And you're thinking about what just happened, not what's going on right now and what's playing.  

It was interesting even from a super competitive standpoint. I don't ever want to let my opponent know that they've gotten to me or that I'm now upset because of that call, because it gives them an edge. I only want them to know what I want them to know about me.  It's especially… working with a lot of U15s and middle school, and some of the younger high school kids, I mean, even older ones. I started doing a thing where, I’ll tell a kid [go get your mind right]. It's easier in basketball, I have unlimited substitutions, I can pull them off the court and tell them “go get your mind right.” You know that's not acceptable– it’s a sportsmanship issue or you're rattled. 

So take 30 seconds, do whatever you need to do, and I usually teach them a breathing exercise at the beginning of the season, but like you need to figure out how to get past this. You let me know when you're ready to go and when you're focused and ready to go back in the game and we'll get you right back in. 

Because sometimes, especially for them, I mean, they're getting so many pressures now. All aspects that…  that blow up may not, like that may have just been the trigger on the field. That may not have actually even been the whole thing that they're now losing their mind over. So just that little bit to readjust and get focused on being back in the moment.

HB– For sure, and that takes time to learn. 

DD– Oh, right! I feel like even as an adult. 

HB– Years, years it takes, but such a life skill as well. You know all of these things that we teach in a team is really, I think for me, as big a picture, you transfer all of these skills into life. And I think probably some of, or if not all of the big things, life lessons that I've had and still continue to have, come through sport.

DD– I totally agree. And to me, that's what I always feel like. Teaching the sport is actually kind of secondary to what I'm doing. But the sport is the gateway and the tool and the medium that we use to teach those things. 

I know we talked about how you played at a high level. Do you think, because I look back and I think a lot of those things happened and I learned a lot of those lessons through sport. But, I don't know that that is happening naturally. It feels like as a coach we need to be, I feel I need to be a little more intentional about giving those lessons and helping kids with those things. 

Do you feel like you got that in your coaching? And that's not saying I had bad coaching or anything. I just think because of all the other things that were going on in our life and how different things were— some of those things came across a little more naturally or a little more easily.

HB– I feel like everything that I learned in playing sport, they didn't have fancy names. They were implied and you learned them, but they weren't named. You didn't talk about how to manage your emotions, but you learned about how to manage your emotions. So I agree. I feel like I'm intentionally teaching these different skills with my girls, but…

I don't know, if I think back to my time, it feels like there was maybe less pressure, like I didn't have these school pressures to be performing well in the classroom and outside of and in all of the areas of life. There's this, I feel like there's this expectation and there's these pressures to be succeeding in a way that I don't feel like I had. Not that I didn't have expectations from people around me when I was, when it was my time, but it feels like there's more now.

I think that, having social media is a huge impact as well. And I think that they feel that, they absorb all of those pressures. Teaching them about emotional regulation and how to respond is so critical, but something that maybe wasn't as big a thing for when we were younger. 

DD– Yeah, everything has become a high stakes environment.

HB– Yeah, and I mean, we talked about—  you're at IASAS, and you've just played a game and, you sit down and debrief with the team and that kind of thing, and then they can instantly go back to the team spaces and rewatch their game.  

DD– And not in a good, like studying game film type of way. Rather, just focusing on their mistakes or their highlights.  

HB– Of course, there's pros to that, but they're going back and instantly looking at all of those things. 

I don't even, I don't think I've ever seen any footage, actual footage of me playing. What that meant was you had to remember, and go back over in your mind what happened in a game and take the lesson, let go of the things that didn't work and then you moved on. So it was almost, you know, it was like a ten second times type thing. 

I think for me, that was great. I learned that you had to move on. I could be fuming about a game—  and we lost it and you know, this happened and that happened. You just gotta learn to let it go and you move on to the next one and that's it.

I think a lot of, the girls that I teach, they find it hard to. They're focused and they get so hung up on what happened. A big part of what I do is getting them to reflect on, that did happen and what were the things that went well and let it go, move on.

