June 13, 2025 ⢠48 mins
đď¸ The Mind Behind the Athlete: Coaching Commitment with Dan Mickle
 In this powerful episode of Significant Coaching, Matt sits down with Dan MickleâHead Volleyball Coach at York College of Pennsylvania and a nationally recognized performance psychology expertâfor a conversation that goes far beyond the court.
Together, they explore how being part of a college athletic program prepares student-athletes for life after sportsâjobs, relationships, and the kind of long-term commitments that truly matter. They dive deep into the mental side of athlete development, why mental toughness is more than a buzzword, and how coaches can shape character just as much as skill.
They also get honest about the goodâand the not-so-goodâof the club volleyball scene and how itâs shaping athletes before they ever arrive on campus.
Coach Mickleâs dual expertise as both a collegiate coach and performance consultant makes this a canât-miss conversation for anyone serious about coaching with impact.
đ Be sure to check out Mattâs newest resource for softball familiesâThe Softball Recruitâs Journal. Itâs the ultimate step-by-step guide to navigating college recruiting, now available with two awesome covers to choose from.
Visit coachmattrogers.com for books, free resources, podcast episodes, and to schedule your free coaching or recruiting strategy session today.
Learn more and connect with Matt Rogers here: https://linktr.ee/coachmattrogers
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
one of my biggest sayings rightoff the bat every year for my
team is buy-in does not require.
Consensus commitment doesn'trequire consensus.
If we sat here and voted oneverything that we were going to
do, we would get nothing done.
Your buy-in is, I trust whatwe're doing and I trust where
(00:21):
you're taking us.
Welcome to significant coaching.
The show where we go beyond theX's and O's to talk about what
truly shapes athletes, collegeprograms and people.
This week's conversation is oneI hope every parent, coach and
student athlete listens to, notjust to learn more about the
game of volleyball, but tounderstand something much
bigger.
(00:42):
The power of commitment.
When your child joins a collegeathletic program, it's not just
about playing the sport theylove at the next level.
It's about stepping intosomething that if done right
will prepare them for.
Everything that comes aftersports.
A team commitment should mirrorthe kind of commitment they'll
one day give an employer thekind of sacrifice,
communication, and consistencythat healthy relationships,
(01:05):
professional and personal arebuilt on.
And today with Coach Dan MiCell,we break that down.
Coach Mickel brings a rare andpowerful perspective.
He's not just the headvolleyball coach at York College
in Pennsylvania.
He's also a sports performanceexpert with deep roots in sports
psychology, coaching at theParalympic level, and working
(01:26):
with elite athletes around theworld.
He understands the mind behindthe athlete and the reality
behind the recruitment.
We also didn't shy away from oneof the most talked about yet
rarely unpacked topics in youthathletics, club volleyball, the
good, the bad, and the sometimesconfusing messages it sends to
athletes about priorities andpressure.
(01:48):
You'll hear some hard truths inthis one and hopefully some
clarity too.
Whether you're a high schoolcoach, helping guide your
athletes, a college coachshaping your program, or a
parent trying to help your childnavigate this massive journey,
this conversation matters.
So let's get to it.
Here's my conversation withCoach Dan Mickel.
I.
Coach, so great to see you.
(02:08):
You and I have had some greatconversations over the last
couple weeks and months, andit's been a real pleasure
getting to know you.
I want to dive right into yourcoaching history because you
began coaching when you were 18,like me, right?
I.
We were both real young.
Yeah.
You were working, literallygraduated high school.
Yeah, I did the same thing.
You were working with peers justoutta high school.
(02:31):
How did that unique start shapeyour approach to being a leader
and a mentor?
I always say when I bring upthat story that I got, I.
A good chunk of the bad stuffout early.
Yeah.
It shaped me because I think Iwas still in that I'm still a
player or I'm still close tothat age, so it was easy to
(02:53):
learn some of the things of whatI went through at that age
versus being a coach.
I think it would've been reallytough starting my coaching
career and getting that sameperspective later.
Having a much bigger gap thattends to happen.
Yeah I'm so jealous of you.
'cause you're doing a thousanddifferent things.
I know there's days where youjust feel overwhelmed.
You have so much that you'retrying to do with all the roles
(03:15):
that you play and the big roleyour wife is working to play in
our world, I.
I'm jealous because I wish Icould take all that information,
all that failure success that Ilearned as a young coach and go
back and do it again.
I've got a 12-year-old and a16-year-old, so it's hard for me
right now to go back intocoaching because they're, they
(03:39):
need me so much, and so I reallyappreciate that experience that
I had, and I wish I was using itmore today.
Let's jump into the fact thatyou were an assistant at York
and then you transitioned tobeing a head coach in 2017.
Were there some lessons thatwere really pivotal in that
transition?
(03:59):
Are there things that you'velearned that really influenced
your coaching style?
Being an assistant first?
Yeah I guess the craziest partabout the whole story was I had
zero ties to the school.
I live.
And have always lived about 30minutes from the campus, but
have was never there.
(04:20):
I didn't know the coach.
I knew no one there.
I just woke up one day aftercoaching high school for 15
years and I was like, I wantsomething different and new.
So I just picked up the phoneand called the coach and said,
Hey, do you need some hands?
Can I help?
Can I volunteer?
Sue at the time said my, my paidassistant just had to step down.
(04:43):
Do you want the paid, you wannaapply for the paid spot?
I was like, sure.
So I think that was unique inthe fact that I went in there
with nothing.
I didn't know the coaching styleof the coach.
I didn't know anything about theschool, who they played, what
their conference was like.
Like I just knew nothing.
And I think that was the biggestlesson because I had to go in
with blind.
Like I just didn't have.
Any ideas.
(05:03):
And I think that stuck with meand carries through the fact of
trying to always look at thingsas if I haven't been there
before.
And that's been a huge part forme.
Each year resetting and lookingat it like, this is my first
year here.
For me I, it's I went throughthe same thing.
My first college job as anassistant, I got a job as a
(05:24):
residence life director.
But I knew I wanted to coach andI walked into the coach's office
and just said, Hey, do you needsome help?
And he said, absolutely, we'lltake you.
And so I.
I've always been that coach andI think you have been the same
way where when somebody calls meand they want to coach and they
wanna break in or they wanna getstarted, I have a hard time
saying no to that.
(05:46):
'cause I know what that did forme and what that did for my
career.
Just somebody saying, yes, comein and we'll teach you, we'll
teach you how to do this.
Yeah I'm always amazed by thestories I hear about closed
practices and closed gyms andTom Tate, who was one of my
mentors.
Basically founded all of PennState volleyball.
(06:06):
Both the women's and the men'sstarted those programs and went
on to be one of the cadremembers with me at USA
volleyball.
But he, he was telling storiesabout he would go to work
clinics and he would try to getin the gym and they were closed
and he would leave, he justwouldn't do the clinic.
He is like.
Why wouldn't you have your doorsopen?
This isn't an environment that Iwant to coach in or help in if
(06:29):
you're that closed.
And so I'm always open.
I would, I love having playerscome back to help.
I ha I love having high schoolcoaches stop by and just chat.
I think at least I.
Once a year for the last eightyears, we've had high school
coaches come in that just comeand watch practice.
I'm like, no, I don't want youto just sit there and watch.
(06:49):
I want you what are you seeing?
Like how are you doing it inhigh school?
And that's been fun just makingthose connections as well.
That's great.
I see.
Am I reading the right, you justhired a new assistant?
I did.
I did.
My previous assistant, who I'veknown for years before he was
even my assistant, had to stepdown.
And we had to do a search.
(07:09):
And man, you think it'd be easy,right?
Everyone talks about how theywant to coach, but it was tough
finding candidates, let alonepicking a candidate.
And just hired Sam young guy.
Great.
Coached a couple years at highschool and club, and.
Man, he gets it.
Just from that very first timewe talked, the philosophy's
meshed.
But it was very evident that hewasn't going to be like the yes
(07:32):
type assistant coach.
He's going to challenge me, andthat's what I need.
I want someone to challenge meas a head coach.
Yeah.
I'm with you there.
I never wanted anybody that waslike me.
I always wanted somebody, thatopposite person that would come
in and say, have a differentperspective, different way to
see things.
So that's really cool.
I'm interested from yourperspective, since you just went
(07:54):
through this, were there certainthings you were looking for in
terms of experience or was themeshing part the ability to, to
you just to connect to them?
Was that more valuable for you?
There were a couple things.
The volleyball community isreally small.
(08:14):
I.
And I know that we'll expandmore on this, on the recruiting
talk that we'll have in a littlebit.
But for me, the relationshipsare really important.
And when I reached out to peoplethat we had in common, everyone
came back with the same thingabout Sam.
Like he's gonna be a good fit.
He's a really good coach, but healso gets the non on the court
(08:38):
stuff as well.
Yeah.
And because of my day job anddoing the sports psych stuff, I.
Finding someone that has, atleast, I don't need full buy-in.
'cause I get it.
A lot of people don't understandthe mental side yet and we're
still growing it.
But I needed to find someonethat wasn't going to be like,
no, we can't do that.
We need to have court time.
(08:58):
So that was huge to me.
What does he do off the court aswell?
I could go watch him, he's aclub coach at a local club, so I
could go watch him, coach, andI've seen him coach.
That's the easy part.
I knew he had the volleyball.
I wanted to know what it waslike when the lights were off in
the gym.
Yeah.
And it also turned out that mydaughter is.
(09:20):
Playing club with one of hishigh school players.
So there was a little Hey, whatdo you, and before that player
even knew Sam was interviewing,my daughter was doing the, Hey,
so what do you think about yourcoach?
Is he a good guy?
Basically interviewing throughthe, through his high school
player.
But that's a huge advantage.
It is and it helps that mydaughter is a mini me.
Like she is going to make anamazing coach when she's ready
(09:43):
to start.
So it's crazy how much I trusther judgment as well.
So for me it was just askingaround I can look at win losses,
I can look at what his programswere like, but I just need to
know what do people say?
When you're out at the bar aftera tournament, what are people
saying about that coach?
Yeah.
And he just checked all theboxes.
That's great.
And for young coaches that arelooking to get into the world of
(10:06):
coaching or looking to move onto a different job, those
references are huge.
You're not, when you put thosereferences on your resume, man,
you gotta make sure that they'repeople that are gonna be honest
about you.
They're not sick of fans wherethey're just gonna say nice
things about you.
They could talk about yourstrengths and weaknesses and
talk about your character andhow you relate to the kids.
(10:26):
So I love that.
I wish I would've done morenetworking like that as a young
coach.
Like I think my path would'vebeen a lot quicker.
Yeah.
Had I done that, but like Ididn't go to the con, like I
went to clinics.
