KEVIN CONNORS - MILLION COACHES CHALLENGE LEAD & MANAGING DIRECTOR AT SUSAN CROWN EXCHANGE - EPISODE 1232

Website – https://www.millioncoaches.org/

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Kevin Connors is the Managing Director at Susan Crown Exchange, where he oversees grantmaking, leads new initiatives, and co-develops organizational strategy.

Kevin has helped lead the Million Coaches Challenge, a national initiative launched by the Susan Crown Exchange in 2021 to transform youth sports by training one million coaches in evidence-based youth development practices. Backed by 18+ partners, including the Aspen Institute’s Project Play and research led by the American Institutes for Research, the Million Coaches Challenge is transforming youth sports by equipping coaches with the information and tools to create positive, inclusive environments that help young people build confidence, belonging, and life skills through sport.

On this episode Mike & Kevin discuss the Million Coaches Challenge, which strives to train one million coaches in evidence-based youth development practices. The conversation explores the critical gaps in training that many coaches face, highlighting the fact that a considerable percentage lack even the basic knowledge necessary to promote healthy development among young athletes. Connors underscores the importance of creating supportive, inclusive environments where children can thrive not only athletically but also socially and emotionally. He believes that the role of a coach transcends mere technical instruction, advocating for a more holistic approach that nurtures the personal growth of each athlete. As the discussion unfolds, Connors reflects on his own experiences in youth sports, sharing poignant stories that illustrate the profound impact that empathetic coaching can have on a child’s development. He emphasizes the need for coaches to cultivate meaningful relationships with their players, asserting that understanding what motivates each individual is paramount to fostering a positive sports experience. The dialogue further explores the pressing issues of mental health among youth athletes, with Connors advocating for a collective effort among coaches, parents, and organizations to prioritize emotional well-being alongside competitive success. Through the Million Coaches Challenge, there is a concerted push to redefine success in youth sports, moving beyond traditional metrics such as wins and losses to focus on the development of essential life skills. The episode culminates in a discussion of the fragmented landscape of youth sports, where existing structures often inhibit effective coaching practices. Connors calls for a unified approach that engages stakeholders at all levels – from grassroots organizations to systemic policymakers – to create a culture that values quality coaching as a fundamental standard. He expresses optimism about the future of the Million Coaches Challenge, envisioning a world where coaches are equipped with the tools, resources, and support necessary to foster environments that promote the well-being and development of young athletes. The overarching message is clear: by investing in the training and development of coaches, we can reshape the youth sports experience for the better, ensuring that every child has the opportunity to thrive.

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You’ll want to take some notes as you listen to this episode with Kevin Connors, Managing Director at Susan Crown Exchange and the Million Coaches Challenge.

What We Discuss with Kevin Connors

The Million Coaches Challenge aims to revolutionize youth sports by training one million coaches in evidence-based practices that enhance youth development
Coaches often lack the necessary training in youth development, with less than a third feeling adequately prepared for their roles
Community and mentorship are vital components of the coach development journey, ensuring that coaches are supported throughout their careers
It is essential to prioritize the human connection between coaches and athletes to foster a positive and effective sports environment
Effective coaching transcends technical knowledge; it requires understanding and connecting with players on a personal level to facilitate their growth
Institutions must invest in systemic changes that support quality coaching, bridging the gap between grassroots initiatives and overarching organizational strategies
A significant aspect of quality coaching involves understanding and addressing the emotional and social needs of young athletes
Part of the initiative’s future focus is to connect coaches with mentorship opportunities to ensure ongoing development and support within the coaching community
The importance of quality coaching standards
Understanding players’ individual motivations leads to better coaching outcomes
Local community involvement and awareness are crucial in transforming youth sports to prioritize athlete development over purely competitive outcomes

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THANKS, KEVIN CONNORS

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TRANSCRIPT FOR KEVIN CONNORS – MILLION COACHES CHALLENGE LEAD & MANAGING DIRECTOR AT SUSAN CROWN EXCHANGE – EPISODE 1232

[00:00:00] Narrator: The Hoop Heads Podcast is brought to you by Head Start Basketball.

[00:00:20] Kevin Connors: Part of the Million Coaches Challenge wasn’t just to train the million coaches. It was to make these broader system-wide calls, like how do we actually make quality coaching the new standard, and we create a new world where every coach is coming in, not just with a training, but a whole coach development journey.

Part of that journey is community and mentorship. That’s, I think, hopefully a next phase for the Million Coaches Challenge. Now that we’ve hit that million mark, hopefully draw some attention to the issue. Now let’s invest in those institutional solutions that can help from the top down. While we continue that bottom up,

[00:00:56] Mike Klinzing: Kevin Connors is the managing Director at Susan Crown Exchange. He oversees Grant making leads, new initiatives, and co-develop organizational strategy. Kevin has helped lead the Million Coaches Challenge a national initiative launched by the Susan Crown Exchange in 2021 to transform youth sports by training 1 million coaches in evidence-based youth development practices backed by 18 plus partners, including the Aspen Institute’s project play and research led by the American Institutes for Research.

The Million Coaches Challenge is transforming youth sports by equipping coaches with the information and tools to create positive inclusive environments that help young people build confidence, belonging, and life skills through.

Coaches, you’ve got a game plan for your team, but do you have one for your money? That’s where Wealth4Coaches comes in. Each week, we’ll deliver simple, no fluff financial tips made just for coaches. Whether you’re getting paid for camps, training sessions, or a full season, Wealth4Coaches helps you track it, save it, and grow it.

It’s time to stop guessing and start building. Subscribe now at Wealth4Coaches.beehive.com/subscribe and follow us on Twitter at Wealth4Coaches for daily money wins. Your money needs a coach. Start with Wealth4Coaches.

Hi, this is Dan Evans, head Men’s basketball coach at the University of North Georgia and you’re listening to the Hoop Heads podcast.

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You’ll want to take some notes as you listen to this episode with Kevin Connors, managing director at the Susan Crown Exchange and the Million Coaches Challenge. Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here without my co-host Jason sunk this morning. But I am pleased to be joined by Kevin Connors from the Susan Crown Exchange and the Million Coaches Challenge.

Kevin, welcome into the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:03:53] Kevin Connors: Hey Mike, what’s going on? Thanks for having me.

[00:03:55] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely excited to have you on. Looking forward to diving into some youth sports topics that are frequently things that we’ve touched on here on the pod, but want to get your expertise and see what you guys are doing to impact coaches and kids around the world who are participating in sports.

So let’s start by giving people an idea of what the Million Coaches Challenges. Give us a quick overview of what the program’s all about.

[00:04:18] Kevin Connors: Yeah, happy to and excited to have this time to talk about youth sports, right? Something we’re doing in our professional lives here at Susan Chronic Exchange and 3 million coaches, but just one of those issues that is like a table.

Tabletop issue, right? Like table conversation every night for parents and families, including in our own household. We have three kids in new sports right now, so happy to do that. Susan Chronic Exchange is a grant making foundation. We’re a private foundation based out of Chicago. We worked nationally but we started work really intentionally in youth sports around 2018, right when I came into the foundation and specifically, we were really.

