Resilience, Coaching, and Influential People - a conversation with Paul McTigue

Today I'm joined by my friend and athletic director, Paul McTigue. Paul is an incredibly busy man. I've been after him for several months, and we finally got the chance to sit down between classes for an interview. Join us as we talk about mental toughness, influential people, and the harsh truth about my running career.   

“You can’t turn Dave Davenport into Usain Bolt.”

DD–  So I'm joined today with Paul McTigue. Paul, welcome.

PM–  Thank you.

DD–  Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, a little about your background, coaching, what you've done, and what position you currently hold outside of coaching right now?

PM–  Okay, so I am the Middle School Athletics and Activities Coordinator at ISKL, International School of Kuala Lumpur. This is my 21st year teaching. My 18th year internationally. I'm originally from the UK in Northern England, a city called Leeds, or just near Leeds. One of six kids. So, sport was always a huge part of my life. Three brothers, sorry, two brothers, three sisters. So yeah, equal match there. But all of us reasonably sporty, all of us played sport for a lot of our lives.

To be honest, teaching kind of fell on me a little bit in terms of I finished university and I wasn't too sure what I wanted to do. I was really lucky where my best friend's mother was a deputy head of school at a local comprehensive school. She knew me pretty well and she was like, “you'd be a really good teacher.” She actually employed me for a year as a learning support teacher, where I worked with a few kids with special needs, including one kid with Down syndrome, but in a comprehensive school. And that's really where I got the confidence to then push to a teaching career.

So then I did my teacher training at Cardiff. And then I moved to Hertfordshire and Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, where I did three years teaching in the UK as a PE teacher. In terms of sports, I've always been, football has always been my sport. I mean, I played a lot of sports. I was a reasonably okay runner, so I did cross-country, I did some track and field. Played other sports a little bit. I used to get recruited to play a little bit of rugby. But, in general football was always my sport. So that's the sport I've been most confident coaching. So I coached for school teams in the UK. 

Then I made a move to Cairo, where I did my first four years as an international school teacher, as a PE teacher. And then my final two years I was head of house, which is the house system in UK, think Harry Potter. That was very much– it's still very much prevalent in a lot of schools. So I was head of house there as well, organizing competitions and sports tournaments. And I was varsity, varsity boys coach there for all four years there. That was always really, really good. And then Egypt went through a bit of turmoil in terms of the Spring Uprisings and me and my girlfriend at the time, now wife, and then moved to Germany. That was my first role as an AD.

I went to Leipzig International School. And I was school-wide AD. And that was where I kind of really got– really kind of understood the impact that ADs can make and what you're doing as a sports program. In Leipzig, I coached, first year there, I coached boys varsity, but then I changed to girls varsity.

Basically, it was literally just, I had another coach who really wanted to coach the boys. So then I was like, well, I can be flexible. I'll move out of the girls. Very different type of coaching, but one I really enjoyed. Boys versus girls, in terms of skill level, boys probably a little bit higher, but in terms of coachability, in terms of being asked questions and being asked how you can get better– girls, very, very different. And I found I really enjoyed that, which was wonderful.

We did three years in Leipzig, and then we got the job at Jakarta International School, so moved to Asia. My first year there was just a PE teacher, and then I did some coaching of the middle school. Different coaching, did some touch rugby. I did some middle school football. I did some track and field. As a PE teacher, especially in middle school, very versatile. And then after my first year there, I got offered the Athletic Director there in middle school.

So then for the next seven years, I was Middle School AD at JIS. And after year two, I became the varsity girls coach there, as well. Coached that for the full, excluding COVID, which we had a few years of not really coaching properly, but…

DD–  All the crazy stuff we did, trying to keep kids engaged and keep a team together.

PM–  Correct. So during my time there was varsity girls coach the rest of the time. Then, yeah, the last two and a half years, moved to ISKL where I’m Athletics and Activities Director in middle school.

 [MUSIC PLAYING]

PM–  You know the resiliency one, it's quite an interesting one because… resiliency seems to be kind of like the new in thing, but it's been around for 20 years. It's been around for way more than 20 years. But there's now, yeah, it's now being talked about like it's a new thing. And this is, you know it's quite nice to talk about.

DD–  Yeah, so that's an interesting point that you just brought up about resilience. In some ways I wonder… it's not a new thing. I mean, like we've been talking about mental toughness in sports for a long time. I feel like now maybe it's getting a wider audience and people are seeing it in things outside of athletics and endurance events. But has it become a buzzword now because it's a fashionable thing? Or, is it because we're seeing less resilience and less mental toughness in kids as a whole? That there's some kind of thing going on there, or like,what do you think about that?

