EMILY JO ROBERTS - DIRECTOR OF WOMEN'S COACHES & NIL STRATEGY AT WASSERMAN - EPISODE 1099

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Emily Jo Roberts is currently the Director of Women’s Coaching and NIL Strategy at Wasserman where her role is to create, grow and celebrate female coaches and other industry leaders in sports.

Roberts was previously a college basketball coach with stops at Appalachian State University as an assistant women’s basketball coach and recruiting coordinator, at Elon University as both the Director of Operations and assistant women’s basketball coach, and at the University of Memphis as the Video Coordinator. She also coached high school basketball on both the girl’s and boys’ side as an assistant coach before coaching at the college level.

Emily Jo played her college basketball at the University of North Carolina Wilmington where she earned a degree in Communication and Media Studies.

On this episode Mike & Emily Jo discuss the challenges faced by women in coaching, particularly emphasizing the struggle for recognition and resources. Emily Jo articulates the complexities of balancing professional aspirations with motherhood in a field that often lacks support for female coaches. The conversation delves into the systemic barriers that hinder women’s entry and advancement in coaching roles, including significant pay disparities and the stigma surrounding former female athletes transitioning into coaching positions. Furthermore, we explore the initiatives being developed to empower women in sports and create a more equitable landscape for future generations. This episode serves as a call to acknowledge and address these pressing issues within the realm of the coaching profession.

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Get ready to take some notes as you listen to this episode with Emily Jo Roberts, Director of Women’s Coaching and NIL Strategy at Wasserman.

What We Discuss with Emily Jo Roberts

Growing up on a peach farm, which instilled a strong work ethic.
Playing for her Mom, who was a legendary high school basketball coach
Her experience as one of the first seventh graders to play varsity basketball
How the taste of defeat motivated her to strive for success
Applying to 41 coaching jobs before landing her first position
Coaching at any level is an arduous profession, particularly for women balancing motherhood
How the lack of resources for mothers in coaching significantly impacts their career longevity and success
Advocacy for women’s representation in coaching is essential for the growth and respect of women’s sports
Why the influence of female coaches is crucial in creating pathways for future generations in sports
Why the stigma surrounding former female players transitioning to coaching roles needs to be addressed and dismantled
How societal expectations can create barriers to women’s success in the coaching profession
Empowering female coaches and promoting their visibility in the sports industry
Educational initiatives and resources are essential for women considering coaching, particularly in providing support for family planning and childcare, which are critical factors in their career decisions
Coaching requires a business mindset, especially in the NIL era

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Your first impression is everything when applying for a new coaching job. A professional coaching portfolio is the tool that highlights your coaching achievements and philosophies and, most of all, helps separate you and your abilities from the other applicants.

The key to landing a new coaching job is to demonstrate to the hiring committee your attention to detail, level of preparedness, and your professionalism. Not only does a coaching portfolio allow you to exhibit these qualities, it also allows you to present your personal philosophies on coaching, leadership, and program development in an organized manner.

The Coaching Portfolio Guide is an instructional, membership-based website that helps you develop a personalized portfolio. Each section of the portfolio guide provides detailed instructions on how to organize your portfolio in a professional manner. The guide also provides sample documents for each section of your portfolio that you can copy, modify, and add to your personal portfolio.

High school and middle school basketball program directors, listen closely. Coaches are expected to do far more than just coach. You know this. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing the coaching yourself, or you have a full staff of coaches with you. You know very well that coaches handle scheduling, academic issues, parent communication, leadership development, and even mental health concerns for athletes. A lot to deal with, and they haven’t even gone home yet to balance those responsibilities.

No matter the passion for the game, and burning desire to help athletes develop, this level of responsibility can lead to burnout, inefficiency, and less time spent on actual coaching. You know it’s true.

When coaches are stretched too thin, it impacts the development of athletes, team morale, and the overall success of the program. Now here comes the outsiders throwing their two cents in about what’s happening. Then come the parents complaining about how you’re running things, as if they know what they’re talking about. When’s the last time you went to their place of work chiming in from outside their window?

Before you let that fire fizzle out, know that it doesn’t have to be that complicated. There are several ways to prevent you or your coaches from feeling overwhelmed. However, I’ll tell you one of our favorite ways to keep coaches firing on all cylinders, and that’s athlete-driven accountability and organization.

Instead of coaches constantly reminding players about assignments, grades, and practice schedules, our programs at Playmaker Planner puts the responsibility back on the athletes. By tracking their own academics, goals, and commitments, student-athletes become more self-sufficient, which of course allows the coach to put their babysitter hat in the closet, and put their coaching hat back on, allowing them to focus on what they love doing.

Are we offering planners that you can get at the dollar store as a solution? Of course not, but we are starting a conversation with you to see if our programs can be a compliment to what you’re already doing. Let’s find out. To learn more visit https://playmakerplanner.com/stop-is-this-for-you

THANKS, EMILY JO ROBERTS

If you enjoyed this episode with Emily Jo Roberts let her know by clicking on the link below and thanking her via Twitter.

Click here to thank Emily Jo Roberts via Twitter

Click here to let Mike & Jason know about your number one takeaway from this episode!

And if you want us to answer your questions on one of our upcoming weekly NBA episodes, drop us a line at mike@hoopheadspod.com.

TRANSCRIPT FOR EMILY JO ROBERTS – DIRECTOR OF WOMEN’S COACHES & NIL STRATEGY AT WASSERMAN – EPISODE 1099

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here without my co-host Jason Sunkle tonight. But I am pleased to be joined by Emily Jo Roberts from the Wasserman Agency. Emily Jo, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:16] Emily Jo Roberts: Thank you. I’m excited to be here.

[00:00:18] Mike Klinzing: Thrilled to have you on. Looking forward to diving into all of the diverse things that you’ve been able to do in your basketball life.

Let’s start by going back in time to when you were a kid. Tell me about your first experiences with the game of basketball. Who got you into it? What do you remember about the first time you, you, you got involved with basketball?

[00:00:38] Emily Jo Roberts: Yeah, so I grew up in a really tiny town. I grew up on a peach farm. My family owned a peach farm in South Carolina, so I grew up working it in the summers.

But I where basketball really kind of started was, I mean, that’s where my work ethic came from. I think it’s like working on the peach farm. And when I really got into the game of basketball, my mom was a high school basketball coach, so she coached for almost 35 years. And had, we were trying to count the other day, al like 25 championships, like we couldn’t, we, we stopped counting at point.

She was unbelievable, legendary high school women’s basketball and volleyball, or girls’ basketball and volleyball coach at the high school level in South Carolina. And pretty well known in the area. And so I, I just was a follower of her and in her footsteps and was constantly around her team.

And they were all my big sisters. I mean, I still keep in touch with that group or so many of them in so many ways. So I just, I kind of fell in love with it. At a young age, just being around it, from being around my mom. I mean, I was constantly on the bench with her and the, the, the, the young assistant coach, like I thought I was really coaching and trying to get her coaching cues.

You know, I was constantly riding my bicycle through practice. And there the players knew that they had to just watch out for Emily. And that, I mean, that was kind of I was just always around the game. I just kind of had that the luxury to be around a very strong woman. Very good technical basketball coach that and I was lucky enough I got to play for her as well.

And I think I was the one of the first ever seventh graders in South Carolina to play varsity basketball. It was a long time ago. And right before Ivory Latta, she followed in my footsteps. So we’ll get to say I got to beat Ivory at something. Nice. There you go. Yeah. And so when I, but in the seventh grade I played in a state championship.

I was 12 or 13, a little French braid playing against 18, 17, 18-year-old grown women. And you know, I mean, I was fearless in that way, and I just remember, I made my first ever three pointer that I shot, it was in same, same gym that Dawn Staley and her team plays in.

So every time I go there, I’m like, I’ve played a few state championships here. And, and just that I remember that moment as a seventh grader. In that state championship game, we ended up losing my 18. It was not our best game or our best day out, but it was a moment I realized like, oh, this is something I really love more than I, my mother never pushed it on me.

It was, I just always wanted to be around and wanted to learn. But that was a moment for me where I was like, oh, I’m, I’m good at this and I want to be good at this and I want to be better at this. And and absolutely fell in love. I think it was probably when I took a charge and hit my head so hard and I was sitting on the sideline and my mom looked over and she’s like, are you ready?

And the trainer was like, I, I think she might have a concussion. And my mother goes, she’s my daughter. She’s fine. And that was a moment I know. I was like, I’m going to be a pretty tough basketball player for the rest of my life. So the joys of playing for parents.

[00:03:30] Mike Klinzing: There you go. Alright, so we’re going to get, there’s a, there’s a lot to unpack right there.

So first question is, when, when did you realize that your experience growing up. With a mom who had keys to the gym and you just always had access to be able to get into a gym and be around teams and be around coaches. How old were you when you realized that, hey, not everybody else is getting this same experience.

Do you remember, did you have a light bulb moment of like, man, like my teammates don’t have this same opportunity, these same just the ability to just be around the game in the same way that you did?

[00:04:12] Emily Jo Roberts: I mean, I was sneaking into the gym at like fifth grade and I was sneaking and I was taking my mom’s keys to go get into the gym without anyone knowing.

So it started early, the access before I even started playing. But I really think a lot of it came, my access came from two, my uncle coached at UNC with Sylvia Hatchell for almost 40 years. And. Brilliant basketball mine. And so the access, I think for me, ’cause I grew up in a really small town in South Carolina, came for me when my mother would actually send me away from her and send me to UNCs women’s basketball camp for basically a whole summer.

She would just kind of hand me off. And it started, I started doing that when I was in sixth grade and I didn’t know I left basketball. I just knew, I loved to go to UNC camp and have fun and spend my uncle’s money in the camp store and eat pizza,

[00:04:57] Mike Klinzing: you know better than that old school. Old school camp. I’m right there with That’s right.

[00:05:03] Emily Jo Roberts: Pizza was all we had. And so I, I think that was like a really a moment where I realized I had access that a lot of my teammates didn’t in a small town, like getting to go and do that. We didn’t have a lot of a a u, it was YBOA in that time period. My mom coached it just so that her players would have opportunities to, to be seen.

And, and she had players that played at high division one levels from lower division one to division two all over. And she, she coached it and did that just for her team at the time, so they would have that access. And so from a young age, like I was around all of that, and I got access to that really early.

But as a player I, I got to go into the gym with my mom if I wanted to and say, Hey, will you come shoot with me at 6:00 AM before school? And she would, and you know, she, she certainly didn’t give me any special treatment other than she probably yelled at me more than other. Right.

Yeah,

[00:05:50] Mike Klinzing: for sure.

[00:05:52] Emily Jo Roberts: But she that access, I mean, it was, it was probably when I was in a seventh grader and I realized I wanted to be really good after we lost that state championship. You know, I was in the gym every day and every day at that point she gave me her keys and the code to get into the gym and I would try to bring teammates along and I started to just get a group of, of players to come play with me and shoot with me and work out with me.