Fascinated in understanding which environments for young people were most influential for their own personal, social and emotional development. We’ve done a lot of funding in other spaces, K 12 education after school, but sports kept coming back to us through our own research, our own conversations, and our own personal experiences as one of those spaces that was really ripe for helping young people not just thrive on a field or a court, but off the court.

After a little more research, we quickly understood that youth sports as promising as it can be sometimes doesn’t live up to that promise. It has that unique ability to foster belonging a sense of purpose. Resilience and coaches are at the center of that. As we talk to coaches, many don’t feel equipped to do that work.

And in fact, as you look into the research lesson, a third have been trained in just the basics of youth development, which is just the very foundation of what it might take to start that journey, becoming a great coach. So we stepped in as a national foundation and we said, what can we do to help close that gap?

There’s this gap between the influence a coach has and the training and preparation they receive. So we launched this nationwide call called the Million Coaches Challenge. We supported 18 organizations across the country who were banding together to collectively train 1 million coaches and youth development and mental health.

And these were organizations that represented all. All aspects of the eSports universe from the US Olympic Committee and NGB movement down to little league and school sports and into rec and park. And so we learned a lot about what great coaching looks like, and the common thread between all of those environments.

And we were proud that this past fall we hit that 1 million mark as a community.

[00:06:35] Mike Klinzing: And obviously it’s something that anybody who’s listened to me talk here on the podcast, one of the things that I always say is a challenge, right? Is that education piece, whether it’s for coaches. And then I’ll take it a step further and we’ll get into this a little bit more detail in a few minutes, but I also think just educating parents on understanding how valuable it is to have a coach who is educated.

And sometimes parents don’t understand the connection between a coach who has had some training and has some basic understanding of what coaching’s all about versus. The volunteer who maybe is a reluctant volunteer, would like to do well, but just doesn’t have the experience that’s necessary or doesn’t have the training that’s necessary in order to provide the kind of environment that you would like to see as a parent, or that I would like to see as a parent.

So we’re going to dive into all those details here in a second. Before we do, just want to go through a little bit, Kevin, of your background and how you got to where you are. So just take us through why athletics is important to you in your life, and just take us through the steps of your career that led you to this point.

[00:07:36] Kevin Connors: Oh, Mike. I have to go back to the very beginning, right? For that, as I’m sure you do, and I think about those days, shooting hoops on the driveway at 9:30 PM in the summer as like the sun was going down in Chicago. I was the youngest of three boys. We grew up in, I grew up in a household that was, it was all about sports.

Both my parents were that way. We were competitive, a friendly level of competition as you might imagine with three boys out there. And, I look back at my time, like in, formally as a player. And those experiences, good and bad and neutral were the most formative ones of my life.

I was successful in school and by all those classic metrics, but it was my teams, it was my coaches, it was the losses. That really shaped me. And it’s those lessons that I draw on now as a parent, as a coach just as an employee. And sports were fundamentally who I was. I was a multisport athlete through high school.

I went on to coach at the high school level. I ma a youth sports coach. And so I think along the way, even implicitly I learned a lot. And then once in a while, I was lucky to have that one in a million coach who really knew how to pull out the power of sport and help get the most out of me.

[00:08:47] Mike Klinzing: When you think about that person, what’s the lesson or lessons that you take from that particular coach when you think about the influence that they had on you then that maybe is still carrying over into your life today? What’s that advice? What’s that thing? What is it that coach shared with you or put into you that you’re still carrying around today?

[00:09:10] Kevin Connors: I think the number one lesson for me is get to know your players. Get, understand how they work, what makes them tick, how to motivate them, what they all need. Even in my own family I’m very different than my middle brother. On the outside we might appear very similar to friends and family, but actually what motivates us is very different.

My, my middle brother who’s three years older than me was the kind of player who wanted his football coach to grab his face mask and get in his face in light of fire, and I was that quieter player. He was like, I need you to come over recognize what I’ve been working towards.

Tell me what’s working well, and tell me what needs what, where I can improve in very just like rational concrete ways. It was just different techniques and I think as a player, I always. Recognize the coaches who are able to use different tactics with different folks and in specific, like we’re all going through something even as kids.

The, I think that there’s one conversation that stands out most to me about my playing experience that still sticks with me today as a parent and as a coach. I was, my senior in high school I was playing varsity baseball. We were pretty we were a pretty competitive team.

We were a top ranked team in state. I was having a really strong season, and in the middle of it, my dad unexpectedly passed away. And after that happened, I went into, as you might imagine, a deep slump, like just off the field certainly. But even on the field I was showing up to games but I really wasn’t all there.

And, baseball perhaps more than any other, it’s all mental. And I saw like my bating average drop from being one of the tops in the areas like by almost a hundred points over a three week span. And I was sitting in the middle of the line of pit and cleanup and our team was suffering as a result of my own performance.

And I remember one day my coaches just sat me down in the dugout before the game and just asked how I was. They said how are you? Do you want to continue hitting in this space? What do you need outside of here? And it was just the first opportunity to just talk openly, not even about baseball.

And after that, everything came back to normal. And so it was just one of those moments, understand your players, what motivates them, what they’re going through. And that’s one of those lessons I seen great coaches today and I’m trying to apply throughout my life.

[00:11:35] Mike Klinzing: It’s a great story. And it’s one that I think rings true to anybody who has been a coach, who’s been a player, who’s been a teacher.

You have a large background in education, as do I, and one of the things that I always say when it comes to education specifically, is when I think about the people that had the biggest influence on me as teachers or as coaches, it’s not the person who was the best technical teacher of algebra or not the person who taught me how to conjugate verbs as an English teacher, it’s the person who, like your coach did.

When you have a tragedy and your father passes away and that coach comes up and says, puts their arm around you and says, Hey, what are you going through? How can we help? What do you need? Those are the same people that I remember, right? It’s the teacher or the coach who pulls you aside. Before class, before, after practice, and says something to you, Hey, what’s going on in your life?

Or, Hey, I heard this is happening, good or bad, right? They get to know you. They want to know you as more than just a basketball player or a baseball player or whatever it may be, or a student. They want to know you as a person, not just a kid in their class. And those are the people that we remember. You don’t remember the technical geniuses, who, they had all the X’s and O’s and this, or they were tremendous about breaking down how to solve this variable equation and whatever it might be, those people who cared about you are the ones that you really remember and that you ha that have an impact on you.

And I think sometimes that gets lost in education, right? In so much of how we measure. The success of a teacher, right? It’s based on test scores and there’s all this metrics and you can crunch numbers forever, which I’m sure you did in some of your previous roles, right? You’re looking at numbers and statistics and all these things, and yet there’s that human element as a teacher that can’t necessarily be measured by a set of numbers.

And I think coaching in a lot of ways is the same in that you can have coaches who win a lot that know a lot of Xs and Os that attract a lot of people to their program, but they may not be having the biggest impact. Again, because parents don’t understand exactly what it is that they should be looking for in a good coach.

And it’s really, I think one of the biggest challenges is how do we get people to see and hear the story like the one that you told and know that. That’s a great coach, even though, and that coach may have been a great baseball coach from a technical standpoint, or maybe they weren’t as good as somebody across the road, but because they were there for you as a human being, that’s what sets them up to be able to have success as a coach.