DD– Yeah, so how do you do that? Because I do think in a lot of kids there's that expectation of perfection as opposed to growth or realizing… they tend to focus on some of the mistakes that they made. That it was only 98 percent, or that I missed a question. Or, oh, I missed this tackle or this thing as opposed to—  look at all of this stuff that you did right. So what's something you do to kind of help shift that focus or help them reframe or keep that in mind? 

HB– Yeah. It's always been a big thing. When we debrief we talk about these things. I felt like last year we needed something to really shift the focus of like, where are we putting our energy when we're reflecting on a game and then what are we taking forward with us? 

I created this reflection, a physical reflection on some post-it note cards. And it came down to, it came back to our standards that we started with at the very beginning of the year— things like attendance and being prepared for the game in all its senses.  

DD– All expectations that you lay out at the beginning of the season. 

HB– Yep. So they know those very well, we talk about them all the time. Your attitude on and off the field. How you're responding and working with and supporting your teammates, and then your ability. So what are you doing out on the field that is impacting the game in a positive way?

And so it came back to those 3 standards, and I just got them to reflect: “What was one way that you lived our standards, what was a moment from the game that you were proud of, and what's a lesson that you're going to take into the next game?” And so it was all positive and it was nothing to do with the score, win or lose.  

That was a really big shift for me as a coach last season. And I will definitely continue it this season because what I started to see, we started it fairly early in the season, what you started to see... 

DD– What age level was this?  

HB– Varsity, Varsity girls.

What we started to see was that the girls started naturally to do this on their own without the reflecting part. So when you were talking about the game, when you were debriefing, when you're at training, that kind of thing, you could see their focus shift from… no one was ever mentioning about the tries that were scored or the score line.  It was about–  “oh man, I missed that girl and I got up and I chased her down and I got her, you know, I...I made the touch just before she scored the try.” And it was about effort and supporting teammates or knowing, finding a point where in the game, someone had lost their head, something didn't go the right way, but they were able to make that switch. 

DD– What a beautiful reflection– I made a mistake and then I moved past that, and did everything I could to fix that mistake or not let that mistake then become compounding.

You know, you see it all the time— I messed up and then because I didn't hustle back, because I didn't play defense, now that actually became much bigger than what it could have been. That's so big for kids I think. 

HB– Yeah, I was just like, wow that worked way better than I thought it was gonna work.  

DD– Love it when that happens!  

HB– Love those ones, like, I planned for that!  

And the other thing is that it… What it does is it starts, I think it's been a big impact on the culture of the team as well. Like you see the older ones really, they're driving it and you see the younger players coming through like, oh, okay, this is what it is to be in this varsity team.

DD– This is the culture of our team. This is how we do things. 

HB– Yeah, setting the bar high and that's super important.

DD– And it's not just coming all from you and the coaches. 

HB– When I was playing a lifetime ago, I played around so many older people. I had older siblings, so I was always around older people. I often played up grades or levels, so I was constantly around sort of more level-headed people. I think that always had a huge impact on my time as an athlete. 

DD– Gosh, that is an interesting comment, and it just totally got me thinking about— you know, when I played as well, that mentor aspect was still there. The older kids and older players setting the standard of this is the culture of the team, this is how we do these things. And I wonder if some of the issues we're seeing, is that part of that is lost today. 

Youth sports in general to me has just become, the focus has become lost a little bit, even if it's well-intentioned. In some ways I wonder if that kind of tribal-apprenticeship-mentor thing has actually been filtered out of the game a little bit. 

HB– I mean, I think that's a huge part of learning and growing as an athlete, is that you have people that you're seeing—  that's how you respond, or that's how you don't respond, you know, in both senses.

I was around people that I idolized. I have a sister who's six years older than me, and I was lucky enough to play so much sport with her. You know, she was this idol in my eyes and I… a lot of the skills and things, the way that I behaved was how she behaved because I was watching everything that she was doing. She was so good at making sure that everyone was a part of the team and making sure that the younger, the youngest players, were you know… you scoop them up, you showed them how to do these things, how to be a part of a team. 