PM–  I look back to me playing sport as a kid, and I don't think I was very resilient, but I never had someone tell me I could work harder. I think nowadays it's identified. But this isn't new because, I mean, I've been international now for 18 years and pre-international teaching when I worked in the UK, I got invited over to a resilience course hosted by the University of Pennsylvania.

It was done by a psychologist called Dr. Martin Seligman, I think it was. And basically three comps councils in the UK– Tyneside, Manchester, and Hertfordshire, sent I think it was something like 20 or 30 teachers each. There was a cohort of about  80 or 90 of us went over to Pennsylvania to learn about resilience. And, this was something that the University of Pennsylvania had identified as something that in schools we could do better at. And it was the education part of, you know, putting a word to what has been around for years.

So, you know, as an athlete, I could have worked harder. There’s times when I gave up when I wish I hadn't. You know, I look back and that's what I try and teach the kids, is kind of like, you can work harder and you can go past this area. And especially kind of the leaders in the team– this is when you need to step up, this is when we need you. It's just putting that word to what's been around forever.

You know, the course, the big standout for me of the course, was resilience, quite often, it's basically turning that negativity into positivity. You know, for example, in a school context. If Mr. Medallion the head of school called me or called a kid into his office, straight away you're thinking, what have I done wrong?

That's a mindset of people with resilience. It's kind of like, what have I done wrong? And, you know, it's negative. And, you know, in a sporting context, you know, we're losing, it's negative and I want to give up. When actually I get called in the Head of School's office, a parent said something nice about you. Or if you're a kid, you know, you're captain of the school team and we've just won a big tournament. You know, amazing job well done, you've been such an advocate for our school. And it's getting rid of that negativity and it's turning it into positivity. I think that's the big thing about resilience. 

In terms of kids today, I mean, again, the generation, you know, my parents used to say, in my day, we used to do this, in my day we used to do that.

DD–  I know, I always try to avoid that, but I still find myself like, the younger generation, or kids today.

PM–  And that's the cycle, because we're now doing exactly what our parents did. And this was 30, 40 years ago, where in my day. And then you know, I remember my parents saying that their parents used to say, "in their day," so this is just a repeat cycle. But all we’ve done is put a word to this in terms of, yes, we need to teach toughness. And we need to be able to say to the kids, you can do more. And asking them to do more is different to saying they're weak. You know, that's very, very different. So I think that's kind of the big thing I'd say in terms of resilience is, it's not that they're weaker or it's not mental toughness. It's just giving them that "you can do more." And that, I think that's important.

DD–  So I heard somebody refer to it, they refer to it in a book I was reading as resilience is really just the ability of an individual… their bounce-backedness. Like, how are you able, you get a set back, and then how are, how quickly are you able to reset and move forward, which is always interesting to me.

So do you think though, because it does feel like parenting in the last several years is a little different than it has been, in that parents seem much more ready to remove obstacles from kids and to not allow them to struggle?

Like, do you think that that's coming into play at all? Like, you're almost taking away that opportunity for someone to learn. It's not that they are weak. You're taking away that opportunity for them to learn how to bounce back or to grow.

PM–  I think the world has changed parenting. So what I mean by that is, I mean, there was a few– well, a long time ago, when I was a kid in the UK, parents left their child in Portugal in the room, and she went missing–  Madeleine McCann. This was very UK based, but basically this girl got kidnapped. There was em, the parents were suspected at one time, and the media furor was huge. So suddenly, freedoms that kids used to have where we could go out and play in the streets and kind of like, just be kids. That gets taken away, because suddenly, as a parent, your mind switches to, am I a bad parent? You know if I give my, what could happen to these kids?

DD–  Yeah, there’s a big fear factor.

PM–  Yeah, the catastrophization. You know, if something happens. We do it as parents, me and my wife talk about what the boundaries we want our kids to go in, and me and my wife have very different conversations, different views sometimes. Where it's like, I'm a lot more willing to take risks with the girls whereas she's a lot less willing. And it's finding that balance of what's possible. You know especially with social media, especially with the way the world's changed. Especially with where the world is, I mean, we're very lucky in Asia, but Asia is generally quite safe. But in the UK, in America, the knife crime of the UK, in America, the gun crime, there's always that worry as a parent, and then it's, do you want to give your kids that freedom of, or can you kind of, they’re your most precious thing, so that's changed the world. So, yeah, parent, parenting’s difficult.