And I think that’s something that when I look at coaching, and I know that when I look at what you’re doing with the million Coaches challenge, and you have the things that make up a good coach, the first, I think seven of your 12 principles just relate to setting the foundation of building a relationship with the players who are your part of your team.

It has nothing to do with your technical knowledge of basketball or baseball or football. And so I just think that’s, I just think that’s so critical and it’s the piece I think that people miss so often. Do you see that in the research? Does the research say that we’re missing that human element, that human touch.

[00:15:12] Kevin Connors: It does. And it at least says that coaches want it and coaches don’t feel like they’re getting the support to do it. And support, I think to us. And like you tell me, especially in all the different environments you’ve currently and have been a part of, like college basketball elite level basketball, you’ve raised, you have kids who’ve gone through the systems, but the sense is that no matter which environment you’re in, the foundation is the foundation of good coaching.

And that was one of the biggest takeaways from working with such a diverse set of partners in youth sport is that there was this recognition that, coaching is hard and good coaching is good coaching at the end of the day. So we might turn up the dial a little bit on what that competition looks like or how we’re, how much we’re focusing on skills and tactics.

But that foundation needs to be there to have any sustainable, really transformational effect. We did some we had some partners. We supported some partners to run some national research and some of those just top line numbers really jump off the page at you. And, it was, for young athletes, coaches are the most trusted person in their life outside of family.

We also know from a national coach survey that we helped support a few years back that, that surveyed more than 10,000 coaches across the country in different contexts. Less than 20% of coaches feel confident in recognizing off the field stressors helping reduce performance anxiety, linking athletes to external resources, helping them navigate just the pressures of social media.

Which like is like this whole separate but very interrelated space now. And so different from 20 years ago when my friends and I were navigating this space. And so coaches recognize the influence they have, they’re in it for the right reasons, but they don’t feel like they’re getting that support culturally within their institutions.

The expectations may be from parents or literally just the nuts and bolts of what are the training resources, what are the tactics I can use to actually help build bonding among my teammates? How can I get to know my athletes if I have 12 on a basketball team or 15 or have a hundred on a football team?

So there’s a need to customize all that, but you have to spend your time there, just like I did when I was in the classroom as a high school teacher too. You couldn’t make those assumptions that kids were ready just to trust you and to believe in you. You really had to work at it intentionally.

[00:17:48] Mike Klinzing: I couldn’t agree more. And I do think that is step one, is getting your students, your players to buy into you as a human being. And that happens because you’ve bought into them as human beings. And that’s not something that people intuitively know how to do. I do think there are some people that are natural born teachers, not that you can’t work to develop your skills, but there, there are some people who have a great understanding of empathy and the ability to connect with kids easier.

It comes more naturally to them. But then there are a lot of people who, with the proper training, with just being. Told that, hey, this is something that you need to do in order to be able to reach and connect that there’s such a possibility to increase the satisfaction of the kids who are participating in youth sports through just this.

And then again, has nothing to do with the technical aspects of teaching or coaching a particular sport. So let’s talk about what you guys are doing in this realm. Once you identify that, hey, this is a key skill that coaches need to have. Tell me about some of the conversations that you’ve had within the Susan Crown Exchange within the Million coaches challenge leadership about, Hey, what do we do?

We know, we recognize that this is something that coaches need. What are the conversations like about how do we get them what we need? And then talk about some of the things that you’re trying to do with the different organizations you work with.

[00:19:19] Kevin Connors: Yeah I think this question like how do you actually bring, the knowledge exists, right?

The resources exist, or the exemplars exist. We can think about our own lives, those transformational coaches, or we can look at all time greats, right? Who have written books, or we can look at coaches who are elevated right now during March Madness, right? Who are in their post game pressers, lifting up actually youth development.

You hear the players talk about their coach, and those stories are just baked into sports. They move us. Oftentimes they’re what stays with us, like the story I shared, and at the same time like what actually builds the skills or like the everyday practices and the environment that, that coaches are building.

So the question is not how we, not, how do we do, we develop more content, which there always will be more, more to share and more to create. But it’s really how do we bring these practices and how do we create a culture? How do we create a culture in youth sports? That prioritizes them. And that’s, I’m so curious, Mike, like what, how you think use sports from, again, elite to recreational, navigates this balance?

For the longest time it’s health and safety, it’s sports skills and tactics. And while we might say what makes one in a million coaches are like that youth, that life development skill, the ability to bring that up. It’s not a formal part of the education experience. It’s not a formal part of the evaluation experience.

It’s not a formal part of just youth sports culture. And the perception, that when parents are signing up their kids for sports, that there is this standard that like, that’s an outcome. I want my kids to develop a sense of teamwork and to learn how to overcome adversity. And rather than hope for that, is there a way for that to become just part of the.

Everyday expectation and standard. And I, and our work says coaches want that. Coaches want to be empowered to be their best selves so they can help their coaches. Right now it’s just such a fragmented landscape in youth sports. We all can talk about how there’s really no federal oversight, state level oversight.

It’s really an organization by organizational system. And the train is really far outside the station. And we have lots of different factors, right? More pay to play models are becoming more important. We now have private equity money in use sports. There are fewer and fewer just like low cost, but still quality options.

We see much more of a movement to travel sports for the majority of kids, at least in the area where I’m, and so much has changed, but we have to work at this from multiple levels. Like a, we just need organizations out there who are. Ready to train coaches. And there’s a few of those in Million Coaches Challenge Positive Coaching Alliance, the Center for Healing and Justice Through Sport, they are just coach training organizations.

They’ll come partner with you, come up with a coach development plan for your group, bring training to coaches, and they can do that for a host of different different types of context. And then we had some who were just, they were the institutions themselves. It’s the US Olympic Committee, it’s Little League.

And those organizations have the power of their own organizational policies that they can that they can work through. And as part of the Million Coaches, little League put in place requirements for any tournament coaches to go through and complete their. Diamond Leader program, which was their customized training program for little league coaches.

So there’s all that. While you’re also working on the big, long-term goals of what, what is actual, like what’s smart policy look like here? How do we start to shift the culture of youth sports to really prioritize this and make the definition of a good coach, a three legged stool instead of a two legged one?

What so

[00:23:01] Mike Klinzing: true.

[00:23:02] Kevin Connors: Yeah.

[00:23:02] Mike Klinzing: So here’s what I’ll say. Yeah. I think there’s, I, to me, I think there’s a whole bunch of different arms of this thing that they’re all going in different directions and it makes it challenging to bring everybody into what we all might agree are the best things. If we could all sit down in a room together, it’s hard to get all those pieces into the room together.

And here’s what I mean by that. So first of all, the youth sports. Landscape, as you said, is completely fragmented with no oversight. And so if Kevin is in Chicago and you’re running your own travel baseball program, and there might be 25 or 30 or 50 or a hundred other travel baseball programs in Chicago, right?

So now we’re not just TR talking about trying to get an initiative into travel baseball in Chicago. We now have to not just penetrate one organization, we have to penetrate a hundred. And then you take that and extrapolate it across the entire country. Now you’ve have to get a lot of people to be like-minded about what this thing has to look like.

So I think that is a challenge, right? Because as much as we all would like to believe that everybody wants the situation to be like this because we’re so fragmented. Because a lot of youth sports now, unfortunately, as you said, private equity, people want to make profits. People run businesses, and again, I have no problem with people running a youth sports business.

