Dr. Roger Goudy President-CEO AAU Sports!

Mike Hartman, performance mindset strategist. This is Develop the Mindset of a Champion with former Stanley cup champion Mike Hartman.

Welcome to another episode. Today I have a special guest. It's Dr. Roger Gowdy, who is the president of AAU Sports. Dr. Gowdy, it's a privilege to have you here today.

Well, likewise. It's a privilege to be on your show. I hear a lot of great things about you from Keith Noel and several people in our hockey program, and I'm a excited to have a conversation with you.

Yeah. So I never knew a lot about AAU except my nephew. He played for Fort Wayne Purdue at one time, and now he's playing in Minnesota. My sister kept saying, he plays AAU basketball. AAU basketball. And then I have a really good friend, Sean Kilmartin. We're very close.

Wow.

And yes, we're super close. And he would tell me about AAU and his boys and. And then I started to learn, and one day I'm in a Starbucks and. And Sean came up to me and says, you know, we'd love to get you involved with hockey, with AAU hockey. And I said, well, I heard there is an AAU hockey. I didn't know a lot about it. And then the more I got to know about it, it's such a fantastic organization. And I would love for people if you could just share a little bit about who you are, your story, how you got involved. We'd love to hear it.

Okay. That'd be great. Well, I started 100 years ago in AAU and at the local level, like most people do, you wanted to have a team, so you got together, you looked around, see who was offering events. And at the time, I think I was actually in the sport of gymnastics. And people don't know that because I. I came out of football and played basketball and ran track and did all those sports. But I was an elementary phys Ed teacher, and I had these girls that wanted to learn gymnastics. So I started learning from other coaches and friends, and I eventually put together a team, and I actually had the first African American gymnastics team in the country. I started with six girls, and I ended up with 342 girls after six years. And we were well before the Dominique Dawes and all those people. And so these kids were the groundbreakers for African Americans to get into the sport of gymnastics. And I'm proud of that fact today. I'm still in contact with a lot of them, and it's great to see the success of Simone Biles and all These athletes out there now. But I've at one point in time or another, Mike, been involved in almost any sport you could imagine being an elementary phys ed teacher and being involved in education. I spent about 42 years in public education, the last eight of which I was a school superintendent. But in between, I taught, I coached, I did a lot of different things, but I was always involved with kids. And I always found it that the AAU was a good fit for me because I thought they covered all the bases. Regardless of what sport you're talking about, whether it be boys basketball, girls basketball, volleyball, hockey, you name it. We have 41 different sports. And I always found I was able to plug into an AAU program and deal with the same national governance structure. I never would imagined in my wildest dreams that someday I'd be the president and CEO of the organization. But I think my base is good because I went from public education, being a teacher, into public recreation, where I was offering all kinds of grassroots sports, and then on to the leadership of the aau. So I have a great deal of empathy for all those people out there that are trying to put together programs and we try to make ourselves, our organization, a good fit for whoever wants to participate. And I think that's what kind of really drew me into this. But since you're a hockey player, I got to tell you one quick story, if you don't mind. Line.

Absolutely. Let's hear. It's all about stories. So a lot of our show is we talk about stories, mindset and champions. So we love, love to hear it.

Well, this is, at least for me, it's a good one. When I said Kenton on the football team at Kent, our, our kicker at Kent was a hockey player, junior B hockey player. Our field goal kicker from Canada. His name is Herbie Page and he was a really nice young man. Well, our football dorm had an intramural hockey team. Well, these football players, none of these guys could skate and I could barely skate. Well, Herbie being a former junior B player, Herbie could skate better than any intramural hockey player. So we'd go out and most of these football players were wearing figure skates because they couldn't skate. They'd run on the picks when they had to. And I was wearing a hockey skate so I could skate better than anybody else. So Herbie taught me that you don't go across the blue line until he does with the puck and then stand by down by the net and keep my stick on the ice. Well, I got the nickname Goal game Gowdy, because Herbie would skate around and nobody could catch him, and he put the. The puck right on my stick, and I would score every game.

So that's awesome.