I did everything I could tolearn the coaching in a sport of
(10:47):
volleyball, but I brushed offthe social part, the networking
and hanging out at theconventions and just picking
people's brains.
I wish I would've done thatmore.
And I think that's a bigcomponent that's still missing.
I think that's why you and Ihave clicked so, so well, is I'm
the same way.
I did every coaching clinic.
I did every camp I could, but Idon't remember ever once going,
(11:11):
Hey, coach, I would love tocoach at your level.
I would love to be an assistantfor you at some point.
If there's anything I can do, Inever did any of that.
I just got really lucky when Ineeded a job.
I would make a call and somebodylike you, somebody needed a,
somebody assistant just left andthey needed somebody right now.
And I got lucky.
I, but it's such it's a skill Ithink to be able to do that.
(11:35):
It absolutely is.
And I think that's probablywhere I've grown the most too
is.
Recognizing when someone shouldreach out and maybe this
person's uncomfortable, so howcan I get them comfortable and
get them involved?
Yeah.
Is a skill that I've probablylearned the most.
I.
This podcast has been reallygood for me because I've had to
(11:55):
just pick up the phone and callcoaches and just say, Hey,
really love what you're doing,respect what you're doing with
your program.
Love to have you on and talkabout coaching, talk about
recruiting.
And I've just, it's been reallygood for my soul.
I would bet 70%, 80% of thecoaches I reach out to say,
yeah, let's do it.
And the ones that don't, it'stypically'cause they're just
uncomfortable.
(12:15):
They're uncomfortable havingthese conversations, but most of
the coaches have been justreally grateful.
So that's been really good forme.
'cause again, I've never beengood at that.
And it makes it fun.
I wanted to have you on, Iwanna, I want to transition here
because of your unbelievablebackground with sports
psychology and what you arereally doing.
(12:39):
In your world and how you'rehelping kids, how you're helping
families, how you're helpingcoaches, and what you're doing
to make this crazy world that welive in with coaching the
stress, the anxiety that we seekids go through what you're
doing to.
Come up with strategies to takesome of that pressure off of
(13:01):
kids and make sure they'refinding that joy.
So what are let's start withjust daily practices.
Now that you get to breathe alittle bit, most of your, you
just sent your kids home for thesummer, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
We ended well contact days We'vebeen done since middle of April,
but school just ended finalswere this last week.
So talk about that.
(13:22):
How are you incorporating, andyou mentioned that with your
assistant as well, how are youincorporating mental training
into your daily practices?
Yeah it's tough.
Like you would think that,because that's what I do.
For my main job that it would beeasy.
But one of the challenges isit's hard to get the team to
(13:44):
look at me as either the coachor the sports psych guy.
Yeah.
So I try to, I have to find thatbalance in what we do.
And I like to bring in outsidepeople for the sports psych
stuff.
Some of the stuff that I couldeasily do, I do we use Neuro
Fuel, which I think is anamazing program.
It's an app for a whole season.
(14:06):
Dr.
Larry, like they, they did agreat job with it and it's
volleyball specific and it's allstuff that I could do, like
visualization scripts,breathing, but it gives them a
different voice to hear andsomething different to use.
Getting the players to buy intothe fact that this is integral
(14:27):
and needed, took a while to makethat transition.
Everyone thinks that it's almostlike recovery.
Everyone thinks if you're notgoing full speed in the gym,
you're not working hard.
We don't think about how much weneed to schedule and do
recovery.
It's the same with the mentalside.
We can't just pepper it in hereand Hey, we're gonna have a one
hour seminar here.
(14:47):
It really is.
We have to integrate it everysingle day.
And for us it's, every practicestarts with a five minute
visualization and breathingexercise.
How we talk, how we communicate.
We work that all year long.
Our preseason, we start and welay the groundwork of what,
what's it like to be a teammate,how are we gonna communicate
with our teammates?
(15:07):
And we really spend this year, Ithink we have nine, nine or 10
days in our preseason.
So we'll do an hour a day for 10days straight, just on what's it
like to be a team, what's itgood to hold each other
accountable?
What's our mental, routine,whether it's breathing,
progressive muscle relaxationbut that's.
(15:28):
It varies by year.
Some years you have some reallyhigh functioning kids that
aren't too anxious, so we workon keeping them calm and,
keeping their mood swings evensometimes you have really
anxious kids so that we spend alot of time working on pre-game
jitters and nerves and the yips.
So each year it just takes awhile to dial it in and figure
out what that team is and whatit's going to be like.
(15:49):
So things like the breathing andthe relaxation.
Will happen every year that's agiven.
Everything else is adjustableand depends on what the player's
like.
And this year I'm gonna have aroster of 21 with nine of them
being freshmen coming in.
So that means I got nine peoplethat are gonna have to learn a
whole new style of how we dothings.
And some of our returningplayers are gonna have to learn
(16:10):
new ways to communicate withthis class and that's the big
challenge I think.
I think the biggest problem thatwe have in this particular space
is everyone thinks it's just aone size fits all.
Hey, what can we do breathingwise?
What can we do?
It's just not, it's just likestrength and conditioning.
It's like everything else.
It's personal.
Yeah.
I'm really curious to what thebuy-in looks like now that
(16:31):
you've been doing this for anumber of years.
When do you know that your teamis starting to buy in?
When you're talking about anhour of mental training and team
training.
What is the, when do you knowthey're buying in?
I always do something completelywild, crazy weird, just to see
if they're like, okay, let's doit.
(16:52):
One year it was okay, we aregonna write in our journals
today, but everything has to bewith your non-dominant hand.
Yeah, I love that.
And everyone started doing it.
I'm like no, I'm, I just wantedto see if you guys were buying
in.
And that's how, no onequestioned it.
Yeah.
No one was like, why are wedoing this?
They just realized that if I'mtaking the time to do it, then
(17:15):
there's gotta be a reason forit.
Yeah.
And I don't know if this kind ofgets off track a little bit, but
that goes to my, you mentionedbuy-in and that's huge for me,
and one of my biggest sayingsright off the bat every year for
my team is buy-in does notrequire.
(17:36):
Consensus commitment doesn'trequire consensus.
If we sat here and voted oneverything that we were going to
do, we would get nothing done.
That's right.
What I need you to do is nomatter what we decide, you have
to know it's coming from a goodplace.
So your buy-in isn't necessarilyalways, I'm buying in that this
(17:59):
is what we're doing and I agreewith what we're doing.
Your buy-in is, I trust whatwe're doing and I trust where
you're taking us.
And that's a big difference.
So many people try and get itto, I just want you to buy into
everything.
No, I don't mind if you questionme, why are we running this
offense?
Why are we doing this?
(18:20):
But I don't ever want you toquestion whether or not it's
valuable to be doing it.
Yeah.
Otherwise we wouldn't be.
Are you finding that you get thefeedback you're hoping for, or
does that take some time?
It takes time.
The, I'm trying to walk thatthin line of politically
(18:40):
correctness, but we get a lot ofkids coming in from club
volleyball that are broken likeon many levels.
Yeah.
They're not treated withrespect.
Their opinions aren't valued.
They're also super controlledand micromanaged, and that's
probably what we battle in ourgym the most for the first month
(19:01):
or so, is failure, is growth.
Like it's okay, we can fix that,but I need you to be honest with
me, and it takes a while to getthere because you're
deprogramming some pretty badyears at times.
And it's not always.
Sometimes we get, and again,this will go into the recruiting
(19:23):
and how we recruit, butsometimes you get those kids
that are ready to go and theyget it.
Yeah.
But there's just a lot of timethat, you know, kids like tweak
the muscle and they hide it fromyou, and then it becomes a
bigger issue because they'reafraid because somewhere along
the line they knew that, oh, Itold my coach, they pulled me
and I never saw the court again.
Or kids that are struggling witha.
(19:46):
Really high level class and theyneed to take a test, but they're
afraid to ask for the practiceoff to go study.
'cause they're afraid they'renot gonna see the court.
They're gonna get benchedbecause they're not there.
And letting them know hey, justbecause you missed practice,
like it's one thing if you'regoing to a Taylor Swift concert
or you're sitting on the coucheating some Cheetos and miss
some practice, but you're astudent athlete.
(20:06):
I know that's so cliche.
We're a student first, athletesecond, but I truly believe that
and getting them to understandthat.
Going to the trainer and gettingtreatment doesn't mean you're
benched.
It means I want you to be thebest you can be and let's make
sure I will play you if you'rehurting, as long as it's not an
injury.
(20:26):
You know what I mean?
If it's not damaging to you andit's just okay, my arm's gonna
be sore a little bit because I'mgetting worked.
Yeah.
I'm not gonna bench you forthat.
Now it's different if you knowyou got a joint thing or
something's going on.
There's just this mentality of,I'm weak if I tell you I need a
break.
Yeah.
And that doesn't help anyone.
(20:48):
It's, and it is so sad, becauseso many kids when they go to
college, I.
They have no idea how to have arelationship with a coach or at
least a healthy one or alearning relationship.
So I found myself over the lastfour or five, six years, the
first thing I say to my kids inthe preseason when we do the
(21:09):
individual meetings is, your jobright now, your number one job
is to figure out what kind ofrelationship you want with me.
'cause that's the relationship Iwant with you.
It's not, this is how I want youto play.
This is how I want you to react.
You're gonna do it this way.
It's, you decide what you want.
That relationship you want tobe, you want it to be fun, where
(21:31):
we're teasing each other andwe're high fiving, and I, you
make a great plan.
I can push you and you know thatI'm proud of you because I'm
pushing you.
Or is it, is it hands off?
Especially when you're coachingwomen, right?
Yeah.
Do you see that as an importantpart of performance coaching?
Absolutely.
That's on both sides.
(21:51):
The mental performance side andjust the volleyball coaching,
that's a huge component.
Getting to know those playersand being a male coach of a
female sport, what are thoseboundaries?
And it is pretty much unique foreveryone.
I have some players that it'slike, Hey, we're gonna fist
bump, we'll talk at thewhiteboard.
(22:12):
Then I'll have some players thatare like, Hey, I'm coming up to
your office and we're gonnawatch this film and we're gonna
hang out.
But both of those relationshipsare huge for me, and neither one
feels slighted by the other.
Like they understand this iswhat I need.
I don't care what anyone elseneeds.
It's okay that one player isalways up with coach.
I don't need that.
And they don't look at it as anadvantage or a disadvantage.
(22:35):
It's just that's therelationship that we have.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's so cool.
That's what we want, right?
This is, that's why we do this.
And, I'm not a, I'm not ayeller.
In fact, every year with myperformance review, it's always
the same thing.
You are so stoic on thesidelines that maybe at times
it's a detriment.
