Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #171: Gill1918 Presents Chad Gunnelson "Part 1 Lessons Learned from Coaching Great Women!"

Transcript

#171: Gill1918 Presents Chad Gunnelson "Part 1 Lessons Learned from Coaching Great Women!" · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  Welcome to the Gill 1918 Project, a podcast series by
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  coaches for coaches powered by Gill Athletics.
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  Think of this as the Ted Talks of track and field coaching.
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  Short, insightful, and packed with valuable strategies to help
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  you grow as a coach. We're bringing the once a year
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  track clinic straight to your ears daily.
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  Interested in creating your own episode?
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  Everyone's welcome to participate.
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  Check out the show notes below For more information.
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  Now let's get into today's topic.
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  All right up. Next, our second speaker tonight
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  represents a milestone moment for Women for Women.
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  For the first time in the history of this conference, we
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  are welcoming a male ally to the Women for Women's stage.
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  And we could not have chosen a better person for that role in
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  Chad Denelson. Chad has attended every single
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  Women for Women conference since the inception.
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  That kind of consistency speaks volumes.
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  He didn't just show up once. He keeps showing up.
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  He listens, he learns, he supports, and he advocates.
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  Chad's presence over the years has been intentional,
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  respectful, and deeply meaningful to this community.
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  As an accomplished coach at Augustana, Chad is known for
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  developing high performing, confident athletes and for
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  building programs rooted in trust, culture and athlete
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  centered leadership. But what truly sets him apart is
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  his willingness to learn from the women he coaches and coaches
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  alongside, and to use those lessons to lead better, stronger
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  and more thoughtfully. His session tonight, lessons
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  from coaching great women, is exactly that.
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  Honest, reflective and impactful.
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  This is not a lecture, it's a conversation, and every coach in
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  this room can take something from it.
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  Please join me in welcoming our first ever Women for Women Male
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  Ally, an incredible advocate and a true supporter of women in
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  coaching and athletics. Chad Nelson.
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  Thank you. Check.
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  All right. We're working.
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  Did all the doctors stay in the room?
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  Yes, they're still here. OK, good.
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  It's. This is the most nervous I've
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  been since I proposed to my wife.
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  When Terry reached out to me and tapped me on the shoulder and
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  asked if I would do this, I was overwhelmed with gratitude,
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  certainly a ton of anxiety. And this was essentially one of
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  the most intimidating asks that I've had in a long time.
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  And so first thing I did, I reached out to my wife and
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  shared the news. And then I started texting.
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  Like every single one of the female athletes that I coach or
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  a coach that are now coaching either out there in the high
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  school world, the youth world and started, you know, asking so
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  many questions and realized that what am I going to talk about?
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  Well, it needs to be the lessons that I've learned from them.
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  And so though this talk will likely evolve into a lot more
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  questions and but hopefully it'll spark some curiosity.
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  There's a lot here in the lessons that I've learned and a
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  lot about the lessons that I have still yet to learn as it as
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  it goes to Carrie, I don't know if you guys have ever been to
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  this before. For those of you who haven't,
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  typically the middle speaker, there's always breakout sessions
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  where there's three different places you can go.
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  All right. And I am assuming that the
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  reason there are breakout sessions this year is because
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  Carrie actually wanted you guys to come to mine and so she made
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  me the only one available. So Carrie, I appreciate that,
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  but the nerves are still rolling.
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  So the ladies I coach, when I shared that this is super
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  intimidating, we're like, well, what do you mean?
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  Like you dance and sing and run around and you're crazy and you
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  speak all the time and you do all this stuff.
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  And and so like first, like I realized, I want to make sure
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  that I honor them. I want to make sure that I honor
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  the women that I've coached, the women that I coach with, my
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  grandma Wilma, who raised me, and the most important woman in
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  my life, my wife Melissa, who's here tonight.
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  When I thought about it, I realized that like the deep
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  rooted nature of this, like intimidation is actually because
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  I realized as a white male, for the first time, I'm actually in
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  a position that our women in coaching are in.
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  I'm the minority here. And so I'm grateful to Wistica
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  to carry to have this podium and to talk through all of this.
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  So it's nice that our our folks are back.
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  But I wanted to share a little bit of an inception story.
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  And Terry mentioned a lot of it. But ten years ago at this
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  clinic, Doctor Rick McGuire and then Dr. Amber Lattner, now
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  sulking, they were here, they spoke and they presented this
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  idea, the Missouri Institute of Positive Coaching.
