For the better part of three years I have been stressing about turning 40. “When you’re old like me,” I would tell the kids, “you want to be healthy. You don’t want to end up hobbling around and broken.” Even as the words would come tumbling out of my mouth,
Great news! I’m really flattered that the editors for SCU’s Illuminate blog have asked me back for a second year of struggling to get my 800-word drafts down to the 500-word limit! The struggle is real. But I’m excited because the last year has been fun and full of surprises. For example, I
It’s swim season! Community pools are opening their gates, and summer swimming leagues are kicking into gear. Here’s how you can help your child have an awesome swimming season. Choose Your Team Carefully Watch a couple practices – from a distance. Are the coaches making an attempt to talk to
“I like this sport because no one tells me I’m good at it.” I overheard a middle school student saying this to his friend the other day, and it caused me to spend a workout or two thinking about kids and pressure. Pressure. What do others expect me to do?
What does diversity mean in sport? What does diversity look like? What does inclusion feel like? Over the past ten years I’ve been part of many conversations about diversity in sport. Here are some of the things that adults say in every conversation: “When we start excluding individuals, we lose
Is it just the way Facebook is filtering my feed (probably) or has there been a lot in the news lately about the negative things women have to deal with in the world of elite sport? There was the tennis thing. There is the women’s soccer thing. Most recently there
A couple of weeks ago I watched a group of middle school girls collect on the pool deck for their final water polo game of the season. When I was in high school there was no such thing girls water polo. I had played – albeit briefly – on the
How do you thrive when bad things happen? Ida Keeling, a 100-year-old runner has a wealth of advice in this awesome feature in the New York Times. Her story is pretty incredible, but to me the most moving facet of the story is how running alleviated her depression. Her take-home
A lot of the kids I coach have a really hard time making mistakes. They really want to get things right, and often this translates into resistance to change. When I encounter a swimmer like this we play the Goldilocks game. “You know Goldilocks right? The porridge is too hot? And too
When presented with the idea of working with Paralympic hopefuls, I’ve heard many coaches say, “I want to help, but I don’t know what to do. Where can I learn?” Here’s where I learned: On the job. At least, that’s how I learned how to coach a swimmer with traumatic