Why subscribe?

As I’ve continued my coaching journey, I have found two areas of exploration to be particularly interesting to me, coach learning and development and how coaches use data and analytics. I believe that these areas are of great importance to the job we do so I also believe that we should approach them with great care and attention.

My intent with this newsletter is to give you food for thought and catalysts for meaningful and fulfilling growth and change. I don’t expect to provide coaching secrets and hacks because my work is rooted in the belief that the only secret is that we teach who we are and that the only hack is relentless reflection.

When it comes to data and analytics, I write with the intention of bringing potentially arcane and confusing concepts to coaches with clarity and insight about how those concepts may or may not be useful. I write about ideas as simple as the enduring benefits of paper and pencil stats at all levels of play. I also write about how complex ideas like game theory affect our strategy and decision-making, whether we realize it or not.

In coach development, I write from the viewpoint that we can always learn from ourselves as much as from others. I write to show that coaching is about who we are as much as it is about what we do. I also recognize that mechanics of what we do, the drills and games we use, are the building blocks we use to show what we believe about sport, competing, growing, and about the people we work with. To do that, I’ll bring in other coaches to share drills and games and we’ll dive into them together to see what those things say about us and the athletes we work with.

To quote D.L. Cooperrider, I write to create “a provocative and inspiring statement of intention that is grounded in the realities of what has worked in the past combined with what new ideas are envisioned for the future.”

What Drives Me?

I want to inspire coaches to become mindful, purposeful, and proactive in their coaching and help them create and develop the tools to do so.

After coaching for many years, I felt like I had accumulated enough experience to merit sharing with others. Over the years, I have discovered that many of the conversations I had with my peers would leave me feeling like I had a point of view that was not widely held or considered. With so many part-time or less-experienced coaches entering the ranks, I felt that it was more valuable for me to share my thoughts with a wider audience rather than lament the lack of deep thinking in our community.

I hold a Master’s degree in Learning Science and Human Development and I am using that to bring an academic perspective to our practice. I continue to study coach learning and development and I am striving to bring what I learn to how I work with coaches.

In addition to mentoring and coaching, I also work as a Technical Coordinator in women's college volleyball, meaning that I spend a great deal of time collecting and analyzing data about the game at a high level. This experience has also given me insight on how we as coaches and athletes view statistics as well as how we use those statistics to inform training and competition. My job also requires me to collect and analyze video for use by our players and coaches. I am at my best in my job when I am connecting video, data, and learning.