I run one myself, hopefully with the idea that my ideals are closer to the ideals that we’re talking about on the podcast today as opposed to some other situations. But I think that fragmentation is a challenge because how do you penetrate all those different areas, those different groups, and get them to see the value in having their coaches be trained?

So that’s the first thing. Then I think the second part of that is that despite what we all say publicly, as parents are typically attracted to, if it’s a travel program, they’re attracted not to great development and great relationships between coaches. What they see on social media or what they hear from their friends is not about, Hey.

Susie had a great time in this basketball program. She really improved and got better. And then the parent says what was Susie’s record this season? Yeah. Susie’s team was, they went 12 and 25. And then that parent is that program’s for losers. I don’t want to be associated with that, even though we know that whatever Susie’s record is as a fourth grade basketball player has no relevance to what kind of basketball she’s going to play, or she’s going to be eventually, let alone what kind of person she’s going to be.

And so there’s this idea, at least what I see, is that people still, unfortunately chase winning because they don’t necessarily know better. And then to go back to the fragmentation piece, right? People provide winning by being good recruiters, which is different from being a good coach or a good organization that has the best.

That it has in mind the best for the long-term development of the players. And then that goes to my last piece of this, which is not only do we have to train and educate coaches, but I think that even a bigger challenge than that from my perspective, is to be able to educate parents about what they should look for and what a good coach and a good program looks like.

Because I think so often what people see Kevin, is the record or the posts on social media, the tournament wins the, this was the score of this game. And then they’re like look, this team won this tournament. Let me go and join that program. And maybe that organization has won lots of tournament championships or whatever it might be.

But maybe that team at your kids’ grade level has. 12 teams, and maybe their best one or two teams have really good coaches, and maybe their last four teams have coaches who have no training. And that environment is suboptimal. And so parents just don’t know or understand what it is that they should look for.

And that adds a layer of complication to what you guys are doing where you can educate the coaches. But then if parents don’t understand that this is the kind of coach we want, and they just keep running to the programs that are good at recruiting, but not necessarily good at coaching and developing kids.

Now that’s where there’s a disconnect. And I don’t know how much you’ve talked to people about those issues.

[00:28:04] Kevin Connors: Yeah. We need a values alignment between parents, organizations and coaches.

And I think if you put each of those groups in a room. Together, you would find that values alignment. But it’s when you say what do you think others are prioritizing in this space?

Or what do you think the current environment may want to promote youth development as a core tenant of your program, but you feel like you are required, or feel a sense of pressure to deliver on the wins or the number of scholarships you’re producing or X, Y, z. And so there is a disconnect and I think that values alignment is really essential.

And we are very careful. Like we, we’re not out to, there are no villains to us in this system, right? Like we all are here because we have a love of sport. We believe it changed our lives. We believe it can produce really positive outcomes for our young kids. It’s the symptoms of just such a fractured environment in youth sports and changing culture.

And I even think about parents my own personal life, like you. Elementary school kids, we’re all siding up our kids for sports and there’s definitely that sense, like a, fear of missing out, right? Oh, you’re doing this elite soccer camp this summer and your kids have played indoor and on this club team and next year playing time is not guaranteed be equal.

Do I need to keep my son involved so that he’s not left behind? There was all of that, and that’s so natural. I think that’s one of the most important things is like all of us to take a breath. Like we’re, you’re not alone. It’s okay to feel these tensions, whether I’m an organizational leader or I’m a parent, but it’s also hard when there’s no clear metrics of success outside of wins and scholarships and points on the scoreboard.

And it’s that’s, those metrics to me are like one of the things that makes sports so potentially powerful. Like we, we can, we do have measurable outcomes in sports and the authenticity of actually playing for something quote unquote meaningful. Is what I think helps build the create the environment for the relationships and the resilience and all the teamwork to actually mean something for kids.

That’s the dynamo, that’s the unique combination of it. But it’s when that dial is turned up too much on those measurable outcomes where we get out of whack. Especially if that’s happening at young ages, but even in the high school, right? Like we, burnout is real. We know we’re working through youth mental health crisis.

We know kids are feeling pressure from all angles more than they ever have. And so I think the lack of a clear definition, so of success is one of those challenges. And we don’t have certified coaches. If we had certified coaches, you could tell parents, Hey, look for a program that has certified coaches.

In a very simple world, and maybe that would help them vote with their feet. But until we have something like that that’s a kind of a clear delineation. It’s hard for parents. I really empathize with all of us. We fall into this trap every night as a set of parents, are we doing this?

We know in our hearts, my wife’s a social worker. We know what is right and what is good for children’s development. Are we even doing it right? It’s a challenge for everyone.

[00:31:13] Mike Klinzing: I couldn’t agree more. It’s funny to hear you say that. Are we doing it right? Because I think just in your normal life as a parent we’re all flying by the seat of our pants trying to figure out are we doing it right?

Just forget about sports, but just in general as being a parent. And then I think when it comes to sports, I think about that all the time because as an, as a parent and as somebody who was as an athlete, pretty driven to practice and work on my own and do things, and you realize that. All of your kids, even though they came from the same two parents and they live in the same household, that everybody’s different in terms of their want to, in terms of what their likes are in terms of this and that, and just like you, I feel like through the experiences that I’ve had that I’ve been able to, I know what’s right and wrong at least as much as anybody can.

I’ve been experienced, I’ve talked to so many people through the podcast and just whatever, but there are still times where I do things or I find myself wanting to do things with my kids that I don’t end up doing that I know are probably not beneficial. And yet I still have a hard time not wanting to do that.

Like I’ll give you a great example. When my kids were younger, not so much anymore. My son’s in college now. My youngest daughter is 16, so they both have taken over the. They’re either driving, going to work out and doing the things that they’re doing. I’m no longer driving that. They’re, if they want me to come and, Hey dad, can you come, work out with me or can you come rebound for me or whatever.

I’m there. But there was a certain point when they were younger, right? In elementary school where if they were going to go to the gym, it was because dad was going to drive him, or mom was going to drive him or whatever. And there were times where I would be going to the gym to do some kind of basketball program or whatever, and I’d say, Hey, you guys want to, you want to come along and you can get some shots up?

And they’d say, no. And I would be like, I’d look at it like, what do you mean? Like, when I was a kid I would’ve had access to a gym. I would’ve killed for that kind of access. And there’s a part of me that wanted to be like, you’re coming. I don’t care whether you want to or not, I’m bringing you with me.

And I knew that was wrong and I didn’t end up dragging him with me, but. I knew better and I still wanted to like, it still took everything. I had Kevin to just hold myself back from not wanting to quote unquote force them to do things. And so then I think somebody with my experience, just in the game also as a teacher and as a coach, and I still am struggling with that fear of missing out that, Hey, you can’t take a day off.

You have to go and do this. Or there, there’s this program or whatever. If I’m struggling with that, imagine a parent who doesn’t have nearly the experience that I have, what a struggle that is for them. And I think that’s a position that I’m sure when you talk to parents in, in what your day to day is that you’re hearing that a lot.

I’m guessing.