DD– Well, I think especially in my age growing up, it was always—  the freshmen gets the ball bag, or the freshmen carries,  the freshmen or the new kid on the team gets the crappy job. 

And then to be on a team where the captain actually says, “no, I'll carry the ball bag, you help me” showing that this is leadership through service, this is a family.

I think the All Blacks are amazing at that. They have their whole thing about, you keep the sheds clean, the sheds are always swept. Like, we're taking care of the little things, there is no undesirable job.

HB– That ranking.  

DD– Right. “Oh, no, I'm the leader of this team, so I'm going to show everything by example.” It's so cool to be a part of that.

I've coached some teams where it was pretty neat to see, we have grade 9s through grade 12s, and here there is no, “oh, we don't pass to the grade 9s.” No, we're going to do whatever it takes to be competitive. And because we're a family we’d even see them hanging out outside of the team in school. It’s such a cool thing to see. And I think it was pretty unique. 

HB– I think that's the culture that you create and that is probably, I would say, the most important thing. You create the culture and the program will benefit. 

DD– I could not agree with you more. Well, and to me if you don't… because you can build a program that wins and is incredibly unsuccessful. So why are we so focused on wins first? If we build the culture, it's a place where people want to come and hopefully those wins follow. But we can be successful without those.  

HB– Absolutely. I think coaching female athletes as well is, it's a different ball game. I mean, I haven't coached a lot of boys sport, my passion lies with coaching girls, coaching females, and building the culture like we were just talking about, again for life.  

I want girls to take all of these lessons that you have in sport and be able to apply them to life and continue to play sport. Learn how to be confident in yourself and to, you know, not give… about what you look like or… there's so much more to sport than…

DD– Well, and, not that that's bad, but that doesn't have to be your sole identity. And other people's judgment and opinion of what you should look like or how much you should weigh, actually doesn't really matter.  

HB– And that's a big thing, especially nowadays, right?

There's all these pressures and all these expectations of what girls should be doing or should be looking like, or should whatever, and helping them to just be confident and be aware and know themselves really well. And to learn how to be comfortable being uncomfortable.

  That was one of our really big focuses and themes of every year that I've coached— is getting comfortable being uncomfortable. That came from, I think it was a netball coach of mine. That was something that really just resonated with me, forever. I said it one year, might've been my first year coaching varsity. It wasn't like a big focus, it wasn't something that I said all the time, I say it now all the time, but it wasn't something in this particular year. And it wasn't until the very end of the year when one of my seniors had written as part of their reflection, was that something that sat with her during the season was when I said, you know, we're gonna learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable. 

And she said, that was really something that helped me during the year when we were in fitness testing. And, it helped me when I went and sat my exams at the end of the year, and that was the big thing that she thought about going into the test. It was such a proud coach moment because I was just like, this is why we do…

DD– They actually listen to some of the things that I say.  

HB– Exactly. Oh my god, they did listen and I’m incredibly proud to know that that's what she's taking with her as a senior and I know that she will take it with her.

She's been away probably three years now and every time she's back in Malaysia she sends a message, she'll come down to training, she'll come down to Tuesday Night Touch and she'll touch base and that's just… Yeah, that kind of makes me feel like success as a coach is when you see and hear things like that and that you've built that culture that when they come back to visit, that's what they want to do. The first thing they do is they reach out and come back down to training and see the rest of the team, that's huge.

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DD– How can we support young athletes and especially girls and women? What are some ways that we can support them, not only in their athletic endeavors, but also to kind of reinforce some of those messages and help them in that journey too? 

I think there's a lot of well-meaning dads or even a lot of coaches that maybe just, we don't have that perspective. And so sometimes I think we can try, but maybe miss the mark. 

HB– I think getting to know them really well– and that sounds really simple but…

DD– No, it's pretty good, “get to know your daughter” it's pretty good advice.

HB– Get to know them really well and honestly just be their biggest fan. 