DD–  Well, and it's different.

PM–  Yeah.

DD–  I think that's the thing I find myself saying this a lot. It's not better, or things today are not better or worse than it was growing up. It's just different, like we have to kind of accept that. And there can be things that we're not happy with, or that we are happy with, but the reality is, it's different. There's different circumstances and influences.

PM–  But that's why the school setting is so important. Creating opportunities for kids to explore their passions in school are so important. So at ISKL, our co-curricular activities.

So obviously, as an AD, I talk sports, but also Activities Director, we talk about music, drama, board games, anything where kids can hang out with each other and anywhere where kids can just explore passions in a safe environment that's important.

We have our school program, and then, over the last few years, we've added Community Sports where kids can come onto our campus and play more sports because it's an outlet where they're away from screens, they're with peers or with teammates, doing things they really love, challenging themselves, getting fitter. I mean, that is the way the world is going.

DD–  Yeah. Gone are the, it feels like gone are those days of, for multiple reasons, but just going to the park and playing pickup. Like everything has become so structured that sometimes I wonder, kids that I coach, sometimes I wonder, would you even know how to go to a park and start a pickup game with random people?

PM– I don’t think they do. And in the UK, there's quite often green spaces that have signs saying “NO BALLS.” Again, society’s changed.

DD–  Yes. A park with stay off the, you have to stay off the grass in this, in this green space.

  So what is something that you think that's – I love the fact that you brought up the activities and not just athletics– so for folks that are in those kind of mentor roles, whether that be coaches or running orchestra, what do you think is something that we can do to help give kids opportunity to learn resiliency or how can, how can we kind of set that up in our culture?

PM–  Well, I think the biggest thing as a coach, as a teacher, as a band leader, as a whatever. Kids follow passion. If you can show passion, then kids can kind of go, they can empathize and go, “Why is this person so passionate about this?”

And then they can kind of explain and kind of show through, through however they teach or how they coach. Why they've had that passion. And that's transferable. And kind of like, making things fun is obviously a huge part of it all, you know, kids want fun. They don't just want repetition and they don't just want...

DD–  The same old crusty drills that we've been doing for the last 30 years.

PM–  Correct, that can't happen because you're going to turn kids off. The kids’ brains nowadays are wired towards entertainment. So making things fun, making things low-key, but it's about making sure that everything has an objective at the end of it.

You know, making a fun drill, but having kind of like, you know, in the case of touch rugby, for example, we coach that, there'll be different tag games. And then you talk about what the links are between tag and touch rugby and, you know, the transferable skills. 

And then in music, you know, obviously I'm not a musician, but there will be things that the musicians do, that you can kind of transfer over to kids and say, this is how you do it, this, and there'll be that click moment. And then that's how you get kids on board.

I mean, to me, the big thing is getting rid of the win at all costs. It is that enjoyment first. And then, you know, at ISKL, we always talk about process. And we talk about we're trying to guide these kids into having a really good attitude, you know, making sure that they're doing the best that they can, they're trying the best that they can. Because if they try the best that they can, they're going to learn. Obviously with guidance, you know, giving 100% every time is going to help you learn because you're trying. And you're making things happen. But if you're doing things half cooked, it's not going to work. You know, you're not going to have that learning.

You know, we obviously talk about the respect, we talk about the sportsmanship, we talk about, you know, sport, and, you know, all these things art, music, to get good at things, you have to have those expectations and you have to have standards and you have to have things that, you know, if we do all these things, then we're going to get better. And that's what we're trying to do.

DD–  Yeah, I love that. It's, gosh, so much of what you just said there, but I think one of the things that resonates the most is that we have to be able to have fun, and yet we need… but having fun doesn't mean there aren't boundaries and expectations. It's within that, that is where the magic happens and the growth.

PM–  It's, what is fun as well? Because kids messing around and being off task and messing around with friends is very different to playing a game and getting the joy out of playing the game. So it's measuring fun. Because there is a balancing act in terms of a coach in terms of not being too strict where the kids lose that joy. But also that is having those standards where it's like, you're off task, you're interrupting this process. So it's, there's a balance there in terms of what fun is and what fun isn't.

