“When you are knocked off your ‘paddleboards’ in life, you can get back on and keep going. We are all capable of doing exceptional things.”

In this episode, I sat down with Mike Shoreman, who is is known by many as the Unbalanced Paddleboarder, but is also a published author, motivational speaker, mental health advocate, and much more. Mike is also the leader of the global Paddles Up Movement celebrating people’s confidence and power. Join us as we discuss mental health, overcoming obstacles, the power of positivity, and more.

Connect with Mike @ http://mikeshoreman.org/

In this episode, I sat down with Ethan Zohn, who is is known by many for winning survivor Africa, but is also someone who, among a wide variety of endeavors, played professional soccer, is a global humanitarian, cancer survivor and advocate, television host, and co-founder of Grassroot Soccer. Join us for an incredibly varied conversation that is full of important lessons and takeaways for us as we navigate our daily lives.

Key Takeaways

1) Learn from Failure

We are all going to have successes and failures in life and some of these failures you can’t control, but you can control how you react to them. “Don’t worry about failing, worry about all of the things you could miss if you don’t even try.”

2) Set "micro-goals"

There is power in creating goals that you know are attainable because the feeling of accomplishing something is motivational and positive to our mental health.

3) The truth is powerful

Build a network of people who you trust and that who you can talk to truthfully and openly. A lot of the times, the thoughts and feelings that someone going through a challenge are having are the same ones that the people supporting them are having, but if you don’t talk about it, you may never know.

Norway has adopted a youth-focused sports development system. The majority of youth play sports, costs are low, teams are organized differently in the younger years of development, parental involvement is uniquely structured, and new ideas are introduced regularly. Our youth sports systems here in the United States need to ask real questions about how we are organized and how we can increase access for our youth. What can we learn from what Norway is doing?

The NFL recently announced proposed changes to the “Rooney Rule”. Adopted in 2003, the Rooney Rule is an NFL policy requiring every team with a head coaching vacancy to interview at least one or more diverse candidates. In 2009, the Rooney Rule was expanded to include general manager jobs and equivalent front office positions. I sat down with Professor Jeremi Duru from American University to talk about the proposed change and have an open and honest conversation about the impact of the Rooney Rule in the NFL and diversity in sports overall.

SOME key takeaways and Information:

1. The question shouldn’t be who you want to hire, the questions is who would be best for the job?
2. Positional Stacking
3. Fritz-Pollard Alliance
4. John Wooten
5. Jason Reid article on the NFL Draft

I hope you learn as much in this episode as I did and I encourage everyone to dive even deeper into the ideas and topics that Professor Duru discusses as we continue to seek out knowledge, understanding, and positive change.

As Nelson Mandela said, "Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. Sport can create hope where once there was only despair."

In this episode, I’ll sit down for part two of my conversation with my dear friend Orlando Beltran and continue our talk about his journey through the youth sports system in California, what makes a good coach and role model, and what might have changed since he was a young athlete.

“When you rearrange the letters in ‘listen’ it spells ‘silent.’ In order to truly listen, we have to silence our brains and stop trying to be right and figuring out how to respond. Just shut up and listen to our children.”

In this episode, I sat down with Valorie Kondos Field to chat about her coaching history, philosophy, and approach. As coaches, we should always be learning no matter how much experience we have and this episode will provide a wonderful opportunity to learn from one of the best of all time; regardless of sport. Miss Val has a unique and valuable coaching story and philosophy that offers incredible value to those who are open to learning from it.

Listen in as we talk about coaching, why we should re-define what success looks like, what the true role of a coach is, and why it’s so important to instill joy in others.

Some takeaways and questions we think about:

1. Infuse Joy
2. Would you coach differently if nothing was attached to winning?
3. We should never stop learning how to better support our youth.
4. Learning how to compete is a skill. 
5. Don’t coach from your ego! 
6. Focus 90% at least on the mental health and wellbeing of their players. 

Sport specialization can be a divisive topic in the United States. On one side people feel like it’s the best route towards becoming an elite athlete or being able to play in University and on the other they feel like playing multiple sports allow for a more well-rounded athlete and ultimately more successful at one sport. The truth is that it’s not so simple as to say kids should play one sport or multiple, a lot of consideration has to go into those conversations. I sat down with Professor Wiersma to talk about the benefits and drawbacks of both specialization and diversification and talked about some of the barriers that our youth development systems have created that make the conversation even more difficult.

I’ll sit down with Kaleigh Cornelison from the University of Michigan's Adolescent Health Initiative and talk about adolescent brain development and dive into why it might be important for coaches, administrators, and youth practitioners to have an understanding of how the brain develops and what that means for the youth that we work with.

In this episode, I’ll sit down with my dear friend Orlando Beltran and talk about his journey through the youth sports system in California, what challenges he faced along the way to be able to play, and what life lessons he learned through playing that have stayed with him in his current role as an educator.

In this introductory episode, we will introduce our podcast and our host. We will learn a little bit about why we put this podcast together, what our goals are, and what the future holds.