Webinar: “Empowering Youth Athletes: Building Resilience and Mental Health”

All right, welcome everyone who is joining today's webinar on empowering youth athletes, building resilience and mental health. We're going to have a great conversation today with some very esteemed panelists with PCA's Vice President of Training leading the conversation. I'm just going to set a few ground rules and then I, I will introduce Kelly to moderate the conversation. So first, this is being recorded. Quite a few of you asked if we would be sending out the recording, which we will, to everyone who has registered. We'll also be pushing it out on our social channels in an email. So please expect that and share it with your networks throughout the conversation. Feel free to on your bottom section of your screen you'll see the Q and A chat box. Definitely send in questions for the panelists and we will get to those as we can. And so with that, I'm going to introduce Kelly Kratz. So Kelly has facilitated, facilitated almost 400 workshops for Positive Coaching alliance all across the U.S. she was a three sport athlete in college and she's also a lacrosse coach in her home state of Pennsylvania. In her role at PCA, she oversees all of the training and development of PCA's trainers who go out and lead the workshops for the the coaches, parents, athletes and leaders that we work with. A huge question that we get from our community, which is why we are leading this webinar is about how you build resilience in youth athletes and use these things that happen as teachal moments. So I'm super excited to turn it over to Kelly to lead this conversation and introduce our panelists. So over to you, Kelly.

All right, thanks Casey. I'm really excited to be here. I was telling the panel earlier that I actually wanted to join this webinar and then when I was asked to moderate it, I thought this is of part perfect. So let me introduce who our panelists are today. First we have Abigail Eiler. Abigail is a clinical Associate professor at the University of Michigan. Professor Eyler is also a mental health and high performance coach with the Detroit Lions and in the MLB as a licensed clinical social worker and educator. She has 20 years of experience working in tribal and non tribal communities across the country. Abigail is also the Chief Education and Product Officer at Momentum Labs. So welcome Abigail.

Thanks. Glad to be here.

All right, next we have Brett Haskell is our second panelist. Brett is a licensed high performance psychologist and certified mental performance coach. She's the Chief Performance Officer at Momentum Labs, the Director of Mental Health and Performance for the NWSL and A team psychologist in the mlb. So welcome Brett, thanks for joining us.

Thanks, I appreciate it.

And last but not least, we have Scott Barry Kaufman. Scott is a co cognitive psychologist and the founder and director for human potential and a professor at Columbia University. He's a prolific writer and speaker in the areas of human potential and the founder of self actualization coaching and fun fact. A a co student with a very famous basketball player. Scott, would you like to just give that little story that you don't share often but we pulled it out of you earlier?

Yeah, yeah. I played basketball in middle school with Kobe Bryant and I actually have a story in my book Ungifted where I almost beat him in pig and in gym class but he dunked on me and he broke the rules.

But anyway, I love that. I love that. So we have to have that Pennsylvania connection. And hey, if you don't get to share that story often, I mean this is the place to share it. So thank you for that. So today we're just going to jump right into the discussion. We have a lot of questions that were sent in in registration. You're also able to put your questions in the chat if you need to. I have some questions also based on your experience, but let me just open it up to the panel first. We here at PCA and around the world know that outside of school, the number one gathering place for youth is sports. And we also know that the mental health challenges are at unprecedented high rates right now. So to start the conversation and to set the landscape, I would love each of you to share some of the biggest or most common challenges you've seen in your work and research. And then we're going to dive into the tools and strategies later. But what are some of those common challenges that come up often? So Scott, I'd love to start with you.

Sure. Probably what's most top of my mind right now is how I see a lot of students fall too easily into a victim mindset when they, you maybe if they're not picked for the team they want or maybe when something's not going their way like they are practicing and they hit a hurdle, you know, and there might be this kind of tendency to just blame the world and blame everyone else, you know, and, and to be bitter and resentful and, and what I've been trying to do is work with youth as well as adults to think of a different, think about their experiences differently, harness a different mindset. I call it an empowerment mindset, self empowerment, where you really take these experiences you've had and you, you take responsibility for them and, and you become a better person, you become a better player, and you feel a greater sense of agency, kind of, kind of putting some agency back into the picture.

All right, thank you. That is, that is a really common question that parents often will ask me at workshops. They'll say, how do I handle this? My. My child is falling apart. Or this is their only goal. This was their dream. So thank you for sharing that. I'm looking forward to hearing more about that. Brett, how about you?

Yeah, so, you know, I've been, I've been thinking about this and I was actually listening to some of Scott's other podcasts before this, just to get to know him better. And I think that our thoughts about this align very closely in that I see there's a lot of challenges around young people feeling like they have autonomy, that they can build competence, that they can have confidence in who they are as a human being, not just what they do, whether that be in sport or in school or in other things. I think we have a culture that tends to define your worth and value by the things that we can see on social media or the things that we can see on paper, these objective performance based metrics. And I think that really undermines the development of identity, the development of autonomy, the development of a growth mindset. And it tends to emphasize really outcomes over the process of becoming the best version of ourselves, which is what Scott talks about so much. And I'm excited to hear him speak more about within a sport context. So I think it's about really nurturing what youth development is supposed to be about. And I think that often we've created a culture in sport that maybe doesn't emphasize those things quite the same way it did 20 or 30 years ago. And so it's more about getting kind of back to the basics of, of how do I develop myself as a human being and with that chase really hard, difficult goals.

I love that. And to add to that too is sometimes when you focus on those, most of the time when you focus on those things, the performance will come, the goals will be reached faster. And that is definitely something I want to hear more about for sure.

And the performance may come, I'm going to add to that. The performance may come in what you want right now, or it may come in something else later because you've cultivated those skills and abilities right now in sport.

Yes, exactly. Thank you. That's great. Abigail, how about you? What are some common challenges or themes that you hear?

