The Fearless Warrior Podcast

065: How Team Mental Skills Training Paid Off For Blair Softball with Head Coach Jennifer Fangmeier

• Amanda Schaefer

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Jennifer Fangmeier is the head softball coach at Blair High School in Nebraska. As a coach, she has focused on intentionally building a culture that fosters unity and success and has done that by keeping her program athlete focused. In our episode today, she talks about how fostering mentorship relationships between her athletes as well as prioritizing rest has helped shaped a team culture that consistently performs well at the highest levels.

Episode Highlights:

  • How to create a positive team culture
  • How to cultivate mentorship in your program
  • How to listen to what your athletes need to be successful
  • The importance of rest

Connect with Jennifer:

Twitter @BlairBearSB1

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the fearless warrior podcast, a place for athletes, coaches and parents who know the value of a strong mindset. I'm your host, coach AB, a mental performance coach on a mission, former softball coach, wife and mom of three. Each episode we will dive deep into all things mental performance, mindset tools and how to rewire the brain for success. So if your goal is to gain the mental edge and learn the secrets of mental performance, mindset tools and how to rewire the brain for success, so if your goal is to gain the mental edge and learn the secrets of mental performance, you're in the right place. Let's tune in to today's episode.

Speaker 1:

Jennifer Fangmeier is the head softball coach at Blair High School For the past seven years as head coach and even longer as an assistant. She knew that she wanted to build on the culture at Blair and the results speak for themselves. In that time, the team has had four state qualifications and last year her team made it to the championship game of the Nebraska High School State Tournament and received runner-up in Class B. The 2024 season this year brought new challenges after graduating a majority of their starters, and this year's team had one lone wolf senior. They were young, but they were prepared to rise to the challenge. I got to walk alongside her coaching staff as their mental performance coach as we implemented my brand new team curriculum. You will hear Jen talk about their intentional culture and what gave them success this year as they made a state berth.

Speaker 1:

After many thought this would be just a rebuilding year. It was that, and so much more. I can't wait for you to hear this episode. So, with that, let's dive in now. Jen, welcome to the pod. Thank you, thanks for having me. I'm so excited to hit record and finally bring some of our conversations to the public, not only because I have loved watching you coach, but you are doing some really, really cool things even before working together. And so let's just start with where you at. What are you coaching? Who are you for everyone listening? Give us the. Give us the download.

Speaker 2:

Sure, um, well, I've been with the Blair softball program in Blair, nebraska, since 2009, I think, but I've been head coach for the last seven years. Maybe, I don't know. They've all blend together but, um, each of them so different and enjoyable. But, um, yeah, I've been a part. They all blend together but each of them is so different and enjoyable. But, yeah, I've been a part of the Blair program for a very long time. Yeah, I've been the head coach. We have three teams JV, reserve and Varsity and I get to have my hand in a little bit of every team, which is also really wonderful. I'm very lucky. I have some awesome coaches which you can always talk about later, um, that I get to work with. Uh, yeah, so I mean, we've been, we've had a couple of great runs the last few years and seen a lot of success, and we have a really large um youth group. So, um, I'm excited that the program will keep growing and getting bigger with each year it passes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and one thing that that was interesting for me. So for context, I used to coach at a school in your conference, so we were head coaches against each other, which is hilarious, because you know we go back and we're like give me all your secrets, what are you doing? We're in the same conference and one of the things that I've always admired is, even from the outside, blair has this rich history of even when I was a player at my alma mater. Blair has this culture that is so ingrained that has never really faltered. Like it's just, it's there, it's palpable, you can feel it.

Speaker 1:

And what I always assumed from the outside and I've never admitted this to you Blair has always been that intimidating team of like you better get your scouting report ready. It's going to be a dog fight. Like you have a really great talented team, but now, working with you on the mental skills side as a coach, working in tandem with you, one of the things that I noticed about your culture is you guys just are so matter of fact, when it comes to when really good things happen, you guys are even keel. When really bad things happen, like you just have this presence at the helm as the head coach of like hey, I have your back no matter what, and it's almost it shocked me of how calm of a coach you are and your girls. It's like they're sitting on pins and needles waiting to hear what you have to say.