And we played in three more state championships throughout my high school career and, we’re really good and really well known in that time period. So I didn’t just have the opportunity to do it for me. I had the opportunity to bring people along and do it with me, which was just a really cool experience being able to grow up in a small town and have your mom as your high school coach.

And like I said, we ended up also taking our teams to Carolina for their teen camp. So like everyone also then got to experience that as we got in that same space, like what Chapel Hill was, how magical a place Chapel Hill was.

[00:06:42] Mike Klinzing: There you go. And you’re showing ’em around, Hey, this is this and this is that.

I can, I could see, I can already, I could see, I could see it in my mind’s eyes as it’s happening there. So Yeah. I thought I owned this. I’m sure you did. I’m sure you did. There’s no question about that. If you’re there every summer and you’re bringing, you’re bringing friends along, you are, you are the, you are the tour guide, you’re definitely the tour guide.

So as you’re bringing your teammates into the gym, are, are you thinking about what you’re doing as I am starting to coach. My teammates or are you still looking at it as I’m utilizing my teammates to make us all better players. But you weren’t necessarily thinking about it from a coaching perspective.

Like, I guess how dialed in were you on, Hey, maybe at some point I want to be a coach ’cause my mom wa is a coach and I love basketball and I know that at some point I, I want to do this. Or were you just focused on, hey, we just lost the state championship when I’m in you know, when I’m in seventh grade and I want to be the best player I can be.

I if either one of those perspectives rings more true for you.

[00:07:42] Emily Jo Roberts: Yeah, I mean, I think at the time I just, I want to be really good. I knew I wanted to go play in college after. That was a moment where I was like, I know I want to go play in college and I want to be really good. And and I think I just wanted, and I knew that if I wanted to be really good, I had other people around me be really good.

And I just wanted them to come along and do that. And I wanted to have that same energy and excitement in the same way. And some did and some didn’t. But when I was young, I, I thought we could all do the same thing. But I, right, as I’ve grown, I’ve learned to enjoy the fact that people are different and they work differently and they have different views about things and, and they see the world differently.

And, and, but I think that’s that was most important thing to me was like, we, I want to win a state championship. We lost that one. I had the taste of defeat. I don’t want that again. Like, I want to go in and, and I want to win and I want to be really good. And so just bringing people into that space. I do think it was an element of obviously my mom was a coach who was a very good coach and my uncle at UNC being the, the kind of coach he was and being able to be the round a game in that way.

My aunt was also a coach and won a few state championships in South Carolina. My grandfather won some state championships in South Carolina, so like I knew that there was an element of coaching probably in my future, just the way that I saw the game, the way that I was a coach on the floor. But I think it when I was kind of bringing my teammates along, it was more about like, I want to win and that’s, and I win

[00:09:00] Mike Klinzing: when you’re in.

You’re doing things, whether you’re working out on your own, whether you’re working out with teammates. What did that process look like for you in terms of figuring out what you were doing to try to work on your game? Were you talking to your mom? Were you just being creative as you’re in there trying to figure stuff out?

What were you working out? Because I always say like, again, I grew up in a time before. All the internet and trainers and all this stuff. I mean, I’m an old guy, so like I, I was just in the gym and I basically, like, I had two workouts that I did when I was playing. I had one I did when I was by myself, and if I was lucky enough to have somebody else to work out with or that wanted to shoot with me, I had another workout that I’d do with them.

And other than that, like I look at all the things that players and coaches have access to now and just the creativity and all the different, and I’m like, I did the same boring stuff for like four years of high school and then four years, I, I got really good at my workout. I don’t know if it really, how much, much better of a player it made me, but I got really, really good at that workout.

So just what did it look like for you when you really wanted to try to get better as a player? How’d you go about doing that?

[00:10:05] Emily Jo Roberts: Yeah, I mean, again, the luxury of being able to go to UN. UNCs camp and, and to be able to be in that space and like, yeah, I mean, coach Hatchell at that time, she was really involved and so were her players and you know, my uncle coached them so I knew them well.

They were like sisters and family and still are, and they would take me to the side and show me some fun. You know, I’ll never forget Nikki Teasley, I don’t know if anyone remembers the name, Nikki Teasley. I mean she was the Magic Johnson of women’s basketball in her, her era. And she taught me all these really cool moves that I would go back and try to do and work on.

And. I did not have her arms. You have long arms to do these things. Nikki was doing, I was trying so hard. But like I, I had access to that world, which was a higher level playing that again, we didn’t have access to social media or a lot of video or things like that. So I had access to that.

My uncle, again, his level of knowledge of the game, he would give me some stuff to work on. My mom and, and, and my grandfather too. My grandfather would come into the gym with me. I, I mean, I was, I’m five seven, maybe five, six and a half if we’re lucky. And he taught me how to block a shot from behind and, and, and I, and, and my time and in our level at, in South Carolina, that wasn’t a thing women did or young girls.

You know, you fouled typically, but I was blocking shots at five, six, I mean, bigger shots. ’cause I was coming and he taught me how to do that in one day in the gym. And so I just had access to things I think a lot of people didn’t. And I’m, I was really privileged and really lucky to have that kind of access to the game and to the level of the knowledge of, of, of, of the game.

I mean, I, I was really, really lucky to get that and, and I enjoyed sharing it with other people, bringing my teammates along and trying to teach them the same thing or something new in that

[00:11:45] Mike Klinzing: absolutely. Yeah. Very cool. All right, so I’ve had a bunch of conversations of fathers who have coached sons or sons who are coached by their fathers, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a case of a daughter being coached by a mom.

So talk a little bit about that. You already said that the experiences mom maybe yelled at you a little bit more than she did other players, which I think is typical right, of a, a a parent and a, and a and a child relationship coaching wise, that the coach tends to be harder on the child than they do on the other players.

But just talk a little bit about what the relationship was like between you and your mom, both player, coach, and then how you kind of navigated the mother daughter piece of it alongside that.

[00:12:27] Emily Jo Roberts: Yeah. It’s such a, such a fun question. I love talking about this. My mom is, is she’s such a just a pivotal, it has been so pivotal in so many women, young women’s lives, not just mine, which is I think such a beautiful thing to be able to see.

But I got her all the time when, when they got her just parts of a day. I got her all the time. And but you know, she was tough. They called her the Bobby Knight Women’s Basketball in South Carolina during that time. It was a compliment. Right, exactly. Yeah. Right, exactly. It was a compliment.

Yeah. But she was, she was tough and she didn’t take any anything from anybody. And especially she stood up for her team and for her players and for injustices, especially for women that we were experiencing if we were not getting the treatment that we deserved or the things that we deserved.

And she won and she was really good and she was super well respected. So you know, when it came to her coaching me specifically, and she was tough on everyone, like, I got it next level tough. And she was in, she made sure to know that because especially as. The first ever seventh grader in South Carolina to play.

I know girl’s about high school basketball team. Like it had to, it had to make sense. And she had to know, and, and people had to know she was not showing me favoritism and she never did. She was certainly much harder on me. I’ll never forget there was a story one time I, I caught a cramp in my calf and I was, I was riling in pain on the floor and she just looked at me, she’s like, can you roll off the court so we can finish this drill?

And then a few plays later, a teammate of mine, she kind of tweaked her ankle a little bit and she was she came back and the next day it was pretty swollen. And you know, my mother’s looking at her. She’s like, well, well you know, Steph, why don’t you tell me what, what happened here? Like, you didn’t tell me we, we could have, we should have been icing it.

There’s things we should have done. We could wrapped it. She was like, I dunno, you told Emily to roll off the court. I didn’t want you to tell me that.

[00:14:08] Mike Klinzing: So that’s definitely, that is definitely old school. I, I remember we were playing, I was playing in college and we. We’re playing in whatever his practice kid goes down, this is like my first freshman year.

Kid goes down, looks like he’s got like a broken ankle. I mean, kid barely. And coach is just like, let’s go to the other end. Yeah. Everybody that’s right. The whole, the whole coaching staff walks the other end. All the players the guy returning guys, all upperclassmen, they don’t even, they don’t even bat an eye to turn around.

Look at the kid. Everybody just walks to the everybody just walks to the other end and practice continues and eventually the trainer walks out there and whatever carries the kid off. It’s just different d different, different era, let’s put it that way.

[00:14:46] Emily Jo Roberts: Yeah. Well, and she would’ve never done that to anyone else, right?

She would’ve definitely, she definitely did it to me. She’s like, can you just roll off so we can finish this? And I was like, oh yeah, yeah, I’m fine. So I mean, so she was really tough on me and, and I’m. Appreciative of that. Like I think what I, the way that I respond to things that happen in my life now, I’m really grateful to have had that in my life, even, especially as my mom.

But she never took it home. When we went home, she was mom and she was, when I say she was just a, a total I’m sick, badass. ’cause I don’t know another word. She really was. She was this incredible coach. She was a high school English teacher, and then she would go home and we would, we had a home cooked meal every night.

We didn’t have restaurants in our little town, so she had to cook a home cooked meal every night. And we did. And to to think that that was the life and, and, and I just got to watch and see what she did and, and try to try to, I can barely cook for just myself. And so you to try to emulate what she did in life is.

Right. And to know what she did, I just have so much respect and I, I think so many. So she’s, she’s been such a influential part of so many young women’s lives. And like I said, I got to get her all the time. I got to get her in basketball, I got to get her in class, and I got to get her at home too. And it, it really is a special relationship.

I think coaches’, kids are, are really special people and just have a unique perspective on, on the, on the world, just from their experiences as a plan for their parents. And you’re right, there are a ton of mother daughters. There’s, there’s still a ways to go and getting more women in coaching, but I was really lucky to have that and, and to be a byproduct of a coaching kid who, who was my mom.

I coach my mom. Absolutely.

[00:16:22] Mike Klinzing: What’s, what’s your favorite memory from high school basketball? Do you have one thing that stands out on the court? Off the court? What, what’s your favorite memory?

[00:16:30] Emily Jo Roberts: I will say it’s on the court and it’s actually not. It’s not a win, which is interesting. My sophomore year we were playing in the state championship for my mom and we were, gosh, we were down by two and we were down by one and we were at the free throw line and the other team, and this is for the state championship, and there’s like, I think 3.3 seconds to go on the clock. And this woman, the other person on the team is shooting a free throw. And I look at my team, I go, if she makes it, get me the ball and she makes it.

So we’re down to, I get the ball, I take two dribbles, maybe two and a half. I step one foot over half court and I chuck it and it goes, it’s nothing but net. And we go berserk. We’re going, I jump on the scores table. It was back when Brandy Chastain had pulled her shirt off. I like halfway pulled my shirt off and I’m like, I don’t have those attitude put back down.