[00:34:16] Kevin Connors: Yeah, like there’s almost like a set, like a permission structure I think that’s needed for parents right now. And we all live, we all literally live in communities and are in community with one another and often make decisions as a community. And it can start as I, we don’t have sure a million coaches challenge.

We’re working nationally. But at the end of the day, youth sports is a community driven experience for kids, especially in the early days of elementary school. Like many of us are still in Park District and Little League and so forth. And I feel like that helps reduce a little bit of the complexity and sense of overwhelm when you think of how do I fix this system and the culture, that culture is in some ways built by those of us who are in it right now and the 10 parents in our elementary school and what we all call, we’re all on a text thread together.

We could potentially decide as a group. What kind of league and experience we want for our kids. And like those aren’t scalable ways to fix a system. And we’re now doing some philanthropic funding at systems level stages, which we can get into. But at the end of the day, like those are years in the making.

I think as parents, what I want to know is I don’t want to stay up till midnight again, talking about my son’s flag football experience. I want to know how to fix that tomorrow and seek out a more positive one. And a lot of this is like a sense of permission. How do we give parents better information to, they can make better decisions more often, right?

Again, there’s that grace in there. It’s hard. So I think quite a bit about that. And the same would go for coaches, right? Coaches don’t deserve to be on islands. And I could train an individual coach, or one of our partners could train an individual coach on best practices in youth development.

But if their organization doesn’t prioritize that or their parents aren’t there, or they don’t sense that those are priorities. They’re going to hit a wall, right? And maybe experience some burnout too. So we have to come at it from all angles. But I think sports is something where like we can change practice tomorrow.

Even with our teams that are currently underway.

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Gimme an example of a success story through the Million Coaches Challenge in this kind of area that we’ve been talking about, whether it’s a particular organization, a particular coach, an initiative that you guys have. Give me a success story from this, again, not technical side of coaching, but a side of coaching that just says, I’ve have to connect with players.

I’ve have to be a human being with them first before I can teach them how to shoot a layup or teach them how to throw a curve ball.

[00:37:32] Kevin Connors: I’ll, there are two that jump to mind. One is, one is in near home state of Ohio. So Ohio State University life sports and the Ohio High School Athletic Association are key partners and million coaches.

And they’re really some incredible work across the state. Primarily working with with high school districts who are trying to institutionalize these practices training opportunities and really. Stake this into their model, what quality coaching looks like. And Ohio’s been really incredible to me because they have done a great job tailoring their messaging to different communities and understanding like, who are the messengers?

How can we talk about these issues, particularly around mental health in ways that are resonating and will connect? Because we know that these are universal challenges in many cases, but the way we have to approach these and talk about them and support them is different. Just a few weeks ago, we know we received just some updates and short videos from the team at OSU of coaches who, high school coaches, who talked about supporting their young athletes through very serious mental health concerns.

And where they, they’re almost have from to statement, they move from a space before training and support where they didn’t a feel equipped to navigate those conversations and B, didn’t know if it was their role. And then. After receiving support and training and just being equipped with a few tangible prompts, questions to ask responses that you can have in those environments before you refer or hand off or connect with parents.

There were success stories of supporting kids who were struggling mightily with what the next day might look like in their own lives. And those are really powerful examples at one end of the spectrum of like, how can you actually be a first line. Provider, four year young people, and we’re in, like I mentioned earlier, we’re in this youth mental health crisis across the us.

My wife’s a social worker. As much as I’d love there to be more social workers, we know there will never be enough social workers to meet the need. And so we need these other creative ways, non-clinical ways to support that first stage to either build all the skills ahead of time that help you navigate those when you encounter or use sport in its unique properties to help you heal from trauma and stress coaches can be that.

And so this Ohio example of hearing a coach go on their own journey about their role and confidence and supporting and those really challenging situations was one. And then I just look at my own experience. I was a young varsity head coach, Mike. I was 25 in St. Louis. I had applied to be an assistant varsity coach.

Noting like I had such a lack of experience and and the ad offered me the head job, to which I said, I don’t think I’m, I don’t, I think you’ll have better candidates. And Sure. Here’s the pile of resumes. You’re now the head coach. And I walked into that season very, just very confident.

Like I played at a high level. I had really strong coaches, my own experience, and I felt ready. Now knowing that I wasn’t, I felt ready for the job, right? I had planned out my practices. I had the old sheet of signs and, like what the first two weeks would look like, and it was all baseball oriented.

And two weeks into the season, my star player and I were just at odds with one another. And this was a school that I taught at, and a school where I had very strong relationships with my students in the classroom. But my star player and I were just at odds with one another to the point where he stopped coming to practice where there were disruptions in practice where I wasn’t responding effectively.

And one day I called my old, one of my old coaches, and I said what advice do you have for me? And he stepped back and he just said, Hey, look, Kevin, you have to remember you don’t coach baseball, you coach kids. And the, that’s a day at practice. I just pulled that player aside during normal and we just took a walk around the diamond and just talked what his story was, why he played baseball, what that connection was, and slowly rebuilt that relationship to by the end of the season, I was his biggest advocate driving him to and from college visits, all of those things.

And it was like, you don’t have to be on an island and especially when you’re young or you’re a volunteer there’s a lot you can. There’s a lot of supports available if you can find them or if to look for them. And so that’s part of the equation here. And so we can think about the most serious situations where coaches are truly stepping in a crisis.

And then there was other situations like, Hey, there. It was a mess of my own making that in retrospect didn’t need to happen. And luckily I was able to get some advice to turn that around.

[00:42:16] Mike Klinzing: I think that goes to being self-aware, right? That you are analyzing what it is that you’re doing as a coach or as a teacher, and trying to figure out, am I being as effective as I can be?

Which again, has nothing to do with the technical aspects of coaching your sport. It has to do with reflecting and thinking about the practices that you’re doing on a daily basis and whether or not those are the most impactful. And then reevaluating and figuring out, all right, hey, what can I do differently?

Maybe I do just need to, maybe it’s as simple as I just take a walk and get to know this kid, and we start to build that relationship. And then that starts to turn things around, not just between us as two human beings, but also then allows that player to perform better on the court, on the field, whatever the case may be.

And I think that’s a big piece of it. And I know that’s one of, again, the other different things on your website, million Coaches Challenge, it talks about just doing the inner work of coaching, right? Which is you managing yourself as a human being. Before we’re talking about managing kids and understanding their emotions and what they need.

But then a lot of times, and you’ve said it a couple times here while we’ve been talking, is a lot of times you feel like you’re on an island. I think coaching is like that. I think teaching is like that, right? In the classroom, you close your door and it’s you and the kids, and sometimes you feel like you’re the only person.

In the entire world that’s going through those experiences with those kids in your classroom. And I think coaches, a lot of times, especially if you don’t have coaching friends, if you’re early in your career where you may not have built that network around, you can feel like this is the first time any coach has ever gone through this situation.

And yet there’s not very much new that comes through under the sun that somebody somewhere hasn’t experienced before. And it’s just a matter of being able to, as you said, find those resources. So talk a little bit about that self-awareness piece and the impact they can have just helping coaches to regulate and understand themselves better, which allows them to be better for the players that they coach.

Talk about that piece.

[00:44:25] Kevin Connors: I think I think data and numbers are really powerful here to understand you’re not alone. And there is a need, we talked about the quantifiable metrics that we have with wins, losses, points, turn all that stuff. But there’s a bit, there’s a dearth of data just about the sport experience and around coaching.