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  And at that point in time in my life, I was thinking, hey, like,
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  maybe I want to get my master's degree.
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  This would be really awesome. This idea is so great.
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  And I just listened and heard so many incredible ideas.
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  And sorry, Doctor McGuire, I fell in love with you, man.
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  And what Doctor McGuire talked about at that clinic was that
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  where he was at in Missouri and Mizzou's athletic department was
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  struggling with some pretty significant negative culture and
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  negative culture as it relates around their women in their
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  athletic department. And so they came up with this
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  idea and the whole like, like original spark of what we're
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  doing here came from the Women for Women movement at Mizzou.
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  And I will never forget that. And from that moment on, like, I
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  just dove in like I always do, completely naive, no clue what's
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  going to happen, but I was like, how do we start this?
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  How do we get this rolling? And it was very, very simple and
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  easy. You know, we started with
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  somebody else who dives in and takes on the whole world on her
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  shoulders. And that was with Carrie.
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  OK. And so back in 2017, the soft
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  opening of the Women for Women was right in our living room in
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  Potosi, Wisconsin. And Carrie and a few of her
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  coaching friends came down, and we had our women's team at the
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  house. And they presented just an
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  incredible, empowering day to our women's team.
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  We took a picture with everybody out front.
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  Obviously that group's a lot smaller than a group in here.
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  But when I went back to look up at these pictures or look up
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  these pictures, I realized in that first original group, 5
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  women join the coaching ranks, and four of those 5 still coach
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  today. And so we had no idea we were
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  going to do. We just knew that we had to cook
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  some pasta, you know, and make sure that everybody got there
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  safe and got home safe. But Carrie showed up.
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  She delivered what she always does.
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  And that was a great empowering message.
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  And because of that, in that first ever 110 years ago, now
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  there's four women who are still coaching today.
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  So. Sorry, Emma, I'll get you that
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  one in a second. Every year, as Carrie mentioned,
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  we have brought either a boss or a van or multiple vans or a
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  group up here to this clinic, to this symposium.
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  And at first I just thought it was like out of a sense of duty.
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  I knew I wanted to go, who could I bring with?
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  And I never really thought that there was necessarily like a
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  bigger intentional thing than other just in other than just
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  involving future teachers, potential future coaches in
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  getting involved with the concept of professional
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  development, right? The opportunity to connect and
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  engage in network. And so now those are just four
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  of the nine, including this one, the last eight that have been
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  here, there's over 15 women that are coaching now.
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  And those are just the ones that I know because we've brought
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  lacrosse teams, we've brought groups from other sports in
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  different years. But when I look back on this and
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  thought about this, I realized that it's incumbent on us all
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  coaches, but also male coaches, to make it our responsibility to
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  help drive women to coaching and to support women in coaching.
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  So I suppose it's important to share a little back story.
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  When I was 22 years old, I had come from, born and raised in
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  Madison, went to Madison Memorial High School.
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  I played football and done track and I wrestled my freshman year.
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  Never been involved with a sport that had girls or women in it,
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  never had a female coach. And most of what drove me was
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  football culture. And I think it's fair to say the
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  football culture is typically not good.
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  But growing up in that and kind of those 18 years of
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  conditioning, right, and not realizing, you know, that
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  there's kind of more to all this that went on to college, played
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  college football at Southwest Minnesota State and experienced
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  really the significantly toxic and terrible culture that can be
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  found in football programs. And so Ioffer am from playing.
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  The reason I went to college is I wanted to be a Spanish teacher
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  and I wanted to coach football and I wanted to coach trap,
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  right the life. OK, that's what I was going to
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  do. And so Ioffer am from playing
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  ball and got into coaching. And so I had a friend and I knew
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  the athletic director at Madison East High School.
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  And just as we men in coaching do, we just talked to the good
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  old boys club and at 22 years old with absolutely 0 experience
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  and no qualifications, I got a head coaching job, OK?
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  And we signed up. I'm going to coach football and
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  I'm going to coach track. And then I realized all of a
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  sudden I was the only opening was the girls head coaching
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  position and everybody thought about it.
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  I just want to be a coach. So throw me in, I'm ready to go.
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  And then all of a sudden like it hit me and I'm like wait, you
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  want me to coach girls? OK.
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  So that was going to be kind of the plan moving forward.
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  Well, at Madison East at that time, there was a boys coach who
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  was a female and she was like dead set against coaching girls
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  only wanted to coach the boys team.