And it was, it was just this incredible moment. And it’s still to date one of these most prolific state championship moments and always kind of comes back up in the memories of the state championships. But, there was, there wasn’t a, there wasn’t a replay back then, and so there was a lot of confusion.

The, the officials, one of them called it good. The other was standing there in, in total shock, and the other one was had one hand up and the other down. So there was a lot of confusion. So they went to the scores table and conferred while we’re celebrating and the other team’s crying and they called it no good.

And it was one of the most gut-wrenching moments I’ve ever experienced in my life. And the reason I remember it though, more than anything is we we’re, we’re, we’re absolutely just, it was, it was demoralizing. And we’re in the locker room and we can’t see straight. We’re crying so hard, we’re all it was, it, I don’t even know how to explain that feeling.

I’ve never had it again yet in my life and I’ve experienced grief and death and all these things around, I, I still haven’t had that kind of pain that I thought, the immediate pain that I felt. And I will never forget my mother. As our coach stood up there and recited Maya Angelou still, I rise.

And, and, and just it’s, that has stuck with me my entire, I even have it tattooed on my arm still. I rise that moment. And I remember her saying, you know the pain will subside. It will hurt right now and it will hurt for a while, but it will subside and you will learn from this and you’ll grow from this and you’ll be stronger from this.

And it is probably one of the most defining moments of my life. And that’s probably the moment I remember more than anything from high school.

[00:18:57] Mike Klinzing: That’s an awesome story. I’m going to tell you a story Yeah. From my life that is almost, it’s eerily similar. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s, but it’s similar.

And I think what’s interesting is that when you, when you play, and it sounds like you have a similar thought that you know, so far, you’ve, you’ve, you’ve shared. Stories about your losses. Yeah. And, and when I think about defining games moments, I mean, clearly there are one games that we won that that, that stick out for me, but the losses, I think stick harder.

And so, mm-hmm. My, my senior year, so this is a story similar, similar to yours, and I think it kind of plays into the theme of what we’re talking about. So my senior year we’re playing in the state tournament, so it was like the, whatever the third round of the state tournament we’re playing against a team that at the time, USA to the USA today rankings were big.

This team was ranked 13th in the country. And so we’re going up against them and we’re playing and the game goes down to the game, goes down to the end, and I make a shot with three seconds ago, get fouled. The call time, they call time out, whatever. We’re sitting in the huddle. The coach is going, well, if Mike makes it or if he misses it, whatever.

I’m like, don’t worry, it’s going I’m going to, I’m going to make it. So make the free throw and we’re up, we’re up by three to three seconds ago. The team has to go the length of the floor and they inbound the ball and they throw it from, they throw it from inbound, they throw it to half court, and then they get it down into the corner in three, in three in three seconds.

So they get a shout off. So I’m kind of standing at half court, like looking straight down the floor at the kid who’s about to shoot it, and I’m looking at his feet and I can still see the, I can still see his feet in, like in my eye. I still, you know how you have like pictures of certain things in your life that you just have a still picture of?

So I have a still picture of his feet, his feet on the line as he goes up to shoot it. He goes up to shoot it. The shot goes in, there’s, there’s again, no, there’s no video, right? There’s no video of, of anything. Nope. So supposedly multiple people have said that somebody on the team gold tended the shot in that somebody on their team knocked it in.

But anyway, there’s an official standing on the baseline right next to the play. Like, like literally like right there on the baseline. He walks off the floor. There’s a guy from across the court at the scores table that runs in and he calls it a three. Now as this is happening, our fans are on the floor ’cause they saw, thought it was a two.

The other team’s fans are on the floor ’cause they. Thought it was a three. And so long story short, it ended up being a three and we lost in overtime. And then one of the kids from that team ended up being my college teammate. And so he and I like then we have stories about like, what was being said about the other one, like in the locker room, like they said, I, so I played at Kent State, they had me going like, they’re like, their coach told them, well, this kid’s going to Kansas State.

He’s like, what, it was just this whole it was just this whole thing. So I, I guess the, the point is, is that when you think about the, the moments that like stick with you, like, like when I think about that, like that, the, the raw emotion of that, like, it just never, like you can never. I don’t want to say you never get over it, but you never get over it because that opportunity just go, that opportunity just goes away.

And so it’s always interesting when I hear somebody that shares a story when you say, what’s your best memory? And your best memory is a loss. Yeah. And I don’t know if I would say that’s my best memory, but when I think about some of my most vivid memories of, of basketball, like that’s it. Because as you said, it kind of is a defining moment of, okay, can I, am I, am I crushed by this or can I get back up and live to fight another day?

And obviously in that season and in my high school career, I didn’t get a chance to, to fight another day, but you, yeah. You move on. And so it’s just interesting when you really start to think about how wins versus losses. And I’m sure you know, you won a lot more games than you lost in your life. That’s right.

I was just say, yeah. And yet the losses are the ones that you know, become in ingrained in you. Just because I, one, they don’t happen very often. And two, that emotion of of losing is, ugh, it’s so tough.

[00:23:17] Emily Jo Roberts: Well, the, the, the other really brutal part of our story was that I got really into video. I actually thought in college I was going to go work for ESPN.

I wanted to make all the one shining moment videos. Like, I was like, that’s my, that’s going to be my job. That’s it. That’s

[00:23:29] Mike Klinzing: your jam.

[00:23:29] Emily Jo Roberts: And that was going to be it. So I got really into video in high school from this moment is I went and took our VHSs and I took ’em out and I stopwatch them over and over again, and it was released at 0.3 seconds.

[00:23:42] Mike Klinzing: Ugh. Ugh. It’s brutal when like, there’s, there’s just, you can’t, you can never go. You can never go back. And, and it’s just mm-hmm. So like, I’m a ca so I’m a Cavs fan and this, this will be dated by the time that the episode goes out, but, so obviously they, they collapsed, they completely collapsed last night.

But then the NBA puts out their two NBA puts out their two minute report today, and both of the offensive rebounds that the Pacers got on. The off of free throws, both should have been wiped out because they’re not allowed to run in from the three point line before the guy releases the ball. And so on both of those.

And then Halliburton on the winning shot, he was in the, he was in the key over the line before his ball hit the rim. And so the NBA said, well, both of those should have been lane violations. And and so, yeah, I mean, I, you can’t, you can’t go back. But it’s just when you know like I can still see that kid’s feet on the line.

Like I, I, I see it as clear today as I saw it in that in that moment. And yeah, you just, you just never get it back. It’s the way it goes. You don’t,

[00:24:51] Emily Jo Roberts: you don’t. Sticks in here, I have so that that memory of me jumping on that scores table has not left me.

[00:25:01] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. But again, it’s it, it’s good that you used it in the right way.

Right. You were able to use it to, to fuel yourself, to continue to improve and, and something that, again, when you, when you look at your, when you look at your arm and you look at your tattoo and it takes you back to that moment and it takes you like, Hey, this is something that’s going to drive me for for the rest of, for the rest of my life.

Talk a little bit about your college recruitment, what that was like.

[00:25:23] Emily Jo Roberts: Yeah. I tell, I actually just told this story the other day. So I was, I, I, I didn’t know really what it was going to look like for me. I, I, I spent a lot of time at all of these, we didn’t have all the camps that kids have now, and I didn’t play a ton of aau, we didn’t have that world.

So it was really a high school level recruiting. And it, I ended up, I. Going to Penn State on a, a visit and I thought, okay, this is where I’m going to go to school. I’m so like, this is it. I went to a a nit lion football game on a Saturday. I was like, this is where I’m going to school. This is it.

My, my mother had decided that you not decided, but told me that I was going to go on the official visits that had already committed to, and I said, okay, fine, I can do that. And at the time, the UNC Wilmington coach had coached at UNC before with my uncle. So she was a family friend. We knew her was close with her.

And also Pat Sullivan was the assistant coach at UNC Wilmington at the time. And I was, I knew about Pat Sullivan in the 93 National Championship and he missed the two free throws. It’s always our running joke with him. That led to the Chris Weber timeout. We were like, you missed those free throws you know.

Anyway, so I a big fan there and so I was like, you know what? Okay, cool. I’m, I’ll go on this visit. And that was back when the Wizards were doing their training camp. In Wilmington. Okay. And, and that was Michael Jordan was bringing it back to Wilmington. And so I go on my official visit, it’s that time period I, I meet bill Guthridge Brandon Haywood, Jerry Stackhouse.

’cause they were all, they all knew pat Sullivan and came in while we were on. So I meet all these guys, I’m like, oh, this is amazing. Like what a fan. And I forget who else was there, Juan Dixon, like so many of these basketball guys that I kind of were growing up watching at the time.

And and then I meet Michael Jordan. I committed on the spot.

[00:27:08] Mike Klinzing: There you go. That would’ve been, that would’ve, that would’ve been enough to, that would’ve been enough to sell me. So one of my biggest disappointments, Emily, Joe, is I had, I knew a guy that was from the Cleveland area, that he was connected to Nike and the Nike camps and whatever.

And so I got a chance when I was in college to go work at Jordan’s camp. And he always played like he’d always play with the counselors. Yeah. And so, I mean, again, I just, like, from the time ever, I mean, since Jordan came on the scene, I was a Jordan just again from the shot and, and the whole, the whole thing.

And so you go there and he, he was he was there and I I saw him a couple times and he was supposed to play he’s supposed to play like the, the last night of camp. He always played with like the college guys and whatever. And the night that he was supposed to play with us, the, the rumor was that he was out at he was out with Mike Ditka gambling somewhere.

That was the, that was, that was why, that was why he didn’t come and play the, the week or the, whatever the, the camp. Camp that I was there. So yeah, I could, I could completely, completely relate, completely relate. If Michael Jordan had shown up on any of my visits, I think I would’ve been, I think I would’ve been right next to you.

Let, let, let’s.

[00:28:12] Emily Jo Roberts: I have a, I say too, like my, the highlight of my college career was I met him again. I had so when he, he would come into the training room. You were everyone, they cleared the whole training room for him, like no one. And, and it was like told like, you don’t talk to him if you see him, which typically you didn’t.

They had him pretty like courted off. Yep. But if you see him, you don’t talk to him like you don’t approach him like that’s a no. Everyone else was fair game, but like, not Michael. Okay, fine. So I I, I rolled my ankle badly. Like someone stepped on it. It was a bad, it was immediately, it was swollen and I was, so they took me to the training room and, and I knew it was kind of eely quiet in there, but I wasn’t paying attention.

I was in so much pain. I was grimacing. I have a sweat all over me and I’m sitting up on the, the, the, the table and I, I kind of feel someone moved beside me and, and I just kind of like having to look over. It’s Michael Jordan. He’s, he’s coming in to get taped and my ankle’s like just massive. And he, oh man, what?

You know, what happened to your ankle? You were right. And I was, and I don’t, I don’t remember what I said. Who knows what came out of my mouth. I think tears came out of my eyes. I wasn’t crying from the pain. So that was the high, that was the highlight of my college career at that point, too. Awesome.