Yeah, I definitely want to Lift up what Brett had just mentioned about social media. You know, I have a 14 year old daughter who is a high level soccer player and I see that all the time. She spends a lot of time on her social media. So there's this constant comparison, like the fear of missing out, always wanting to, you know, present the best, be the best. And so it exacerbates these feelings of inadequacy and vulnerability and anxiety and all these things that we are trying to help them develop skills to navigate through. And because of that, one of the most common challenges that I see is like this absence or lack of emotional regulation skills in youth athletes. And because of that, many youth struggle to manage their emotions and their stress and that therefore impacts their performance and their mental health. And then that kind of brings me to my third point, right Is the lack of access to adequate, culturally responsive mental health services and care. And so when we look at affordability, when we, you know, with the pandemic, we saw a huge shift of virtual telehealth services which I think made things more accessible. But it's also really hard to get into a licensed mental health provider and practitioner. And so being able to engage with mental performance coaches that have mental health training I think has become a huge protective factor in way to build some of these skills so that our, our athletes have better outcomes and then therefore, you know, are performing better and their mental health is, is improved.

Yeah, I think that's great. And I love, as I feel like the stigma is, is being slightly lifted, baby steps around mental health. But it's also becoming more proactive with a lot of the athletes that we talk to, where parents and kids and are saying how, how can I get help before I crash, before I burn, before I really am desperate for help? What can I do? So I'm. Thank you. Thank you. Well, let's, let's dive specifics because every time we do workshops we have a lot of theories and a lot of studies and a lot of information and the people in the room want to say, I need to know what I need to do. What can I do specifically? So let's just start with coaches because we have a lot of coaches on this call right now, by the way. Also, please put your questions and comments in the chat. We'd love to be able to make this as interactive as possible. So please keep, keep that chat coming. But let's start with some coaches. So what are some specific tools or language that coaches can use to cultivate a team culture that promotes resilience and grit? We talk a lot at PCA about culture and that culture, a strategy for breakfast. So as coaches, we're constantly thinking about skills and drills and tips and tools. But when we're really talking about establishing a culture of resilience and grit, what are some of the specific tools or language that coaches can use to promote that? So I'll open it up to any one of you.

I'm happy to start with that. I actually just did a talk on grit yesterday, so this is like right at top of mind for me because I do think that Dr. Duckworth did an amazing job defining grit for us.

Right.

Passion and perseverance. And I would even take it much further than that. You know, I think it's those connections to not just our passions and our reasons why, but ultimately, what are we going to do about it, what are we going to do with it, and how can we grow from it? So I think as coaches, one of the things that I've always said to coaches is set very clear expectations from the very beginning with your youth athletes creating that culture where effort and improvement and growth is valued over results. Right. We always say, like, we're here to win, that's great. We are here to win. Like, we don't get into sport to lose.

Right.

I was a very competitive, high level athlete. Like, I never wanted to lose, but the process was much more important to me. And so that's something that we want to make sure we're fostering. So setting those clear expectations can really shape the culture. I think also normalizing the challenges is really important for us. When we think about certain language, that mistakes are a part of learning. I know I talk to Brett a lot about, like, there are no failures right there. There's always opportunity to grow and to learn and to thrive. The other thing I think for coaches to do is encourage peer support a lot, especially when we're in competitive atmospheres, we are also competing with our peers for playing time, for attention, for opportunity. And so if you can foster that team cohesion in the collaborative approach, not only are you going to get better outcomes, but you're also going to get people that are driven and connected in a different way to the sport and to the team, and that shifts culture. Kelly, I know you are a basketball coach. I know you're a lacrosse coach now. One of the biggest things that I valued was coming together with my coach and my team. And we did this like, almost like resilience circle at the very beginning. Like, our coach would say, what didn't go well today and how'd you get through it? And because of that, we were able to. To grow every single day and to think about how did we get through challenges. And then he'd say, because practice is going to be hard, so you better take that lesson learned and apply it today. You know, So I think those are some things that I found. Find really helpful.

I love that we do that mistake circle all the time. Tell me what, what mistakes you made. And again, I love the way that you said Abigail about model that too. As coaches, we can't go out there and pretend that we're going to be perfect all the time either. So modeling it is a big part. I love all those things you were talking about and the expectations that you were saying too. Nobody expects to lose, but are we preparing our athletes to know what to do when the scoreboard doesn't go our way? And defining PCA really spends a lot of time working on mastery focused coaching. That is defining what winning and losing and the scoreboard and effort and all of those things are. But it goes right in line with what you're saying. So I appreciate that. Brett or Scott, do you have anything to add to that in terms of culture building that would promote resilience and grit? I know it's a big question and hard to answer in a few minutes, but anything off the top of your head?

I love the phrase mastery focused coaching, so I just want to double click on that a second. That's brilliant. You know, I was thinking about the culture and a culture of grit and resilience. Maybe I would change it to a culture of grit and growth, because I think a lot of people think of resilience. They think, well, you're just bouncing back, you know, to where you started. And I know that our esteemed panelists don't think of it that way for sure, but I just think in the general public, if you ask someone off the street, what does resilience mean, it's like you're just back. And I just think there's, you know, but promoting a culture where you have determination, perseverance, passion, for sure. And this phrase post traumatic growth, which is really popular in positive psychology, to me is. Is better than resilience if you can. Whatever sort of challenges or adversity you experience, you really view it through a lens of growth, and you start to just have a whole different mindset. So, like, the culture is like almost promoting rejection, promoting setbacks so that the students can have a lot of more. A lot of great fodder to. To learn about themselves and learn who they really are. So just, I guess that's what I would say is really promoting that culture of, like, failure is amazing.

Yeah. Which is definitely something that we as adults understand, but it's really hard to get that through to the youth that we're coaching. That's great. Grit and growth. I love that. Brent, how about you?