DD–  I just had a talk with a player, I actually just complimented a player this morning. Like man, you do a great job, like I love seeing you have fun in practice, but I never see you goofing off. Like, and that's a, that's a, sometimes a fine line. I'm like, and I love seeing that.

PM–  That's really important. That message is, I love the fact that you're having fun here, but that's so important. And kind of, you know, kids hear that and go, what I'm doing is good. And giving positive feedback is, you know, that's so important as a coach. But also making sure that, yeah, you're not goofing off, you're not interrupting other people's learning and other people's fun.

DD–  We're still focused on what's going on, ultimately, even though we're laughing and having a good time. Yeah.

So can you talk a little bit about your philosophy as an AD and how like, how you like to set your program or what are your goals for the program overall?

PM–  Well, middle school is the age where… it’s that transition age where kids are going to either join or not join. So middle school is where we can give the kids the opportunity to explore their passions. And we can encourage kids to come and, you know, in our program, we really have a really inclusive program where we do have competitive teams, but everyone's welcome. Linked to that, you kind of show kids it's okay to come and be better at something. And we're going to upskill you, we're going to help you learn. That's kind of what's really important in terms of ISKL and, you know, our program is: we want the kids to learn, we want the kids to get better, we want the kids to have fun. And all of that is really, really important. And we want the kids to have high standards in terms of, you know, turning up to practice on time, working hard. So all of that is important in the program. It's reminding the kids that, you know, we want them to try everything. We want them to find a passion.

Essentially, my job as an AD isn't to find the next Lionel Messi. That's, you know, even playing any sort of even Division One college, you're talking 1%. What about the other 99% where they might not be professional athletes, but sport is important to them and physical activity is important to them and playing and being physically active throughout their lives is important. So that's kind of my job as an AD is to make sure they know that, you know, being good and playing sport and being in that team culture and all of that is really important and it helps you know that you want to exercise for life and it helps you be healthy and, you know, it's all about health and well being, you know, that is the crux of it. You're teaching kids, physical activity is super important and sport is that tool to do that. Essentially.

DD–  So I was talking with somebody and said like, let's say you had a 30% rate of sending kids to play at the highest level, but 70% of the kids walked away from your program and never wanted to play that sport again.

PM–  Yeah.

DD–  Would you consider that successful?

PM–  No.

DD–  No, you wouldn't. Like, so why like… I mean that would be an astronomically high rate of sending players to the pros.

PM–  I think what's important as well is, I mean, I've been teaching for 21 years now and in my time, I think there was maybe, when I was in the UK, there were two boys who ended up playing semi-pro football. Then I moved to Cairo and there was one boy who could have easily been semi-pro or pro. Then in Leipzig, there was two girls who were both state volleyball players and there was one boy who played for RB Leipzig. Then I moved to Jakarta, and lots of good athletes, but none outstanding. And, sorry, there was one girl who was an Australian girl who ended up going and playing em, I think she plays for, professional rugby now in Australia, there was one girl, she was just so fast.

So in 20 years, I think I've known five or six kids that, but one thing that I can say about all of them is, as a coach I've encouraged and I've tried to help, but they had natural talent.

You know again, we talk about percentages and you talk about this. I guided them a little bit, but I can't claim credit for them, their genes, their natural talent, their own drive, you know, all of that compounded to make them good. It wasn’t… 

DD–  Somewhere along the line, they've probably had like a personal coach and a personal trainer and like there's, yeah,

PM–  Yeah. All of that.

DD–  It truly is a village, it takes that, but you have to start with like the premium genetic stock of the seed that's going to grow.

PM–  And these kids were all different, their mentality was different. They kind of, they knew they were good, but they pushed harder. They were willing to do this themselves. 

So when you talk about a program, the impact that we have, you watch movies where the coaches claim credit for how the team is doing, stuff like that most of that is rubbish, especially when you've got the very best players. You kind of joke about what, especially in international school settings, what kids are going to come in to help your program because you might get lucky, you might get two or three kids who come in from, you know, from the States or from Australia who are difference makers in your program. That suddenly your team goes from average to extremely competitive, but is that down to coaching? No, it's down to luck. It's down to which kids come in. And then the flip side is that you might get the kind of kids who transfer in who aren't going to add value to your programs.

And then, as coaches, you can set up in shape, you can make them organized, you make them fit, you can make them, you can run some plays, all of that you can do, but to a certain degree, your exceptional, your 1% as we talked about in terms of your college players or your professional players– what you do is, it's minimal. You know, those kids already have it, you know you can't teach speed, you know, you can develop speed, but you can't, you can't turn Dave Davenport into Usain Bolt.