[00:29:22] Mike Klinzing: Well see, there you go.

You got a high, you got a high school memory of dancing on the scores table, and you got a, you got a training room memory from college. I like it. Yeah, I like it. Well, the reason I

[00:29:29] Emily Jo Roberts: went there, I got it again. So

[00:29:32] Mike Klinzing: there you go. Got it back. Got it back twice. My impression of Michael Jordan when I walked by him in the hallway was that basically he was like a walking muscle with 0%, 0% body fat.

And I was amazed by like, his ankles were so skinny and this was, this was, this was pretty early. I mean, he was, I think my, I think I went to camp in maybe 90 or 91, so not not. Not, not his rookie year, but you know, he was still not in the second, not in the second Threepeat era. But man, I just remember him being just a seriously, like a walking, a walking muscle.

That’s what I remember. Like just zero

[00:30:07] Emily Jo Roberts: pin muscle. A lean muscle. Yes. Hard to explain when you saw him in person up close. Yeah. What his body felt like and looked like compared to like Ben Wallace was there one year and he was just a muscle, you know? Right.

[00:30:20] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. But Jordan was just, yeah. Wi, I mean, just wiry and like, again, honestly looked like, looked like someone had taken, like you’d see in a health class, like the, the, the skeleton with all the muscles.

Yeah,

[00:30:32] Emily Jo Roberts: that’s actually,

[00:30:33] Mike Klinzing: and just had taken the skin and like, just wrapped, just wrapped some skin around that. Like, let’s forget about the fat layer. Let’s forget about the fat layer completely. Let’s just wrap the, let’s just wrap this, this muscle into the skin. And that’s what that’s what Michael looked, that’s a good

[00:30:46] Emily Jo Roberts: visual actually

[00:30:47] Mike Klinzing: look like back in the day.

So, all right. So as you’re in school, what are you thinking about? Career wise, are you starting to think that coaching, are you still into your film? Where, where are you at mentally as you’re as you’re going through academically in school?

[00:31:01] Emily Jo Roberts: Yeah, I mean, listen, I had a really good time in college. I was part of the, the, also the reason was going to school at the beach.

So like I was having a good time. I wasn’t really thinking about career honestly, except for I I started to really get into the video thing and, and that started in, in that high school experience, I was like kind of enamored by it. And the one shining moment vi one shining moment videos like absolutely took me in.

But I also loved video, so video wasn’t super accessible when I was in high school. To, to watch your games and, and be able to like, break things down and, but I, I we, we had a little bit of access to that. ’cause again, my uncle having been at Carolina, he’s a, he’s a video and just brains guru, basketball mind guru.

And, and he was really into the film side of things. So like, he had kind of passed that along to my mother and to me. And so we had a little bit more of access to, to video and some VHS tapes. So I’d watch my games a lot and I was really into that. And and just kind of studying myself. So video kind of became a thing.

So I, I decided to major in communication studies with a basis on, on video production. And Wilmington was a, a, a pretty prolific film school. ’cause we had Dawson’s Creek and one, one Tree Hill were, were filmed in the area. I’m really popular in the area, so a lot of film students were there, but I didn’t want to, I tried the film more and I was like, it’s not film that I want, like, I want to make.

The one shining moment was like,

[00:32:20] Mike Klinzing: that’s what I kid, my, this is my life goal. This is what I’m, this is what I’m doing. I understand.

[00:32:25] Emily Jo Roberts: I was like, who has this job and how do I get it? And is it more than one person? So and so that was it for me. I was like, this is, I’m going to do this. And then I started to kind of understand the separation.

I had, again, had the accessibility to women’s basketball. At a different level because of my uncle at UNC. And so I, I had access to the Charlotte Smiths of the world to the Marian Jones of the world. Like I, I knew them, I had access to them. I, I, I was around them. I got to watch them play. And it was, it was really, I mean, again, privileged and lucky to be able to see women at that space when they weren’t on tv.

You know, I, I was there when Charlotte Smith dunked at the Myrtle Beach Tournament. Like I got access to those things. I saw Dawn Staley play, like when she was at Virginia and they played North Carolina. So it being able to like see women at this level, I was like, okay, if men have a one shining moment video.

I want to make one for the women. And so I, I would just do all these little highlights as I started to learn all that stuff. And so I was like, this is okay, so this is what I want to do. I want to do it for the women. You know, I, I, well the one shining moment was, was kind of what got me into this, and I want to make this for the women and how do we do this for women’s sports or women’s basketball?

And so that’s, and that was like, that was what I was going to do. I, I, I wasn’t really into coaching. I didn’t think about coaching. I actually probably said like everyone else in my family, all the, my brothers, sisters and cousins that we don’t want to coach or teach because that’s what everyone else in our family has done.

And we saw what they went through doing and we’re not going to do that. And so I, I, I was like, that was my goal. That was what I was going to do. And then I I think there were my experiences in college and just pat Sullivan was probably one of next to my mom, one of my favorite coaches I ever played for.

And he was unique in so many ways. And again. Very lucky to have someone of that knowledge. You know, that personality, what, he was my there my freshman year and part of my sophomore year, and he left to go to the Detroit Pistons. So big jump for him. Yeah. To go from Wilmington to the Detroit Pistons and still kept up with him and still keep up with him now.

And CM at UNC from time to time. But he’s just he, he was someone that was like. I started to realize, like this personality as a coach and the effect that he had on me outside of my mom, who I had played for most of my life, that it was, there was something really special. And I had some other assistant coaches in that space that really they started just to, like, they had just such a, a, a, a really profound effect on me from a day to day, from a personal not just on the court experience.

And I thought like, what a re like what a relationship. ’cause I’d always have my mom and like, what a different relationship. But like, having this relationship with someone who you know, you respect and you care for and you love, and they respect and care for, and love for you in this way. That’s like, not familial, but it’s, it’s, it’s this different style, but it’s so powerful.

It started to like, towards probably my junior year, I’d say, I’d started to think like, okay, this is, I I, I have some, I, I know that this is a world that I’m, I’m in. Intrigued by and have, have been for most of my life. But it started to really touch me in a way that I thought, like, this is something I think I could do.

And you know, even times when I felt like things weren’t the way that I wanted them to be, I’m like, okay, if someone else can do this this way, then maybe I could do it better and in this way, you know? So I saw a lot of good, and I saw some things that I think, I don’t want to say that were bad, they were just different than what I would want them to be.

And I, I think that, that kind of propelled me into thinking like, maybe this is something I want to do. You know, like, and, and, and I, and that’s, as soon as I left college, I jumped right into it. In coaching high school.

[00:35:46] Mike Klinzing: Did you know right away when you started doing it that. You had made the right decision that that was where you wanted to be?

I mean, was it instantaneous?

[00:35:54] Emily Jo Roberts: No. My very first game, it was JV girls basketball in Cedar Ridge in Hillsborough, North Carolina. We lost 79 to 13. So pretty sure I thought I made the worst decision ever. This, I was like, who does this and enjoys it? It was, it was not fun. But I again. Put my head down and learned and like, okay, I know the game well, but like, how do I actually transfer that knowledge to these young kids who when you get some of that JV level, know nothing, like, how do I transfer knowledge to them and this passion that I have that they don’t like, how do I transfer that?

How does, how does this work? And I started to learn a lot about teaching. In, in my first year I didn’t teach, I just coached and I, I had a different job my second year I took a job teaching. So I think actually being in the classroom and being a teacher made me a better coach. It taught me so much about just communication and, and, and being able to explain things and being able to really bring, you know help like people see and the, the good in themselves and bring that out in themselves and teach them things that like they never thought they could do in a way that they understood.

And I really took a lot of pride and I enjoyed that. And I think teaching, again, in a classroom helped me do that. But my, my first year, the end of our first year, so that, that was our first game. We lost 7, 9, 13. We played that team again the last game of the season and we only lost by two. So I felt like, I was like, okay, like I’ve, I’m, I’m, I’ve got something here.

Like and, and honestly like we, we had some pretty decent players and I understood also that like good players make good coaches early no doubt about that but we have a way to like touch them and help them grow and help them see a potential they maybe never thought they had.

And I was really able to tap in that early in my career. And JV girls basketball was really what did that for me. And teaching, I think teaching were, was a big part of that for me.

[00:37:46] Mike Klinzing: Did that sell you on being at the high school level, obviously your mom’s influence and being a high school coach, did you think after that first year.

I’m just going to continue on that career path of I’m going to teach and be a, eventually be a high school varsity coach and that’s kind of going to be where I’m going to hang my hat. Or did you, in the back of your mind, eventually, obviously you get to the college level, but did you think maybe that was something that you’d be interested in or where, kind of where, where was your thoughts at that point?

[00:38:13] Emily Jo Roberts: Yeah, it’s such I have so much respect for people that, coaches that get out and do this at the high school level, at the JV level, and you know, at the youth level, it’s just, there’s so much. There’s so much power in like the, the, like, what you can bring to young people’s lives in that age.

They’re so susceptible. They’re susceptible to learning. They’re susceptible to all many, to so many other things. And you just have this, this, this position to be in their lives in such this positive way. And it’s a hard job. It’s a really hard job still. And some of the best basketball minds and coaches I know are at that level.

They real, they, I mean, some of the best basketball minds I’ve ever talked basketball with are at that level. And, and I don’t, I don’t think people often think of that as the space when I’m, I, I’m constantly talking about that. But I knew for me that I, I’d kind of grew up in a small town and I think I was living in a small-ish city at the time.

I would say Chapel Hill was not a city, but whatever we want to call it. And I just knew I, I wanted to find a bigger space and I wanted to, I wanted to be in a different, I wanted to experience something new. I, I had an opportunity to go play overseas after college, and I turned it down ’cause I was a little nervous about leaving.

I had never, I honestly, I, the most we had traveled at, at Wilmington was to like Philadelphia on a plane that was like our one plane trip. That was the only time I’d ever been on a plane. And I thought I was, I was scared to go to Iceland to play and I, so I did. I didn’t take it. And so I think for me, I sat with that in that moment of, of kind of thinking about what does this look like for me?

I love coaching, I love playing an important role in these young people’s lives, but I. Affect more people and I want to do more. And for me, I thought I can reach more people at a higher level. And that, and to me, I was like, okay, the college is, is about reaching more people. Not, you can do so much in a space at that high school level, but for me, the college level is like, I could reach more people and I could do more that.

And I want, and I want to change the game. I want to change the game for women and I want it to, to get the respect it deserves. And I want people to start respecting the game in the way that it should be respected. And, and I wanted to be a part of that. And I just felt like at the high school level you’re doing such an important job, but like you’re reaching just this minute group of people.

And I wanted to do more. So I started to really kind of push for opportunity to get in, in the college space. And that was probably my third year of, of coaching and teaching in co in high school. I said, okay, I’m I’m going to make a do this and, and go for it. And so I just started applying to jobs.