Yeah, so I'm gonna. I'm gonna talk a little. I'm gonna kind of play off of what they both have shared, because I think it's amazing. And there's some really clear tool, and I think that language is a tool. I think that's one thing Scott was just talking about, is how do we change? How do we take something that maybe our athletes have categorized. Categorized in a particular way and sort of have this predetermined view of. For example, resilience is bouncing back as opposed to growing from a challenge. Right. And how do we maybe recoin that within our team? We have a new word that we use, and we explain what that word means to us. So instead of resilience, we're going to use the word growth, and we're going to be a team that's focused on growth, and we have a couple of key words, and we're going to rally around that. But then also we bring attention as coaches to the moments where we can capitalize on that word that defines our culture. Right. So I'm going to use Scott's word of growth, for example, and I'm going to bring attention to a moment where we have a player in practice who's struggling all the way through practice but doesn't give up. They continue to maintain a positive attitude. They continued to persist. They continue to lift up their teammates. They're not, you know, their shots aren't hitting, they're not connecting with the ball in the way they want to, so on and so forth. And at the end of practice, instead of highlighting the player who has a phenomenal practice, let's highlight the player who grew through practice, who stuck to their plan, who mastered the things that were controllable. Their attitude, their effort, their persistence, their determination, their ability to be a good teammate. And then we bring that back to our. To our keyword that defines our culture. So I think that those are a couple of things. And the thing that Abigail was talking about that I would like to identify as a potential tool that coaches could use is curiosity. How do we foster a mindset of curiosity? And we know that curiosity is a great anecdote for judgment, and judgment tends to create a fear based Biological response that can be prohibitive to actually what we know, especially from a motor behavior standpoint. High performers need, in order to be great and to be excellent, to find that flow state or that zone. And curiosity is an anecdote to judgment. And so Abigail was talking about, you know, what happened today and how did you get through it. Now we're starting to engage in curiosity around just how to be ready, how to be persistent, how to overcome adversity. And then we can coin that in a culture of growth. Growth, yeah.

I love that. I think that's great. I mean the. I never really thought of it in terms of, you know, curiosity as a word like growth. You know, we use with our athletes a lot and we talk about grit and perseverance and all of those things. But in terms of curiosity, that's it. That's like a different word that's not usually brought into the sports space.

Well, you know, we, we talk a lot about mindfulness training. Part of mindfulness training is being able to foster curiosity and reduce judgments because judgments are ego react to the events that have occurred, which sometimes limit our capacity to understand them in a different way and then turn them into something productive and useful for us in the future. Right. So curiosity is a way to sort of suspend judgment and take that 30,000 foot view on the, the events that have occurred so that we can maybe come up with a different solution, a more creative solution, maybe a more productive solution to the problem. And so what Abigail's little, I don't know, exercise is, it's an exercise in curiosity that then maybe produces some new solutions that then we share with the group. So now we have a bunch of different solutions that everybody's learning from.

Yeah, I love that. And I like how. Let's just stick on this topic of failure for right now because PCA does a lot of work and tools on failure and how coaches can make it normal and, and you know, actually use it as a stepstone for learning. The lifeblood of learning is failure. We have a tool that's very simple that we call the flush. And it's a mistake ritual. It's a physical sign that triggers a mental reset. And we say, you know, everybody flush it or brush it off or no sweat or any of these mistake rituals that we can use. There was a question from somebody in the group that would love to know what are some of your practical tools when you see a young person struggling with failure, what are some things that you would suggest? So anybody can open up with that one.

We're also Respectful and want to make space for each other.

I know, and I could call on you if you want, but I didn't want to put you on the spot.

I'll go ahead.

I'll.

I'll start. So one thing that I use a lot is just grounding in the present. So what's something I can see, what's something I can feel, what's something I can hear? And you don't have to do all of them. Usually you don't have time to do all of them. But physically, like bringing your mind back to here and now, it also reduces the intensity with which our brain experiences forecasting of danger. And so we can usually relax a little bit. And when we relax, we can kind of get back into an optimal zone for high performance. But using a reset tool that includes a grounding exercise. So, you know, I work with. With baseball players, so it might be, you know, grabbing the bat and feeling the bat in your hand, or it might be looking for a certain place on the outfield that I can anchor my attention to really quickly before I return to the rest of my routine. A grounding exercise can bring you back to the present, followed by a word that tends to channel your best self as a performer, and it could be a word that maybe aligns with the next activity you need to do. So I've worked a lot with football players, so, you know, loading your power in your hips. So just thinking about power in my hips or quick feet, something of that nature. Again, it's kind of resetting your attention on what's important now. So we're really getting out of that time machine, time travel that we tend to do after. After a mistake in which we engage in a lot of self evaluation and what has happened and what does that mean for the future? We bring ourselves back to here and now with that kind of quick reset routine that you were talking about.

So is that something that. Oh, I'm sorry, Scott. Let me just follow up on that real quick. Is that something. I'm thinking about the coaches that we have on this call right now. If I have a player that's kind of out of their mind, frustrated, negative self talk, all of those things, would I, as a coach, remind them to, hey, let's just ground ourselves for a minute. I want you to just grab your stick. Take like, is that as physical as you're talking about, like a coach literally, player saying, okay, let's. Let's look at the. Let's look at the outfield, the third base or whatever. Let's look at the hold onto the stick. Let's breathe. Is that what you're talking about?

Yes. And ideally, like you said, you would have that established with a player prior to those moments, and then you're just a cue or a reminder to use the routine. But a breath could be really good one too. You know, we're going to use a belly breath right now. I want you to breathe in through your nose, notice the air and breathe out and then, you know, reset. But a lot of times for coaches, it's really about like positivity, like, wow, what a great opportunity. Let's. What can we do with this next? So it's, it's about cognitive shifting too. So from a coaching standpoint, hopefully those routines you've established for them prior to those moments and it's just a reminder to use them. If you're actually going to engage with your athlete, then it's really about a cognitive shift to now refocus on, like, hey, this is fine, we're good here. Like, this is because in their mind this is a really big deal. I'm being judged in a evaluated and I'm going to all of these places that from a brain development standpoint, equal death don't really. But in our mind. And so it's for. About shifting them back to reality a little bit. Scott, I'm just curious what you were going to share.