Speaker 2:

How have you built that? You know? Um, it's funny because I was a college athlete as well as softball, and I think I've always been pretty calm. I'm very competitive, but I try to like keep it locked in a little bit and not necessarily um show like when I'm frustrated or angry, just because I think that gave me like a mental edge. If I was, I didn't make an error If I didn't get on base, like, okay, I'm just going to remain calm and confident and I'll just get it the next time, and then my opponent won't see that I might be struggling mentally. So I think the same thing goes when you're coaching too. So if you get down, or your team gets down, or they make mistakes or things start spiraling Like, you have to maintain that calm confidence where they know that I am 100% confident in them. And it's about respect too.

Speaker 2:

I think, um, there's never like an uneven balance of power within my coaching staff or even like my players. So they know like they have a concern, they can come up and talk to us, and that's one thing we always talk about our players Like if something, if you're struggling with something, please come talk to us. We want to make sure we're approachable, but that also comes with respect and also just that calm demeanor, like I don't really see the need of like yelling at an umpire or yelling at a kid. There's instances where I've had to be stern, but that's always usually done like in a one-on-one setting, or if it is something that needs to be addressed to the team, we address it outside of a game, maybe like the next practice 24 hours later, so, but in the moment we just really maintain like composure and try to stay even keeled throughout the game.

Speaker 1:

And that doesn't mean that your team lacks energy. Like hanging out with you guys in the dugout the energy is is, it's loose, it's fun, but when it's time to get down to business, really your team does a really great job of carrying that energy through. Watching you guys, um, just at everyday season games, but then also at the state tournament, you know where the pressure is high. Can you talk about kind of the evolution of your season? What? What did this season look like for you guys?

Speaker 2:

You know, um, a lot of people talked about our last year season where we graduated, you know, nine seniors um coming into this senior or this year's season. We didn't have a single player that would be starting in the position they were in last year. So we had two returners, um Brooke Janning, who was our right fielder, um who became our starting pitcher, and then Claire Anderson, who was our third baseman, who bumped over to shortstop, and everybody else was new. So, um, from an outsider's perspective, everyone's like, oh, I don't know how Blair is going to be this year. They're going to be down. You know the offense is going to be, you know, not there. I don't know what they're going to be like defensively. But as a coaching staff, we're like we're going to be good, like we knew we were going to be good. We knew what we had like behind those seniors last year. So, coming in after our first week of softball, we're like, yeah, we have something special, and nurturing that special talent that we had all season was something really important to us and then ended up winning districts, making it to state, which we were really, really proud of.

Speaker 2:

One of our goals early on in the season was to make it to state and then eventually, towards the end, we're like, okay, we want to be at the top. So we fell to Beatrice our second round. Hats off to them. They played a really great game and they hit Brooke really well. Came back, played GI Northwest who we fell to in the championship game last year at UNL, and had a great game and beat them. And then after that we played Hastings and tipped our hats to them because they were ready for us and they played well and that knocked us out of the tournament. So it was bittersweet. I mean, we had a great run, super proud of the young athletes that we had on our team, and we just know that our future is really bright by how hard they worked all season. They weren't ready to give up.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that's evident. I think towards the end of the season you get a lot of tension, a lot of pressure. I think it can be easy to get to the state tournament and then have this expectation. You know, you guys were in the semifinals last year what what kind of conversations did you have with them towards the end of the season when they started to realize, oh my gosh, like we, you're, you were right coach, Like you believed in us. But then they kind of had that epiphany themselves of wait, we are good, we do belong here.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and our mantra we try to pick a mantra every year in this year's was day by day and we truly did live by that. So we knew, like sub districts, we got to just win through sub districts and it's district finals and it's game one which I mean, you know, like coaching at state, especially when you have a young team, that first game can dictate the rest of the tournament. And we were kind of nervous for, like okay, well, how are our girls going to react? You know we've only had two that have actually played in state.