I applied to 41 jobs and I got. Two letters back. One was from Sherry Cole, Oklahoma. It was a handwritten note. The other was like a type note. I don’t remember who it was from, but it Sherry Cole. I haven’t forgotten Sherry Cole to this day. And I talk about her all the time to Jenny at Oklahoma and just I, Danielle Robinson who played for, for Sherry Oklahoma, where she’s our client now, and I talk to her, I’m like, that was the one coach.

She took the time to hand note, write me and say, and I think I was like applying for her head assistant position. And she took the time to respond and go you’re not the right fit for this position, but the right fit’s going to come to you and keep, keep this passion, keep this energy and you know, the game deserves you.

Something like that, in that realm. I remember most of it. I still have the card. I keep it in my, my desk drawer, but you know, that was another moment for me that I had someone that just kind of helped propel, propel me into what I I was like, you know what? You’re right, I’m going to do this. I didn’t get a job that year, which is fine.

By the next year, I my first job at Memphis as a video coordinator making $12,000 a year, literally in a video closet that I turned into a wonderful space. That was my first job working for Melissa McFaren at Memphis. And John Calipari was there for that first year. And then, you know Josh Passer came in after, on the men’s side.

So it was, it was really a, a, a rich basketball heritage that I got to experience in that place too.

[00:41:57] Mike Klinzing: What was the learning curve like for you in terms of your growth from an xs and o standpoint of sitting there and being able to watch the film and just having access to the better technology that you obviously had at the college level compared to high school?

And I know that. Talking to different people that have had the opportunity to either start their career or at some point get in the video room. They all inevitably talk about just the fact that I’m watching so much video of our own team and then I’m watching so much video of our opponents that it’s almost like you’re going to finishing school of, of learning so much from all these great coaches.

So it sounds like just from you shaking your head, I could tell that that experience was similar for you.

[00:42:37] Emily Jo Roberts: Gosh. And, and again, we’re like video, it’s kind of, I had a little bit of like the tech, I didn’t have to learn the technology. I was pretty savvy in that area. So that was thankfully good for me because it was hard in every other way.

But it, I I, and again, my uncle at Carolina, he had been using he, he was one of the first. Coaches at that level who had made that jump or that transition to sports tech? Yep. And he, I mean, he was, he was kind of ahead of his, his ahead of his era and ahead of his time when it came to the video space because he understood and knew the importance of it.

So I just, I was always around him too. When I was coaching in high school. He was at Chapel Hill when I was coaching at a high school in Hillsborough, which is 20 minutes away. So I would go just like sit with him. I go watch their practices all the time and study. So the transition was for me, just learning this new coach Melissa McFaren, who I was working for, and she, again, rich basketball heritage there and learning her style and understanding that and, and the type of players that she worked with.

But then like, as you mentioned, like getting to study all of these other coaches and all these other games and all these other people was. Eyeopening to me. ’cause I had not done that at that level before. But I felt, I mean, you, I would stay in that, my little video closet, it was literally a very small video closet that I put a little mini fridge in.

I was like, I’m rocking.

[00:43:54] Mike Klinzing: You got, you got your $12,000, you got your closet, you got it all ducked out. You’re living it. Yeah.

[00:43:58] Emily Jo Roberts: And you, you could find me in there from like 6:00 AM to like 3:00 AM and I was having a ball and I loved every second of it. I mean, loved every second of it. And it, it, it was I knew how to work hard.

Peach farm like I had, that was a part of me from, from a young age. I, that you, you didn’t have to ask me to do that. But just getting that much basketball and that much knowledge, I, I was, I was, I was soaking every bit of it up and I loved it. I couldn’t love it anymore. And it was just an incredible experience.

And it was honestly one of the first times that I’d been around a program the way Melissa ran it and she ran it like a business. You look at where we are in this NIL space now at the college level, she ran her program, like a business like that she was a good coach, great coach, but she was a business woman.

And I, that was eye-opening to me from that perspective. Like, okay, if I want to be a head coach, I’m watching what this woman does from a business standpoint here. And like to see that again, just another piece of like that propelled me into this traject trajectory of where I am now in my career.

[00:45:00] Mike Klinzing: All right. Talk about the next step after Memphis.

[00:45:03] Emily Jo Roberts: After Memphis. So my grandmother, who was very close with was diagnosed with breast cancer and she was back in the Chapel Hill area. And Charlotte Smith ended up getting the job at Elon and Charlotte Smith, who I told you I played at Carolina, coached with my uncle at Carolina known for her 94 National championship shot also for dunking in a game.

Called me and asked me did I, I want to come. And it was a pretty, I was a video coordinator and she wanted me to come as her dobo, so it was a pretty lateral move. It, it definitely made more money than my, my $12,000 a year. And didn’t have a, didn’t have my own office, but that was fine. And she asked me to come with her and, and I was kind of hesitant at first ’cause I was like, I’m enjoying this experience.

Like, I, video is like the basketball path for me that I want, if I go Dobo, is it, is that the path that it’s going to take me to? So I was kind of questioning it first. And then when my, my grandmother, I found out maybe two days later was diagnosed with breast cancer and I called Charlotte and I was like, I’ll be there tomorrow.

You know, I’m taking the job. And so I went back and, and lived with my grandmother in Chapel Hill and commuted to Elon and, and, and, and had that experience and got that time with her. And it was it was, it was my first. Coaching job. ’cause Charlotte gave me a lot. She gave me so much.

She knew I wanted to be a coach and she knew I was kind of making that, but she let me be involved in so many opportunities from coaching. So I was still doing some video, I was doing everything. My hand was in everything, which was exhausting, but it was also, I learned so much in that experience. She’s a wonderful leader.

She’s also an incredible basketball mind. She’s one of the I would say one of the like sharpest basketball minds that has the ability to make adjustments to certain things. Anybody I’ve ever been around, she has an incredible basketball mind. So I would just sit and watch film with her. You know, she’d be watching film in the office and I’d just go sit behind her quietly, let her talk out loud, talk to herself, and I’m just be back there listening while I’m trying to do all my dobo duties, you know?

And so that was my next stop was being a dobo there for her. And we had an assistant coach lead after that first year, and she came right to me and said, will you step into this spot and take this role as, as on a, as an assistant coach and I. Was in, I was ready to be on the court. I was dying, not being on the court.

You know, I wanted to be involved. I wanted to like coach and speak and, and again, play a role in the lives of these young people and how they could see themselves be better. And she gave me my first coaching job.

[00:47:17] Mike Klinzing: What’s something that in that first year or two there, as you’re taking on all those responsibilities, what’s something that you really enjoyed that maybe is unorthodox or maybe that’s something that people don’t always equate to.

Again, the on obviously people outside the profession think of the on the court coaching and not stuff off the fore, but what’s something that you enjoyed, an aspect of coaching that you liked that maybe wasn’t the, wasn’t the on the floor, it wasn’t the video. Maybe even wasn’t directly basketball related, but something that you kind of took to.

[00:47:51] Emily Jo Roberts: Yeah. There’s a few things for me and I, this is not going to be a popular opinion, but I loved bus rides. I loved bus rides. I loved them. I mean, the snacks, like the work I could get done, and I don’t sleep on ’em because like, I, I, I can’t sleep on a bus or a plane. It’s just, I just can’t do it. So I loved bus words, rides.

I’d go and take pictures, everybody’s sleeping, and they would be so mad and it would be so, that was so funny.

[00:48:16] Mike Klinzing: Did you do that when you were playing? Did you do that while you were playing? Yeah.

[00:48:19] Emily Jo Roberts: Well we didn’t have, I, we didn’t have camera phones, but yeah, I wish I did. No, but I mean,

[00:48:23] Mike Klinzing: but I mean, you were awake.

It’s funny ’cause like, I, now, now I could sleep, like literally, if I closed my eyes now and I stopped talking and just sat here in a hardback chair, I could be asleep in like three seconds. But when I was playing, I was the only person who on the bus whatever, the game would end at 10:00 PM and you’d have like a four and a half hour bus ride home, and within like 10 minutes, everybody on the bus maybe the coaches were awake for an hour watching fell, but everybody’s, everybody’s asleep within an hour.

And then I always was in the very backseat, had my light on. I’m, I got my book I’m reading, or a magazine. Yeah. My headphones on. Like, it was, that was me. That was me. I could, I could never sleep anywhere. So I I’m right there with you again.

[00:49:02] Emily Jo Roberts: Yeah, yeah. No, still can’t fall asleep. I think coaching did that to me.

Okay. Alright. As a player, I, I just, I could never do it. I couldn’t sleep on a bus, couldn’t sleep on a plane. I just I’ve never had coffee a day in my life, so we don’t know what this is.

[00:49:18] Mike Klinzing: All right. So you like the bus rides? I can relate. I understand. Completely understand. Yeah, that’s a good one. I like it.

[00:49:24] Emily Jo Roberts: I gotta watch a lot of film on the bus rides too, so that was probably another reason. Yeah,

[00:49:27] Mike Klinzing: there you go. That, that all makes, that all makes sense. So as, as you’re going through and you’re, you’re, you’re doing your coaching part of it, and I, I think a theme that has kind of run through the conversation here is that you’re starting to look at the bigger picture of that impact, right?

And how you want to do that. So at this point at Elon, are you starting to think about how can I advocate more for women in coaching for females within the game? What, how are you starting to get involved in sort of that bigger picture idea at this stage in your coaching crew? Yeah.

[00:50:12] Emily Jo Roberts: It honestly started when I was adobo there.

Charlotte gave me a lot of opportunity to speak up and, and, and what was really wonderful about Elon it wasn’t always right, but it was, it was wonderful that they at least thought this way is if they were going to do something for their men’s program, they were going to do it for the women. And what I was always trying to impress upon them.

And I don’t think I, I, I had all the words then because it probably wasn’t what we know of it now. The way we look at the blueprint for women’s sports is different than men’s. And, and I, I didn’t have that language then, but I would always say like, I appreciate that, that you want to do the same for us as you do for them, but we’re different and we just give us the same.

Percentage, the same amount and allow us to do the work that works for us versus just doing the same thing. And it was a constant battle. So it started really in that dobo state when I’m talking about scheduling and where we’re talking with the marketing people about how this should look.

And Charlotte asked me to stay in on some of that as I was an assistant coach, because my, I was always very vocal and I’ve always been very vocal, especially speaking up about injustices or things that I thought were wrong. And and, and Charlotte allowed me to be that she very much respected that about me.

Sometimes had to tone me down a little bit. I was, I was a little hotheaded in my younger days, maybe still am, but definitely more than but you know, you have to learn. You know, but that, that she knew that about me and she was, she was proud of that for me to be that. And she kind of honed that and, and helped me grow that my voice in a, in a.