As a coach I will speak to all of the girls–  varsity, jv.

You know Paul has pulled me into middle school and got me hooked in there as well and I really love it, but just taking the time to get to know them, whether they end up with you on an A-team, in a varsity team, or whether they end up in jv, it doesn't matter because if they feel seen and you know their name, like I heard one of them say, “oh, Coach Blair knows my name.” 

Little things like that can help. That's one small way to motivate them. “oh, I want to be in that team.” Or she feels like, you know, I feel like she understands me or she knows me.”

Getting to know what other sports they play. I'll go, because I'm often here anyway on the weekends with my kids, so, going and watching, catching one of their games or touching base and knowing that there's these different things coming up for them. Some of them will reach out and say, “Hey, I've got this art show coming up, will you come and see it?”  

Things that are outside of the game and the sport mean a lot to them and if you can take the time to shoot in there for five minutes and see their art show or go and check in and say, “hey, I know that there are these exams coming up,” send them a message. I think that's really big for them and it makes them feel valued as people.

DD– Well, and that's just showing up. I think especially from the parents and friends side, you know, that's showing up and cheering for them and supporting them… in what they do, not just for the try or for the big score or success, but everything, just being on the sideline. 

HB– Showing up and just setting the bar high, like high expectations is huge. High expectations, so they know that this is what I expect at this level. I know that there's all these different things that contribute to why something might be happening. So, yes, I have high expectations, but I'm also very understanding as well, and I think that they know that and they feel that. 

So, if they're coming to training and something's going on for them, whatever it might be, just building that culture of they can come up and tell me on the side or, you know, that they whatever it is, they can let me know and we can adjust. 

DD– So that's obviously like from a coach's side. Especially that high expectation. What would you maybe suggest for parents, who often I feel like are well intentioned, but…  I think sometimes it's really easy to forget, in some ways the parents are the least in the know about what we're trying to do because they're not in the huddle, they're not in training every day, they're not hearing that same message. 

What would maybe some advice be for them? I think one example is I had a parent who was great. He said every post-game conversation he would have with his kid was, “I just love watching you play.” 

And then if she initiated and said, “well, what did you think about this or that?” then he would talk about some of those things. But there was no criticism of the play. It was just “great job,” just, “I love watching you do your thing.” 

HB– And probably one of the most powerful things to come from parents.  

DD– It was a light bulb moment for me. Like, oh my gosh, I am going to give that advice to every parent that I ever come across again.

Not that my family was ever really critical, but how much would that have meant to me? Especially after a performance where I was terrible, and I knew that I was terrible, then to hear, “I just love being here and seeing you do your thing.” 

HB– I love that. That, do that. And again, just be their biggest fan. You don't need to criticize them. You don't need to coach them. Just be there and support them. I think something that I've learned in my years of coaching varsity, is each year I've tried to be a little bit more transparent with parents so that they too start to understand the culture of what I'm trying to build in the team. I've had a few parents respond to the emails and things and just say “thank you.” It's really helpful for us to know that, you know, this is the expectations of the team and that there's going to be disappointment and here's how you can support your child. 

DD– Well, sorry, just what a great way, though, to make sure that the message is more likely to be consistent between one, what they're hearing here at school, and then two, what they're getting from you as a coach, which is meshing with that. And then as a parent as well, these are the things we're talking about; about confidence or about emotional regulation. This is how you can help reinforce that message.

HB– I would share, maybe not in the detail that I do with the team, but I would share with them, this is what our sort of mantra, focus, whatever for the year, theme of the year, these are the things that we are working on, so that they're aware of what I'm trying to do and then that way, hopefully, they can support them in that.  

Attendance being one, showing up, but especially at varsity level, we're building independence, we're building athletes, we're building good people. These good people aren't going to have mom or dad or parents or family to send an email and say, hey, such and such can't make training. It's on them. I don't want to hear from you, I want to hear from them. A two second chats, email, whatever it is, but they need to learn to communicate, because that's a big part of what it means to be in a team. Like you need to learn to communicate off the field as well as on the field. And so if it's coming from your parents, I don't want to hear it– that's on you. That's on your child. So please encourage them and empower them to do that themselves.  