Like I'll let my assistants gocrazy and I want to be the, the
(22:57):
rock, right?
But I tell my players.
The very first week or so,because it's a mix, right?
High school, college is sodifferent than everything else,
even club, because you are trulypulling people from so many
different demographics andsocial, areas.
(23:20):
Whereas like high school.
Most of the people are the samebecause they all live in the
same area, so they might bedifferent, but they still have
some of the same common grounds.
And same with clubs.
You only pull from so manymiles.
So even though kids may not goto the same high schools or
middle schools, they still kindahave the same sense of things.
With college I'm pulling fromall over the country, even
international at some times.
(23:41):
So it's like just setting thetone and letting them know where
you stand.
And one of the first things Isay is, Hey, look I'm not a
yeller.
I don't swear a lot, but I will.
But if anybody is going to beoffended, just let me know and
I'll try really hard to curb it.
And usually it's, no, we're finewith it.
You know what I mean?
But, and I also tell them like,if you need pushed more, tell
(24:03):
me.
Don't be afraid to come up andbe like, you need to push us
more.
Now's the time to drop thehammer in.
And that happened twice lastyear, my assistant coach had to
leave.
I really think we were maybe 10matches into our 30 match
season, and he had to step down.
So it was me and my volunteeror, and my other assistant
(24:24):
Brandy, who is awesome, butshe's super limited.
She's a mom of two kids.
She's a school board director.
Like I was lucky if I would gether one or two days a week.
Yeah.
So most of the season frommid-September until November, it
was just me.
My team was so awesome at comingup and saying, you need to be
harder on us.
You're not pushing us hardenough right now.
(24:44):
Or, Hey, we're slacking off.
Blow the whistle.
Make us do something to refocus.
That's great.
Me, that's goes back to likewhere you went when we started
this.
When do you have buy-in?
And to me, when your team, andnot just the captains.
When your team is not afraid tocome up to me as a coach and
say, you're not pushing us, orThis is what I need, that's when
(25:08):
I know that they're buying in.
I think there's so much maturityin that because we talked about
how a lot of kids don't know howto have a relationship with a
coach when they get to college,or they only know one
relationship with a coach.
Yeah.
And it may be different with youand it may be, it maybe needs to
be different.
Yeah.
But I think the idea of yourkids saying, I wanna be pushed
(25:33):
harder is a testament to notonly you, but maybe the
diversity of where you'rerecruiting from and what they're
coming in with and the toolsthat they're coming in with.
And they're realizing maybe Ididn't like before being pushed
hard, but now I'm starting torealize how important it is that
I do get pushed, that somebodyis pushing me past where I think
(25:54):
I can get to.
Do you, are you seeing that?
Yeah.
Yeah.
There I think there is amisconception of coaches
dictating or demanding what theywant being pushing a kid, and
(26:15):
that's not always the case.
Yeah.
There's a huge differencebetween music A coach yelling
and making the kids do this anddoing that.
Versus finding out what myplayer's limits are and then
pushing them that way.
But I think people automaticallyassume a coach.
That's tough and a coach that'syelling is pushing a kid, and
that's not always true.
(26:35):
Sometimes it's damaging, butsometimes it's just beneficial,
so it's just, again, taking thattime to, to learn coaches and
this is what I tell club playersall the time, is you shouldn't
be waiting for the offer.
To ask about the coach.
That should be one of the thingsyou are like, if you are
thinking about, ah, I mightswitch club this year, you
(26:56):
better be scouting the potentialcoaches at the new club that
you're looking at trying outwell before tryouts.
'cause you're gonna have two orthree days of two hours to try
and get to know a coach that'sgonna basically be in front of
you for nine months outta theyear.
And I just don't think there'senough research on that side
either being done.
I agree.
And boy does club.
(27:17):
Club make it so hard, especiallywhere I live in Denver, where we
have a hundred different clubswithin two hours.
There's just what we do to thesekids' brains before a season in
the middle of the season, at theend of the season, the off
season with how they're, howthey have to make decisions and
when they have to makedecisions.
It's, I don't know how you canbe a 15-year-old volleyball
(27:39):
player anymore and not have somesports performance issues
because of it.
It's crazy.
Like it just, we switched, Ithink it's been three years now
that we switched to summertryouts.
We used to, our region used tohave tryouts in November after
the girls' high school season.
But we switched to a end of Julynow, and I just remember we got
(28:01):
back from nationals in, the veryend of June and beginning of
July at 15 U and we had one weekoff.
Then it was open gyms and thentryouts for the new club season.
And it's tough and I don't know,I don't know that there's a
solution'cause there's so manydominoes with that.
It's really easy to say, theyshould just push tryouts back
(28:25):
like they used to be.
And I get that.
Except, these big tournamentsand these big qualifiers require
payment and you gotta book thehotels and for years in our
region.
We were paying entry fees andbooking hotels before we had
tryouts.
So you hope that you werefilling those teams, you hope
those teams happen, and then ifthey didn't, you had to beg to
get your money back from thosetorment directors.
(28:46):
So there's just so many movingparts.
I just don't know what thesolution is.
Other than and I per, I, Iactually said this years ago and
I got laughed out of the roomand whatever.
We should just all do ittogether.
I was watching Friday night,tykes, the football thing on
whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's like how San Antoniodoes it.
(29:07):
Every kid that's going to playMidget Peewee football in San
Antonio shows up to the samearena, like the Alamo Dome or
something on the same weekend.
And every team that's in thatregion is there.
And you get to meet with them,interview with them, and do all
that stuff.
Sounds smart to me.
(29:28):
But the problem is.
I can't have the side deals, theback deals.
Yeah.
We can't have those discussionsto try and lure you to my club
because it's all out in theopen.
Yeah, and I don't know if thereis a good fix.
I think for me, the best way tofix club volleyball is to just
shorten the season.
(29:48):
I think way too long.
I think if there's no volleyballfrom November 1st.
To I, I'd even go as far asFebruary 1st, where, the season
starts in February.
We play till May Nationals arein June, and you're done.
I think that would be the bestthing.
(30:08):
'cause then kids are getting abreak after their high school
season, then they can go playbasketball, they can wrestle,
they can they can have a trackseason, they can play tennis,
whatever that may be.
Everybody wants a multisportathlete until that multisport
athlete's on your team, and youhave to figure it out.
That's right.
Everyone will tell you everyhandbook.
We love multisport athletes andwe love working with the
(30:28):
basketball coach.
Until that kid's on your teamYeah.
Then you never see them untilthe season begins.
Yeah.
And then it's a challenge.
I have a track jumper.
One of my main outside hittersis a track jumper.
I told her like, don't show upat all for any spring.
Like you're in track season.
Do whatever you need to.
That's right.
Again, it's not like you'resitting at home not doing
(30:49):
anything.
You are practicing, running andjumping.
We'll get the volleyball.
Yeah.
You know what, and this is whyyou're a good coach and the
this, and there's, I would saythere's 65, 70% of the coaches
in the country are like you andme, where they're gonna say that
even though deep down you wantthem to be at spring practices
and you wanna be able tointegrate and there's team, you
(31:11):
know what's best for that kid isfor them to focus 100% on their
team, their track coach, andwhatever they're doing to get
ready for that, for those meets,right?
Yep.
As long as we're putting thosekids before our own needs we're
at least winning the day there.
And when I was coaching club, Iwould always call or email the
(31:38):
other coaches, Hey, my name'sDan Jenny's playing volleyball
for me this year.
I understand she's on your highschool basketball team.
That's absolutely a priority.
I just wanted to see these areour key dates.
Can we work something out?
And it was always a negativeresponse.
Always.
(31:59):
Always.
That's so sad.
It's just so sad.
No.
Jenny knows the schedule and sheneeds to be here for all those
events, and yeah.
Okay.
And then we're making kidschoose between basketball and
volleyball or softball andvolleyball.
It can be worked out, but yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the days of the one one dayevents are gone.
Everything's a travel event,everything's an overnight event.
(32:22):
I, no one talks about it.
Like we see it all the timeonline, like forums where
everyone's complaining about thetravel costs and another weekend
away from home.
And my ma my grass isn't gonnaget mowed, but there's a whole
population that never sees theirkid play.
Or like my grand.
My daughter's grandmother hasn'tseen my kid play in four years
because everything's a travel.
(32:42):
Like my parents aren't gonnatravel to see their
granddaughter play in Georgia.
I'm with you.
I wanna talk about your greatblog that you write and
specifically you wrote onecalled, you wrote a blog called
How I Grew to Resent the Sport ILove and you talked about
burnout and I think everythingwe've been talking about at this
point kind leads up to this.
(33:03):
Are there things that you'recreating, developing to help
with that burnout?
When we're talking aboutmulti-sport athletes, we're
talking about kids that arebasically playing year round.
Is there ways that we can givethese kids a break when there's
really not a break build in?
Yeah.
One of the things that I've beenworking on is like, how do we do
(33:25):
that for everyone?
Because it's the kids, it's thecoaches, it's the parents,
everyone gets burned out by it.
So one of the things I've beenreally working on is what
science is behind burnout.
And we know that there's a lotof things that help it.
Again, the normal stuff, youneed more sleep, you need to
meditate or, whatever.
For me, I think it's more aboutwe gotta get to the point where
(33:48):
we can develop boundaries andjust say, no, I'm not training
today, or This is too much, or.
Just kinda looking at schedulingit out.
I think a lot of burnout comesfrom people not looking big
picture scheduling wise.
Like for example, you know thatyou're gonna be playing in a
(34:09):
qualifier this weekend and wehave two practices this week, so
that's not a problem.
We're gonna practice Tuesday andThursday, catch our flight on
Friday, play Saturday, Sunday,but.
No one's thinking about what amI going to pack?
When am I going to do my schoolstuff?
So taking a time to look at theschedule and saying, okay, maybe
we don't practice that Thursday.
What are we really going to gainfor that 90 minute practice
(34:32):
before a qualifier?
Technically by practicing versusgiving my kids time to pack, get
their homework done, get thingsdone, so when they're traveling
and they're gone.
And I think for me, that's thebiggest thing is we gotta start
looking at what's involved withthese events.
Because our kids aren't eatingwell at these events because
food's horrible.
(34:53):
You can't bring your own foodin.
Some of these kids get there fora two o'clock match.
You're running two hours behind,so you're not getting out of the
venue until 10, 11 o'clock atnight and you're in a town that
nothing's open.
And if anything is what's gonnabe able to handle a team of 11
or 12 all at the same time, at11 o'clock at night to eat.
(35:14):
So there's just so many factorsthat we don't look at and we
need to build in those breaks.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was really impressed this yearwith my daughter's club season.