I had a great experience to a point where actually the club director there asked me if I wanted to try out for the. The club team. And I said, no, I'm not. I'm not a hockey player. But I had a great, great experience with Herbie in that group. Really learned to appreciate, enjoy the sport of hockey and how talented you guys are that play that game. But that's my hockey claim to fame.

But wait, we talk about stories now. There was a guy on our show, he might have been on the second episode. His name is Mike Lodish. We grew up in Detroit together. He went to ucla. His father is a doctor. We grew up really right down the street, not far from each other. And I had him on an interview. Now this guy plays hockey. Played. He has. He went to the super bowl six times. Had the record up to when before Tom Brady had it. But he won two with Denver, but lost four with Buffalo. And I actually was never friends with him in Detroit. We had the same friends, but I heard he played hockey. And this is a monster. He's a lineman on skates, and he was pretty good. He could skate. And I talked to him on my podcast where I said, mike, if you would have played hockey, you would have made it. There's got that big. And you could skate.

So.

So there's a guy that could skate. So, you know, football player that could skate.

So. Yeah.

So I have to ask you, so how you've been involved with AAU sports more than almost what, 40 years, right?

About 45 years now, and mostly as a volunteer. But I got involved. It's like every other organization. People say, oh, why don't you run for office? Or why don't you become the national chairman of this board or run for national chairman? So I went chairman of the sport of baseball, and we did a pretty good job there, our team. And so then the president at the time said, roger, can you do with volleyball what you did with baseball? And the joke in AAU at the time was a Gowdy couldn't even spell volleyball. Well, I took over volleyball, and at the time, 25 years ago, volleyball was the 35th out of 41 sports. As far as being the largest. We were the fourth or fifth smallest sport. And I'm proud to announce, two years ago, volleyball is now the largest sport in the aau. And we surpassed Boys basketball.

So the one thing I learned about the volleyball is you have this big tournament. Doesn't there a big tournament on Disney with 50,000 people attend? The big volleyball AAU tournament over there is actually we.

We started it 23 years ago with 123 teams. And two years ago we had 2,805 teams from 17 countries. And we had about 45,000 athletes, about 10,000 coaches, and about 125,000 spectators in 12 days. And we set the Guinness Book of World Records as not only being the largest volleyball event by far, but they think we may be the largest youth sports event because nobody's even close to those kind of numbers.

That's a great game, volleyball. Volleyball is such a great game. And my daughter tried out for volleyball. They had to play a sport. And my kids weren't much of athletes. I mean, I grew up in an athletic family. My father, who was involved with sports his entire life, we love baseball, we have a real baseball family. And my brother played and everybody played, but my kids were not involved. And my daughter came home and says, dad, I want to try out for a sport. And I said, what are you going to try out for? She said, volleyball. So she ended up trying out. She didn't make it because everybody at the school had to play a sport. She ended up doing cross country, and then my son ended up doing pole vaulting. He didn't like lacrosse, and that's fine. I love whatever, you know, you tell your kids whatever you love to do and as long as you're keeping active. But it's such a great game, volleyball, such a fantastic game.

It really is. And it allows a lot of opportunities for kids because you could be tall and very effective in the front row, or you could be a libro and be a back row player or a defensive player. So there's a lot of opportunities for kids. And. And I think the thing about volleyball that I've noticed, especially in our beach division, we do self officiating and stuff, it's a lot less stressful on kids. And kids like it for that reason. They want to play, they want to compete. There's nothing wrong with competition. I'm not one of those people saying not to compete, but I think sometimes we get a little bit over the top with competition and sometimes we lose sight of that. Who's the game for? And it's for the athletes, it's for the kids. But volleyball is a great sport for that. But I think we have the same thing going in most of our sports. I Think Keith and that group do a great job in youth hockey. Those kids are enjoying themselves out there. We try to take the adults out of the equation. We try to take all the politics out of the equation. We try to make it an activity where kids can enjoy the experience. Because life's too short for these kids not to enjoy the experience. Because, as you well know, being a former professional player, the numbers are so much against you. I mean, the reality is, most of these kids, and I used to say this to parents all the time when I was a school superintendent. I said, look, have your kids enjoy the sport, enjoy the experience, enjoy their high school experience, because the reality is they're not going to go on to the NBA. They're not going to go on to Major League Baseball. Maybe 1 in 100,000 are. But let them enjoy the journey. Don't worry about the destination. Just enjoy the sport.