Speaker 2:

Um, but we were really loose and they just took it like any old game and we were kind of shocked by that. We thought they'd be more nervous, um, but they played it just like any other tournament. So the pressure, I don't think they felt it nearly as much as they could have, um. But we also say, like we put pressure on in practice, like that's your opportunity to, like you can make mistakes, you can die for that ball that maybe you don't normally die for. Like you can put some extra pressure there in practice time and then when you come to games, like the pressure should be off. You've already done the hard work that we just have to make something happen.

Speaker 1:

I love that and I want to key into that. Before we get into the mental side of it, I want to key into the physical side. So give us a behind the scenes. How are you pushing them to failure? How are you communicating that it's hey, if you're going to fail, we want you to fail. At practice, what are those conversations like? And how would you tell another coach that's like okay, obviously you've had a successful program, but how, how, coach, how are you doing this?

Speaker 2:

Um, I think it. It does come down to a lot of our cultural things. You know, with three teams and just under 40 girls, we start our practices the same way every day. So our girls I think this is this is a fun little like inside scoop that our girls do, and it's been going on since I've been there they all meet in the parking lot before practice and they all wait till everyone is there and then they come down together as a one whole team and I love it. I don't know when it started, but I mean they do it for every single game, every practice, and then we all sit together as one big unit, because we are one unit like reserve, jv and varsity. We are all one team shooting for one big, massive goal. But also they also have like 13 goals and individual goals. We talk as a team, we warm up as a team. I think that's really important and it also gives some of our younger girls maybe who are aspiring to be at that next level, they can see okay, this is what it looks like to play catch when you're on the all-state team, like what does that look like?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we also do what's called like specialty groups, um, softball season. You know, in the fall is so fast and furious, so we don't get to do it often. But we'll do a specialty group where we have, like, all our middle infielders will work together, whether they are freshmen, sophomore, junior, senior, reserve, jv varsity, they'll all go together. Our catchers will all go together, our outfielders will go all together Another opportunity for them to work with someone that might be at a different level than them, also a mentorship type of field too. So, like some of our older girls might be able to mentor those younger girls and showing them that it's okay to fail, and we talk about that too. We don't yell at them, we don't do like foul poles or anything like that, but we just tell them like, hey, this is your time. Like, go for that, protect that line on third base. They miss one, we'll hit them another one. Just oh, yep, one step over and just do it until they feel successful.

Speaker 2:

And then we usually break off into our three teams and do what's needed for that team and we structure our practices. If we had a game the night before and maybe we needed to work on cutoffs, and then we would practice cutoffs the very next day, we address maybe some of those weaknesses, which is why I like really starting our schedule really fast, furious and usually pretty intense in some class A tournaments. It exposes some of our weaknesses early and then we're able to find those out the beginning of the season, rather than like easing into the season and then finding some of those things out in late September, october. But yeah, those conversations with girls, I feel like they're pretty straightforward and the girls will ask us and we'll put them in groups and say, like this is what we're working on today. We keep missing those shoelace catches in the outfield or the in-betweeners. Let's work on those today, like it's okay if you miss, we don't care, like we want you to perfect that before we get to our games.

Speaker 1:

And I think the key that I want everybody to hear you saying is that communication right. So you're breaking that down. You're calling out the good things. We're talking about what. Hey, tomorrow, you know this could have been better after the game recap, and when you come at it, what I admire most about your coaching is that you really are matter of fact. There's no guilt there, there's no nuance, it's literally hey, we need to work on this. So therefore, I got you, we're going to push you to failure.