We had a couple tournamentsearly on where, there's always
that morning and afternoonsession where there were no
games from 11 to 12.
(35:35):
So if you wanted to drive downthe street a couple blocks and
go get something to eat, or ifyou wanted to bring your own
food and have a little picnicoutside, or, there was a little
bit of space inside where youcould do that, but at least
there was that time where like,all right, everybody's gonna
take an hour off.
Everybody's gonna breathe,everybody's gonna go eat.
If you wanna take a nap, you cantake a nap.
So I, it was so small.
(35:56):
Insignificant in nature, butwhat I thought that did to the
girls and their mentality andthe coach's mentality, I thought
it was, I thought it was sosmart, but I haven't seen it
since.
I haven't seen anybody do thatsince.
Yeah.
And when you look at theschedules, some of these
schedules are crazy.
You have kids play, work, play,work, play off, like just.
There's no you think, okay,working, we're not playing, but
(36:18):
like your lines, people arestanding there, they're
literally standing there for anhour right after they just got
done playing and then they gottaplay again.
Or you can't eat at the scoretable while you're doing the
scoring.
There's just so many things thatare just going against the
athlete that I think if wereally sat down and said, how
can we look at this?
(36:39):
How can we make this schedulebetter?
Yeah, we probably could.
I and maybe I'm being naivehere, but I don't think there's
enough of that nationaltournament mentality where, all
right, we're gonna put everybodyin groups.
You're gonna compete in yourgroup for this many months, and
then we're gonna take, the toptwo are gonna go to this next
level, and the next two aregonna go to this level.
(37:01):
And we're gonna, we're gonna,we're gonna be smart about how
we pyramid this.
There, there just doesn't seemto be any of that.
Now and there won't be justbecause of all the different
governing bodies.
10 years ago on the boys side,let's say we were 98%, 99% USA
volleyball, now we're 98% a U orJVA,'cause some things happened
(37:26):
and people weren't happy.
We're gonna go over here and au's gonna help do it the way we
wanna do it.
So there isn't a lot ofcollaboration between the
governing bodies, which thentrickles down that there isn't
much collaboration, between theclubs.
Yeah, it's you and I.
We could have a whole podcastjust on that topic.
I want to, I wanna dive intoyour coaching with the
(37:46):
Paralympic games and the greatwork you've done.
Winning some gold, winning thegold, the silver medals.
Talk a little bit about how yougot into coaching the
Paralympics, what that's donefor you as a coach, what that's
done for your soul.
Yeah, so that whole story isreally interesting.
We.
(38:06):
At one of the convention, one ofthe A VCA, the American
Volleyball Coaches Association.
They do, yearly conventions andit's always on site during the
final four week for women'svolley division one at that host
city.
And I got to meet.
And really become friends withsome of our sitting volleyball
players, our national teamplayers.
(38:28):
And I really wanted to getinvolved, but at that time I was
doing a lot of beach stuffbeach, high performance, beach
coaching, education, all that.
And we were approached inPittsburgh.
There was talk that they weregoing to start doing.
Para of beach volleyball, whichwould be standing, not sitting,
(38:48):
volleyball in the sand teams ofthree.
And Bill, who is the women'scoach for the sittings team, and
basically the director for thepara teams said, would you and
John who's a great friend ofmine that has still to this day,
does a ton of work withpara-athletes.
You are the beach guys.
Would you guys interest in beinglike the para of beach guys?
(39:09):
And so it just started and wewere looking at, okay, who do we
have on the sitting side that wecould transition to the beach
that would be able to do both?
What's this look like?
Because everything, curriculumwise has always been written for
sixes, sitting or standing sixesor doubles, beach doubles, but
there was nothing for trips.
(39:30):
Like how do we, and luckily Igrew up in Pennsylvania, we play
a lot of grass triples.
So the strategy, was like, okay,what do you know?
How do we do and what we do it?
We got some grant funding and wewere training and the crazy part
was, we're training our beachteams, but we had to do it in
Oklahoma because that's whereour sitting teams were and
that's where all the staff andthe resources were.
So we're in, March, April inOklahoma is cold and.
(39:55):
Rainy and miserable.
But we were out there trainingat one of the facilities had two
beach court, it's two sandcourts with their indoor
facility.
So we were out there trainingand we just started going.
And the biggest holdback orproblem was a lot of it's
self-funded.
So when it was for worldchampionships in China we only
had such limited money, so a lotof it was gonna be out of
(40:16):
pocket, so that, that's been theholdback and.
Para beach didn't, has still hasnot gotten sanctioned as a world
para volley, I forget what theycall it, but it's not an
official Olympic sport.
Like we didn't make it into LA20, we didn't make it into
France and we didn't make itinto to LA as an official sport.
(40:37):
So because that we don't get thesame funding.
So when COVID hit and moneystarted getting tight,
everything got cut down.
Yeah.
But.
All that to say, it's probablybeen one of the most rewarding
things I've ever done.
'cause it, it is completelydifferent and it's great and
it's amazing, but it's, I don'tknow, like there was so much
(41:00):
growth from me as a coach.
What do I do?
A story I tell, which is funny,is, we had to drive from the
dorms where we were staying atcentral Oklahoma or UCO, I think
it is, university of CentralOklahoma to the courts.
So we'd have to, all get in therental cars or the vans and
drive the players over.
And it was like day one.
And we're driving over and wegot five miles.
(41:21):
And one of the girls was like, Ileft my arm back at the dorm.
I was like, wait, what?
And she's literally, I don'thave my arm with me.
So we had to like, turn aroundand, go back and get it.
You don't hear that every day asa coach.
And things like.
No one, like none of us, eventhe athletes, no one really
thought too much about it, butlike sand getting into the
(41:43):
hydraulics of the leg, theprosthetic legs, and gosh, how
to keep that clean.
Like things like, we just neverreally thought about that.
It was more, we were so worriedabout like, how do we do trips
and who do you put at the net?
Do you put your more mobileathletes at the net or do you
put your more, like how are wegonna do this?
So that's so wild.
(42:05):
'cause those kids Yeah.
Wanted to play and they knewthey had some skill and, yeah.
Yeah.
And we just started doing morecamps.
We got a great funding from then re foundation out of Florida.
So we moved most of our trainingcamps down to Hickory Point the
Florida region and Steve Bishop.
Worked their tails off to get usmoney and we got to work out and
train there, partnering with theA VP.
(42:27):
So they would do an event thereand we could do a showcase in
between the event so peoplewould get awareness of it.
That's great.
So it was amazing.
It's just, things are comingback, but it's still been tough
with COVID.
We weren't a sanctioned Olympicsport or a Paralympic sport, so
we're not getting the fundingmuch like snow volleyball,
before be before the pandemic.
(42:47):
Snow volleyball was getting abig push as well.
We had teams that medaled LOYball and a bunch of those guys
that medaled in the indoorOlympics went on to play and
medal in some of the snowvolleyball stuff.
But again, the, just the fundingand how it worked, it wasn't
there.
So from the para beach side,things have been on hold a
little bit, so hopefully that'llbe coming back.
(43:08):
Cool.
I'm glad you had thatexperience.
It sounds wonderful.
It just sounds like a just agreat thing for a group of un
unprecedented can't think of theword I want to use, but the kids
that don't get the attentionthey deserve and yeah.
Underrepresented misunderrepresented, that's the
word I was looking for.
Wanna go rapid fire with you?
Do a little, do some fun stuff.
Just get your thoughts realquick on certain things.
(43:29):
What's one word that describesyour coaching style?
Chill.
That's, that that's what theword in my gym is.
I'm the chill coach.
I love it.
What's the most impactful bookyou've read as a coach?
It is Zen.
Zen in the martial arts.
Love it.
Joe, the guy that wrote it, wasa student of Bruce Lee.
(43:52):
So it's all about the teachingsof Bruce Lee, but how to put it
into real life.
And I read it every single yearbefore the season starts.
I've never read it, but I'vebeen, it's been referred to me a
couple times.
I, I gotta go get a copy of it.
I love it.
Pre-game routine, you can'tskip.
Is there something that you doevery before, every game?
Yeah.
I eat a hot dog.
I don't know why.
(44:12):
It just it started when Istarted coaching high school.
Just the time constraint of,coming from a job or doing
something coaching.
And I just, I always, if it's agame day, I guarantee I've had a
hot dog.
I'm the same way every time I goto Wrigley Field.
I understand.
Biggest coaching, pet peeve.
Tradition.
We're doing this because that'sthe way we've always done it.
(44:34):
I am in the same boat with youthere.
That drives me crazy.
If you weren't coaching, andthis is hard because you do 90
different things, if you weren'tcoaching, what would you be
doing?
I'm addicted to video games, soI'd be a streamer playing video
games probably.
What's your go-to?
I'm a Call of Duty guy.
I'm probably two to three hoursa day like it.
(44:56):
It's a true addiction.
Does it relax you?
I.
I don't know if it relax me, butit lets me anonymously yell at
like little 13-year-old kidsover the microphone that don't
know who I'm.
So it's an outlet.
Do you want to give your handlejust in case somebody wants to
battle you?
Nope.
Nope.
Coach, thanks so much for doingthis first segment with me.
You're fantastic.
I highly recommend everybodycheck out dan mickel.com.
(45:20):
He's got a great podcast.
He writes an unbelievable blog.
He is a great mentor.
He is a great mental performancecoach.
The way, if he didn't realize itin the last 40 minutes, how how
his mindset works.
So please check out danmickel.com and I know you'll get
a lot out of it.
Coach again, thanks for doingthis.
(45:41):
Hope everybody comes back onMonday'cause you and I are about
to do some recruiting talk, sothanks for doing this.
Excited for it.
Thanks.
And that's a wrap on today'sconversation with Coach Dan
Mickel, one of the few people inour profession who can speak
with authority on both what ittakes to build a college team
and what it takes to develop themind of a high performing
athlete.
(46:01):
I hope today's episodechallenged you in a good way if
you're a coach.
I hope it reminded you thatdeveloping athletes isn't about
building stronger bodies orbetter skills.
It's about shaping strongerminds.
Teaching athletes how to handleadversity, stay consistent under
pressure, and commit to theprocess even when the results
aren't immediate.
(46:22):
Mental performance isn't abonus.
It's the foundation if you're aparent or athlete listening in.
I hope this helped connect thedots between being a good
teammate today and becoming adependable employee, a loyal
partner, and a grounded leadertomorrow.
And before we go, let me giveyou a heads up on Monday.
Coach Michel and I continue theconversation over on the
(46:44):
Significant Recruiting podcast,and I'll be honest, I'm
apologizing in advance if itoffends anyone.
That's not our goal, but we'retalking about some taboo topics
in the world of recruiting.
