The Athlete Way

     The most valuable lessons I have learned about coaching, I learned a very long time ago from an unsuspecting source, my mom. Karen Dawson is the least coach-type person you will ever meet. She never played sports, and I am not sure that she really likes them, or understands them either, though she has watched a lot of them. She is the only parent I know who fell asleep while sitting in the stands at the Olympic Games watching her daughter play (she claims she was just resting her eyes). Still, her influence on the way that I coach is beyond measure. My mom didn’t teach skills, she instilled values. She didn't coach teams, she raised one. A friend from college asked me recently if my mom ever yelled at us growing up. I had to think about it for a moment. She definitely got annoyed and overwhelmed by us; she raised her voice when we were being ridiculous, told us to go outside and swing on the swings, but I can’t remember a time when she ever yelled at me in a way th...

        When I was in college, I was adamant about one thing career-wise and one thing only. I was never going to be a coach. I professed it emphatically to anyone who would listen. When I am done playing field hockey, I am done with the sport. Totally. Forever. Never going back. Done.  I was especially defiant about it to anyone who told me that I would make a good coach. Well, tough luck, because it’s never happening.    I’d say. I love playing. Not coaching. I was so stubborn about not becoming a coach that I enrolled in the business school at the University of North Carolina just to defy the stigma of my identity as an athlete. I wanted to prove that I could belong in spheres of education beyond the field hockey field.  The irony makes me laugh because as you may have guessed, I now coach field hockey and I really enjoy it.  Coaching brings me joy. When I am on a field with athletes or talking shop with other coaches, I lose track of ...