I would say a more intelligent way and how to get things done differently. ’cause you know, Charlotte was a thinker, so I learned a lot from her about how she thought before she spoke, when I was just always talking. And so I think, yeah, that was certainly a space that did that. And, and again, I, Elon was a wonderful experience from the administration down in what they wanted to do.

And, and they would listen when we would have these conversations, it was, there would be some nos, some nos, some nos. But eventually it was like, okay, we hear you. And, and it would start to change a little. And seeing that change and, and watching that change and then watching it actually really work because in my head I thought like, this is, this got, this makes sense to me.

And then they would actually do it. And I was like, oh, why did they listen to me? I dunno if this is going to work. And then it would work and it was good and it was successful and I. Okay. Yeah. There, I mean, I, I am, I do see this the way that a little bit differently than the rest of the world seeing this.

And they were grateful for that. And, and they started to come to me for other things that I had no idea what to talk about, but I was, I was, all right, I’m going to figure it out because I want to know that too. So it was, it was a incredibly pivotal moment for me to have someone like Charlotte as a boss actually, like, let me use my voice to speak up for the things that we felt like needed to be done right or correctly for women.

Because that wasn’t always the case throughout my career. It certainly wasn’t the case at my stop after Elon, and a little bit of why I probably left coaching, and that’s because my voice was really stifled in that, in that position.

[00:53:02] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. That’s hard when you. An idea of idea what you want things to look like, right?

And it, you’re not necessarily able to fulfill that vision when you’re in a spot where, okay, here’s what I want to have happen. Here’s what my ideal vision of it is. And then if you can’t make that happen, yeah, it, it’s easy to see where you might say, okay, I could go from this position to another position, to another position where maybe I get stuck in this spot where I can’t have that larger impact.

So talk a little bit about just the decision to leave coaching and then how you figured out where am I, what does that look like? Because obviously at a certain point, right, you had kind of accepted the fact that you. You were going to be enthusiastically accepted the fact that you were going to be in coaching and that’s where you wanted to be.

And so then I would think, again, especially with your family legacy to, to kind of wrap your head around, wait, I’m not going to have a basketball season and I, I’m not going to have a team to be a part of. Like, that had to be, I know when I first walked away from that, from coaching, for me that was, that that first year was completely just the strangest feeling.

’cause there was, there was no ba I mean there was basketball season, but there, but I didn’t have a basketball season. I was participating in other people’s basketball seasons as just a fan. And so that was very strange for me. So just how did you go about a, making that decision? What did you kind of debate back and forth for yourself?

And then how did you map out what you wanted to do with it, with the idea in mind that you wanted to continue to be able to have that impact that we’ve talked about?

[00:54:39] Emily Jo Roberts: Yeah. I mean, like I said my last stop was at App State and, and my voice was really stifled. It was I was met with a lot of resistance when I was using my voice.

And I think it after three and a half years there, it was, I, I was really exhausted by the fight of that trying to rebuild work to rebuild a program and as hard as I work and just was spinning wheels and, and, and it was, it was a, it was a difficult stop. And sometimes that happens in this business.

I never thought it would happen to me. I’m a deeply loyal person. My uncle was at Carolina for 37 years with Coach Acho. Like, that’s just who we are, right? And I thought that would be me. And I thought that would be my career. And I didn’t see it would be any differently because that was how I looked at things.

But it was an experience that opened my eyes to that. You know, you, my experience was going to be different and I never thought I would do anything but coach. And so after leaving coaching in that first year, I, I struggled in a lot of ways, I, I, that I didn’t realize. I think it took me about a year to realize how much I was struggling without basketball, without coaching, without something that I love so dearly that I was good at.

And I, I knew I was good at it and I had an incredible amount of passion for it. And now what am I doing with all that energy? I have nowhere to put it. I, I tried an office job around sales. ’cause everybody’s like, oh, we’re, you’re recruiting, you can do sales. And, and the, they chain me to my desk from six to eight and I was like, there’s no three hour practice break in the middle of the day.

I am not doing this. You can’t do this. So I didn’t really know what I was going to do or what this would look like. And in that, in that, in that meantime, I, I found real estate and I was like, oh, this is actually, there’s a lot of transferable skills from to real estate and coaching, and I. And I thought, this is great.

And I had actually talked to a former coach, head coach. She left, she’d retired and she just did real, did real estate on the side at this point. And she was the one who told me that. And so I kind of stepped into it, ended up building this really incredible business in the triangle area in North Carolina.

And it’s successful. And I was like, this is kind of great. I’m making more money than I had ever made coaching. Nobody’s given me an itinerary. And for about a year that was. Amazing. I was like, this is great. I’m learning new things. I like to learn new things. There’s a lot of, again, I’m coaching people in a different way and, but I really missed, I missed the, the pieces of coaching that I loved so much.

You know, the impact I, I had on young people’s lives. Like I missed so much of that. It was, real estate was not fulfilling all of the needs. It was fulfilling a few of them the strategy and telling ’em like, all you have to do is do this and we can win this offer. You know, it wasn’t fulfilling everything.

It was, it was doing its job. And, and I actually ended up seeing a sports psychologist named Dr. Hack out of the care area, and he’s. World renowned for some things he’s done and some from some, some, I don’t know the exact terminology around it, but he’s, he’s, he’s unbelievable. A friend of mine was a golfer at UNC and you know, golfers, they have to have those sports psychologists around them quite a lot.

And he worked with her in college and she was like, I really think you should just go, like, sit with him and talk to him and just see if he helps. She’s like, I talked to him about everything now and I’m like, okay. You know, so I, I, I met with Dr. Hack and he, I, I kind of tell people, I think he changed my life in a way that like, he helped me under, he helped me kind of get through.

I don’t just understanding like. Leaving coaching and how the expectation and, and, and then reality, like what you expected versus what’s reality now. He really helped me I think with sports we learn a lot of things that are so valuable to how we approach our daily lives and the things that we do.

I think athletes obviously see and can experience the world in a lot of different ways from just the experience that that sport has given them. And he helped me realize also though, there were some things that I’ve had to unlearn from the perspective of, you know. You know, I, I was just kind of the grinder, grinder, grinder, and never really stopped to think about why the what, the, where, or to actually, like, feel some of the things that I was going through when my grandfather passed away, like I just dove right in back and played a game the next day in high school and in tears the whole game, right.

And just went with it. And he, he he has, he’s world renowned for his, how, how do you feel a feeling? And, and it’s this running joke. I, I love to tell this story. He asked me at one point, he was like, has anyone ever told you how to feel a feeling? And I. What do you mean? And he was like, well, when you’re sad, what do you feel?

And I was like, sad. I feel sad. And he was like what do you feel? And I was like, sad. I feel sad. And he said, well, what in your body do you feel? And he kind of went through this whole mantra and this moment and taught me this moment. And he does it a lot with football players and football teams and guys that ’cause it’s just a difference of that that world for them and, and what the expectation is for them.

And and so he, he was incredible and he helped me kind of work through all of that in a way. And that is what led me to having, I, I don’t want to say the courage or the confidence I’ve always been fairly confident in, in, in things and willing to try new things and not really scared of a lot of things, but to come out of where I was and to step into this new space and say like, I want to try something new in women’s sports.

And what does that look like if it’s not coaching? Because I had gotten probably my dream job. Coaching offer while I was out of coaching and I turned it down and I could not say why. And that’s when I decided to see Dr. Hack. I was like, I have to figure this out. Yeah. Why did I that and or why was I not excited about it?

And he, I that, I think that experience for me truly was, was, it was mind blowing honestly. And, and it was just a few things that I’ve carried with me in the last few years after having seen him and worked with him and, and talk about that experience all the time. ’cause I think it was, it was life changing for me as well.

Yeah.

[01:00:21] Mike Klinzing: It’s amazing how sometimes just a simple conversation of somebody asking you the right questions can get you to see things that you could never get to on your own. Even though they might be right there lurking below the surface, but you just can’t get to them. It, it really is kind of amazing when you talk to somebody who asks.

Good questions, or maybe just follow up questions of you give an answer, like your answer of, I feel sad. And for some people that would be enough of an answer. Yeah. And then for somebody else, you just probe just a little bit deeper and all of a sudden now you’re onto a whole nother level of insight that you could never get to on your own.

And I always think that that’s, I mean, it’s fascinating when you try to figure out yourself, right? I think the most successful people in whatever they do, you try to be self-aware of the things that you do well, the things that you don’t do well. You try to be aware of what’s going on with inside your own mind, but then how that relates to the people around you and what your goals are and all these different things.

And, and yet. Sometimes we get so stuck in our own head, in our own ways and on our own path that we just need somebody to nudge us off into the brush and not just walking straight down the middle of the path. And it definitely sounds like he was able to do that for you. So as you have those insights, then, how do you take the insight and turn that into action?

What’s the, what’s the next step?

[01:01:53] Emily Jo Roberts: Yeah. Well, I, I didn’t know what the next step was. It was just really like, at this point I, I saw a lot of things happening with women’s basketball. I was kind of one foot in, one foot out. I was like, I really want to be a part of this. I don’t know how, I don’t know if I want to go back to coaching.

I really miss it, but there’s something in me holding me back. And I, I happen to run into at an event, a man named Dan Levy, his wife is the women’s lacrosse coach at UNC Jenny Levy, who is one of the. When it comes to coaching and development, and she’s one of the most incredible coaches I’ve ever been around.

And what she’s done over, I think she’s now on 37 years there sh her, she should be studied for her coaching. I. Prowess. She’s really unbelievable. So was a big fan of her and meet him. And we just struck up a conversation and that’s Dan is I kind of call him the godfather, the architect of what representation for women’s women look like in the business space because he started his career back in the nineties with Mia Ham, and he said he was going to start a business representing women and only women back in the nineties.

And people said he would never make any money. It would never work. Then off he went with me and him and put her in a commercial with Michael Jordan. So like, he just kind of figured out that the blueprint is different for women and he built this business off of it. And then our, our women’s group, our women’s sports group at Waserman Dan and a, a woman named Lindsay Cole, who’s on our basketball side.

They, they’ve done this for the last 20 years in this incredible way. They figured it out that it’s different for women and they built that path. And you know, so I meet him and we were having this conversation and he tells me that their group’s looking to start a a women’s coaches, an exclusive women’s coaches division.

That’s, that has a marketing forward approach. And it all the, it was the, I remember it so vividly, almost like I could feel a light bulb come off of my, like the, the, the left side of my head. I was like, wait a second, what? And so I started thinking about it and he, we had another conversation to follow up and he asked me to put something together if I have some interest.

And so I spent a lot of time researching Wasserman researching, like the way that I want to portray this, like how do we propel women forward in this profession? Because there are a lot of obstacles. The barrier to entry for women is a lot more difficult than it is for men. And it’s why there are not enough women in this space.

We don’t make it easy for women to be in this coaching space. We actually make it harder for them to be in this space, in, in multiple ways. And so I just started to kind of develop this, this concept and this idea, and I put it in front of them and they were like, yes, this is what, this is. What we’re we want to do?