DD– I know for me, one of the things that I try and do, we talk a lot about communication as well, and that same thing. Things happen– mom or dad schedules a doctor's appointment for you on training day, you're 14,  you have zero control over that. But again, that email shouldn't come from them. I just need you to let me know about it. 

How do you or have you addressed… sometimes we will sit in practice, we will finish our training, we will talk about things, I try and really establish that, you can come talk to me. Ask me an uncomfortable question. Ask me what you need to do about playing time. Ask me why you're not getting more playing time. And yet when given the opportunity to do that, kids that won't say anything, 10 minutes after I get home from training, I have an email from mom and dad advocating for their kid as to why they're not getting more playing time. 

HB– So I would just pull them in straight away on the next training. 

DD– The kid, right? 

HB– The kid, not the parent.  Definitely the kid, I would pull them in and say– Hey, this is what we talked about as a team. These are our expectations, blah, blah, blah. So whatever it is that's happening, things happen in life– I get it. It's all good, but the communication needs to come from you. 

So I would just pull them in and not even, not a telling off, just– “I noticed this and then I got an email from your parents. Next time, I don't want it coming from your parent, I want it coming from you.”

DD– Really a reinforcing of the expectations that you've already set in the standards conversation. 

HB– Sometimes you want to get on to training, but it's taking that two minutes, and it could be, get the team started warming up, pull that kid in, have a two minute conversation– you're gonna reap some benefits by taking that couple of minutes just to clarify and to set those standards instead of just letting it slide, which would be the easy thing to do, just making sure that they know… it's gonna be beneficial in the long term. 

DD– That is so great. I feel as coaches, we can oftentimes feel like there's never enough time for what we wanna do. For the scheme we're trying to run or… more practice time is always better. But obviously you have a lot of things like the reflections, setting expectations in those first couple practices, I think one of the hesitations from some coaches that I hear is that–  “well we only have two contacts a week, I don't have time to do some of these things where we're setting expectations.”

I don't believe that. I think that's a little bit of a mindset shift, because I would argue that the five minutes that I spend on this thing, five minutes of this extra drill is not going to make us better. But me addressing this or setting this expectation gives us a lot more benefit later. 

Is there a way that you found to try and sneak those things in? What's one of the ways that you incorporate some of these ideas and being intentional about imparting some of these lessons into your practices or into your pre and post game?

HB– I guess it's similar to what I would do in my classroom, my fifth grade classroom. At the beginning of the year–  we've just finished our first three days with kids, we've not done one academic thing at all. And that was very intentional. It’s all community building games, get to know you, set boundaries, set expectations. At a school like this as well, where there's so much curriculum focus and all of that, you're like, oh gosh, I should be getting into teaching. But taking that time and setting those boundaries and setting those expectations will reap you so many more benefits in the long run than if you didn't do it.  

At our first training at the beginning of every year, we spend probably the first hour in a classroom.  

DD– And how long is that first training usually?

HB– It's usually an hour and a half to two hours depending on the day.  So, 45 minutes to an hour, we would spend in a classroom. And the first part of that is always me introducing myself, reintroducing myself. I usually try, you tend to have overlaps with girls coming through so some of them know you, a lot of them don't. I like to make sure that I do something sort of different or fresh each year. 

So last year I think it was, I sort of labelled it as “finding strength in each season” and introducing myself as going through all these different seasons of my life. Going back to me as... and I found one picture of me when I played for New Zealand and it was like this old picture of a picture in the newspaper or whatever. So, one season and then playing rep in different stages of my life and then… having children and then being in the season that I'm in now, of this finding of myself again.

And especially as a female, connecting and relating to the challenges of coming back after having kids and how hard it is, that struggle and just showing some vulnerability that it's hard in whatever season you're in. It's hard for you in your season that you're coming in as a freshman or…

And it's hard for me trying to find my place of what or who am I now as an athlete? I'm still an athlete, but like I've had two children.  