 DD–  Right. 

PM–  It's impossible.

DD–  There's an NFL player who was an amazing defensive player, Ray Lewis, just one of those guys super intense as well, and he had a quote, "Everyone always wants to chase greatness. But if you work hard enough, greatness will chase you.”

PM–  Yeah.

DD–  Yeah, that's great and motivational, but at the same time, I can work as hard as I want, I'm not going to be great at the NFL or at the high level. There's still, you know, a very foundational piece that's missing. So I always thought that was like, yeah, sure, Ray, you can say that because you're one of the top, you know, probably even the top half percent of players that make that level, like, yeah, so, so funny.

But also interesting because like I have seen coaches almost to the detriment of their program, rely solely on that one kid that moves in and not do things to bolster their program overall or increase learning for the other players. And then when that kid moves, it's not even that you go from competitive to now semi-competitive. You go from competitive to almost being irrelevant because you haven't done anything to… 

There's only so much I can teach an elite player. But there are a lot of things that I can do with players that don't have a lot of knowledge to help them grow into the talents that they have.

PM–  And we go back to the winning at all cost kind of thing. We go back to where, is the focus on winning games where, yeah, and we give the ball to my best player all the time and that's going to be the play, or is it actually no, we need to build a team where we can, the best player compliments our team, but it can't just be that player. And that's also very sport dependent, basketball versus football, 11 players versus  5 players, big difference.

DD–  Right. Well have you seen, this is off topic, but have you seen the study where, I think Malcolm Gladwell talked about it, where they basically took and tried to see where, are you better off spending more money on a star player or on spreading that money around and raising the whole of your roster. And what they found was that it was actually, it's completely sport-dependent.

So in some place like the NBA, where you're super–  there's only 10 people on the floor at the same time, like one person can control that game and has a bigger influence. But on the football pitch, you were actually better off, like you were better off taking your worst player and improving that position, not because of the amount of influence, but also because of the influence that a mistake has.

So in basketball, one mistake doesn't kill you, but on the football pitch, that person who's more prone to make a mistake, if you reduce the amount of mistakes that they make, then you're not going to, you’re gonna lose less 1-0 games.

PM–  But it's interesting now, because football's going down the road of two positions are most important. Your forwards, your strikers who score goals and your goalkeeper. They’re your two premium positions, your goalkeeper, are they that 1% difference maker who's going to be able to save those, or nowadays it's the goalkeeper who can play out from the back and turn defense into attack, or it's your Erling Haaland, which is going to score you 30 goals a season. Both those positions are now the premium positions.

DD–  It's been really cool to actually see how much that position has changed. Even just the advent of like, oh, well now we're actually looking for keepers who have some footwork, not just hands or not just the guy who, you know, could anticipate angles or whatever, and to now it's becoming an integral part.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

DD– Yeah, it's interesting, I'm coaching boys again now, but for a long time, I had made a switch several years ago, and I had one of my former players actually come, and he said, "oh, don't you, don't you miss coaching the boys in this,"

and I said, "well, actually, no."

Like, yeah, I miss some aspects of it, right? We get to be a lot more technical, and there's different, you know, different things. Like, well, the girls actually listen to what I have to say, and they're way more coachable than you guys are, and it's a very, it is very different, and I find it really enjoyable as well. It made me actually look at different aspects of the game that I had probably been ignoring or not paying as much attention to as a coach.

PM–  It's really interesting, as well, in terms of, you look at things differently, age-wise as well. I mean, I coached varsity girls and you do some stuff, but then now I'm doing middle school under 13 girls, and you have to take it down a level or two levels again. It's really good in terms of coaching PD [professional development] and coaching, you know, you have to challenge yourself all the time in terms of, I just did a drill there which has not hit the mark, so I need to now change this and take it back a step or two steps to allow the kids to have success, because it's that success which builds a confidence to actually develop.

DD–  Yeah, I think it made me a better coach because I had to actually then start examining, why…okay this drill has actually missed twice, and we're not getting it. So why am I doing this drill? What am I trying to teach? Am I not communicating correctly? Or, I think sometimes with higher level athletes, or even just more, just athletes period, athletic kids, sometimes that athleticism can really cover up a drill that's just not very productive, but maybe we've done it for you know, like, oh well, my coach, I did it when I was, you know, was playing, and so we'll do it now. But going back and then looking and saying, okay, what am I actually trying to teach through this drill? What am I trying to mimic?