It's real, it's honest, andwe're okay.
If it sparks some debate, youwon't wanna miss it.
As always, you can subscribe toboth the significant coaching
(47:06):
and significant recruitingpodcasts wherever you listen.
And check out all of my books,including my new book, the
Softball Recruits Journal, nowavailable with two awesome
covers to choose from.
You can also find tools, freedownloads, and more resources
for families andcoaches@coachmattrogers.com.
And don't forget, if you want toschedule a free strategy session
(47:29):
for coaching or recruiting, justhead to my website.
I'd love to connect.
Until next time, lead withpurpose, coach with
significance.
Thanks for listening.
one of my biggest sayings rightoff the bat every year for my
team is buy-in does not require.
Consensus commitment doesn'trequire consensus.
If we sat here and voted oneverything that we were going to
do, we would get nothing done.
Your buy-in is, I trust whatwe're doing and I trust where
(00:21):
you're taking us.
Welcome to significant coaching.
The show where we go beyond theX's and O's to talk about what
truly shapes athletes, collegeprograms and people.
This week's conversation is oneI hope every parent, coach and
student athlete listens to, notjust to learn more about the
game of volleyball, but tounderstand something much
bigger.
(00:42):
The power of commitment.
When your child joins a collegeathletic program, it's not just
about playing the sport theylove at the next level.
It's about stepping intosomething that if done right
will prepare them for.
Everything that comes aftersports.
A team commitment should mirrorthe kind of commitment they'll
one day give an employer thekind of sacrifice,
communication, and consistencythat healthy relationships,
(01:05):
professional and personal arebuilt on.
And today with Coach Dan MiCell,we break that down.
Coach Mickel brings a rare andpowerful perspective.
He's not just the headvolleyball coach at York College
in Pennsylvania.
He's also a sports performanceexpert with deep roots in sports
psychology, coaching at theParalympic level, and working
(01:26):
with elite athletes around theworld.
He understands the mind behindthe athlete and the reality
behind the recruitment.
We also didn't shy away from oneof the most talked about yet
rarely unpacked topics in youthathletics, club volleyball, the
good, the bad, and the sometimesconfusing messages it sends to
athletes about priorities andpressure.
(01:48):
You'll hear some hard truths inthis one and hopefully some
clarity too.
Whether you're a high schoolcoach, helping guide your
athletes, a college coachshaping your program, or a
parent trying to help your childnavigate this massive journey,
this conversation matters.
So let's get to it.
Here's my conversation withCoach Dan Mickel.
I.
Coach, so great to see you.
(02:08):
You and I have had some greatconversations over the last
couple weeks and months, andit's been a real pleasure
getting to know you.
I want to dive right into yourcoaching history because you
began coaching when you were 18,like me, right?
I.
We were both real young.
Yeah.
You were working, literallygraduated high school.
Yeah, I did the same thing.
You were working with peers justoutta high school.
(02:31):
How did that unique start shapeyour approach to being a leader
and a mentor?
I always say when I bring upthat story that I got, I.
A good chunk of the bad stuffout early.
Yeah.
It shaped me because I think Iwas still in that I'm still a
player or I'm still close tothat age, so it was easy to
(02:53):
learn some of the things of whatI went through at that age
versus being a coach.
I think it would've been reallytough starting my coaching
career and getting that sameperspective later.
Having a much bigger gap thattends to happen.
Yeah I'm so jealous of you.
'cause you're doing a thousanddifferent things.
I know there's days where youjust feel overwhelmed.
You have so much that you'retrying to do with all the roles
(03:15):
that you play and the big roleyour wife is working to play in
our world, I.
I'm jealous because I wish Icould take all that information,
all that failure success that Ilearned as a young coach and go
back and do it again.
I've got a 12-year-old and a16-year-old, so it's hard for me
right now to go back intocoaching because they're, they
(03:39):
need me so much, and so I reallyappreciate that experience that
I had, and I wish I was using itmore today.
Let's jump into the fact thatyou were an assistant at York
and then you transitioned tobeing a head coach in 2017.
Were there some lessons thatwere really pivotal in that
transition?
(03:59):
Are there things that you'velearned that really influenced
your coaching style?
Being an assistant first?
Yeah I guess the craziest partabout the whole story was I had
zero ties to the school.
I live.
And have always lived about 30minutes from the campus, but
have was never there.
(04:20):
I didn't know the coach.
I knew no one there.
I just woke up one day aftercoaching high school for 15
years and I was like, I wantsomething different and new.
So I just picked up the phoneand called the coach and said,
Hey, do you need some hands?
Can I help?
Can I volunteer?
Sue at the time said my, my paidassistant just had to step down.
(04:43):
Do you want the paid, you wannaapply for the paid spot?
I was like, sure.
So I think that was unique inthe fact that I went in there
with nothing.
I didn't know the coaching styleof the coach.
I didn't know anything about theschool, who they played, what
their conference was like.
Like I just knew nothing.
And I think that was the biggestlesson because I had to go in
with blind.
Like I just didn't have.
Any ideas.
(05:03):
And I think that stuck with meand carries through the fact of
trying to always look at thingsas if I haven't been there
before.
And that's been a huge part forme.
Each year resetting and lookingat it like, this is my first
year here.
For me I, it's I went throughthe same thing.
My first college job as anassistant, I got a job as a
(05:24):
residence life director.
But I knew I wanted to coach andI walked into the coach's office
and just said, Hey, do you needsome help?
And he said, absolutely, we'lltake you.
And so I.
I've always been that coach andI think you have been the same
way where when somebody calls meand they want to coach and they
wanna break in or they wanna getstarted, I have a hard time
saying no to that.
(05:46):
'cause I know what that did forme and what that did for my
career.
Just somebody saying, yes, comein and we'll teach you, we'll
teach you how to do this.
Yeah I'm always amazed by thestories I hear about closed
practices and closed gyms andTom Tate, who was one of my
mentors.
Basically founded all of PennState volleyball.
(06:06):
Both the women's and the men'sstarted those programs and went
on to be one of the cadremembers with me at USA
volleyball.
But he, he was telling storiesabout he would go to work
clinics and he would try to getin the gym and they were closed
and he would leave, he justwouldn't do the clinic.
He is like.
Why wouldn't you have your doorsopen?
This isn't an environment that Iwant to coach in or help in if
(06:29):
you're that closed.
And so I'm always open.
I would, I love having playerscome back to help.
I ha I love having high schoolcoaches stop by and just chat.
I think at least I.
Once a year for the last eightyears, we've had high school
coaches come in that just comeand watch practice.
I'm like, no, I don't want youto just sit there and watch.
(06:49):
I want you what are you seeing?
Like how are you doing it inhigh school?
And that's been fun just makingthose connections as well.
That's great.
I see.
Am I reading the right, you justhired a new assistant?
I did.
I did.
My previous assistant, who I'veknown for years before he was
even my assistant, had to stepdown.
And we had to do a search.
(07:09):
And man, you think it'd be easy,right?
Everyone talks about how theywant to coach, but it was tough
finding candidates, let alonepicking a candidate.
And just hired Sam young guy.
Great.
Coached a couple years at highschool and club, and.
Man, he gets it.
Just from that very first timewe talked, the philosophy's
meshed.
But it was very evident that hewasn't going to be like the yes
(07:32):
type assistant coach.
He's going to challenge me, andthat's what I need.
I want someone to challenge meas a head coach.
Yeah.
I'm with you there.
I never wanted anybody that waslike me.
I always wanted somebody, thatopposite person that would come
in and say, have a differentperspective, different way to
see things.
So that's really cool.
I'm interested from yourperspective, since you just went
(07:54):
through this, were there certainthings you were looking for in
terms of experience or was themeshing part the ability to, to
you just to connect to them?
Was that more valuable for you?
There were a couple things.
The volleyball community isreally small.
(08:14):
I.
And I know that we'll expandmore on this, on the recruiting
talk that we'll have in a littlebit.
But for me, the relationshipsare really important.
And when I reached out to peoplethat we had in common, everyone
came back with the same thingabout Sam.
Like he's gonna be a good fit.
He's a really good coach, but healso gets the non on the court
(08:38):
stuff as well.
Yeah.
And because of my day job anddoing the sports psych stuff, I.
Finding someone that has, atleast, I don't need full buy-in.
'cause I get it.
A lot of people don't understandthe mental side yet and we're
still growing it.
But I needed to find someonethat wasn't going to be like,
no, we can't do that.
We need to have court time.
(08:58):
So that was huge to me.
What does he do off the court aswell?
I could go watch him, he's aclub coach at a local club, so I
could go watch him, coach, andI've seen him coach.
That's the easy part.
I knew he had the volleyball.
I wanted to know what it waslike when the lights were off in
the gym.
Yeah.
And it also turned out that mydaughter is.
(09:20):
Playing club with one of hishigh school players.
So there was a little Hey, whatdo you, and before that player
even knew Sam was interviewing,my daughter was doing the, Hey,
so what do you think about yourcoach?
Is he a good guy?
Basically interviewing throughthe, through his high school
player.
But that's a huge advantage.
It is and it helps that mydaughter is a mini me.
Like she is going to make anamazing coach when she's ready
(09:43):
to start.
So it's crazy how much I trusther judgment as well.
So for me it was just askingaround I can look at win losses,
I can look at what his programswere like, but I just need to
know what do people say?
When you're out at the bar aftera tournament, what are people
saying about that coach?
Yeah.
And he just checked all theboxes.
That's great.
And for young coaches that arelooking to get into the world of
(10:06):
coaching or looking to move onto a different job, those
references are huge.
You're not, when you put thosereferences on your resume, man,
you gotta make sure that they'repeople that are gonna be honest
about you.
They're not sick of fans wherethey're just gonna say nice
things about you.
They could talk about yourstrengths and weaknesses and
talk about your character andhow you relate to the kids.
(10:26):
So I love that.
I wish I would've done morenetworking like that as a young
coach.
Like I think my path would'vebeen a lot quicker.
Yeah.
Had I done that, but like Ididn't go to the con, like I
went to clinics.
I did everything I could tolearn the coaching in a sport of
(10:47):
volleyball, but I brushed offthe social part, the networking
and hanging out at theconventions and just picking
people's brains.
I wish I would've done thatmore.
And I think that's a bigcomponent that's still missing.
I think that's why you and Ihave clicked so, so well, is I'm
the same way.
I did every coaching clinic.
I did every camp I could, but Idon't remember ever once going,
(11:11):
Hey, coach, I would love tocoach at your level.
I would love to be an assistantfor you at some point.
If there's anything I can do, Inever did any of that.
I just got really lucky when Ineeded a job.