DD– Yeah, not the same athlete you were as when you were 18. 

HB– My body responds differently now. So, taking that as an opportunity, but also, this is hard. This is so hard. And the things that I am doing as an athlete that I know from years and years and years of playing that still work for me. 

So, having that positive mindset, this is really hard and I'm really uncomfortable. But I know that, and that's okay because I know that I can keep going. This is just like showing them that. So I always do like a little bit of a… who I am as a person, as an athlete and this is what I want for you this season.

Really it's all about being a team. What does it mean to be a team player? What does it mean to work hard for the person next to you and that your whole mindset is for the team. So you might have individual goals and you might have, this is what I'm working on, but I'm working on this so that it benefits my team. And so really instilling that. 

DD– Me getting better at my tackling actually is to benefit the team.

HB– Exactly. So what are you doing for the team? And so we do that, you know.

I will also introduce and talk about the standards. These are the things that really make us who we are in this team. And then I take those standards and we kind of split into different small groups and they just norm like, what does it mean? 

Ability, what does that mean? 

What do we expect of each other? 

What do we expect of ourselves? 

They brainstorm some things together in their small group, and then we have a bit of a share back, and that becomes our norms. We take photos of these. It's put into our start of year slides that I share with them and then that's all available in their team Google Classroom. 

But it's also something, it's not like we do it at the start of the year and they never hear it again. I'm always constantly referring to these standards. This is what we set for ourselves.

DD– What I have found, is that taking that extra time–  and I can already hear people be like, “oh my god, you spent an hour of your first practice doing that?”

Well, yeah, because then I have to spend less time on it throughout the year. Instead of having to stop and re-norm, that becomes a two minute conversation. It becomes being able to say a phrase in a timeout to remind people, we play defense, we hustle, this is what we do.

HB– Another thing that just popped into my head as well, each year we set up mentor partnerships or twos or threes. It's usually our older or more experienced… not necessarily older, but more experienced players, I will team them up and that becomes their mentorship, it's literally a partnership. It's that person checking in frequently with the partner that they've been given. Sometimes, there's sort of like natural partnerships. It could be this more experienced player is going to partner up with this younger freshman coming in, but they play the same position so she's partnering up with them. 

So I put them into twos and threes and they are very much there to check in on not necessarily the game at all, but just like how you're feeling. Making sure that everyone's feeling supported and all of that, but they specifically have checking in with their player. How are you feeling? Are you all good? And, you know, maybe giving them that extra push when you're doing fitness testing or, you know, “I can see, you were down after that game” checking in with them. So that's nothing to do with me. At the start I will pull the mentors in, and say, hey, this is your job, this is your role this year as leaders, but it's on them to be doing the checking in. 

And every so often, I'll check in with the mentors and say, hey, have you checked in with… ? So it's not me doing the checking in all the time. 

DD– Well, and it helps establish it's the team or family culture. This is how we do things. It's bringing in those mentor and role model roles.

I love the fact that it's not just about gameplay, but it can be in the hallways in the school or before or after practice, “hey, you seem really stressed out, what’s going on?” 

Do you feel like that's fairly successful? How long have you been doing that?  

HB– Probably at least three seasons now. 

DD– And you feel like it's been–  obviously, there are gonna be some folks that buy into it more than others and that's fine. 

HB– It's just literally a part of the culture now and it's a norm.

There was, I'm just thinking about one of the seasons that we pulled in an athlete and we pulled our captains in as well. And it was more of a supportive conversation and things that we had noticed, like the captains had noticed that they had spoken to me about it. And so it didn't feel like an attack. It was just more like, these are the things that we've noticed.

“From my experience”, this is one of our captains, “From my experience, I get it. That was me a couple of seasons ago, and this is what I did to be able to grow and learn. We're here to support you.” And that was really impactful. 