That's so true, everything you said. And that's why I want to be a part of aau. And AAU is all about having fun and going out there and enjoying the game. Hey, if you're good enough, great. But overall, I tell parents all the time, I know my kids went to a school and they said, well, I hope my son gets a scholarship. I hope my daughter gets a scholarship. I said, you know what? I hope that they play a sport and they have a smile on their face. They're enjoying it. They're building relationships, and if they really want it, great. Yeah, the numbers are tough. And it's not especially getting a college scholarship. Like, I know, even in hockey, if you're from Michigan and there's over a hundred thousand hockey players there, and. And they only give two or three scholarships a year to Michigan State or Michigan or Michigan Tech or some of the big schools. And then a lot of the kids are from Canada and the numbers are not there. But I love the reason. And I was going to ask you, so your why of wanting to be involved with aau, what is the big why behind this?

Well, I think that's partly it. And since I've been president, I started a couple of initiatives in AAUD because I guess I'm all about giving back to the sport and having the kids learn social responsibility. Two of the programs that I initiated here when I became the president was, one is called AAU Cares, and the other one's called AAU Proud. And AAU Cares is about. We want to teach the kids some kind of social responsibility. We don't want to run into a town, run an event, leave the Town. And they say, well, these aau, because we don't know all this negative stuff, we want the kids to like our volleyball. We packed lunches for the homeless. Our track and field. They give out track shoes to the kids that can't afford them, or they go out and paint houses and do things with the kids. And the cool thing about this has been, I thought it was just going to be the athletes. Well, we packed 80,000 lunches one year for the homeless here in Orlando, actually, for five cities. But we did it at our volleyball tournament in Orlando. And in there, there's coaches, there's. There's athletes, there's parents, there's referees. And what better way to have kids learn social responsibility than not just looking at a referee that's up on the stand officiating their game, but that's standing next to them with a hairnet on, packing lunches for these homeless people. That's a great experience for kids. And I think as athletic organizations, we should all be doing that. We shouldn't just let these kids come and compete. They need to learn how to be socially responsible, and they need to learn how to help others. So that's the one program. And then the other one we have is called AAU Proud. Because one of the things we found that I have four kids, and you drag the kids along to these events, and these kids come to these events, and their brothers or sisters are playing, and the other ones are sitting there just doing nothing. So the AAU proud is something. We just got these stickers that say AAU proud. And if you hit a balloon over a net, we'd give you a sticker saying, we're proud of you. AAU Proud. Well, it was designed for the younger brothers and sisters. And the thing we discovered were the grandmas and grandpas were out there hitting the ball, the balloon, over the net, and they wanted the sticker. So it turned into a pretty positive thing where we made a athletic event, a family event. So I think some of the reasons for our tremendous success has been instead of making it just a national championship, or instead of making it a competition, we've made it more of an event where families can come and enjoy it. We do water park parties for the kids. We do things in the city for the kids. We do things for the kids where they can get together as teams and not always be competing against each other. So I think we're really more focused now more than ever on developing the whole child than we have been in past years.

I love it because I've Always said that to coaches. And I did a little seminar here in Charlotte at a school, and they had every coach, there was a private school, and they're very competitive. And I said, some of you are not going to like what I'm going to say. I said, I believe that not every player has to play equally, but we're all about. You said it. Developing young people. We're not developing athletes. We're developing people. We're helping people in their life. We're teaching communication, we're teaching unity. We're teaching camaraderie. And that's what sports is all about. And I told the coaches that you don't have to beat the best team. At the end of the year, it's a score. But if you properly play everybody in different situations, you're going to develop confidence within our young people, which turn into wins, eventually winning in life. So I love that model. That's what makes me proud to be part of aau. And. Well, that's. That's great. So.

Well, look, I'm more story with you. I hate to keep telling you these stories, but love it, love it.