Speaker 1:

Practice, and if you can't emulate this, I'm trying to think of the travel coaches. If you don't coach a high school, there are teams that are starting to pick up these organizational practices, and so if you're a 14, you playing with an 18, you, I think there's a temptation of, oh well, we're not going to be as efficient or it's going to slow us down. And they've actually done studies on the Kohler effect, where, when you combine multiple people together, the group increases their ability because they rise to the level, versus working on these skills alone. And so what a beautiful example of no wonder you guys were successful, because, even though you lost nine seniors, if this is how you've been practicing, there's less of a gap, I guess for a jump up. That jump up isn't as scary because for the last how many years these underclassmen, you know, even if they were a freshman or sophomore you were very underclassmen heavy. They prepared and they felt that.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, yeah, A hundred percent. And I have an opportunity to work with club my oldest is in 11 U now, so I feel like the head coach for her team does the exact same thing. She's like we're going to, we're going to prep them for high school already and they're you know, some of them are sixth graders and it's just a few years away and by you know, practicing with older teams or having scrimmages with older teams and having that piece where you see others, um, providing you an example of where you need to be, I think is so important.

Speaker 1:

So good. Okay, we're going to shift gears into the mental side Sounds good. This again. I know I'm giving you so much praise, but give praise what praises do. So even before I came on as a mental performance coach for your team, you were already doing wellness Wednesdays, which you and I have talked about a lot of other coaches, especially in the environment of high school softball. We only have nine weeks, 10 weeks If you do post-season, it feels like the pressure of we only have so much time, but then when we zoom out and we look at it, we're asking our players to practice every day after school, monday through Friday, and then we start throwing games in there. What is your approach for your practice plan for the week? And talk about wellness.

Speaker 2:

It gets kind of crazy. And you know, I initially hadn't done wellness Wednesdays and I think because when we first started I had felt like almost like a sense of guilt, like oh, I don't want them to think I'm lazy, Like we're not planning practices, Like we should be out there and should be hitting seeking grounders. But then, after the first year of doing it, I really saw the benefits in our girls One, I feel, like school-wise, they were on top of it. We didn't have a single girl during season that was on like our like Dean's list, I guess you could call it, which was amazing because we did have an opportunity to do that.

Speaker 2:

But going back to schedule, I guess Mondays, you know, we'd be pregame usually which pregames? We try to keep light, we try to keep simple, just kind of fine tune anything that we might need to. Tuesdays, usually games. And then Wednesday we did our wellness Wednesdays. So our girls had a shirt that they wore every Wednesday. Somebody in the community usually donates it, Sometimes a parent will donate it, which is wonderful, and we put our mantra for the year. So we had our day by day on the front and then we'd meet in one of our high school teachers rooms and they'd have their little envelope or their folder that had all their materials in it and we do what's called Big Sister Little Sister.

Speaker 2:

So at the beginning of the year our captains for our varsity assign Big Sister, Little Sister, which is just an opportunity to communicate with somebody in our program that maybe they don't get to communicate with a lot, and the little sister can ask questions to the big sister and we give them 10 minutes at the beginning of Wellness Wednesday to sit and chat with their big sister. They go around the high school, they find a quiet spot it could be about softball, it doesn't have to be questions about class or maybe something they're struggling with at home. And then we come back and we went through your Warrior Wednesday, Fearless Warrior program and it was amazing. And then sometimes we maybe go hit for 10 to 15 minutes, but normally we would just send them on their way or go do our.

Speaker 2:

Our parents provided us meals on Wednesday night so we'd go on the cafeteria and we'd eat a big meal together and then send them on their way and the next day we'd usually play and it was great because our girls felt, felt rested, and I think that's one thing that I've grown to appreciate about doing those Wednesdays is listening to our athletes bodies. Um, they are just kids and um, but aspiring for bigger things and they need a rest. They need rest time and downtime. Going out to the field for an hour and a half after a long night and preparing for a day, another long night the next day, I think giving them that time just to like recuperate and mentally like reset is important.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, and I think, going back to the fact that they're kids, I think we get so caught up in keeping up with the Joneses that we look at the teams in our conference. We look at class A, class B, class C, and if we zoom out and we say, okay, how do I feel as an adult when I work a nine to five, we get to clock out at five o'clock.