DD– Hearing you talk about that, two things really come to mind. One, how well is that gonna serve both of them when they move beyond school into whatever career path they choose to be able to help a colleague, say like, “I've been there, this is not criticism. I've done the same thing. I see this in you. I know this isn't what you want to be.” On both ends to also be able to then take that. 

But also, how much more impactful when the check-ins aren't just “how are you doing?” but also encouraging you through those hard times. We're running sprints right now and I see you struggling, so I'm going to make sure that I move over next to you and encourage you any way that I can.  

HB– Yeah. That is an uncomfortable conversation. My captains were a little bit nervous and they told me that and we brainstormed. This is how we can start these things. It's not about being critical, it's about being supportive. And so here's some ways to start these conversations and I want it to come from you. I’m just... 

DD– Well, and really a skill that honestly many adults would benefit from–  to be able to have that uncomfortable conversation. Whether difficult or not, it's gonna be uncomfortable, It's always uncomfortable.

HB– I think in a team situation, sometimes you don't realize you're doing something until someone tells you that you're doing it. I've totally been called out or told, and I haven't realized that that's what I was looking like on the sideline, you know, my body language.  

DD– I don't want to show up like that, it’s not my intention. I didn't know that I was, my shoulders were down or like…

HB– Yeah, and then the impact that has on the people around you, which therefore impacts your game. So when you're being told, “this is what we noticed and this is how it impacted the team and the game,” and that person's learning to take that feedback, and they responded so well. Like they could have responded in a… there were two ways they could have gone there.

Thankfully, they took it on and it took them… initially straight after the conversation, it was hard, but not even one session later, it was like, “I'm back.” 

DD– Well, and some of that's even just processing time. I just got this really hard news…  I can't even compute that right now. 

HB– That is huge growth for that athlete. 

DD– That's amazing. So is that something you're doing, obviously you’re doing this at the varsity level, are you doing that at any of the other levels or does it become harder just because… 

HB– I would say that I am basically the same coach at varsity, jv, middle school level. 

DD– I guess specifically the mentoring groups. Is that something that you're doing like in U15s as well? 

HB– Yep. I think at a varsity level, I do tend to go a little bit deeper, a little bit more.

DD– There's different levels of what the kids can handle. 

HB– I guess yes, but just at a slightly different sort of intensity.  

DD– Are you finding that's still… I know one of the challenges I have is that in my U15 teams, a lot of times I only get the kids for one year because they're usually coming up or in transition. So it can be hard to have those kind of mixed age relationships. Almost everyone is brand new to the team every year.  Are you...

HB– It's hard.

DD– Yeah, are you finding that as well or are you getting some nice overlap?  

HB– Definitely some overlap. I'm really excited about this upcoming season because there's a lot of girls that I've coached for multiple seasons. I've got an athlete, I think I had her in middle school. So it's exciting. I think we are incredibly lucky here at school. 

We now have a bit more consistency across the board. So we've got, you know, with Paul driving middle school and then we've got Nick in jv and then myself, we're all on the same wave.  

DD– Yeah. Well it's the easiest way to build a program.  

HB– We talk a lot. We've very similar ways of coaching. We're all about empowering girls and female athletes. I mean, especially Paul and Nick are just, they are the biggest fans, they just want to see girls, female athletes be successful. And so they will go out of their way to make sure that they're doing whatever we need to do to make that happen. And so I genuinely just love coaching with them. They're mildly funny too, so it makes the job easier. 

DD– Yeah, we won't tell them that too much. 

It is always so great when you get a coaching team that just meshes. There's just some magic in that. 

HB– For sure. And you see it, we're starting to reap the benefits in varsity. Now from middle school, you're starting to see the program grow and develop.

DD– Well, that was one of the things that I wanted to talk about too. I feel like when pushback comes to this idea of sometimes coaching… like, what are we doing to actually coach the whole player, and that these mental things are just as important as the X's and O's and the physical skills. Sometimes one of the arguments is, “oh, well, but are you having success?” And I think what they usually mean by that is, are you getting the wins? Are you getting the medals? 