There’s a few surveys out there. We’ve been a part of a couple of those. If the base is growing, but it’s really shining a light. And I think one of the biggest ahas is like, alright, like coaches are coming from a good place and is a universal challenge that they feel they’re seeking more support.

And so to know that. It’s not just me who wants concrete resources on how to have that first conversation about mental health with a student who appears to be struggling. It’s not just me who wants to reach out to who wants to have a constructive conversation with parents about a young person who isn’t showing up, right?

It’s not just me who feels at a loss of how to connect to my students who maybe I don’t live in their community and or have different life experiences. And so I think that is really powerful. And then it helps equip them with maybe the agency to go seek out resources or to have more courageous conversations with their a, their athletic directors or whoever that supervisors about what they need and hopefully begin.

More than just access access to training. Like one of our biggest takeaways, Mike, I’m curious how you do this in head start with all the coaches you hired and the environment you set up. One of our biggest takeaways and why we felt so I think like loyal to this group who came together is this was a coach training initiative.

And to a t every one of them will say, yeah, but training alone doesn’t work. Training is just the start. It just helps raise the floor a little bit. And I think that gets to what we said earlier about the culture of the institution and even here, who are my mentors? Who is that community of coaches?

And those are practices that organizations can put into place and really effective ones already are. And it’s not sports specific, right? That those are effective businesses. Those are effective schools. Like how do we create those environments where coaches can say I can be vulnerable with my fellow coaches.

And it doesn’t always have to be a high level competition among us. And so we need those spaces. And part of the Million Coaches challenge wasn’t just to train the million coaches, was it was to make these broader system-wide calls. Like how do we actually make quality coaching like the new standard?

So rather than the million who eventually might churn out of this system, they would create a new world where every coach is coming in, not just with the training, but a whole coach development journey. And part of that journey is community and mentorship. And that’s I think hopefully a next phase for the Million Coaches challenge.

Now that we’re, we’ve hit that million mark, hopefully draw some attention to the issue, now let’s invest in those institutional solutions that can help work in from the top down while we continue that bottom up movement.

[00:47:25] Mike Klinzing: It’s a critical mass thing, right? Where now you have a community of people that can interact with another with each other.

They can see other people who are doing it maybe differently than what they experienced when they were playing or maybe differently from the organization down the road. And I think that’s always the challenge. So as an organization for us at Head Start basketball, so I’m not necessarily running. Teams.

I’m running a week long camp where a coach will come in and you’ll have a group and you’re doing stations and you’re working with the kids and that kind of thing. Different than coaching a team from a standpoint of there’s not playing time issues, there’s not organizing a practice, but there is putting together a station that works.

It is getting to know the kids. Like one of the things, honestly, Kevin, that I’m known for at my camp, and this is just something I’ve done from the time I started it, is I’ll have whatever number of kids I have at the camp. It could be 40, it could be 80, it could be a hundred by the second day of the camp, I know every one of those kids’ names.

[00:48:32] Kevin Connors: Yeah.

[00:48:33] Mike Klinzing: So that when on day two, when a kid and their mom walks into camp, obviously the first day you’re checking people in and whatever, and then I spend that first day. As kids come to my station, or sometimes if I’m just overseeing the whole camp and I’m not coaching at a specific basket, I’m just walking around trying to learn those kids’ names.

So the next day when the kid comes in and he’s with his mom or he is with his dad or grandma or whatever, and I can say, Hey Johnny, how you doing? Good to see you again today. And the mom is looking around going, there’s a hundred kids here. How does this guy know my kid? And I’ve already engendered good feelings for that family.

Which one is good for them From a just right, every kid likes to hear their name, right? It’s the same thing as a teacher, right? You want to, every day when they, somebody says your name, that’s everybody’s favorite word, is hearing somebody in authority say that, say their name positively, and smile at them and give them a high five.

So yeah, that from a business standpoint, I’ve just now impressed that mom wow, this guy knows my kid. I don’t know if he’s teaching basketball or not. I have no idea. I’m not here while he is doing that, but I know he knows my kids, so he at least put some time into getting to know him. And then it’s also when I’m talking about being able to have a positive environment, if a kid is doing something that I like, now I can say, Hey Johnny, great job.

I like the way you’re working over there. Or if Johnny’s doing something he’s not supposed to do, I don’t have to just yell, hey you and run over and I can just call his name and boom, I can correct whatever the behavior is. So that’s an example of something that, and it that I try to model for the coaches who are a part of my camp.

We talk about all the time, you may not be able to get all hundred names the way I do, but you should certainly know as many kids as you possibly can. And if you have a group that is your home group, you should know every kid’s name in that home group so that you can talk to them and get to know them.

And that’s just one little example of kind of what we’re talking about here, where, how do you set. What that environment looks and feels like for the kids where everybody feels welcome. And again, we’re not even talking about the coaching basketball part, we’re just talking about being able to understand what provides a quality environment that makes people want to come back.

And then of course, you try to model and just talk about, Hey, here’s how you interact with kids and here’s what you do. And sometimes I’ll have an intern program where maybe you have a kid who’s younger that is going to eventually become a coach. Maybe they went to camp and now they’re coming back to help out.

And so you pair them with somebody who’s a coach. And then eventually when they get to be a junior or senior in high school, then maybe I hire them and then they’re on the payroll and now they’ve worked with somebody who they’ve seen do things in the right way. And that’s the kind of small steps, I think that you’re talking about where it’s not just.

Me thrown in, Hey, go do your thing. Yeah, it’s, there’s a connection between the greater organization and then what that specific coach is doing, if that makes any sense.

[00:51:33] Kevin Connors: Two things that, that jump out to me, Mike, and thanks for sharing that. A at a separate conversation, you’ll, to gimme the strategies for learning a hundred names.

[00:51:42] Mike Klinzing: There isn’t one. So there, there isn’t one. People always ask me like, how do you do that? Yeah. And honestly, the only answer that I have is it matters to me. Yeah. So if I met you at a coffee shop somewhere and got introduced to you because my friend was friends with you, the odds of me remembering your name would be probably fairly low.

because I’m just not as invested in that particular piece of it. So I’m invested in learning every kid’s name, and then all I do is I just keep walking around. And every time that I’m at a station or at a group, I just keep tapping kids on the head. John, Mary, Tom. Whatever. I just, and I just keep saying, so it’s just it’s repetition and making it important to you.

That’s the only trick. So I, so no real trick

[00:52:25] Kevin Connors: thing about like that. What matters to you actually comes to fruition, like you can. It’s such a great life lesson, but also so different than like the old high school football days. Everyone with the coaches apart names on our helmets and it was like week two of doubles when you finally made a big hit and they’d rip off.

They’d be like, alright, I know you’re now you earned. That’s

[00:52:45] Mike Klinzing: funny.

[00:52:45] Kevin Connors: I love that. Thanks for sharing that. But two, two things jumped out as you were sharing your story. One is how simple the answers can be, right? We’re not asking coaches to become PhDs in youth development or athletes centered coaching.