Speaker 2:

They don't, they get done with school and then they have more practice, and then they're expected to go to hitting lessons and pitching lessons, and then when are they getting their homework in? And so I love that you're walking the walk, talking the talk. You're actually giving them, um, that space where mentally they you said at one point in our conversations that they know that they can look forward to that. Yeah, they do. And we check into with our captains. We're like hey, how do you feel this week? Like, do you guys need a short practice tonight? Are you okay to go long?

Speaker 2:

Sometimes on Fridays they're like, hey, I know we had a long, like we're going to be home late tonight from our Thursday game, but can we do a morning practice so we can go support our football players? And I'm like, absolutely. So we might not want to do it, but I mean, it's not about us, it's about the kids and they want to go support their friends. And we say, absolutely, We'll just do a morning practice and then they can scoot on out after school. So we really try hard to listen to our athletes and what they need, and they don't take advantage of it either. They're really respectful and I think that goes along with like having that mutual respect between the two of us. There's no none of that imbalance of power.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, and I think this could be said for parents too. If, if you're listening to this conversation and you're thinking, man, when is my daughter's rest day? Because it's tempting, you know, mondays is hitting, tuesdays is pitching. Then we sign up for strength and conditioning and, um, jen, sometimes I'll have one-on-one clients that I'm meeting with after my kids go to bed. Sometimes I'll have sessions with athlete athletes at nine o'clock at night, which, if they're on the East coast, it's 10 o'clock.

Speaker 1:

And I've even started to look at this of like, at what point are we sacrificing their rest, physically, but also mentally? Of? Um, I know that, um, a big talk right now is cortisol, like hormone, balance it and rest and getting eight to 10 hours of sleep, and the younger they are, the more sleep that they actually need. And so some of these girls that are staying up till midnight or 1am because they're doing homework, it's like, let's, let's zoom back. Parents, like, let's, let's zoom back. Um, so let's kind of talk about can you give me a quick picture? What impacted your decision to bring me in to work with your team? At what point were you like, hey, I think we need to like, look at something different. Let's bring Amanda in what was that conversation with your coaching staff Like?

Speaker 2:

um, well, I love getting your email, so that's one thing. I'm like, ah, and coach Macklin's a huge fan to my assistant coach and um, we, every year we try to like have a theme. Um, like, I read Zig Ziglar's Me Too, at the Top for last year, and so we structured a lot of our activities around this book, even though it was more business geared. But we can trans, we could translate it into like softball world too, and I think for me, I like I'm obviously I still love school, I'm going to school, I teach still, so, um, I like learning new things and I'm like I also can see when, like, I've kind of probably reached my max in like my knowledge in a certain area.

Speaker 2:

So I felt like we needed to outreach to somebody else to see who's an expert in that area and provide us with some more tools for our girls. And having such a young team this year, I just felt like this is the perfect time. We have a young team this year. I just felt like this is the perfect time. We have a young team who's really going to grasp on to these ideas and really took hold of everything that you taught them and is using that in their softball career and hopefully other sports as well.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. Do you remember what were your team dominant colors?

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, so we did. Yeah, we did do our colors assessment and I gave that this summer. Um, we were mostly blues and oranges and we had gold. So, um, we had one green and that was my, my solo senior. So, um, they really leaned into the color assessment and I love it too because I'm a blue. All my assistants are golds, except for one who's an orange, um, which she brings like the life of the party too. So she's super fun and I do love having my assistants be gold because they are so responsible.

Speaker 2:

I get things done. I'm getting better at delegating things. Um, there were six of us on staff this year. We had a couple of volunteers, which was really nice, um, but in my blue, like in me, like I am more a little bit emotional and they can kind of keep me in, keep me aligned. Same with my one senior that we talked a lot about, like how to lead as a green, how to lead as a blue, and she'd be, she'd have to have a tough conversation with the kid and she'd go can you like give me some blue ideas so I can like be nice, but then sometimes I feel like I need to channel her green too.