Yeah, I am too. I see his head nodding. I'm like, oh, I love this.

I feel like I'm riding the same frequency as Brett Haskell over here.

I like that.

Let's get good.

That's great. We're all team here.

Every, every single idea that popped in my head, Brett then said it and so I that off. It's got to cross off. But it's, it's so, so great. I would, this is what I would add because I'm really into this new perspective. I just wrote about it on my substack. It's called Strength Space Resilience Enhancing Training, which is really for helping children with adversity. Youth who have ACEs, ACE high ACE scores, you know, have a lot of adverse life experiences. But I think the same principles can apply to helping to coaching athletes to become their best self. For sure, because there's a lot of adversity that they face, you know, in their lives as well. So this is one suggestion. A big part of this approach is drawing on character strengths and not ignoring or downplaying the suffering the person is feeling. But as the coach, helping to redirect and ask the child a Very specific question. Okay, yes, you are maybe very stressed out right now. And, and what character strengths? Name two, three character strengths you can bring to the table right now to deal with this situation. Because I think a lot of these kids don't realize and this is, this is what would be called a powerful coaching question within, not the sports coaching, but just within the, you know, like personal coaching world, you know. And you know, just being a. But. But I think sports coaches can be personal coaches too. Like, I think that that's yeah. Great opportunity to ask powerful coaching questions on the field, you know, or whatever the sport is. And so there's like a via free assessment that people can take that'll that and I actually would recommend. And maybe I could put a link in in there where. And, and I would actually recommend if you're a coach, have all the athletes take the via test and print out their top three character strengths and, and use that information. Have it in your back pocket. It. You know, when a child's having a meltdown or whatever is is going on where child's like, I don't think I can handle this. You can be like, you know, how can you bring in your humor, creativity and curiosity to the table with this situation because you have these inner resources. So just that to recap, it's just teaching them what inner resources they they helping them focus on their inner resource. They already have. Yeah.

Yeah.

Also as a, as an adult, you're then, you're then expressing your belief in their ability to draw on those resources to overcome. So I don't need to do this for you. You have the capacity to do this and I believe in you. I know these things to be true about you.

Yeah. So while we're on that topic, Scott, I love that and I'm not even, I can't even write as fast as you're talking right now. But I just love the term powerful coaching question. Like I want to list in my, on my clipboard every single day these powerful coaching questions. What I love the most is that the Avia test and the other things you were talking about, we're talking about character strengths that they can bring to the sports space. Because I think so many times as coaches we just think athletic strengths like, well, they're not really a good dribbler, so we're going to work on their defense or they're not a great shooter, so we're going to work on. And it's all physical skills. And if the athlete's hitting a wall with the physicality, I love the Fact that you're drawing on other things I would love. There's a few questions coming in too about neurodiverse population of kids that we're coaching right now. That's becoming, you know, huge. I know that you're a just expert on this topic, but these questions come in and this is something that I started. I was a teacher for many years and I started asking parents when I, even when my kids were itty bitty and I was coaching, you know, six year old soccer, I asked all the parents, tell me what type of a learner your child is because I realize you get this list, you get these kids that parents drop them off and you're stuck with them for two hours and you have no idea how to coach these kids. So I think more and more, and this is a great news, this is great news that more kids that have different neurodiverse backgrounds are coming to sports. So how can we as coaches, what advice do you have for coaches when coaching these kids? And even specifically there was a question about supporting athletes with ADD who's, who's experiencing very, very low motivation. How can we as coaches help?

I, I really want to give other people a chance obviously as well. But when you said the word neurodiversity, I was like, hello.

Yeah, that was, hello.

That's like, there you go, gotta talk, I gotta talk just for a second. You know what's cool is if you really get, kind of get an assessment of things like you can know like what kind of minds lend to certain things more than others. So for instance, if you have someone in the autism spectrum, they're probably going to want to do really specific drills over and over and over and over, you know, and assign it to them. Be like, hey, I got a great dribble practice for you. You can do 500 dribbles in the next and they, they'll love it over and over and over. There's a repetition person with adhd, great opportunity to let them be the leader. What a great opportunity to let them be the leader of all the autistic people. Like, like, like let them set the drills, come up, be like, hey you, you know, why don't you. They want to be creative. You know, people adhd, they love, they're just coming up with ideas and then they're on the next idea. Like, hey, why don't you come up with some practice drills for the, for these people? Don't say the autistic people. Don't say that. But I'm saying for these people over there you, you know, you know, what, what, what their benefit is, what, what, what they would benefit from. But if you really have that sort of knowledge of kind of the composition, you can really design tasks to really suit the people. I think.

Yeah, I love that. And, and again, work to their strengths. That's what they're already good at. So let's put them in a position to actually feel like, wow, I'm, I'm really, I really have an important, valuable role. We talk all the time about a positive youth sports culture is where all athletes feel safe, seen, heard and valued. And man, what a great way for a kid that maybe doesn't always feel valued to say, here's your spot, here's your, here's your chance.

That's great.

I love that. And I know Casey's putting some links in the chat as well. So, Abigail, let's switch over to you because I know that you, you are also nodding as well. But you have a lot of experience working with research on mental health screening for kids and also you have a lot of experience working with, with athletes that maybe have experienced some of those aces that trauma in their past. So do you have some suggestions or can you talk about things that we can look for to spot some of these challenges or on the other hand of that, things that we can do as coaches when we already have knowledge coming in that this, these kids are coming to us with some trauma or some tough experiences. How can we as coaches help those kids be the best they can do?

They can be.

Yeah.

