“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
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
I’ve fielded numerous requests from swimmers over the years to be interviewed for school projects. Here are my answers to some of the most frequently asked interview questions…. Why do you think that the Paralympic Games are important? The Paralympic Games are important because they are the Olympics for athletes with
I suppose I should start with an apology to those who witnessed my shameless name-dropping over the last few days. But, really, wouldn’t you too if you were spending the weekend with living history!? Few people today would probably recognize even the names of the champions of my second sport who
Our middle-school basketball huddle always ends with a chorus of girls yelling, “Teamwork!” The goal, which we’ve stated incessantly for the past three weeks, is for everyone to score. Everyone dribbles, everyone shoots. Coach keeps saying to me, “They all have to understand that they can score.” As the clock was
On the day when the 6th graders were supposed to choose their winter sport, I was making small talk with the current crop of water polo players. A girl pushed into the group and said, “Coach Kelly, will water polo be easy next semester?” Will it be easy? Did she really just ask that?!