Love the stories, love the story.

This is. This is another thing we do that I think has been really added to our success, is that my daughter wanted to come down and play volleyball at our national championship. I said, you know, we have all kinds of levels. You know, glad they put together a team. Well, it's like anything else. We started with 12 girls. And by the time we ended up coming from Ohio down here, we had six. So I didn't even have a sub. So we entered our tournament. And the way our tournament is structured is our national championship is structured. It's three days of pool play. Then the fourth day, you go into the brackets. Well, the first day of pool play, the top three teams go up, the bottom one goes down. The second day, the top two go up, bottom two go down. The third day, top two go up, bottom two go down. Well, by the fourth day, when you get into the brackets, if you're a great team, you're playing great teams. And if your team isn't so good, you're playing teams that aren't so good. Well, my daughter's team was in the not so good category. So I think we finished. Got a bronze medal in the zinc division of her age group. And she was happy. She was happy. Everybody's happy as the national champions in the open division. And that's where I really learned, you know, it's not about just winning the highest level of competition. These kids want to compete. They want to compete against kids. They're, you know, at their level. And I think the way we structure our event in our tournaments in basketball and volleyball and hockey and everything else is that kids can find success. And that's so important because these people that talk about taking the competition out, you don't have to take the competition out. Make the competition balance, make it something where the kids can play to their level of expertise and have fun at the event. What's wrong with having fun and competing?

That's what it's all about, having fun, competing. And I tell my own children, same thing. I said, hey, if you. As long as you're out there, we can't control how much you play. So I know a lot of parents, they always want to see their son or daughter on the ice, field or court, or out there playing. But I said, listen, as long as you give 100%, as long as you're having fun and you keep enjoying the game and you support the team and tell your teammate, hey, you know, good play, and everything's about good sportsmanship, and you give it all you have. That's all that matters and life, because that's going to take on beyond sports. So we're like, we. We said it earlier. Like, I. I know that you talk about building champions on and off the ice, in the field, and. And that's exactly what you're doing. Like, I. And I've said it in my podcast, even interviewing these different athletes, I would say winning. Being a champion isn't just winning a championship. So I know you have that model. You could share a little bit about that. You know that, because I've read that with the reputation of just really building champions, not just on the field.

Absolutely, absolutely. And. And again, there's so much of it. As you all know, being a former professional player is the physical stature. I mean, I told my son, he's 5, 10, he was a shooting guard for my AAU basketball team. He was a great shooter. I said, for every one of you, there's a six, four shooting guard. And so you're competing against kids. That's physical dimensions. Not that you can't play at the next level, like, God love if you can, but don't worry about that. Enjoy. Enjoy your friends, enjoy your teammates. Compete as hard as you can at the levels you're at. And if some. If somebody wants you or somebody needs somebody, they're going to find you. You don't need to find them. And that's the misnomer. A Lot of parents have is. I got to use all these agencies, and I got to spend all this money to get my kid in front of these people. If you're good enough, these college coaches are going to find you. Believe me.

I believe in that 100%. I've said that a thousand times. And you don't have to spend all kinds of money. And I don't want to talk about any one agency.

We have a couple sponsors. I'm not against what they do, but you can do it without them. Again, these college coaches, they have teams of people. They got a lot of sets of alumni eyes out there watching people all the time. They're gonna find you, right?

They'll find you. And I'm not saying anything. There's nothing bad. Like, everybody, you know, has a different philosophy, but what they shouldn't do. You don't have to put all your eggs in one basket, and you don't. You don't have to take it on. And like we talked about, I don't want to sound redundant, but as long as that player, the. The boy, you know, the girls that we have, if they. Long as they have a smile on their face and they're enjoying the game and you said that magic word, they're competing, that. That's what it's all about. And they'll find you.

They.

They do. They know you're out there. They're watching. They know who you are. And if you're good enough to be found, hey, that's great. But not everybody could do it, just like you said.

Absolutely. And at our national championship for volleyball, we have 700 college coaches. So they walk around the whole place. We got a 186 courts going simultaneously. They're going to find somebody. We have international teams there. We have local teams there. We have national teams there. They're gonna. They're gonna see you and they're gonna. And they're gonna come to you. You don't have to go to them.