That’s not reasonable. It’s not wanted, it’s not needed. What you described it, just knowing a young person’s name is such a concrete, actionable step that makes an enormous difference for that young person. So I, so that’s what a lot of the million coaches calls to action and practices are. And that doc or those sets of recommendations are the result of all 18 organizations coming together and finding common ground again, like organizations working in so many different spaces said, you know what?

Yes. No matter which type of environment, what level of competition, boys, girls, team, sports, individual sports, knowing someone’s name is really critical. Being predictable with your practices and your schedule isn’t just helpful for your coaching staff. It’s actually wired into young people’s brains.

They need that level of predictability. It helps them thrive and grow and stay regulated. And so those are like simple practices that I think is like a really important part to enter the conversation with. This is not the classic rocket science. This is how do I show up and help people feel seen and valued?

Because in the second part that jumped out as you said, Hey, if you’re a camp and someone is not doing what they’re supposed to do because you started to build a relationship, you can have a harder conversation. And isn’t that what all coaches ultimately need to be able to do? To have really hard challenging conversations with their players, maybe to help them grow as individuals and sometimes as you get older and more in the system to actually win games and actually to actually succeed on the court, which is one of those misnomers, sometimes folks will look at us in this initiative, be like, oh, you just want to get rid of competition.

It’s all about you. No. The competition’s actually what makes sports so beautiful, powerful. And there is a place and time for that, especially the especially as you get into it, but these practices help you win. If you are in an environment where state championships matter to your school and your job security, knowing kids’ names and having relationships that you can have, that really courageous conversation is what allows you to succeed and allows that young person to actually take in what you’re saying and feel motivated to change.

You are living it every day and it’s one of those pieces to keep drilling in because there’s a whole lot of assumptions and prior experiences all coming from different spaces. So how do we meet people where they are and say, I understand your outcomes and what you need, what your metrics of success are.

These practices will still help you get there.

[00:55:29] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I think that’s a huge misconception, and I’m glad you brought that to the forefront, that a lot of times when people think about just some of the things that we’ve been talking about. Today on the pod, right? The knowing kids’ names, the ability to have conversations and connect, right?

The quote, people think those soft skills, right? That those soft skills, there’s a misconception that those don’t lead to winning. And I think the research would tell you that when you have connection between player and coach, when players are connected to one another, that type of culture and that type of connection, not only does it provide for a positive experience, it also provides for a better opportunity to win.

And then I’ll take this Kevin, one step further in that my experience as an athlete, my experience as a coach, my experience as a parent, and I’m sure you can attest to this, that in the moment, right when you’re playing, when you’re coaching, when you’re watching your kid play. While you’re watching that game or playing that game, or coaching that game in the moment, what feels like the most important thing is the win or the loss or your own performance or your child’s performance or your team’s performance.

That feels like it’s the most important thing in the moment, and yet when I look back upon my career as a player or my career as a coach, just as an example, college basketball, I probably played in 110 games as a college player. There’s maybe 5, 6, 7 of those games that I can honestly say I remember specific details from those games.

The rest of them, you could ask me, Hey, how’d you guys do against such and such a team? When you were a junior, what was your game like? I would have no idea. Whatsoever whether we won, whether we lost, did I play well, did I not? All that stuff is lost to history, but what’s not lost to history is the overall general feeling of the experience and the people that I was with.

And sometimes those experiences are good. Sometimes unfortunately they’re not as good, but if we could give everybody the opportunity to look back on their participation on a team five years out and say My experience was a good one, that’s I think what we’re pointing for. Yet in the moment, we all get caught up in our individual performance and the wins and losses, and it’s important to sometimes take a step back and say, five years from now this game and my performance.

Isn’t going to matter that much. What’s going to matter is my teammates, my relationships with my coaches, just the feeling that I had and the environment that was created. And it’s hard to keep that in perspective. I’m sure you can. I’m sure you can relate to that piece of it, for sure.

[00:58:34] Kevin Connors: Yeah, absolutely.

And Imagine you can extend that same kind of retrospective look to coaches, right? As I get further into my coaching career, what stood out to me? Are there specific seasons or games maybe? But like, how was I defining success then? How do I define it now? And I’d say we would land much more on these life skills, these soft skills, like those things.

Like I, this team came together, it stayed with me. because this team bonded like one I’ve never seen before. This team in 20, in oh six sticks with me because they overcame so much adversity. That season. And those are the things that we know in our heart of hearts lead to success and and our fulfilling experiences for us as coaches too.

And so how do we preempt that 20 year book back, right? Like, how do we do that now while in the job and for their younger coaches? How do we help prompt some of that? And again, it goes back, there’s a lot of pressure, especially young coaches or even volunteer coaches, like how do we make sure they’re equipped with the guidance from mentors or their or others in their organization?

These are important. And in best case, hey, here’s, we’re going to, we’re going to hold you accountable in some ways for that work. Like we are going to find ways to measure or determine whether this, these teams are bonding or whether their relationship’s growing, et cetera. Because it’s going to help me, right?

Not as I got you. That’s not why we’re in this professional. It’s going to help me and going to help us all lead to our ultimate outcomes.

[00:59:58] Mike Klinzing: Which goes to, again, being self-aware, you talked about being willing to go in and have a difficult conversation and get some feedback, right? I think about that as a teacher, right?

We don’t have all the answers. Are you a teacher who’s willing to go in and talk to your principal and say, Hey, I’m struggling with this. Can you help me to be able to do this better? Or, I’m having trouble with this kid. Can you come in and watch and help me to figure that out? And if you’re a coach, can you talk to somebody who’s been in the business for a long time and bounce ideas off of them?

Can you talk to even your spouse and just throw an idea? So maybe they give you a different perspective and get you to think about it. I think that is a big part of being good at your job. No matter what your job is, if you’re reflective upon it, it gives you the opportunity to be able to look at what you’re doing and determine, Hey, is what I’m doing working or should I be trying to do something else?

And the best of the best, I think spend a lot of time. Self-evaluating and reflecting and trying to figure out what are the best practices and how I can I continue to improve what I do. There’s one more area that I want to touch on here, Kevin, and that’s the, just creating the athletes learning and engagement environment.

And when I think about this, again, I’m not talking about how do you teach how to shoot a layout or how do you teach how to come off a screen? But I’m thinking more about just in terms of, especially for volunteer coaches and people who are new to the profession of how do you organize a practice, how do you maximize, again, the experience that kids have in a practice setting?

I’ll give you one example from just my own experiences and then I’ll let you dive in. So one of the things that I’m always amazed by, and I take this for granted in myself, Kevin, as a teacher and somebody who’s been, both my parents were teachers, and so I feel like I’ve been around kids a lot and kind of understand how to.

Manipulate and move and get people to go where they need to be. And I’ve volunteered at my kids’ field day and parents will be standing, there’ll be 20 kids and they’re just trying to get the kids into two teams. And I’ll watch people struggle, just try. I’m like, you 10 over here, you 10, and I can do it in three seconds.

And I don’t even think about it, but I forget that I have tons of experience in doing that. But anyway, so in terms of organizing a practice, like one of the things that we always talk about at camp with coaches is, okay, you’re doing a drill and you have 10 kids at your basket. Can you put those 10 kids instead of in one line with two kids participating in eight kid standing, can you put that, can you make that four lines or can you make that three lines?