I would make a call and somebodylike you, somebody needed a,
somebody assistant just left andthey needed somebody right now.
And I got lucky.
I, but it's such it's a skill Ithink to be able to do that.
(11:35):
It absolutely is.
And I think that's probablywhere I've grown the most too
is.
Recognizing when someone shouldreach out and maybe this
person's uncomfortable, so howcan I get them comfortable and
get them involved?
Yeah.
Is a skill that I've probablylearned the most.
I.
This podcast has been reallygood for me because I've had to
(11:55):
just pick up the phone and callcoaches and just say, Hey,
really love what you're doing,respect what you're doing with
your program.
Love to have you on and talkabout coaching, talk about
recruiting.
And I've just, it's been reallygood for my soul.
I would bet 70%, 80% of thecoaches I reach out to say,
yeah, let's do it.
And the ones that don't, it'stypically'cause they're just
uncomfortable.
(12:15):
They're uncomfortable havingthese conversations, but most of
the coaches have been justreally grateful.
So that's been really good forme.
'cause again, I've never beengood at that.
And it makes it fun.
I wanted to have you on, Iwanna, I want to transition here
because of your unbelievablebackground with sports
psychology and what you arereally doing.
(12:39):
In your world and how you'rehelping kids, how you're helping
families, how you're helpingcoaches, and what you're doing
to make this crazy world that welive in with coaching the
stress, the anxiety that we seekids go through what you're
doing to.
Come up with strategies to takesome of that pressure off of
(13:01):
kids and make sure they'refinding that joy.
So what are let's start withjust daily practices.
Now that you get to breathe alittle bit, most of your, you
just sent your kids home for thesummer, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
We ended well contact days We'vebeen done since middle of April,
but school just ended finalswere this last week.
So talk about that.
(13:22):
How are you incorporating, andyou mentioned that with your
assistant as well, how are youincorporating mental training
into your daily practices?
Yeah it's tough.
Like you would think that,because that's what I do.
For my main job that it would beeasy.
But one of the challenges isit's hard to get the team to
(13:44):
look at me as either the coachor the sports psych guy.
Yeah.
So I try to, I have to find thatbalance in what we do.
And I like to bring in outsidepeople for the sports psych
stuff.
Some of the stuff that I couldeasily do, I do we use Neuro
Fuel, which I think is anamazing program.
It's an app for a whole season.
(14:06):
Dr.
Larry, like they, they did agreat job with it and it's
volleyball specific and it's allstuff that I could do, like
visualization scripts,breathing, but it gives them a
different voice to hear andsomething different to use.
Getting the players to buy intothe fact that this is integral
(14:27):
and needed, took a while to makethat transition.
Everyone thinks that it's almostlike recovery.
Everyone thinks if you're notgoing full speed in the gym,
you're not working hard.
We don't think about how much weneed to schedule and do
recovery.
It's the same with the mentalside.
We can't just pepper it in hereand Hey, we're gonna have a one
hour seminar here.
(14:47):
It really is.
We have to integrate it everysingle day.
And for us it's, every practicestarts with a five minute
visualization and breathingexercise.
How we talk, how we communicate.
We work that all year long.
Our preseason, we start and welay the groundwork of what,
what's it like to be a teammate,how are we gonna communicate
with our teammates?
(15:07):
And we really spend this year, Ithink we have nine, nine or 10
days in our preseason.
So we'll do an hour a day for 10days straight, just on what's it
like to be a team, what's itgood to hold each other
accountable?
What's our mental, routine,whether it's breathing,
progressive muscle relaxationbut that's.
(15:28):
It varies by year.
Some years you have some reallyhigh functioning kids that
aren't too anxious, so we workon keeping them calm and,
keeping their mood swings evensometimes you have really
anxious kids so that we spend alot of time working on pre-game
jitters and nerves and the yips.
So each year it just takes awhile to dial it in and figure
out what that team is and whatit's going to be like.
(15:49):
So things like the breathing andthe relaxation.
Will happen every year that's agiven.
Everything else is adjustableand depends on what the player's
like.
And this year I'm gonna have aroster of 21 with nine of them
being freshmen coming in.
So that means I got nine peoplethat are gonna have to learn a
whole new style of how we dothings.
And some of our returningplayers are gonna have to learn
(16:10):
new ways to communicate withthis class and that's the big
challenge I think.
I think the biggest problem thatwe have in this particular space
is everyone thinks it's just aone size fits all.
Hey, what can we do breathingwise?
What can we do?
It's just not, it's just likestrength and conditioning.
It's like everything else.
It's personal.
Yeah.
I'm really curious to what thebuy-in looks like now that
(16:31):
you've been doing this for anumber of years.
When do you know that your teamis starting to buy in?
When you're talking about anhour of mental training and team
training.
What is the, when do you knowthey're buying in?
I always do something completelywild, crazy weird, just to see
if they're like, okay, let's doit.
(16:52):
One year it was okay, we aregonna write in our journals
today, but everything has to bewith your non-dominant hand.
Yeah, I love that.
And everyone started doing it.
I'm like no, I'm, I just wantedto see if you guys were buying
in.
And that's how, no onequestioned it.
Yeah.
No one was like, why are wedoing this?
They just realized that if I'mtaking the time to do it, then
(17:15):
there's gotta be a reason forit.
Yeah.
And I don't know if this kind ofgets off track a little bit, but
that goes to my, you mentionedbuy-in and that's huge for me,
and one of my biggest sayingsright off the bat every year for
my team is buy-in does notrequire.
(17:36):
Consensus commitment doesn'trequire consensus.
If we sat here and voted oneverything that we were going to
do, we would get nothing done.
That's right.
What I need you to do is nomatter what we decide, you have
to know it's coming from a goodplace.
So your buy-in isn't necessarilyalways, I'm buying in that this
(17:59):
is what we're doing and I agreewith what we're doing.
Your buy-in is, I trust whatwe're doing and I trust where
you're taking us.
And that's a big difference.
So many people try and get itto, I just want you to buy into
everything.
No, I don't mind if you questionme, why are we running this
offense?
Why are we doing this?
(18:20):
But I don't ever want you toquestion whether or not it's
valuable to be doing it.
Yeah.
Otherwise we wouldn't be.
Are you finding that you get thefeedback you're hoping for, or
does that take some time?
It takes time.
The, I'm trying to walk thatthin line of politically
(18:40):
correctness, but we get a lot ofkids coming in from club
volleyball that are broken likeon many levels.
Yeah.
They're not treated withrespect.
Their opinions aren't valued.
They're also super controlledand micromanaged, and that's
probably what we battle in ourgym the most for the first month
(19:01):
or so, is failure, is growth.
Like it's okay, we can fix that,but I need you to be honest with
me, and it takes a while to getthere because you're
deprogramming some pretty badyears at times.
And it's not always.
Sometimes we get, and again,this will go into the recruiting
(19:23):
and how we recruit, butsometimes you get those kids
that are ready to go and theyget it.
Yeah.
But there's just a lot of timethat, you know, kids like tweak
the muscle and they hide it fromyou, and then it becomes a
bigger issue because they'reafraid because somewhere along
the line they knew that, oh, Itold my coach, they pulled me
and I never saw the court again.
Or kids that are struggling witha.
(19:46):
Really high level class and theyneed to take a test, but they're
afraid to ask for the practiceoff to go study.
'cause they're afraid they'renot gonna see the court.
They're gonna get benchedbecause they're not there.
And letting them know hey, justbecause you missed practice,
like it's one thing if you'regoing to a Taylor Swift concert
or you're sitting on the coucheating some Cheetos and miss
some practice, but you're astudent athlete.
(20:06):
I know that's so cliche.
We're a student first, athletesecond, but I truly believe that
and getting them to understandthat.
Going to the trainer and gettingtreatment doesn't mean you're
benched.
It means I want you to be thebest you can be and let's make
sure I will play you if you'rehurting, as long as it's not an
injury.
(20:26):
You know what I mean?
If it's not damaging to you andit's just okay, my arm's gonna
be sore a little bit because I'mgetting worked.
Yeah.
I'm not gonna bench you forthat.
Now it's different if you knowyou got a joint thing or
something's going on.
There's just this mentality of,I'm weak if I tell you I need a
break.
Yeah.
And that doesn't help anyone.
(20:48):
It's, and it is so sad, becauseso many kids when they go to
college, I.
They have no idea how to have arelationship with a coach or at
least a healthy one or alearning relationship.
So I found myself over the lastfour or five, six years, the
first thing I say to my kids inthe preseason when we do the
(21:09):
individual meetings is, your jobright now, your number one job
is to figure out what kind ofrelationship you want with me.
'cause that's the relationship Iwant with you.
It's not, this is how I want youto play.
This is how I want you to react.
You're gonna do it this way.
It's, you decide what you want.
That relationship you want tobe, you want it to be fun, where
(21:31):
we're teasing each other andwe're high fiving, and I, you
make a great plan.
I can push you and you know thatI'm proud of you because I'm
pushing you.
Or is it, is it hands off?
Especially when you're coachingwomen, right?
Yeah.
Do you see that as an importantpart of performance coaching?
Absolutely.
That's on both sides.
(21:51):
The mental performance side andjust the volleyball coaching,
that's a huge component.
Getting to know those playersand being a male coach of a
female sport, what are thoseboundaries?
And it is pretty much unique foreveryone.
I have some players that it'slike, Hey, we're gonna fist
bump, we'll talk at thewhiteboard.
(22:12):
Then I'll have some players thatare like, Hey, I'm coming up to
your office and we're gonnawatch this film and we're gonna
hang out.
But both of those relationshipsare huge for me, and neither one
feels slighted by the other.
Like they understand this iswhat I need.
I don't care what anyone elseneeds.
It's okay that one player isalways up with coach.
I don't need that.
And they don't look at it as anadvantage or a disadvantage.
(22:35):
It's just that's therelationship that we have.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's so cool.
That's what we want, right?
This is, that's why we do this.
And, I'm not a, I'm not ayeller.
In fact, every year with myperformance review, it's always
the same thing.
You are so stoic on thesidelines that maybe at times
it's a detriment.
Like I'll let my assistants gocrazy and I want to be the, the
(22:57):
rock, right?
But I tell my players.
The very first week or so,because it's a mix, right?
High school, college is sodifferent than everything else,
even club, because you are trulypulling people from so many
different demographics andsocial, areas.
(23:20):
Whereas like high school.
Most of the people are the samebecause they all live in the
same area, so they might bedifferent, but they still have
some of the same common grounds.
And same with clubs.
You only pull from so manymiles.
So even though kids may not goto the same high schools or
middle schools, they still kindahave the same sense of things.
With college I'm pulling fromall over the country, even
international at some times.