I know sometimes it's hard as a coach, you don't want to toot your own horn, but... you guys are actually having quite a bit of success, especially from the consistency and where the program was year after year from before you took over, on to what we're seeing now. Especially in an international school setting, you can't count on having a kid for four years.  

HB– No, it's so transient.  

DD– Sometimes you get a… oh, I got a gold medal. Yeah, because I had a kid move in who was amazing. And then the year later they were gone and now my program is in tatters because I didn't build the program. 

So I just want to acknowledge that even seeing it from outside–  from a traditional wins measure of success, you guys are being very successful. And I think even more successful on the things that I think that we both believe are actually the important things as well.  

HB– Of course, every coach loves winning. Every athlete loves winning, of course. But if you ask me about success throughout our program–  since I've been lucky enough to jump in and be a part of that and see it grow. Huge success to have girls coming up from middle school into varsity level this year and thinking about what that looked like even just a few years ago. The athletes, the confidence in these athletes is huge to me. I'm like, that's success.  

DD– The confidence even, we're going to go and compete, and we're going to be able to do that. We're not resigned. Oh, we're going to go to this big tournament where we're the smallest school and we're just going to be in sixth. No, we are going to compete. Our tournament may not look the same as the biggest school, but we are going to compete. 

HB– If I think about my first IASAS, I had no idea what to expect as a coach, but you know, we were going to go out there and give it a crack. And we got last. I mean, yeah, we were last. With us and JIS though, I think they won one and we won one. So it was like, we're right on the same playing field. 

And then the next year we came, we got sixth again, we probably should have been fifth that year, but it came down to, you know, just sometimes that's the way it goes with sport. It's how the cookie crumbles sometimes and it sucks, but we as a team should have been in that fifth place. 

And then last year, we had no business, thinking that we were going to get into the third/fourth or the first place game. But last year we were a different team and that came from seasons and seasons of work. We were a different team and we just missed out on getting into that third/fourth playoff. It was gutting, but I still came away feeling really happy and proud because we're there. We deserve to be there and we'll get there. And yes, it's disappointing, but I still felt proud and successful because we're getting there and that comes from the program.  

DD– I think it's often easy to miss, especially if you're only looking at the results after the fact, like if you're not actually watching games, you can finish last in a tournament and still have a very different tournament. 

You can finish last where you got blown out every game, it's just not there. And then you can still finish last and you could have been in every game and it just didn't go your way. You just didn't get that one last little thing when you needed it to get three wins versus the two wins.

HB– I think we still placed the same as the previous year, but... very different tournament, very different tournament. If you want to go off the scoreline, you look at the scoreline in our first season, we were getting absolutely whipped compared to last year where the scoreline was literally one or two points. We've closed that… that gap has closed.  

DD– That team that came into that game thinking, this is another rollover, but no, we're here, and we're here to play. And they had to actually take notice of you. That's a big thing. 

HB– Success.

DD– It is, and I think the kids feel that. What's hard is then when they come home and again it's that social media pressure. It's everyone who wasn't there who just talks about… oh but you lost or you did this or that. It's hard to help them keep that perspective. That person literally has no idea what they're talking about. 

HB– I think that deep down, I think we have done a really good job in instilling that in our female athletes and we're getting there, we are getting there, but it's still hard. It's hard for them with all these outside pressures. I think that's something you know… I obviously, I don't understand that side, it wasn't a thing for me. So I find it hard to understand, but I feel like I'm trying to be more understanding of what that pressure might feel like. 

DD– Yeah. I would not want to be growing up today. I would not want to be a teenager today. You know, and that's not good old days, it's that pressure. Kids often are not able to be kids as long as they should be able to be. 

HB– Which is why all of these things that we do so intentionally are even more important for them to be aware of themselves, to really know themselves, to be able to compartmentalize these different things about sport is so much more important now than maybe it ever was. 

DD– Well, this has been amazing. Super insightful. I feel like we barely scratched the surface. Thank you. Thanks for joining us and I hope we can do it again.  

HB– Awesome.