I think the one thing is really understanding from the youth perspective that in lens, like what they have experienced, because I think sometimes we name it as trauma when they're like, this is my life.

Right.

And so I think we need to be really cognizant of how we're naming what someone's experienced and how it's impacted their overall functioning. For identifying how trauma has impacted someone's experience, especially a youth, we're going to look for those behavioral changes, right? Do we see an increase in them being withdrawn, more irritability, sometimes even risky behaviors? You know, I am a kid from subsidized housing from a not so nice area in the Gary Hammond, in the area Hammond, Indiana area. And a lot of people are like, whoa, like, where are you from? Gosh, it was really dangerous there. And I'm like, it was my life. You know, I knew I, that's what I knew. I didn't see it as being dangerous. I knew I couldn't go a block this way. I couldn't go a block that way, but I could play across the street in the cemetery. Like that was. That's what we did. And so I think it became important for my coaches at a really young age to understand when there were times where maybe I was sad or a little bit more anxious or a little on edge because of what was going on in my environment and how it was impacting me in those moments and being able to sit down and have a conversation with me. And I brought that into my clinical practice and my research so that I can understand how exposure to trauma impacts physical symptoms, social dynamics, behavioral changes, and to have one on one conversations to really understand through a culturally responsive way, like what is the cultural context behind this? Like what does this actually mean? To fully learn about the communities in which our players come from. Right. And not just reading about it, but like having conversations with cultural brokers, those knowledge keepers from the community, so that you can really understand what are some of these systemic inequities that exist and how does it influence and impact their experiences on a daily basis. The other thing I think is really important is validate without minimization. Right. So it's going to be really important for us to validate what someone's going through without saying, like, I understand, right? It's the I'm here to listen and to support you and let's work together to do that. So that collaborative process that we see in sport is a great way to foster self empowerment and cohesion. And I think that's a huge part for, you know, increasing like adaptable resilience skills in our athletes, especially our young athletes. So I always say for coaches, be consistent because when you're consistent, you become predictable. And when you become predictable, you become trustworthy. And when you become trustworthy, you're going to have a much healthier dynamic and relationship with that athlete and they're going to respect you. I always say, you know, to coaches, don't say like you can trust me. Because when you're working with kids that are from spaces and places where trust has been violated over and over again, you can say that as many times until you're blue in the face. But they have to experience it, they have to see the action. And so action oriented steps are going to be huge for fostering resilience and relationships with, with youth that have experienced trauma.

Yeah, I, that is so good and it's so good to hear. And I just want to reiterate that our foundational principles that we use at PCA are based on the foundation of trusting relationships. And we talk to so many coaches that say, I don't have time to have one on one time with all of my high school athletes. I can't take them all to Starbucks and spend an hour with each of them. And I love that you said that, Abigail, because you said it's consistency, busy, it's coming back over and over again and they know what they get. And so many times coaches are put in the position where they expect the athletes just to trust them. Just trust me because I'm the coach and I play D1 and I have a national championship and I've been here for 35 years. And that has nothing to do with the trust that the athletes feel. And the other thing that you said, I love what you said was about the getting to know the, the place that you're coaching. Just simply who are the cultural brokers? Get into the community, find out who you're coaching.

Coaching.

So if I were to get a new coaching job in a new town, let's say I moved to a new town that was not my own town, who would those people be? Where would I go? What would be the first step? I like to just make it super tangible.

Yeah.

I mean, obviously, like investing in the school system. Right. So getting to know folks within the school system, getting to know people within like religious organizations and different spiritual communities are huge. You know, going to the library, like having conversations with everyone in different spaces and places can be, be very, very helpful and beneficial. I always say too, like to the youth, like, who do you go to for advice and wisdom and words of encouragement, like, so that they can identify themselves who might be helpful for you to speak to, like, who are their support people?

Who's your person?

Who's your person? And is it okay if I have a conversation with them? Because I, I'm invested in, in your development and that's really important. So I want to make sure I can do things that are going to be helpful and we'll do it together.

I love that.

I think that's, that's a big piece.

Yeah. Awesome. Let me add to this because we do have a lot of leaders on this call. I keep directing it to coaches, but we have parents on the call. We also have leaders of organizations that are trying to do so well by their organization. And a question came in and I'll just read the question because I think it's, it's worded well. Can you name a specific structural barrier in our sports ecosystem that youth sports advocates and community adults can address? Address the the reason is that coaches have such limited capacity to do more broader advocacy, especially when they're having to directly address lack of gym time, lack of field space, all these other issues. So do you have any advice for the people out there that are, are advocating for sports in some of these regions? What can they do? How can they address some of these inadequacies in the system?

There's two things that come to mind for me. The first thing is when you are identifying your team culture and your themes, and like Scott brought up earlier, like kind of the, the character and the connection, what are things that come forward that can, you can like, stand on?

Right?

Like, what are things that are really important within that team that you are going to commit to, and from that you can mobilize the broader community to get on board and to support. Right. So I think that the more you've got people invested, whether it's parents, organizations, community members, you're going to be able to advocate not just yourself, but you're also going to have other people that are advocating for you. So I think mobilizing a broader community is really important. I always say, like, we can create a coalition when we bring folks together, and that then drives change within, you know, city council, school boards, things of that nature. So that's one thing that folks can do. And then fundraising, which I know a lot of people don't love doing, but it's, but it's part of our role as coaches. So figuring out how can we cover participation fees. I know there's a lot of different, like, fundraising activities. I don't know how many times my kids have sold like, cookie kits and you name it, all the things, right, to cut down costs so that more people can participate. Like, that's a huge issue. People are being kept out of sports not because they don't want to participate, but because they can't afford to it. And so if we can start more community sports funds and connect with larger foundations and organizations, then hopefully we can offset some of the cost of these systemic issues that continue to negatively impact our organizations.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna plug training a little bit here too, and pca, but I think that, you know, a train, the trainer's model and really investing in educating your leadership, your coaches, the people who are touching the, of the vulnerable, and making sure that they understand and are equipped with tools, actionable tools to do the right things in those environments by those people. So, you know, understanding dysregulation for populations that are, have been marginalized and have experienced cumulative trauma or are, you know, operating from a place of survival.