(23:41):
So it's like just setting thetone and letting them know where
you stand.
And one of the first things Isay is, Hey, look I'm not a
yeller.
I don't swear a lot, but I will.
But if anybody is going to beoffended, just let me know and
I'll try really hard to curb it.
And usually it's, no, we're finewith it.
You know what I mean?
But, and I also tell them like,if you need pushed more, tell
(24:03):
me.
Don't be afraid to come up andbe like, you need to push us
more.
Now's the time to drop thehammer in.
And that happened twice lastyear, my assistant coach had to
leave.
I really think we were maybe 10matches into our 30 match
season, and he had to step down.
So it was me and my volunteeror, and my other assistant
(24:24):
Brandy, who is awesome, butshe's super limited.
She's a mom of two kids.
She's a school board director.
Like I was lucky if I would gether one or two days a week.
Yeah.
So most of the season frommid-September until November, it
was just me.
My team was so awesome at comingup and saying, you need to be
harder on us.
You're not pushing us hardenough right now.
(24:44):
Or, Hey, we're slacking off.
Blow the whistle.
Make us do something to refocus.
That's great.
Me, that's goes back to likewhere you went when we started
this.
When do you have buy-in?
And to me, when your team, andnot just the captains.
When your team is not afraid tocome up to me as a coach and
say, you're not pushing us, orThis is what I need, that's when
(25:08):
I know that they're buying in.
I think there's so much maturityin that because we talked about
how a lot of kids don't know howto have a relationship with a
coach when they get to college,or they only know one
relationship with a coach.
Yeah.
And it may be different with youand it may be, it maybe needs to
be different.
Yeah.
But I think the idea of yourkids saying, I wanna be pushed
(25:33):
harder is a testament to notonly you, but maybe the
diversity of where you'rerecruiting from and what they're
coming in with and the toolsthat they're coming in with.
And they're realizing maybe Ididn't like before being pushed
hard, but now I'm starting torealize how important it is that
I do get pushed, that somebodyis pushing me past where I think
(25:54):
I can get to.
Do you, are you seeing that?
Yeah.
Yeah.
There I think there is amisconception of coaches
dictating or demanding what theywant being pushing a kid, and
(26:15):
that's not always the case.
Yeah.
There's a huge differencebetween music A coach yelling
and making the kids do this anddoing that.
Versus finding out what myplayer's limits are and then
pushing them that way.
But I think people automaticallyassume a coach.
That's tough and a coach that'syelling is pushing a kid, and
that's not always true.
(26:35):
Sometimes it's damaging, butsometimes it's just beneficial,
so it's just, again, taking thattime to, to learn coaches and
this is what I tell club playersall the time, is you shouldn't
be waiting for the offer.
To ask about the coach.
That should be one of the thingsyou are like, if you are
thinking about, ah, I mightswitch club this year, you
(26:56):
better be scouting the potentialcoaches at the new club that
you're looking at trying outwell before tryouts.
'cause you're gonna have two orthree days of two hours to try
and get to know a coach that'sgonna basically be in front of
you for nine months outta theyear.
And I just don't think there'senough research on that side
either being done.
I agree.
And boy does club.
(27:17):
Club make it so hard, especiallywhere I live in Denver, where we
have a hundred different clubswithin two hours.
There's just what we do to thesekids' brains before a season in
the middle of the season, at theend of the season, the off
season with how they're, howthey have to make decisions and
when they have to makedecisions.
It's, I don't know how you canbe a 15-year-old volleyball
(27:39):
player anymore and not have somesports performance issues
because of it.
It's crazy.
Like it just, we switched, Ithink it's been three years now
that we switched to summertryouts.
We used to, our region used tohave tryouts in November after
the girls' high school season.
But we switched to a end of Julynow, and I just remember we got
(28:01):
back from nationals in, the veryend of June and beginning of
July at 15 U and we had one weekoff.
Then it was open gyms and thentryouts for the new club season.
And it's tough and I don't know,I don't know that there's a
solution'cause there's so manydominoes with that.
It's really easy to say, theyshould just push tryouts back
(28:25):
like they used to be.
And I get that.
Except, these big tournamentsand these big qualifiers require
payment and you gotta book thehotels and for years in our
region.
We were paying entry fees andbooking hotels before we had
tryouts.
So you hope that you werefilling those teams, you hope
those teams happen, and then ifthey didn't, you had to beg to
get your money back from thosetorment directors.
(28:46):
So there's just so many movingparts.
I just don't know what thesolution is.
Other than and I per, I, Iactually said this years ago and
I got laughed out of the roomand whatever.
We should just all do ittogether.
I was watching Friday night,tykes, the football thing on
whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's like how San Antoniodoes it.
(29:07):
Every kid that's going to playMidget Peewee football in San
Antonio shows up to the samearena, like the Alamo Dome or
something on the same weekend.
And every team that's in thatregion is there.
And you get to meet with them,interview with them, and do all
that stuff.
Sounds smart to me.
(29:28):
But the problem is.
I can't have the side deals, theback deals.
Yeah.
We can't have those discussionsto try and lure you to my club
because it's all out in theopen.
Yeah, and I don't know if thereis a good fix.
I think for me, the best way tofix club volleyball is to just
shorten the season.
(29:48):
I think way too long.
I think if there's no volleyballfrom November 1st.
To I, I'd even go as far asFebruary 1st, where, the season
starts in February.
We play till May Nationals arein June, and you're done.
I think that would be the bestthing.
(30:08):
'cause then kids are getting abreak after their high school
season, then they can go playbasketball, they can wrestle,
they can they can have a trackseason, they can play tennis,
whatever that may be.
Everybody wants a multisportathlete until that multisport
athlete's on your team, and youhave to figure it out.
That's right.
Everyone will tell you everyhandbook.
We love multisport athletes andwe love working with the
(30:28):
basketball coach.
Until that kid's on your teamYeah.
Then you never see them untilthe season begins.
Yeah.
And then it's a challenge.
I have a track jumper.
One of my main outside hittersis a track jumper.
I told her like, don't show upat all for any spring.
Like you're in track season.
Do whatever you need to.
That's right.
Again, it's not like you'resitting at home not doing
(30:49):
anything.
You are practicing, running andjumping.
We'll get the volleyball.
Yeah.
You know what, and this is whyyou're a good coach and the
this, and there's, I would saythere's 65, 70% of the coaches
in the country are like you andme, where they're gonna say that
even though deep down you wantthem to be at spring practices
and you wanna be able tointegrate and there's team, you
(31:11):
know what's best for that kid isfor them to focus 100% on their
team, their track coach, andwhatever they're doing to get
ready for that, for those meets,right?
Yep.
As long as we're putting thosekids before our own needs we're
at least winning the day there.
And when I was coaching club, Iwould always call or email the
(31:38):
other coaches, Hey, my name'sDan Jenny's playing volleyball
for me this year.
I understand she's on your highschool basketball team.
That's absolutely a priority.
I just wanted to see these areour key dates.
Can we work something out?
And it was always a negativeresponse.
Always.
(31:59):
Always.
That's so sad.
It's just so sad.
No.
Jenny knows the schedule and sheneeds to be here for all those
events, and yeah.
Okay.
And then we're making kidschoose between basketball and
volleyball or softball andvolleyball.
It can be worked out, but yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the days of the one one dayevents are gone.
Everything's a travel event,everything's an overnight event.
(32:22):
I, no one talks about it.
Like we see it all the timeonline, like forums where
everyone's complaining about thetravel costs and another weekend
away from home.
And my ma my grass isn't gonnaget mowed, but there's a whole
population that never sees theirkid play.
Or like my grand.
My daughter's grandmother hasn'tseen my kid play in four years
because everything's a travel.
(32:42):
Like my parents aren't gonnatravel to see their
granddaughter play in Georgia.
I'm with you.
I wanna talk about your greatblog that you write and
specifically you wrote onecalled, you wrote a blog called
How I Grew to Resent the Sport ILove and you talked about
burnout and I think everythingwe've been talking about at this
point kind leads up to this.
(33:03):
Are there things that you'recreating, developing to help
with that burnout?
When we're talking aboutmulti-sport athletes, we're
talking about kids that arebasically playing year round.
Is there ways that we can givethese kids a break when there's
really not a break build in?
Yeah.
One of the things that I've beenworking on is like, how do we do
(33:25):
that for everyone?
Because it's the kids, it's thecoaches, it's the parents,
everyone gets burned out by it.
So one of the things I've beenreally working on is what
science is behind burnout.
And we know that there's a lotof things that help it.
Again, the normal stuff, youneed more sleep, you need to
meditate or, whatever.
For me, I think it's more aboutwe gotta get to the point where
(33:48):
we can develop boundaries andjust say, no, I'm not training
today, or This is too much, or.
Just kinda looking at schedulingit out.
I think a lot of burnout comesfrom people not looking big
picture scheduling wise.
Like for example, you know thatyou're gonna be playing in a
(34:09):
qualifier this weekend and wehave two practices this week, so
that's not a problem.
We're gonna practice Tuesday andThursday, catch our flight on
Friday, play Saturday, Sunday,but.
No one's thinking about what amI going to pack?
When am I going to do my schoolstuff?
So taking a time to look at theschedule and saying, okay, maybe
we don't practice that Thursday.
What are we really going to gainfor that 90 minute practice
(34:32):
before a qualifier?
Technically by practicing versusgiving my kids time to pack, get
their homework done, get thingsdone, so when they're traveling
and they're gone.
And I think for me, that's thebiggest thing is we gotta start
looking at what's involved withthese events.
Because our kids aren't eatingwell at these events because
food's horrible.
(34:53):
You can't bring your own foodin.
Some of these kids get there fora two o'clock match.
You're running two hours behind,so you're not getting out of the
venue until 10, 11 o'clock atnight and you're in a town that
nothing's open.
And if anything is what's gonnabe able to handle a team of 11
or 12 all at the same time, at11 o'clock at night to eat.
(35:14):
So there's just so many factorsthat we don't look at and we
need to build in those breaks.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was really impressed this yearwith my daughter's club season.
We had a couple tournamentsearly on where, there's always
that morning and afternoonsession where there were no
games from 11 to 12.
(35:35):
So if you wanted to drive downthe street a couple blocks and
go get something to eat, or ifyou wanted to bring your own
food and have a little picnicoutside, or, there was a little
bit of space inside where youcould do that, but at least
there was that time where like,all right, everybody's gonna
take an hour off.
Everybody's gonna breathe,everybody's gonna go eat.
If you wanna take a nap, you cantake a nap.
So I, it was so small.
(35:56):
Insignificant in nature, butwhat I thought that did to the
girls and their mentality andthe coach's mentality, I thought
it was, I thought it was sosmart, but I haven't seen it
since.