Speaker 1:

So but I think sometimes we get so lost in like, okay, we know that we are coaching individuals, but how do we coach our individuals? And what I love about the color personalities is, even if you don't remember, you know, does this kid respond to being pushed? Does this kid not respond? You can look at their colors and kind of get a quick overview. I used to do this all the time when I coached. I would save our color photos. I have all of the girls hold up their colors in a picture and I would save that picture and go back and reference it, find the kid I needed to talk to. And just a quick reminder for myself, like, oh my gosh, they're an orange. How do I speak to an orange? And it just like from girl to girl culture, wise, coaching, wise. Um, I have so many notes that like we could talk about. But the question I have for you is which? Which skill out of the entire curriculum do you feel like your girls keyed into the most? Which one did they really latch on to?

Speaker 2:

I think we really liked like the mood I'm trying to remember what it was called. It was towards the end, where we um identified like what we look like when we are like feeling down and then what we look like when we're like ready to go and like naming, our naming our people on. We had our positive pickles and we had our pouty pickles yes and um, which penelope our pickle. That was involved in our dugout all year long, which we loved, um, but I think they really latched on to that because that was something that we could use right away. Um, we could easily. We came up with all different funny gestures that you know. We decided on something simple and it was right before post-season. So I felt like they were really invested and they actually took account of okay, yeah, I can tell when we're like starting to like be in a lull and then that energy would need to get like hyped up again, and it was just a quick, easy reminder. So I felt like they really I feel like they liked that one.

Speaker 1:

But I think what also gave you guys success is that it wasn't just something that happened on a Wednesday and stayed in their folders or stayed in the classroom. You did a phenomenal job of integrating it. Your girls were talking about it. You had Penelope in the dugout, which is a little. It's a pickle, it's like a knitted pickle. So every game there was the pickle, there's the reminder, and so you know what good is mental skills, what good is bringing in a mental performance coach just lives in that bubble of of Wednesdays.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I had one of my reserve parents and this is probably probably one of my like big success to you Um, one of my reserve girls. It was about the buckets and like what bucket are your parents in? This is an earlier lesson which I also really, really loved and it brought up some hard conversations with some of the girls. But one of our girls said something, her mom said something to her in the game and she yelled to her mom, mom, get in the right bucket.

Speaker 2:

And mom laughed and she's like, oh gosh, she's like whatever you guys are doing is really working and she was able to have that healthy conversation with her mom at home and then able to actually say something and mom understood what she was talking about. And then mom's like, oh yep, I need to make sure you know I'm just in the praise bucket, not sitting there trying to give her direction. But I also thought that one was really valuable but yeah, a really hard conversation for some of our girls.

Speaker 2:

I walked around and talked to them. I'm like, okay, where do you feel? Like you know certain people in your life. What buckets are they in? Are they in the right ones? And a lot of them are like ah, and then just trying to figure out how to talk to their family members about, or coaches about, being in the bucket that they really want them to be in.

Speaker 1:

So I thought that was a really good lesson and the feedback from your team going through this brand new curriculum, of the conversation we had of how to make this curriculum better. Parent resources, I think is the first thing on my list to make better of how do we help bridge not only the coach player, you know gap and communication that you guys have on Wednesdays, but then how do we take that beyond? I think it's going to be so valuable because, I mean again, like you said, they can apply this to their other sports, their winter sports, their spring sports, their club teams. Your parents are going to be there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and that is the thing especially being a mom too, like I want to make sure I'm involved in my kids, like their journey, but I want to make sure I'm doing it in the right way. So I mean, they look at me and I'm like, oh yeah, my mom coaches, but I also. But I also want them to look at me and be like, oh yeah, that's my mom. So, but I also want them to look at me and be like, oh yeah, that's my mom. So I try to wear my mom hat as much as possibly can, unless they ask me to, like you know, be in the other bucket and I will. But, um, I want to make sure I support them the best I can. So I think parent resources are going to be really beneficial for anybody who's looking to improve the mental health of their athlete.