As.

Opposed to, you know, having some of their basic needs met and understanding like how do we, how do we address just dysregulation at the beginning of practice so that they can be present and here while they're here and maybe then just practice is a, you know, a safe space for them for one or two hours a day. Do they need food at the beginning of practice so that their brains can self regulate? Can we get bars somewhere so that we have bars at the beginning of practice? And we do some self regulation tools? Because that's the population I'm dealing, dealing with. But that's. Those are neuroscience practices that are. We can educate and teach and train, but administrators and people in positions of power have to make that accessible and make space and time for that for their coaches. So if you're an ad, how do you make space and time for your overworked teachers and coaches to be able to do that kind of training? And then how do you supply the resources that they can implement some of those tools and strategies for the population that they're with? Resilience is not just an individual issue. It is a community based social issue as well.

Yeah, that just reminded me of a strategy that we've talked about before. It's like a 3, 2, 1, right? So when people come in, when the youth come into practice, it's like what are three things that you see? So you're attending, right? You're bringing yourself to the present moment. The two, like two things that you express gratitude towards because we know that gratitude drives positive outcomes in behavior change. And then the one, what is one thing that you want to accomplish today and what is one thing that we're going to accomplish today? So people have an individual goal and a collective goal. And that three, two, one really helps set the tone when athletes are coming into practice.

I love that. I love that. I love that you mentioned gratitude too. My next question was going to be for Scott and I have a feeling you are going to speak about gratitude possibly as well. But I know that you taught a course at UPenn on Introduction to Positive Psychology, which was one of the most popular courses that you taught. But I also know that you have a lot of research that you've done on toxic positivity. We are positive coaching alliance. So one of the things we do when we walk into a room of coaches or parents or athletes is bust the myths that we're not talking about. Just everybody gets a trophy, everybody gets a ribbon. We're all winners here because we have to. We have to level set at the very beginning. I would love to hear thoughts on that, on this idea of, yes, we want you to be positive toxic positivity for sports, coaches, mentors, even parents. Because I think sometimes times we get caught as parents into saying our kids are great. You're so wonderful. You're excellent at everything. We want to be positive, but that's not always super helpful. So if you have any thoughts on that, Scott, love to hear that.

Well, that's wonderful. When you said, I noticed you taught a course, I thought you're gonna say, you know, that I taught a course with Oprah on gratitude.

Oh, I love that, too.

We're talking about gratitude.

Talk about both.

We want to hear about both of them. Kobe, Oprah, all of it.

Well, the thing with the gratitude course is, and this really does relate to the toxic positivity thing, there's actually. I prefer the phrase gratefulness, which is developed by a friend of mine, Christy Nelson. She wrote a beautiful book called Wake Up Grateful. She was actually diagnosed with stage four terminal cancer, and she found that she could be grateful as an orientation toward life, not as something that you have to kind of wait for something great to happen. Even then you feel gratitude in that moment. But you can go through your entire life with this orientation of gratefulness where no matter how small, seemingly small, like when she was in her hospital bed, she was just so grateful for, like, how the nurses treated her. She was so grateful for that. For, like, the water she got. She got to drink when she was thirsty. I mean, the. The very. And it really got her through it. She's. She's still alive. She's still here. But it really, you know, it really helped her get through some really trying times. And she writes about. So it's. Anyway, this is. This is how I was. Would frame the situation, because that's not toxic positivity. You're not saying just smile and handle it. What you're saying is, no matter what is coming your way in life, you can find some way to be grateful for. Like, what is the lesson this is teaching me? What is this? What. What could this mean? You know, if I create some meaning out of this, and, and to me, that's. That's the opposite of toxic positivity in a way.

Yeah, I love that.

That.

I love that it makes. It makes gratefulness a verb and an action, not just gratitude, the noun of like, what. What was. So I. I love that. Wake up grateful. And what was the name what was her name again?

Christy Nelson.

Christy Nelson. All right, thank you for that. We have, we have another good question that comes in and I, you know, I almost hate to go here too early because the parent issue comes up all the time. And then we have a lot of parents on this call as well. But we had actually someone write in a question who is a clinical psychologist from South Africa. So thank you for joining us. All the way from South Africa. And this person says they work with a lot of young athletes. One of the biggest challenges is managing parents and their expectations. It's not just South Africa, it's here as well. So the question is, do you have any tips on managing parents involvement in a way that would be most beneficial for young athletes? Now, we are talking about resilience, grit and the mental health space. So I'm sure a lot of you have suggestions on lots of things parents can do, but let's, let's just focus on that for right now. How can parents get involved to help support what we want these coaches to be doing as well?

I think the one thing is having a parent huddle, right? So making sure that parents are involved in the process and asking them what they are hoping to achieve by involving their youth in sport, how they plan to support the, the, the youth as well. You know, our coaches, my children's coaches are exceptional about saying, like, these are my expectations. What are your expectations of your youth? As also myself as a coach and how can we do this together? Because the, the team isn't just the youth and the coach, it's literally all of us. And so starting that from the very beginning and doing a parent huddle has really shifted how we show up as parents in our dynamic as well. So I would definitely encourage a parent huddle puddle as much as possible.

I love that. Also, on a quick aside, Abigail, two people wrote in and said, can you review the 3, 2, 1. Can you just real quick say the 3, 2, 1 again?

Yes. So the three are three things that you see. So you're attending to the present moment, right? So you're bringing yourself to that present moment. Two things that you're grateful for or that you have gratitude towards, and then one thing. What are we going to do next? And what are you going to do next? So it's that. Three, two, one.

