The session entitled, "Building and Maintaining a Successful Program", attracted a near-capacity crowd, with a plethora of coaches seeking to learn how to infuse a positive and winning culture between themselves, the players, and their support staffs. Following a 15-minute introduction to the subject, the presenter opened the floor for those in attendance to speak to their own efforts to first gain initial success and then build upon it. Among those who went first were: Louisville's Dani Busboom Kelly, the AVCA National Coach of the Year; Kentucky's Craig Skinner; Minnesota's Hugh McCutcheon; and BYU's Heather Olmstead.
Lauren: Our program at James Madison has been fairly successful, or perhaps I should say as successful as possible for a school not residing in an FBS conference. The quick turnaround from the COVID season to our Fall one coincided with a number of changes in our coaching and support staff. We hired a new associate head coach, were given a new liaison in Athletic Development, and had been assigned a graduate student in the School Counseling program as our team's academic advisor. Those three, along with the incoming transfer of a student-athlete on par with our school's namesake, ended up providing the relational base that allowed us to ride out the eventual turmoil brought onto us as a result of the school's pending departure from the CAA and expected move to the Sun Belt Conference. Now, you may ask how those four individuals boosted our program's collective culture and set us up for the level of success we experienced this year and what we hope to accomplish in 2022. It's because the support staff members chose to bridge the gap between their positions on the edge of the program and their persons in the center of it. You see, the first two I mentioned are married to each other, meaning that Ally would at times be with us on road trips, leaving Harrisonburg after work on Friday for wherever we happened to be. It provided our players another female with whom to relate and exposed her and Michael's relationship to them outside the crucible of Sinclair Gymnasium. As for the other two, serendipity landed both of them at JMU and, over the course of six weeks or so, drew them into one another's universe to such an extent that they coupled up. It was from this base that Marc was able to use his toolbox of skills to help us overcome a handful of mental health crises in the program, resolve an impasse between factions of the team that was leading toward a schism, and frame our season in the best possible light for the selection committee. On top of these tie-ins, we also have a number of other interconnections, such as roommates who became so because of sharing a former teammate between them, and one of our freshmen having played with the daughter of one of Marc's cousins. In 2022, we will be adding to this "family" with the arrival of a defensive specialist who is the common link between the pair of roommates I just mentioned.
After Lauren sat down, several others brought up their stories of creating and then sustaining success in their programs. Following the session, Craig came back to Lauren and introduced his graduate assistant, Sara Parson, to her. The pair of like-named women exchanged greetings as they had both attended the 9:00 session led by Jamie Morrison, then the latter brought her partner into the conversation.
Sara: I guess the two of us have a bit in common, Marc. I'm in UK's Sport and Exercise Psychology program. No real opportunity yet to use what I've learned, but I'm hoping that will come next year.
Marc: I've been doing my interventions and therapy by trial-and-error almost, using the information and techniques I've learned in my counseling and psychology courses and meshing it with what some members of the team call my Wikipedia on steroids knowledge of sports. I'm hoping I can get placed in Sports Psych for my assistantship next year so I can actually do more in-depth work with the teams at James Madison.
Sara: Heard from Craig you stepped in to deal with a panic attack one of the players from Purdue was having on the bench. Scared?
Marc: A little, just because you never know what you're facing until you get the patient alone and can start asking questions. As Lauren said, I had done a couple of interventions with players from her team toward the end of the regular season, so I wasn't going to be that far out of my element regardless of what I'd end up having to do with the player in question. We should swap contact info so we're able to keep up this conversation and actually help one another by filling in the gaps we currently have in our knowledge bases.
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Under The Radar: A Redshirt Diary
FanfictionSarah Fuller was a goalkeeper on the Vanderbilt University women's soccer team, but is best-known for being the first woman to play in and score in a Power Five Football Bowl Subdivision game. Having finished her degree with two years of eligibility...