Speaker 1:

So good. What else would you say if a coach was wanting to implement curriculum? What, besides setting aside the time right, we set aside a time practice plan. How else did you use it? One of the things that you mentioned to me was you know, you had their folders. You pre-pinted the worksheets that I provided. What else would you recommend if a coach was whether it's a travel coach, club coach, high school coach? What's your recommendation to make mental training a success?

Speaker 2:

I think you really, as a coach, you really have to believe it and like buy into it too, Like you have to make sure you're watching the videos, you have to make sure, like you're prepared and you understand what's going on and then try to incorporate it throughout the week the best you can. Um, some of those, some of the lessons you know you're talking a little bit more personal information, so you're not going to probably address it in front of a whole group, but, um, I think you really personally, as a coach, have to buy in, and if you don't buy in, your kids aren't going to buy in. The same thing If your coach, if your kids don't think you're going to win, like if you not going to think they can win. So, anything you do, you have to do it all in all in, or nothing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love that Well, um, one of the questions that we always ask as we're kind of shifting, um, unless there's anything else you want to add about, you know, mental performance, or I guess maybe this would be a good question. It kind of ties in. One of the questions we always ask on the podcast is you are a time traveler and you could go back and give your past self one message. What would that message be? And I kind of want two answers on this. One would be when you first started coaching, and the other can just be any point in your life.

Speaker 2:

I think for me it would probably be when I first started coaching to like be willing to like make mistakes Like it's okay and like I do this in my classroom too. Like kids need to see that you make mistakes all the time. Like I have no ego when it comes to like making a mistake and like, if I make one, like I'm like oh, I shouldn't have stole you, like that is on me and I will say that to the girls. I'll be like that one's on me, that is my fault, or I should not have thrown you out at home. So I think, like being willing to make mistakes early in my career would have been something I would have told myself. I do them now all the time, like make them all the time, but when?

Speaker 1:

I'm younger, but I think that's why you get so much buy-in from your girls. I look at them and I know your program is rock solid because they are, they're leaning in, they're listening to you and and we don't always see that I didn't see that and I made those same mistakes as a young coach. But no wonder your girls are bought in because they know you have their back and vice versa. You're being vulnerable, of like if I'm asking you to fail, then I'm also going to admit when I fail. Oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

I do all the time More than them. So, yeah, I would say for sure that would be one thing. And then, like, just the confidence piece, like knowing that like you're there for a reason, like be confident as a coach, because I think sometimes, like, if you do lose or there's been seasons where we haven't been, you know, we've been hanging around 500 and I wanted that really big winning season and I, I think for me it'd be like what did I do wrong? Like how could I have made this better? But then realizing, like you know, there was some really good things that happened in that season and I should be really proud of it. So, like that confidence piece too, there's always room for growth. But I feel like being confident as a coach is something that it's taken a while to get there and I, I still battle with that every day. Um, but yeah, I would say future self, or future self and past self, like be confident.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and you love what you do and I can tell that you're passionate coaching, so it's never left. I love it. I am your biggest fan. I will keep cheering you on. I love working with your team and I know you've got a busy day to get back to, but thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom and some of your behind the scenes of your successful program. I know that so many coaches listen to this and if you're hearing this and you're a coach and you have questions, jen, what's the best place to follow you? Would it be Twitter, instagram?

Speaker 2:

Twitter's probably our best place. That's where we're probably the most active, so, but yeah, twitter's probably where you'll find us.

Speaker 1:

Sounds great, we'll tag that in the show notes Sounds great. Well, thanks for your time today.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, it was so nice to see you again, so, and we'll talk soon. Lots to talk about, of course.

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Amanda Schaefer

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