Thank you. I love that. All right, any questions popping in from what Abigail said, continued Brad or Scott, on what parents can do?

Yeah, I, I would just echo what Abigail shared. So I, I am the daughter of a coach and my, my brother is a high school coach. So I get to hear about these kinds of challenges all the time. And I think one of the things that's really important is engaging your parents, just like Abigail said. But, but being proactive about the culture we're going to create around our team and educating parents about how important their role is. I don't think. And I, and I think part of this is having unconditional positive. We talk about that in psychology, unconditional positive regard, which is, you know, valuing where a person is coming from, assuming that they're trying to do the best that they can with what they know and what they have. I don't think any parent, parent is coming to the table trying to mess up their child or life, not intentionally anyway. That's generally not the, like, their goal in mind. And I think that when we can come together before the messiness of a season and, you know, deciding what the depth chart is and who gets playing time and all of those things, if we can come together and agree to some ground rules of behavior as a unit, because we are a community now and there is a team beyond the team and that that ecosystem will influence the child's growth and development. So as a, as a whole unit, what is all of our goals? And the coach is defining that largely. But you can engage your parents around what do you want your child to get out of sport? And I would, I would pose the question like, you know, maybe your child is so gifted and talented that they will potentially play collegiate sport. Maybe they will play collegiate sport at a high level, and even less likely, maybe they will play professionally at some point. There's also a very high likelihood that they get injured. And at some point their sport career ends unceremoniously. If that's the case, let's pose that question. Your child's sport career ends at 19. What will you have hoped that they got out of it at 19 that then propels them into the next, you know, hopefully 70 years of their life. And let's work from that place. And how do we create a culture of behaviors from that place around what we want our children to get out of this experience for the remainder of their lives? And then what is our role in that? How do we talk to our kids? How do we talk to each other's kids? How do we talk to the coaches then and then? Now we've set, we've level set at the beginning. So when there are these challenges that arise later in the season, we can come back to that with our parents and have those Hard conversations of, hey, you were at that meeting. These were the ground rules we'd agreed upon. How do we. How do we have this conversation operating from those ground rules that we all agreed upon? And, and it's always someone's choice if they want to be part of, or they want their child to be part of that group and that culture. You get to opt in and you get to opt out. If you opt in, though, this is where we're all operating from. We agreed upon it.

That's great. Oh, go ahead. Sorry, Abigail.

I was just going to say for coaches, like, don't do it alone.

Yeah, no.

Coaches have such a huge responsibility. So it's like either having a parent lead or a team manager or use your athletic director or. Or an assistant coach, like, make this a collaborative process because coaches have a lot of responsibility. And so how can you kind of use these, like, conduits to. To bring the bridge together? Right.

And I think the hard thing for coaches is sometimes, sometimes having, like, holding your culture up means that you have to let go of something that could help your team succeed. Sometimes it might mean letting go of a player and a parent who, who aren't on board with that culture, and that person might be very talented and they might help with outcomes, but in the long run, you know, what did you say that PCA says about culture?

Eat strategy for breakfast.

Yeah. And so I think, you know, the reality is, is it defines what kind of program you have over time. And talented athletes will come and go, and the culture is what will sustain growth for everyone for the longest period of time.

Time.

I love that. And, you know, I love too, Brett, when you said people's expectations, parents expectations that my kid's going to go to the, you know, MLB and be a, you know, starting pitcher for the Phillies, of course, but whether their career ends at 16, 17, 18, 22, maybe they do get all the way through. One of the problems that we're seeing, and this is a question that was written in also, is that athlete retention. Some athletes have expectations so young that teams are having trouble because maybe the. A child's getting the playing time that they thought they should have. So they cancel, they quit, we're done. I'm not doing this. This isn't what I want. So how can we combat that? Even as from a parent point of view, also in order to keep our player, our child motivated, but also understand that there is growing that's going to happen, and there are things that are going to be. Are going to be great about this experience. Even if you don't win the state championship or even if you're not the starting quarterback on the team. How can we keep our kids, kids involved and motivated without giving up? Because. Well, it's just not what I thought it was going to be.

I'd actually be really interested because of Scott's work on Twice Exceptional. I'd be very curious because those are kids who tend to struggle to maintain, to, you know, to get kind of latched in and, and maintain that persistence and, and feel engaged. I'd be curious what you and your research and work would say about something like that. That.

Oh, wow, you asked me a question. Amazing. Okay, let's see. Yeah.

Turn the table.

Sorry.

And it's funny, I was thinking of a question I had for Abigail. So it's a pass, pass it down the lane or something. But yeah, the 2E. I'm glad you brought that up because I think you're going to find a lot of people in these Sports teams are 2e meaning that they have some real serious challenges. Maybe working memory capacity issues maybe. Yeah, we talked about trauma already. Maybe lots of situations in their life where they were focusing on their survival, you know, but at the same time they have amazing gifts and talented and maybe they're very talented at the sport. And I think that with these kinds of kids, really building self esteem seems to be like the number one issue. I really said self esteem as the two components, self worth and self competency. So competence, a sense of like, okay, I'm reaching my goals and I'm getting there. And I would say in a sports context, I think competence makes more obvious sense. But don't neglect the self worth part of it and don't consider that too touchy feely for sports. You know, it, it matters to me. Does that make sense? Yeah, like it really matters to like. Competence is not everything there is and that's only one part of the self esteem equation. A lot of these kids, especially too late, may, may, may have the competence because they're very talented, but they, they, they, they may not even feel worthy of being there, you know, or they may feel impostor syndrome or they may feel damaged. You know, deep down they might feel damaged, you know, because they have a learning, a learning disability or something. So just don't neglect the self worth aspect. It's just, to me, it's just important, if not more important than the competence part.