This is it. So they brought me on board and we started this women’s coaches division with it’s a super intentional group. And the, with the ultimate goal of like doing things that where we see I call it the Dawn Staley effect. You know, she’s kind of done this really organically where she’s just been herself and she’s also won games.

And those two things combined have really propelled her into this limelight in a, a different way than we see coaches in general. And, and it’s really just her, maybe some Becky Ham Hammond, maybe some Emma Hayes. It’s really just them in the women’s space of that. You know, on the men’s side their contracts are higher.

They make a lot more money in there just from their contract and from their work. But again, on the women’s side, as same as talent and athletes, it’s not just contract. There’s a lot of marketing. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of different pieces to the business. The blueprint’s different. And so we wanted to figure out what that could look like for women.

’cause no one was really doing that. And I think we’ve built a really cool business, really is an intentional group to try to do that. Lots of different coaches from different sports with soccer, volleyball, basketball is really deeply rooted in basketball. ’cause that was my background and, but it’s been, it’s, it’s what I say that I’ve been able to do there, that if you think about all of the stories I’ve told over the course of my life, I’ve been able to use my voice to fight for the things that I feel are necessary and needed for not just women in sports, but women in coaching.

And you know, oftentimes when women as coaches speak up about some things that they’re experiencing at their universities or their institutions they need to see better and they want, they be, the bullseye becomes on their back and it becomes a really difficult to do the job. And, and oftentimes they’re, they’re shunned for that.

Or there’s, there’s a lot of things that go into that. And I’m like, now I get to fight for them. And I work for a place where like, we shout this from the rooftop. We are here to fight for those things. And that’s like the number one that’s like how we lead and how we go with this. And so I’m like, I, I keep, I’ve said this over and over again, like, I found my place, I found my people, and I think I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be with the ability to use my voice.

The ability to still have this space in, like in the coaching world and the ability to affect lives in a big way.

[01:06:24] Mike Klinzing: So having a coach’s voice be shut down is clearly an obstacle, right? For women in coaching. But what are two or three other obstacles that when you look at what a. Trying get into the college coaching profession or someone who’s already there, what are the obstacles that they face that someone on the men’s side might not have to deal with?

[01:06:47] Emily Jo Roberts: So, the first one, and, and, and probably one of the biggest ones, family planning and you know, whether they want to be a mother, whether they already are, are a mother whether they want to they have a partner who’s going to be a mother or who’s going to carry a child. It, it, family planning is difficult for women and it’s the biggest barrier and the bus biggest obstacle.

You have so many women who cannot see themselves in this profession. It’s a hard profession. Coaching at any level, high school, college, I don’t care what it is, coaching at any level is a very, very hard profession. And so many women cannot see themselves doing that ’cause there are not a lot of mothers who are celebrated as moms, as coaches.

As, as you know, to go out and lead a program and then to also be a mother. Like these people are super human to be able to do that. I, I was, I’m the product of a coach’s kid. I, I experienced it and they’re super human, but we do not make it easy for them to make that decision. Number one, the pay on the women’s side is usually significantly less than it is on the men’s side.

Title IX doesn’t cover coaching salaries, so there’s, there’s a pay inequity there, number two, like universal childcare to help this, or some sort of childcare to help this process for women so they don’t have to make a decision between their career and being a mother. And, and I think that that is one of the biggest spaces that if we saw change there and we’re trying to work to create that, we’re, we’re working with a lot of different spaces that we’ll see an increase in women.

Who are parents, who are mothers, who, who want to be mothers, who want to be parents in the space. And, and, and if they can see how this could work for them and their family, they’ll stay in it and be in it. And the game will grow from that. It will game, the game will grow. The women’s game, the men’s game, all the games that women are a part of as leaders will grow.

Because when women lead, we win. We all win.

[01:08:34] Mike Klinzing: How much of that is involved in the education of young women who maybe aren’t at the stage of starting a family yet to help them to understand that, hey, you’re in this and now you’re getting to the point where maybe you do want to start a family, here are mm-hmm.

Options. Here are the ways that we can make that feasible for you? I would think that that just, again, the education, the ability to see someone else who’s already doing it and doing it well, both from a family and a coaching perspective, I would think that has to be a big piece of the puzzle.

[01:09:11] Emily Jo Roberts: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, education certainly is important, but the hard part is like, what are we educating them to do?

Yeah. The, the, the resources are so limited, the resources are so limited. It is so difficult. You know, and I’ll give you just an example. We started so Nali a Chan who is assistant coach at Michigan and played in the WNBA for 13 years, Canadian you know, on the Olympic team for the candidate national team.

She is, she’s wanted to be a coach since she was 13. She is a phenomenal and a brilliant basketball mind and a wonderful connector of people. She’s going to be an, she is a great coach now, but I kept saying she was going to be an amazing coach and at the time she’s looking at entry level jobs coming from the WNBA in her first coaching job, and she’s going to make 50, $60,000 a year, and she’s a single mom.

How is she supposed to pay for childcare? There is no resource for her. We went after everything we could find everywhere, and there’s no resource for someone like that. So she’s going to go leave, she’s going to go take a different job where she can make more money. And this profession that she wants to do, that she wants to be a part of, that she’s going to be so good at, she wasn’t going to be able to do.

And. So I was selfishly out trying to find a brand. I was going after the marketing side and the outside brand dollars to get someone involved to sponsor her a grant to help pay for childcare so that she could coach, she could take a coaching job, and we ended up working the Alex Morgan Foundation.

On the soccer side, Alex picked it up in a massive way and started something called the Coaching Moms Initiative for her foundation. And so her goal is to give $10,000 coaching grants to coaching moms throughout the year to be earmarked towards childcare just as to help them in that way. But then any of the bigger part of that that she’s taking on, that’s, that’s the most incredible piece of this.

It’s not just resources in that way. She’s telling their stories and she’s telling the stories of people like Courtney Bang Hart or Marissa Young, who’s the Duke women’s softball coach, or Kim’s Barna Rico, who’s at, at Michigan. She’s telling these stories of these women who have done it at all levels and who are doing it at all levels and telling the story of how they did it.

And so many of them talk about how important family is and their community is in that process. And that’s, that’s great. It’s wonderful to have a great community, and you need that in so many ways, but they all talk about how hard it is without the resources they feel like they needed to have. So the biggest thing is education’s huge, but.

Are starting to tell these stories so that one, they can see like how people did it and we can celebrate that. But I think that they become the very people fighting for, for the things that are needed for them as moms, as parents, and for also the people that are going to follow behind them. Because we’re so far behind and until we fix the resource problem here, it’s so hard for women to step into the space.

It’s not hard. It’s a hard job for them to be a coach. They’re not scared of that. It’s a hard job for them to be a mom. They’re not scared of that. It’s hard to do both and, and to do it effectively without a lot of help. And that’s not fair to one side of the equation when we can figure out resources to help them stay in this space.

[01:12:09] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. I do think that when I hear you talking about that in terms of the resources and, and looking and finding, where do you get tho, where do those resources, where do they come from? And obviously someone as an individual coach, right? Like when you were. When you’re coaching, like you don’t have the time, the energy, the ability to be able to go out and find the type of resources like you’re describing, right?

That’s where what you guys are doing at Wasserman is. You are advocating for not, you may be helping one individual coach, but you’re advocating for the entire women in coaching profession, which again, allows you to scale it, right? Because one coach just can’t, like, I, I might want to be able to look for those resources.

I might be super motivated, but again, it goes back to how do I balance, I have a job, I have, I have a family. Where do I find the time and the energy to be able to go out and do some of the things, research wise, communication wise, reach out and, and talking to people to be able to, to make that happen. So when you start to look for those resources, how do you, how do you even start that search?

Like where, when you think about how do we do this, how do you even start in terms of just brainstorming? Like where do, where do the ideas come from? Who do you reach out to? What does that process look like to, to be able to try to get those resources in place?

[01:13:34] Emily Jo Roberts: Yeah, I mean, honestly Wasserman in our reach you know, Lindsay Coli who is in our group, she’s our kind of pro basketball agent and, and has some Olympic athletes as well.

She’s the most incredible connector of ideas. Like if you come to her with an idea, she’s just so amazing at connecting it and putting it all together. And, and, and this really was stemmed from a conversation with her ’cause she represented Nat at the W level. And this was my, the conversation when I brought this pain point to her.

And so off we went to reach the brands that, because Wasserman is, we represent talent artists, mu musicians, entertainers, and brands of properties. And so we reached out to some of our brands and it was like, well, where’s this? What is this? Is this just charity? Like what does this look like? And we were working that space within Alex Morgan’s Foundation.

Again, we represent Alex on the soccer side. Tapped into this and was like, yes, this, this fits the pillars of what her foundation’s trying to do in a, in, in a really cool way and something that no one else is really doing. I also have good relationships with we coach and, and, and tapped into that group, which is about growing women and coaching.

And they have some stuff around being a mom and. You know, they get together and they talk about things that they do that are helpful. You know, the best kind of stroller that’s packable to carry on the road. Like they have these groups that they work with. So we partnered the Alex Morgan Foundation with we Coach and, and to build this coaching moms initiative out.

And we were able to, to do a lot of really cool stuff and just really almost, we’re not even a full year in yet. And we’ve done a lot of really cool stuff together. And you know, I think that, but that’s the reach of Wasserman. Like when you work with something, I mean, we’re this large global agency and our women’s sports group acts like this boutique small space where we’re, it’s personal and it’s a partnership and we care for people, but we have the resources of the global agency.

And that’s where we were able to tap into that. And honestly, like connecting with Alex Morgan, there couldn’t be a, like a better source to get this out with her influence from the social and the media perspective.

[01:15:33] Mike Klinzing: I mean, having a, having a spokesperson, having a front, and having a front person, right, that can, that people can relate to obviously is an important piece of it.

And then when you start looking at the foundation dollars and, and being able to provide that and then giving somebody, it always comes back to, I think for me, when I think about just being able to put funding in place, right? That, that a lot of times there, there are people that want to help. But they don’t know how.

And sometimes when you provide people just with the framework of like, okay, here’s what we’re trying to do, here’s the framework for how we’re going to do it, can you step in and provide us with whatever, whether it’s time, whether it’s funding, whether it’s energy, whatever people have to give. Sometimes people just don’t, they want to do it, but they just don’t know.

They just don’t know where. And as a result of that, they end up doing doing nothing. I think about that on the cha on the charity side, right? Like people are, people want to be able to give to like their local food bank or whatever, but maybe they just don’t know how to do that or where to do that, or they just want to be able to, to give somebody a framework to be able to, to be able to have those, you know to put those resources in place.

So, alright, let’s, let’s take a second obstacle. What’s another one that you see out there for, for women in coaching beyond the, beyond the resource piece?