Yeah, that's great. So you mentioned international. Is AAU expanding into other countries or where are they now?

Well, now, it depends what you're talking about. Pre Covid. And today we. We. When. Before COVID hit, we were booming. I mean, our national numbers were up in every sport. We were, I mean, just blowing a. And we had deals going with China. We had deals going with teams and clubs in Australia, all kinds of European countries, African countries. Matter of fact, I got elected to a position as continental president for the isf, the International School Sports Federation, which in most countries is the governing body for high school sports in this country. We have the federations. Ohio High School Athletic Association. We have all these federations in most European, African and South American countries. They report through the ISF. So now that I'm continental president, I have 42 countries. North America, South America, Central America and the Caribbean islands that I'm responsible for as a volunteer. So we really expanded into the South American market until Covid hit and we were expanding outside and we had. China was extremely interested. We were working with some very high level people in China. Actually, I was working with Yao Ming. And it just. This Covid just threw us for a loop. And we're trying to rekindle those relationships now. But just like the problem we're having in this country where every state, every county, every city has different rules, you think about a global scale. We can't even get some of these teams. Can't even get them over here anymore.

Oh, I know. And not even that we're having, you know, with COVID we're having even problems opening up an ice rink or are they going to play on a field.

Exactly.

Now when you hear about the, the, you know, the top quarterback in the world, Tom Brady, getting in trouble for throwing a football outside on. He was practicing in Tampa Bay. His skills. And the police officer said, you can't be here, you know.

Yep.

Covid has really hit. When you, when you see something like that.

Absolutely. And, and, and, you know, we, we kind of took a bold move here because everybody else shut down. I'll have to send you a copy of the video that we're sending out to all of our athletes. Actually, it's going out today, I think, where it talked about everything closing down. And we, we said, you know what, kids need support. And if we're going to do it, we're going to do it safely. We're going to make sure we enlist medical professionals. And, and we came out of the box and we ran our national championship for volleyball. We moved our Junior Olympic games from Virginia down to Cocoa beach. We ran 25 of our sports this past summer, and we didn't have one incident during that thing. Now we spent a lot of money with doing the heat checks and have medical professionals there and ensuring that we spread the courts out. We sanitize the courts. We had the blue lights on all these things. We sanitize them overnight. We took a lot of precautions, but we figured out how to do this because we didn't want to just stop doing sports. And I think it's so important for Kids. I mean, I'm one of those old school guys. I really believe in the values of sport, and there's a tremendous amount of values.

Oh, I agree. I mean, sport is a way to release energy. It's a way to make friends. It's a way to. We talked about competing. It's a way just to get out there and keep active and to keep you healthy in your sanity. And we need sports. And AAU's done an amazing job keeping, Keeping people, keeping our players, our young athletes and families safe. So, you know, high regards on that. And I, like, personally, I've been involved with the AAU hockey the last five years, and I'm watching it grow and I'm having people call me and saying, boy, we're so happy we're involved with the hockey. And I've been. I've been more than proud to be involved with the hockey. So hockey's even growing. Absolutely big numbers.

Absolutely it is. And again, you know, we're very thankful to have people like you because that, I mean, got like, guys like yourself, like Sean Kilmartin. He's a great guy down there in North Carolina, and we got a lot of good people out there, and we have our knuckleheads, too, just like anybody else. But we try to police that. And when we find out somebody's acting a little goofy or doing crazy stuff, we get rid of them because we don't want those kind of people around kids anymore. And the parent wants them around kids. So we're trying to work within the system. We're always trying to work within the rules, and we always want to make sure it's safe for the kids. So it's great to have people like you and Sean there in North Carolina. And he's a great guy. Don't tell him I said that. But he's a great guy now.