I haven't seen anybody do thatsince.
Yeah.
And when you look at theschedules, some of these
schedules are crazy.
You have kids play, work, play,work, play off, like just.
There's no you think, okay,working, we're not playing, but
(36:18):
like your lines, people arestanding there, they're
literally standing there for anhour right after they just got
done playing and then they gottaplay again.
Or you can't eat at the scoretable while you're doing the
scoring.
There's just so many things thatare just going against the
athlete that I think if wereally sat down and said, how
can we look at this?
(36:39):
How can we make this schedulebetter?
Yeah, we probably could.
I and maybe I'm being naivehere, but I don't think there's
enough of that nationaltournament mentality where, all
right, we're gonna put everybodyin groups.
You're gonna compete in yourgroup for this many months, and
then we're gonna take, the toptwo are gonna go to this next
level, and the next two aregonna go to this level.
(37:01):
And we're gonna, we're gonna,we're gonna be smart about how
we pyramid this.
There, there just doesn't seemto be any of that.
Now and there won't be justbecause of all the different
governing bodies.
10 years ago on the boys side,let's say we were 98%, 99% USA
volleyball, now we're 98% a U orJVA,'cause some things happened
(37:26):
and people weren't happy.
We're gonna go over here and au's gonna help do it the way we
wanna do it.
So there isn't a lot ofcollaboration between the
governing bodies, which thentrickles down that there isn't
much collaboration, between theclubs.
Yeah, it's you and I.
We could have a whole podcastjust on that topic.
I want to, I wanna dive intoyour coaching with the
(37:46):
Paralympic games and the greatwork you've done.
Winning some gold, winning thegold, the silver medals.
Talk a little bit about how yougot into coaching the
Paralympics, what that's donefor you as a coach, what that's
done for your soul.
Yeah, so that whole story isreally interesting.
We.
(38:06):
At one of the convention, one ofthe A VCA, the American
Volleyball Coaches Association.
They do, yearly conventions andit's always on site during the
final four week for women'svolley division one at that host
city.
And I got to meet.
And really become friends withsome of our sitting volleyball
players, our national teamplayers.
(38:28):
And I really wanted to getinvolved, but at that time I was
doing a lot of beach stuffbeach, high performance, beach
coaching, education, all that.
And we were approached inPittsburgh.
There was talk that they weregoing to start doing.
Para of beach volleyball, whichwould be standing, not sitting,
(38:48):
volleyball in the sand teams ofthree.
And Bill, who is the women'scoach for the sittings team, and
basically the director for thepara teams said, would you and
John who's a great friend ofmine that has still to this day,
does a ton of work withpara-athletes.
You are the beach guys.
Would you guys interest in beinglike the para of beach guys?
(39:09):
And so it just started and wewere looking at, okay, who do we
have on the sitting side that wecould transition to the beach
that would be able to do both?
What's this look like?
Because everything, curriculumwise has always been written for
sixes, sitting or standing sixesor doubles, beach doubles, but
there was nothing for trips.
(39:30):
Like how do we, and luckily Igrew up in Pennsylvania, we play
a lot of grass triples.
So the strategy, was like, okay,what do you know?
How do we do and what we do it?
We got some grant funding and wewere training and the crazy part
was, we're training our beachteams, but we had to do it in
Oklahoma because that's whereour sitting teams were and
that's where all the staff andthe resources were.
So we're in, March, April inOklahoma is cold and.
(39:55):
Rainy and miserable.
But we were out there trainingat one of the facilities had two
beach court, it's two sandcourts with their indoor
facility.
So we were out there trainingand we just started going.
And the biggest holdback orproblem was a lot of it's
self-funded.
So when it was for worldchampionships in China we only
had such limited money, so a lotof it was gonna be out of
(40:16):
pocket, so that, that's been theholdback and.
Para beach didn't, has still hasnot gotten sanctioned as a world
para volley, I forget what theycall it, but it's not an
official Olympic sport.
Like we didn't make it into LA20, we didn't make it into
France and we didn't make itinto to LA as an official sport.
(40:37):
So because that we don't get thesame funding.
So when COVID hit and moneystarted getting tight,
everything got cut down.
Yeah.
But.
All that to say, it's probablybeen one of the most rewarding
things I've ever done.
'cause it, it is completelydifferent and it's great and
it's amazing, but it's, I don'tknow, like there was so much
(41:00):
growth from me as a coach.
What do I do?
A story I tell, which is funny,is, we had to drive from the
dorms where we were staying atcentral Oklahoma or UCO, I think
it is, university of CentralOklahoma to the courts.
So we'd have to, all get in therental cars or the vans and
drive the players over.
And it was like day one.
And we're driving over and wegot five miles.
(41:21):
And one of the girls was like, Ileft my arm back at the dorm.
I was like, wait, what?
And she's literally, I don'thave my arm with me.
So we had to like, turn aroundand, go back and get it.
You don't hear that every day asa coach.
And things like.
No one, like none of us, eventhe athletes, no one really
thought too much about it, butlike sand getting into the
(41:43):
hydraulics of the leg, theprosthetic legs, and gosh, how
to keep that clean.
Like things like, we just neverreally thought about that.
It was more, we were so worriedabout like, how do we do trips
and who do you put at the net?
Do you put your more mobileathletes at the net or do you
put your more, like how are wegonna do this?
So that's so wild.
(42:05):
'cause those kids Yeah.
Wanted to play and they knewthey had some skill and, yeah.
Yeah.
And we just started doing morecamps.
We got a great funding from then re foundation out of Florida.
So we moved most of our trainingcamps down to Hickory Point the
Florida region and Steve Bishop.
Worked their tails off to get usmoney and we got to work out and
train there, partnering with theA VP.
(42:27):
So they would do an event thereand we could do a showcase in
between the event so peoplewould get awareness of it.
That's great.
So it was amazing.
It's just, things are comingback, but it's still been tough
with COVID.
We weren't a sanctioned Olympicsport or a Paralympic sport, so
we're not getting the fundingmuch like snow volleyball,
before be before the pandemic.
(42:47):
Snow volleyball was getting abig push as well.
We had teams that medaled LOYball and a bunch of those guys
that medaled in the indoorOlympics went on to play and
medal in some of the snowvolleyball stuff.
But again, the, just the fundingand how it worked, it wasn't
there.
So from the para beach side,things have been on hold a
little bit, so hopefully that'llbe coming back.
(43:08):
Cool.
I'm glad you had thatexperience.
It sounds wonderful.
It just sounds like a just agreat thing for a group of un
unprecedented can't think of theword I want to use, but the kids
that don't get the attentionthey deserve and yeah.
Underrepresented misunderrepresented, that's the
word I was looking for.
Wanna go rapid fire with you?
Do a little, do some fun stuff.
Just get your thoughts realquick on certain things.
(43:29):
What's one word that describesyour coaching style?
Chill.
That's, that that's what theword in my gym is.
I'm the chill coach.
I love it.
What's the most impactful bookyou've read as a coach?
It is Zen.
Zen in the martial arts.
Love it.
Joe, the guy that wrote it, wasa student of Bruce Lee.
(43:52):
So it's all about the teachingsof Bruce Lee, but how to put it
into real life.
And I read it every single yearbefore the season starts.
I've never read it, but I'vebeen, it's been referred to me a
couple times.
I, I gotta go get a copy of it.
I love it.
Pre-game routine, you can'tskip.
Is there something that you doevery before, every game?
Yeah.
I eat a hot dog.
I don't know why.
(44:12):
It just it started when Istarted coaching high school.
Just the time constraint of,coming from a job or doing
something coaching.
And I just, I always, if it's agame day, I guarantee I've had a
hot dog.
I'm the same way every time I goto Wrigley Field.
I understand.
Biggest coaching, pet peeve.
Tradition.
We're doing this because that'sthe way we've always done it.
(44:34):
I am in the same boat with youthere.
That drives me crazy.
If you weren't coaching, andthis is hard because you do 90
different things, if you weren'tcoaching, what would you be
doing?
I'm addicted to video games, soI'd be a streamer playing video
games probably.
What's your go-to?
I'm a Call of Duty guy.
I'm probably two to three hoursa day like it.
(44:56):
It's a true addiction.
Does it relax you?
I.
I don't know if it relax me, butit lets me anonymously yell at
like little 13-year-old kidsover the microphone that don't
know who I'm.
So it's an outlet.
Do you want to give your handlejust in case somebody wants to
battle you?
Nope.
Nope.
Coach, thanks so much for doingthis first segment with me.
You're fantastic.
I highly recommend everybodycheck out dan mickel.com.
(45:20):
He's got a great podcast.
He writes an unbelievable blog.
He is a great mentor.
He is a great mental performancecoach.
The way, if he didn't realize itin the last 40 minutes, how how
his mindset works.
So please check out danmickel.com and I know you'll get
a lot out of it.
Coach again, thanks for doingthis.
(45:41):
Hope everybody comes back onMonday'cause you and I are about
to do some recruiting talk, sothanks for doing this.
Excited for it.
Thanks.
And that's a wrap on today'sconversation with Coach Dan
Mickel, one of the few people inour profession who can speak
with authority on both what ittakes to build a college team
and what it takes to develop themind of a high performing
athlete.
(46:01):
I hope today's episodechallenged you in a good way if
you're a coach.
I hope it reminded you thatdeveloping athletes isn't about
building stronger bodies orbetter skills.
It's about shaping strongerminds.
Teaching athletes how to handleadversity, stay consistent under
pressure, and commit to theprocess even when the results
aren't immediate.
(46:22):
Mental performance isn't abonus.
It's the foundation if you're aparent or athlete listening in.
I hope this helped connect thedots between being a good
teammate today and becoming adependable employee, a loyal
partner, and a grounded leadertomorrow.
And before we go, let me giveyou a heads up on Monday.
Coach Michel and I continue theconversation over on the
(46:44):
Significant Recruiting podcast,and I'll be honest, I'm
apologizing in advance if itoffends anyone.
That's not our goal, but we'retalking about some taboo topics
in the world of recruiting.
It's real, it's honest, andwe're okay.
If it sparks some debate, youwon't wanna miss it.
As always, you can subscribe toboth the significant coaching
(47:06):
and significant recruitingpodcasts wherever you listen.
And check out all of my books,including my new book, the
Softball Recruits Journal, nowavailable with two awesome
covers to choose from.
You can also find tools, freedownloads, and more resources
for families andcoaches@coachmattrogers.com.
And don't forget, if you want toschedule a free strategy session
(47:29):
for coaching or recruiting, justhead to my website.
I'd love to connect.
Until next time, lead withpurpose, coach with
significance.
Thanks for listening.
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