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  And our athletic director wanted both of us to kind of make the
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  switch, right? Whether it's supervision, locker
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  room presents, bus rides, hotels at the state meet, like all
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  those things, right? Like our athletic director
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  thought that it made sense to have, you know, the male
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  coaching the boys and the female coaching the girls.
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  And, and then we also wanted to collaborate.
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  We only had 25 people out for track and field at Madison East
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  at the time, a high school of almost 2000.
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  And so it made sense to kind of combine the team and things like
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  that. And so unfortunately that coach
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  quit was completely against it. Not going to coach girls.
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  OK. And I'm like, man, what am I
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  actually getting myself into, right.
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  And so there all of a sudden I became the head boys coach and
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  the head girls coach, and I was lost.
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  So the first thing I did was reach out for advice.
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  And I guess even though this isn't one of my lessons tonight,
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  I think it's probably an important lesson to point out
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  that not all advice is good advice.
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  OK, so I get to Madison East and first person I reach out to was
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  a coach that I knew, a female coach who I had been familiar
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  with and kind of had worked with and known from my previous high
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  school experience coaching as an assistant volunteer.
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  And I said, hey, I need your help.
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  I'm about to be the head girls coach, Madison East, and I don't
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  know where to start. I've never done that.
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  We've never been in a combined program.
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  I've never had a female coach. I just don't know what to do.
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  And she says, well, here's the deal.
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  You need to go get a calendar. You need to make sure you have
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  every single one of their menstrual cycles on that
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  calendar. I will share with you I did not
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  do that, OK, And I'm glad that I didn't.
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  But the thing that I realized kind of through that message
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  that thankfully I was able to filter in my naveness and
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  gullible nature didn't just throw me into that and be like,
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  ladies check in, right? Like I did realize that it was
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  important to make sure that I was more thoughtful so that in
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  the event that we needed to make a target run, they'd be willing
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  to ask me, right? And so that's something I
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  learned through that time. But the first, the first thing
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  that I did as coach was I hired our sprints coach, Sally Merks,
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  ADC Everest from up near Wausau. You guys probably know where
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  that is, OK. She was actually injured and had
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  kind of off ramps from University of Wisconsin's team.
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  And so she came on to be our sprints coach and she came from
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  Coach PD's program and like, she brought in this incredible,
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  like, positivity and confidence and an experience where she had
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  a male coach. She loved it.
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  Track was such an important part of her life and so she injected
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  that into our team and that was extremely helpful for me to have
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  a female role model on our staff.
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  OK. And then a couple years later,
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  Nancy great. You can see Nancy and I up in
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  the on the upper left hand corner there.
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  Nancy joined our our program. She was the the boys head cross
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  country coach at East and then she joined as our distance
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  coach. Our our distance coach had left
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  to take a head job at Memorial. Everybody goes West in this
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  town, you know. But I stayed true to the purple
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  and gold. But Nancy came on and Nancy made
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  such a significant difference in our program.
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  She coached our first national or so first state champion in
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  almost 2 decades in Gabe Heck in the 3200 and truly helped me
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  continue to grow as a coach trying to guide and lead women.
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  So we worked through Madison East and those six years I had
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  such incredible young people. There's a blue collar mentality
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  at East. East at that point in time was
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  65% free or reduced lunch. And it was such a unique, such a
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  unique culture that already existed and one that we were
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  trying to build that it really allowed me to realize how
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  important it was to have boys and girls or men and women on
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  the same team together. OK.
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  And so having gone from split boys and girls programs as an
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  athlete, assuming that that's exactly how life would be from
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  there, it was that team, those ladies in particular, that
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  helped me realize how important and what incredible lessons can
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  be learned from young people when we get a chance to learn
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  together. So from there I got tapped on
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  the shoulder to go to the University of Dubuque.
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  And like I said, I played football, played football in
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  college, played semi Pro Football here in Madison for the
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  Mustangs. And they had track and cross
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  country jobs open, all four of them.
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  And the Adu was like, Yep, we want you to come in and be the
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  track and cross country coach. And I was like cross country.
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  And he goes, Yep, it's all part of the gig, you know.
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  OK, so first thing I did was call Nancy Grit.
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  I said Nancy, how do I do this? How do I handle coaching
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  distance in college? And so she told me to put on the
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  calendar training cycles. OK.