The tag example is so great on, you know, for touch. Well, I'm trying to teach this thing, I'm trying to mimic this game skill. This is a way that I can do this, that's actually relatable. That a kid who may, if I start speaking in sports terms looks at me with eyes glazed over and doesn't understand it, but they get this and actually excel at it, and then eventually there's that click. Oh, right. This is just like what I do in the game. The game and the practice are exactly the same, we just call it a different thing.

Yeah, it was really interesting, like I teach, coaching girls, like kind of made me step back a little bit for that. And then I think especially, like coming from the States, on the international circuit, I found that I like, oh, this is a drill I normally do with 12-year-olds, but these 12-year-olds haven't been playing basketball for three and four years now. I actually need to step back and again kind of reevaluate that thing.

So, can you talk about what's someone or something in your life, whether in sports or not, that you think that has inspired you, or that you've learned from and kind of take those lessons into athletics and then try and impart those on some of the kids?

PM–  There's two people that really stand out to me in terms of how I guess I'm wired nowadays. I was really lucky. I played football my entire life from under eights, through to end of college. Growing up, you always aspire to be a football player. And, it's really interesting, kind of like looking back, and again, now as an AD, a lot of kids have inflated ideas of how good they are, and I used to do that. I used to want to be a pro player, and I used to want to have trials, and I wanted all sorts of things. 

But I was really lucky because I think I was about 14. We had some coaches, coaching our team, and they stopped halfway through for, I think they just lost enjoyment and a few of our teammates weren't really helping, or weren't really being cooperative. I mean, they weren't the world's best coaches, it was parents trying to help.

Then one of my teammates, Mark, his dad said he’d coach us. And his dad Dave Houlston, and basically at the time, he's a sports psychologist. He was one at the time, obviously, this is mid-90s. He was one of 38 UEFA licensed coaches in the UK. So we went from having, you know, a couple of parents, who literally, there's a ball go and kick them, to suddenly having this guy who just knew football inside and out, knew coaching inside out. As I say he's a sports psychologist at the University of Central Lancaster [Cumbria]. The change in that we went from being very, very quite poor team, to suddenly being competitive within one season. But Dave was a lot more than that, as a role model, as a… you know his football knowledge was extensive, but he really cared about the kids as well, and cared about coaches.

Between probably 16 and to be honest mid-20s, I was kind of a little bit turned off with school and stuff like that, and Dave was always kind of there to help. So for example, I didn't do as well in my A levels as I probably should have done. I was more focused on working part time and getting money than actually doing my school studies. So I was working late in restaurants and working late in bars to try and earn money to obviously buy nice things and spend, and because I came from background which wasn't the most affluent, so money really mattered to me at the time. So I didn't do as well as I could have done, and Dave, obviously, was a professor at the University, he was like, "well look, what are you trying to achieve?"

And I was like, "I really don't know."

He was like, "you should apply to my university."

I got into the university and I had three years there, and he was just always that person who would try and help, and kind of… he could see at the time I wasn't quite fulfilling what I could fulfill, but he kind of had your back a little bit.

So he was fantastic, and then working at JIS, I used to work for a lady, Amy McCall, who she co-coached with me at girls varsity football. And she was the one who kind of talked about giving 100% effort and giving 100% attitude will make you a better person and better player. She also kind of taught me, you are a role model, and this is something that I've learned in the last five to ten years in terms of, as a coach it's so important, kind of like, as a role model, you're demonstrating what sportsmanship is, you're demonstrating how to act, because I'm really, really competitive, and I found myself when I was coaching varsity especially, I wanted to win more than actually what is the right thing to do.

So there was one time we got a couple of really bad calls, and at the end of the game I didn't shake hands with the referee, and that still haunts me now in terms of how it was the wrong thing to do, and my kids have all seen me not do that. And Amy straight away called me out on it and said “you did that wrong.” You know that was such a big lesson in terms of, yes I want to win, and yes I want our team to be successful, but again the bigger picture is, I want our kids to have respect, I want our kids to realize that, referees make mistakes. I want our kids to realize that, yes, the referee might have made some bad calls, but they could have done different things to have won that game anyway.