Yeah, yeah. And I think a lot of 2e kids, kids are the ones who they self select into sport because it does offer these Opportunities to use these other gifts that they have. Especially kids who have ADHD or are on the spectrum because they have this incredible ability to hyperfocus and you know, and then there's this like self soothing component to, to physical exercise that causes them to more likely self select individual into sport. But they do have these other unique challenges around self concept. And a lot of the reasons that kids self select out is because they.

Have.

They misperceive where they should be and where they from where they actually are. And they don't understand I, I, I graph out a lot of times the effort by performance graph and, and that it's a growth curve and that as we put in effort we're going to see really intense growth early on and it's plateau over time and we have to put in more effort to see very minor growth. But also it's not, it's not consistently positive and we're going to have these moments that feel like a lot more of a struggle and we have to normalize that for, for our youth and help them understand that even when you're in this moment that feels a little like a valley in terms of your development or your performances or your outcomes, it's these other things that you can control. Your effort, your attitude, the work that you're putting in that, that should have help you have competence, that you will get better at this over time. And that's really that growth mindset, right? Instilling that growth mindset in our, in our athletes.

Are you referring to the, the work I did with Angela on talent times effort?

No, I have this own graph of my own that I've always used.

Oh my gosh.

We should all get on the same page. I love it.

Please send me, I want that.

Okay, we'll do. So just to be wrapping up here, I, I've been just skimming through some of the questions coming in and I think all the things you've said are amazing. I think I have four pages of notes myself as a coach coming in or even as a parent. We've now talked about how to coach, you know, the, the, the kid that's neurodiverse, the adhd, the autistic kids. We've got kids that are coming from different backgrounds. We've got the overachievers, we've got the kids that have all these high expectations and I am one volunteer or very low paid coach here that has to grapple with all of these kids that are being thrown at me in a season. So I would love just to, just to have each of you just weigh in. What would you say would be the best advice for a coach coming in that can get the best experience for these kids that you're coaching in a season that are coming from all different backgrounds and here you are, whistleblows, they're in your care for however many hours a week. What would be your, your inspirational nugget that you would have or advice you would have for the coach?

You know, I would say, I would say be very cognizant of that. Every child is on their this but is on their own unique sacred self actualization journey. And I, I just say this a lot and you know, the way, it's the way I think about it, be very aware of that and, and, and for all other kids to be aware of that all the other kids are on their own unique journey as well that might be very different from someone else's journey. And trying to figure out what is the unifying thing that the values and culture you're talking about, the overarching, there's the cultural differences to be sensitive and there's also a general culture of the organization that can help people no matter what sacred journey they're on. But recognizing that some, some may be doing sports to for some reason, another person might do sports for a whole different reason. But there's an overarching sort of spirit of we're going to bring the best out of you so that it'll help you in your own direction that you're going in.

Yeah, I love that. I love that. Everybody's on their own self actualization journey.

Sacred. Sacred.

Sacred. Oh, sacred. I like it. Is sacred too.

That's great.

Sacred self. Actually, there's really, to me, there is something really sacred about every individual human's self actualization journey.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you. Abigail or Brett, what about you?

I think the one thing I think about is centering joy and reimagining. Like what are these metrics of success that we have as coaches so often? You know, we are focused on the wins, the, the grind, the everything that comes with it. So centering joy so that we can uplift competition and weaving that in is helpful. And then when I think about shifting or reimagining these metrics of success, a big part of that is fostering a growth mindset like amplifying teamwork. Right. Focus on the outcomes of participation and that helps people take these small incremental steps, steps to work on their individual self and then their goal as a team. And I think those two things are.

Really big that's great.

I love it. Reimagining the metrics of success, for sure. I love that. And Brett, how about you to wrap us up?

You know, we are, I think as human beings, we're wired for growth. So I, I, I want to encourage coaches that your opportunity to, to just join young people on their journey towards growth is really quite an honor, and you also should enjoy that. And if you can enjoy the process and take, like, if you can take pleasure in and, and be grateful for the opportunity to walk alongside young people as they're on growth journey, which is inherently like, we're wired to do that. Like, you don't have to do a whole lot. You just got to be a good, warm, encouraging body who, who reflects honesty to them. Right. It's not all about toxic positivity. Who reflects honesty to them in a sincere way and joins them in a meaningful relationship. They're gonna grow. They're gonna grow. And so that should be, like, that should be a joyful process for you. So coming back to what Abigail said about joy and what Scott said about gratitude, like, what an honor. I think that sometimes we taken the joy out of, of coaching and coming alongside, you know, youth athletes, and I think we have to reinstill that a little bit to, to make sport what we all think sport has the capacity.

To be and what the kids deserve it to be. For sure. We want every walk out of there, every coach to walk out onto the field or the court and say, I get to coach today and have that feeling of privilege and that why that drives that them. So thank you so much. This was fantastic. Casey, over to you.

I had somebody, one of PCA staff members chat me during this and said, this may be the best webinar I have ever seen with pca. So shout out to our panelists, thank you so much for making time. Probably also one of the most engaged webinars with the most questions, which unfortunately means we weren't able to get to all of them. I will say we will pull the report of all the questions. There are some tangible resources that we have that can and answer some of the questions that came in. And so we will follow up with you individually as we can. And then just in the chat, you'll see there's a link to learn more about Positive Coaching alliance and our work. There's also a link to learn more about Momentum Labs, learn more about Abigail and Brett there. You can also order Scott's new book, Rise Above. There's a link in there for that. And then, of course, on Instagram. Scott has a great following and you'll, you can see him sharing more, more tangible tips and tools. Finally, it's in the final stages, but we will be sending out a resilience toolkit in collaboration with Momentum Labs that will go to our whole community, coaches, parents, athletes, leaders that hopefully you can try out with your teams. Thank you for joining. We hope everyone has a wonderful holiday. Scott, Abigail, Brett, thank you all so much and we will catch up soon.

Thanks everyone. Have a great day.