He is. Thank you for the, for the kind words. And. And he's another one. Like, if you look at Sean, everything is about the kids. It's about the kids. I have a tournament. I mean, he's always about the kids. And, and, and I, and I go into. I don't want to go deep into the psychology of sports, but I talked to a couple parents and I had a talk on this that I really believe that when, when we're yelling or raising our voice as a coach, it's more of a setback to the kids. I remember the coach like, I was the worst hockey player. I'm not kidding. This is. I wrote a little book about this that I, I struggled as a hockey player all the way up to about 11 years old. But you know who I remember? I've had some great NHL coaches and high division coach, but I remember the coach that had the patience to put his arm on me. Yep. His name was, his name was Marshall from, from Detroit. He says, hey, don't worry, you fall, we learn, it's called, you know, not learn to learn to play. I learn to fall. You fall and you get back up, you get, you get back up. And, and, and that's, I mean all these Years later, I'm 53. I remember the impact of the positive, the, the good coaches that cared about our players and he didn't care about wins and losses. So I'm, I'm kind of going on and on about this.

But no, that, that, that's important.

That's what excites me about, about sports and looking back and that's what I'm, I'm, you know, some of the challenges we have with our coaches is maybe not our coaches necessarily, but coaches in overall sport, they too, too seriously at times they do.

And, and I, I, I don't think there's anything wrong with passion. And I love to see passionate coaches, I love to see passionate players. But you gotta separate the passion from putting a kid in a stressful situation unnecessarily. That's not necessary to improve a kid's skills. I think sometimes coaches try to coach way too much during the game and forget that. Where you teach kids is you teach kids in practice and kids during the game are testing out what you taught them. And I think if they had that perspective, they'd have be a lot better off. And that's why I never want to take away the competition though. But sometimes the competition makes some people get a little bit crazy.

That's so true. Because if you think about it, or baseball, I use this analogy quite a bit. I'm a big Yankee fan. I don't want to offend anybody. I'm from Detroit. But I love watching the Yankees. I watched and what I love about the Yankees, well, the thing with the Yankees, which I loved is I love those, I call them the over the underdogs. And there was a guy, Mike Ford, that played for Princeton and he got called up in his family's at the game. He's a New Jersey born player and he's smiling and he's out in Yankee Stadium. To me that's the part of the game I love. And the other part is if you watch the manager of the Yankees. And, and maybe this is something to learn. I'm sure in practice, he's. He's working and he's teaching, but yeah, they're gonna get mad sometimes, but usually they sit there with their arms folded. They let the players play. They let them play. And yeah. I mean, the odd time they might say something from the dugout, but what happens is that by doing that, if we're yelling at. Let's say we're playing soccer.

Yeah.

And we're telling. And we're saying, shoot, shoot. And everyone's yelling at the. At the. That, you know, our younger athletes shoot. Their motor skills hear something different and it actually throws them off. It really does.

Absolutely. I totally agree with you. And. And where. Where you should be working on situational things in practice so that they know when they should shoot and when they shouldn't shoot.

Exactly. Exactly. So. So just to conclude here, is there any takeaways that you can give to some of our coaches and young athletes today? Is there anything that we could take with us and. And bring with us, like a couple words of wind wisdom.

This is from somebody that's been around a lot of sports for a lot of years. Is I. The first takeaway is have fun. If you're not having fun, you shouldn't be doing it. If it's so critical for you to stay, have longevity in a sport because you're going to have injuries, you're going to have wins, you're going to have losses, you're going to have good teammates, you're going to have bad teammates, but have fun. And. And I. I think the second thing I would say is, you know, get out there and try different things. Don't. Don't be afraid. You know, I. I think we sometimes try to put people in these boxes that you can only play one sport. I played a bunch of sports my career. I've coached a bunch of sports in my career. Try them all, because you never know, you might do one that you find out you're pretty good at and you don't have to be the best, but enjoy the experience.

I love that. Thank you, Dr. Gowdy. It's been a. It's been a privilege just to talk to you. I really appreciate you taking the time out. I know things that are very busy there in Florida for you, and it really meant a lot for you coming on. Thank you so much.

Well, likewise. And if I'm North Carolina, I'm gonna have Sean Kilmerton buy us dinner.

We have to talk about. I call him Alligator Arms. That's his nickname. Okay, okay.

Okay. Thank you.