[01:16:51] Emily Jo Roberts: Yeah, and this one’s kind of an interesting one that as I started to get into this and work with, with, with Lindsay’s former players or players who were transitioning out of their playing career from the WNBA and wanting to get into coaching and wanting to understand what this looked like.

There, there’s a stigma around former players and, and, and I think that’s one of the hardest ones that I, I, I grapple with in this space is I was having a conversation with a coach who I, I respect and as a good friend, and I was, I was bringing a name to her who was currently that person was playing professionally.

And we were talking about after their career, like they want to get into the space. Like, would you consider her for an opportunity on your staff that you’re going to have opening? And, and her first initial response was to say, well, I’ve hired a former player before and I’ve been burned and I thought we’re going to pin all former players into one bad experience with one.

Person like that, that feels like we’re holding them to a, a, a unattainable level, an unattainable you success like that doesn’t make sense to me that that’s a response. And I heard it more than once and I like, wow, this is actually an issue. This is actually a problem. And so I kind of really playing that out with different levels you know, one of our athletes is she’s won four WBA championships, a national championship, and was an all star a seven or eight times.

And I was told she didn’t have enough experience to be a coach. And I was like, wait, we don’t respect her experience as a player. You as, as a four-time WNBA champion, a national champion, a seven time, eight time, WBA All star. Like, we don’t expect her experience. Like we don’t respect that. But you know, we look on the men’s side and you know, Steve Nash is taking the Brooklyn Nets job right away.

Steve Carr got a, a pretty early job and his career and what he did there JJ Reddick, like I, listen, I love jj. He coach his fourth grade son’s team and off he is to the Lakers. Like, okay, that’s.

But like for women, they, they don’t get that, there’s not that same level. We, for some reason, with women, there’s not a separation of the athlete, the player, and the professional that they could be. It’s, it’s all still bound into one. And in too many conversations I had made me realize that. And so we, I don’t know if we figured out like the avenue of how we helped change that other than us just simply being an advocate and a resource and continuing to fight against that, that ideology and against that stigma.

Which I found a lot of success. I mean, my response to that coach was a little blunt and abrasive maybe. ’cause I was like, are you kidding me? That, that I response? And I kind of went through that. But then we had a real conversation about it and she goes, I maybe I, I need to check myself at the door because I mean, I’m, listen, I’ve worked on staffs where a lot of bad things happens in, in different ways.

And you know, we, you don’t just. Go after one group of people for that. And, and, and I don’t know why former players were getting that. And if you even look at Dawn Staley, like we have coaches who have, they’re, they’re incredible basketball guys. And just because I hear this all the time, just ’cause they were a good player does not mean they’re a good coach.

And, and, and that that’s fair. And that’s true. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be a good coach. It doesn’t mean that you can’t mold and mentor and grow them to be that. And you know, for some reason there’s this like primadonna mentality that comes with it. I go, no, no, no. I think it’s how you, how you grow them, how you, there there, there’s, there’s still a level of learning in them, but it’s how you grow them.

And you know, when the NCA came out with the two you know, non recruiting assistant spots, I thought this is going to be really great on the women’s side and we’re going to see more former players come into those spaces because now they can be they don’t have to have this recruiting back background, which I think was a lot of the word experience that I was hearing, which I understood.

I, I thought, okay, now they can use the, their assets on the court and they can player development, the X’s and O’s. They can really be deeply involved in that. But it didn’t happen. We actually did not, we’ve been studying the numbers. There was not an influx of former players or women in general in those spaces.

And so I think that’s still, that’s still a, a barrier that we’re still working with. Like how do we, how do we, how do we divest from that? Like how do we change that and create a new space where it’s not how we look at women who are former players of the game, especially who these women who have played for no money and gave their lives and their bodies to this.

Like, how do we change that? And we’re still working on that. I, I think there’s still a lot to go there because I think when we have more players like a dawn. Dawn Staley who played the game understands, like just has a different perspective when she communicates with players in that way. It’s not to say someone that didn’t play the game is not a good coach.

It’s to say though she has a different and a unique perspective that she brings to this. And when we celebrate that, support that, and grow that and have more of that, our game will be better and the women’s game will grow in a different way from that. And, and I hope we see more of that and I hope there’s more space in that.

[01:21:45] Mike Klinzing: It’s almost like the generalities are going all different kind of weird directions in what you’re saying in that you have, okay, well someone who’s a player doesn’t necessarily, just ’cause you’re a great player doesn’t make you a great coach. But then also the inverse is true, where just because you’re a great player doesn’t mean that you can’t, you can’t be a good coach.

Obviously if you played, especially if you played professionally, like there’s clearly a passion for the game. Nobody gets to that level of success, whether it’s in the WNBA or overseas or wherever. Even if you’re playing at the college level, you don’t get to that you don’t get to that point in your career without having some dedication and love for the game of basketball.

And, and sure. Obviously everybody has a different ability to to be a great coach or not be a great coach. But I, I think what, what I hear you saying for sure is that what we want to do is we want to look at the individual merits of each person and not blanketly say, well, this person’s a former player.

Let’s, let’s exclude them because I’d rather hire somebody who, whatever had it again, doesn’t have that know, came right out of college and became a coach, as opposed to playing 10 years of professional basketball. It just, it seems, it seems silly. The, the stereotypes seems silly going both directions, if that makes any sense.

Like it’s just totally you’re like, yeah,

[01:23:03] Emily Jo Roberts: no, 100%.

[01:23:05] Mike Klinzing: I don’t understand how either one of those statements from a, from a generality standpoint, makes, makes any sense and certainly doesn’t make the, make the profession better. And I, and I think you make a great point, that it’s just like anything, right?

When you hire somebody you think back to your first job at Memphis. It wasn’t like you walked in on day one and you were like, Hey, I, I’m the, I’m the best video coordinator that’s ever been. I’m, I’m number one in the country. Like, there’s, there’s a learning. I’ve said it that, yeah, there you go.

There’s, I understand. There’s a, there’s a, there’s a learning curve. There’s a learning curve somewhere in there That’s right. That you take and, and if you, if you bring in somebody who’s passionate and smart and wants to learn and all those things, then, then you can, you can mold them. And I think that’s one of the things that honestly, when I.

Think about the interviews that I’ve done here on the podcast, Emily, Joe, and, and I think about people that I respect that are head coaches. One of the things that they always talk about is their ability to develop their coaches, right? And you have your coaching tree and that you know, hey, I brought this guy in.

And especially, I’ve had a ton of division three coaches on here, and. When you’re talking about a division three staff, you’re usually talking about one person. You’re talking about somebody young, right? Who’s not making very much money, who eventually probably is going to move on to a ne their next opportunity.

And so I’ve had a ton of coaches just come on and say part of my responsibility is I gotta grow my assistant coaches. I gotta, I gotta help them to learn and to understand, and then that’s going to allow them to move up in their career. And, and it sounds like maybe on the women’s side that it’s not quite as prevalent as it is on the men’s side in terms of that development of of coaches that are on, that are on staff.

And you, you hope that, again, one of the things that I’ve loved about doing the pod is just the number of people that are willing to share. Their knowledge and talk about the game. And regardless of whether you’re male or female, that’s been something that has been super refreshing for me when I have conversations is the number of people who love the game and just want to see it grow, like they don’t care.

It’s, it’s not like it was 30 years ago when I can hide all this great stuff that I’m doing. And I, I’m not going to tell you. Well, I mean, every, everything, everything now is out there. So people are so, that’s right. Willing. Every, everybody’s so willing to share. And I think that that’s the direction we’re headed.

And you guys, if you guys can continue to push that on the, on the women’s side, to me, I think that’s a, that’s a goal that everybody in the game, regardless of gender, regardless of position, everybody, everybody should want to care about the game and grow it. And then to me, this is a, this is a pretty simple way to do it.

[01:25:37] Emily Jo Roberts: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s where I think like at the basis of all that we’re doing obviously it’s a business, but the goal is to grow women in the leader in leadership positions in these spaces. And everything we do, if we get a marketing deal, how can we, how does it help do that? Like that’s kind of the goal.

And you know, from, from all of that with our coaches, we, we also, we were able to start up an NIL group that we heard just pain points that the rev share dollars and collective dollars and where women were really kind of missing out in those spaces. And we were able to, I think we’ve able, we’re, we’re building a really cool NIL group that’s going to, I hope, help propel that side of the business too.

[01:26:19] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s an area that coaches at every level need help being able to try to navigate that. I mean, you throw that on top of all the responsibilities that they already have coaching wise, and then you throw NIL on top of it. Any outside help in terms of being able to navigate that and, and figure out how do we make this work?

To me is just that, I mean, I clearly, if if things stay the way they are, continue to evolve, it’s going to be an area that every coach, every school is going to need somebody that’s going to be able to help in, in those Yeah. With, with that, because it’s just, it’s so like go back five years ago and you, you fast forwarded to right now today, and nobody would’ve ever in a million years guessed that the college basketball landscape was going to look the way it does in terms of the portal and in terms of NIL, it’s just a completely, the whole college basketball world has been turned on its head compared to where it was when you started your coaching career.

When doesn’t.

We are coming up on an hour and a half, so I want to ask you a final two part question. So part one of the question is, when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge? And then part two of the question is, when you think about what you get to do now every day, what brings you the most joy?

So your biggest challenge first and then your biggest joy.

[01:27:50] Emily Jo Roberts: Yeah. I think the biggest challenge is continuing to move the needle. For women leaders in this space. It’s Conti. It’s a challenge. It’s continued to be a challenge and I think it will continue to be a challenge. You know, there’s just a lot that has to really change to see those numbers really move and change and but it’s, it’s one that I’m here for and I’m here for the fight and I’m, I’m thrilled that I get to be a part of that fight.

And I would say probably my biggest joy is, is getting to use my voice and my energy and my passion to fight for women and women in spaces to be leaders in the sports world.

[01:28:33] Mike Klinzing: Very well said. Before we get out, I want to give you a chance to share how can people connect with you, find out more about what you’re doing, so share website, email, social media, whatever you feel comfortable with.

And then after you do that, I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:28:48] Emily Jo Roberts: Yeah find me on LinkedIn on Instagram. Emily, Jo Roberts. And you can go to our Wasserman site, our Wasserman at the collective. So the collective is the umbrella over all of Wasserman that is really focused on empowering and growing women in spaces and getting brand dollars and marketing.

So basically all you’ve seen around women’s sports and women’s basketball particularly this growth Wasserman’s, the Collective group has had their fingerprints on that, which has really been cool to be a part of a group that’s doing the work that they’re doing. So definitely check that out.

The Mom’s and Alex Morgan’s Foundation, the Moms and Coaching, or the Coaching Moms initiative, check that out. That’s a really cool initiative that I think is doing really good work.

[01:29:29] Mike Klinzing: We’ll get all that in the show notes. Emily Jo, cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to join us. Really appreciate it and to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.

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