So that was a huge lesson for me, but again it stuck with me, so Amy did an amazing job in terms, we need to remember what we're doing here, and this is about the kids getting better, it's not about me as a coach and my ego wanting to win and wanting to go home with a trophy. And I forgot that, that day, and that still, still haunts me a little bit now, so...

DD–  Yeah, I think it's something that I always have to remind myself and keep in mind, that we often work so hard to build culture and to be an example for those kids, and yet we can throw all of that away in those moments of mistake.

PM–  Yeah, absolutely.

DD–  Hopefully the kids see that it was just a moment, but how did you come back from that, or how, if you had to do it over again, how do you build culture, you obviously made a mistake, we all make mistakes, then how do you come back from that with the kids, how do you handle that? Because some of them probably saw it too.

PM–  I mean, I was very lucky she called me out on it, and so the following, before the next game, I owned it. And it's like, “look, I've just made a mistake there, and we had a tough game.”

But I think you have to own it, because if you don't, the kids think it's okay to do, and it really isn't. So owning stuff is one thing, and then just, again, for repeating the message in terms of, we're here for this reason, we're here to get better, we're here to do as well as we can, and you can't control referees, you can't control opposition, you can’t… there's controls and there's uncontrollables. We just have to control our controllables. So it's kind of reinforcing that a little bit, but the year after it was COVID, so I don't actually know the results in terms of how much of an impact, if any it had. But certainly for that tournament, I just had to say, look, I've made a mistake here, and yeah, I need to do better as well. 

DD–  I wonder, I, and maybe, right, it's just naïvette, but like, I have to believe that in some ways, that resonates more with the kids longer term than maybe anything else that I could do– of admitting that mistake. Like, “hey, I messed up, this is, right, we talk about, we talk about controlling ourselves, we talk about this all the time and yet you saw me do this. I was wrong. I messed up.”

And I think especially middle school and high school, like having an adult, the kids know you screwed up, they saw it, they see the behavior; having an adult own that, and apologize and say, what I can do is try and be better moving forward. I have this expectation of you, I should also have that expectation of myself, it just seems huge, like that's got, I mean, the times that I saw an adult do that was, was just so like, whoa.  

PM–  One other person I probably should have mentioned is also, he retired last year, but Pete Casey, Middle School Principal at ISKL. He's probably the principal that I've aligned with most my whole career. He was an AD background, and me and him used to have lots of conversations about culture and about how we build it and about what we want from our program. And we also talked about, you know, coaches and how we can help coaches. Tell them that this is what we want from them versus, you know, win-at-all-cost model.

Because you sometimes deviate from conversations, and you know, both of us kind of agreed that in our coaching careers or in our AD careers or whatever, there's often lots of success, but the things that haunt us are our mistakes. And he often talked about, you know, he made two or three mistakes where he's had altercations on the sideline of a rugby pitch or, you know, this has happened, and this has happened. And he was like, this is the learning thing, which, you know, we're all human, we're all competitive, we all have this, so I think every coach is going to make mistakes.

But it's about people then being willing, in my job as an AD or, you know, as a co-coach or something, going, you have crossed that line, and this is something that I want to change in the future, and if I don't know it then, telling them, look, what you did there was wrong. You know, so Amy told me “this was wrong,” and, you know, Pete got told or realized what he did was not the right thing to do, and again, we carry that, we learned a big lesson. You know, we both talked about kind of like, again, so many successes, you know, these big schools, we have lots of success, but it's not the successes you remember, it's the failures. 

DD–  Paul, this has been so great, such good stuff. It's been a pleasure having you on. I hope that we can do it again, do it again some other time. 

PM–  Sure. Pleasure. Thank you very much.

DD–  So Paul, we're going to play a little game, it's called What's Gotta Go?. So I will give you two different choices between things and you have to keep one of them and one of them has to go.

PM– Okay. 

DD–  We're going to start off I think probably relatively easy here. Okay. So which one's gotta go: fish ‘n’ chips or shepherd's pie? 

PM–  Shepherd's pie is going to go. Fish ‘n’ chips every day. 

DD–  Okay. All right. What's gotta go: pub games, like darts and cards or golf?

PM–  Pub games have got to go. Golf is, golf is the new thing. 

DD–  Is it, is it just because you're playing so well right now? 

PM–  It's the fresh air. It’s the time, time outside and it's a lot healthier than pub games.

DD–  All right. Last one. Got to keep one, right? So what's gotta go: Sunderland or Man U?

PM–  Sunderland. Easy.

DD–  Easy, easy. All right, again, thanks, man.