And maybe you’re not directly instructing or watching or coaching those kids, but they’re still getting reps instead of standing there. Yeah. You may not be able to watch all three groups at the same time, but if you’ve instructed them and showed them what to do. They’re much better off getting those reps.

They’re much more active, they’re much more engaged as opposed to standing in a line. So that’s just an example of what are some practices that you guys have seen that work in a practice setting to make the environment better for the kids who are participating?

[01:03:06] Kevin Connors: Oh, yeah, Mike, as you were sharing that example, I was thinking back to when I was a, when I was an early teacher in our principal at my high school, put in like hard and fast rules.

And you’re teaching high school students every 20 minutes you need to change up the mode of learning the environment, get that moving and there’s science behind it, right? We can look at the way the brain is wired and how it lights up, but like every 20 minutes, almost put in a hard rule. For us as teachers.

And I think that is very aligned to what you were just describing. I had other mentors along the way who told me in the classroom, they said, great teaching means that you can walk out of the classroom and the learning still happens. That’s when you know you’ve got a class that is kinda like self-regulating themselves, who’s bought in, where everyone has a job and responsibility and knows what they’re doing at any given time.

And so I think those principles apply here. I’ve been, I’ve been lucky to a, personally experience some of the training through the million coaches cohort and c of course how they’re all working with other organizations across the country. But there’s a few really good resources, especially for those volunteer coaches and early ones who are making a profession out of this.

Or they’re not earning money and they’re working, they’re driving home. From the city after work. Just trying to think together. A practice plan. Nike and the Olympic Committee put together a resource called How to Coach Kids. That really breaks down by age and grade and sport. Just some very simple tactics you can use.

The positive Coaching Alliance, who I mentioned and Center for Healing and Justice have different types of resources depending on the environment you’re in the park district. Brings coaches in our community. It’s optional, but it’s really effective. And I actually think it’ll be a pull strategy for them as the word gets out that these are really useful trainings.

One hour trainings. I was a 7-year-old soccer coach this season. I haven’t played soccer since the third grade, and so I entered that season. Now the classic example, like there was no coach. The team might be canceled, A parent needed to step in and I sat there, I was like, I can coach football, basketball, and baseball, but I can’t coach soccer.

But there I was and they just gave very practical sample practice plans of, they said, don’t scrimmage for 45 minutes. What you need is touches on the ball at this age instead of full field scrimmages. Do small sided games. Two on two, let kids all feel engaged. And so I think those were really critical.

Don’t spend time, 10 minutes just stretching and warm. They’re seven years old. You don’t need to do that yet. You can get right into an activity after doing your get to know yous, get into an activity, help them feel some success, build in the right amount of kind of games for them. And then mock competition like it will be in a game scenario.

And so it can be all these ways, these can be resources that we’re accessing online. They can be a training I’ve been a part of on Zoom, or they can be when the Park District says, come to the field on Sunday at one o’clock and we’ve partnered with the Chicago Fire to run a one hour coaching clinic.

But those basics that I think apply from seven to 18 is keep your team moving, help them understand their roles, help them understand, why this drill? What it’s meant to actually build both on the field and maybe off the field. That clear communication Is essential. We’ve learned from working with all of these partners, and a lot of it ultimately comes back to like our own sense of confidence.

As coaches to step in. I think about my first year of coaching versus my second year. Some of my practices changed, but the biggest thing that changed was my confidence in the way I delivered everything I was trying to teach. And we, as part of million coaches we worked at the American Institutes for Research to survey about 15,000 coaches across the us and over 90% of them said that participating in just an introductory coach training significantly increased their confidence as coaches.

And that is such an unlock for everything else that needs to come.

[01:07:01] Mike Klinzing: Do not agree more. I know that in my own coaching experience that times when I come into a practice. With a great practice plan that I’ve put time into that I’ve thought about that I have looked at exactly what I’m going to do. I deliver a much better practice than when, as you said, I’m driving home from work, I practice, time got moved, maybe I was an assistant coach, and all of a sudden my head coach called me and said, Hey, I’m not going to be there.

Boom. Suddenly I’m on the practice field and I’ve have to try to figure something out, and I’m trying to do it on the fly, and I’m not nearly as effective in those situations because I’m not as confident in what it is that I’m trying to teach. And every coach has been there probably at some point. Whether you’re young and you’ve grown out of it or whether it’s just, sometimes there’s situations where you’re just not able to be prepared for whatever reason.

And yeah, the confidence piece I think is huge. Without question, Kevin. All right. I want to ask you a final two-part question here before we wrap up. Part one. When you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge? With the Million Coaches program. And then the second part of the question, when you think about what you get to do every day, what brings you the most joy?

So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy?

[01:08:18] Kevin Connors: The biggest challenge is something we’re actively trying to solve for right now with the million Coaches initiative and community. And that is to bring systems level decision makers to the table. You, we were talking about that earlier in this fraction and fragmented environment where it’s kinda one organization.

Everyone’s in survival mode. In some ways. There is a need to build the grassroots, bottom up movement of parents and coaches. And I think we are working towards that. And at the end of the day, healthy system five, 10 years from now is going to have decision makers at systems level, whether that’s within a state or within large youth sports or the national governing body movement.

They need to be at the table and feel empowered and resourced and have a clear plan of action. Right? Almost plug and play like we can. Here is the path forward. We need to bring it up to the table and help them feel bought in and seen and part of the solution. I think that is a challenge we all need to actively work towards, and we’re trying to support some efforts like that over the next couple of years through Million Coaches.

The second part of your question, what brings me joy? Personally, it’s to see the through line from my childhood to the relationship that it formed with my brothers and my dad and my mom. How it affected me early career right now in this role, to know that the foundation that was built in me when I was 10 years old is allowing me to help support millions more of coaches across the country and organizational leaders, civilian coaches who are just.

Running full speed with all of their charisma and passion to make the experience better for their kids and kids across the community. There’s nothing more meaningful and fulfilling than to be able to connect your personal story to your professional one. And I feel blessed every day to do that alongside partners and million coaches who feel the same.

[01:10:14] Mike Klinzing: Well said, and it sums up a lot of our conversation. Before we get out, Kevin, I want to give you a chance to share how can people connect with you, how can they find out more about the million Coaches challenge, share, email, social media, website, whatever you feel comfortable with. And then after you do that, I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:10:32] Kevin Connors: That sounds great. For anyone who’s interested in learning more the first stop would be go to the website millioncoaches.org. There you will find the research behind the initiative, the organizations we’ve supported the calls to action for system-wide improvements that we’re now supporting.

So you’ll find a host of information there as well as an email to reach out to million coaches that gets directed to the appropriate person inside. You can also follow us on our social channels and any of our individual partners, right? Because each of them are working in different parts of the ecosystem.

We are always happy to be connectors. This is ultimately a collective action, and it’s a coalition of organizations and I have the privilege of sitting at the center of this and most, more often than not, find the most meaning in connecting folks to the right organizations who want to be a part of it.

Million Coach Org will be that central hub of information and connection.

[01:11:25] Mike Klinzing: Perfect. Kevin cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule today to join us. Really appreciate it and to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we’ll catch you on our next episode. Thanks.

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Thanks for listening to the Hoop Heads Podcast presented by Head Start Basketball.

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