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  And that was good advice. No, But Nancy, Nancy helped me
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  to grow first as a coach of women and then as a coach of
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  distance. But at UD, we had combined the
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  program. It was in a very big kind of
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  challenging place in this in disarray and the culture was
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  going to require the collective effort of all of our men, all of
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  our women, everyone on staff to be aligned to help that program
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  grow. We started out there.
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  We had 440 total men and women in our first year.
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  And Rachel Boujon is in that picture.
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  She's here. She was one of the the O GS from
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  back in the day and she rocked it.
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  And she's from Sobiski, Wisconsin too.
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  So a lot of great Wisconsin natives and she helped us and of
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  usher in a new era and it was her and her female teammates
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  leadership that allowed us to be truly A-Team and a program that
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  ended up be becoming pretty darn good.
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  A lot of incredible memories at UD.
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  Got a lot of ladies in the room that I coached there.
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  And as Kerry mentioned, I don't coach there anymore.
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  And I'm just going to leave a lot of those memories so we
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  don't have to cry tonight. I felt like I was going to throw
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  up for a while and now I feel like I'm to cry.
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  So I'm going to move on from that.
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  OK, So there's been a lifetime worth.
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  I'm I'm 42 and this is my 21st year coaching women.
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  And so half of my life I've been coaching girls in high school,
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  women in college. And it has been, what I have
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  learned is that it has been something that I would have not
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  been able to live without. It has saved my life more than
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  once. And it has made my life so much
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  more meaningful. And but again, I've learned a
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  lot of lessons through that. So I figured we might as well
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  get to those, right? That's what you came here for.
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  So lesson #1 women are different.
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  Just so you know, people ask me like, oh, tell me a little bit
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  about yourself. I'm a pot stirrer and I'm a
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  feather ruffler. OK, so I'm going to, I'm going
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  to talk about some stereotypes. I'm going to get into some
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  stuff. But you know, I want to talk
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  about this stuff because it comes up and we think about it,
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  but we don't always say it. Women are different.
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  And we always try and take this neutral path, right?
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  Especially those of us who coach in public schools, right?
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  Can't say what you're thinking, can't do what you want.
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  But we're we're taught that we need to treat everyone equally.
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  And what I've learned from trying that and starting there
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  and doing the politically correct path, I learned that I
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  absolutely do not believe in equality.
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  I believe in equity. And I believe in equity because
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  I think equity is empathy. And I learned that equity and
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  empathy is what helped build the platform in which the strong
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  women, the independent leaders, the great teams that we've had
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  over these last 21 years were built on those two things.
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  They weren't built on equality. They weren't treating them the
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  same as their male counterparts. It wasn't treating them the same
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  as I would want to be treated myself.
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  It was meeting them where they were at and helping them get to
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  where they wanted to go. OK, so when it comes to women
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  being different, some of those differences revolve around the
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  language that we use. First, I'm going to start in the
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  home. Often times we put our women in
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  a predicament to think that what they're doing as an athlete or
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  as a coach is not valuable. So I want you to think about
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  some of these these conversations that may happen at
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  home, right? Just if you could ever imagine
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  this happening. Well, sweetheart, you know,
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  like, you know, you did track in high school and you know, it was
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  great for the social side of things.
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  But don't you think it's time to really start thinking about your
• 19:59
  priorities or, hey, you know, like you're not going to be a
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  professional in volleyball, so why don't we just focus on
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  school? Can you imagine those
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  conversations happening at home? They do.
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  They do all the time, OK, As a coach and in coaching women for
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  21 years, these conversations have come from parents, through
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  athletes to staff to teammates every single year.
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  And So what I want to realize when we have those conversations
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  in the home, that is devaluing what we do as coaches.
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  It's devaluing the time and energy that we spend, the time
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  and energy that they spend, the investment that they make in
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  their sports. And so when it talks about women
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  being different, we need to think about the language we use,
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  what we say to them and how we emphasize sport, OK.
• 20:52
  Hey gang, Mike Cunningham here. Hey, I hope you enjoyed this
• 20:55
  episode of the Guild 1918 Project series.
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  It's really my mission, my passion to bring you massive
• 21:02
  amounts of value and I hope this one hit the mark.
• 21:05
  The Gilt 1918 Project is really dependent on you if for you to
• 21:10
  build your own episode, to hear your voice, to have your voice
• 21:13
  heard you have something to say and teach other coaches out
• 21:17
  there. So please get a hold of me,
• 21:19
  E-mail, text message, Twitter, smoke signals, get a hold of me
• 21:24
  and let's help create your episode of the Guild 1918
• 21:27
  Project. Hope you enjoy the day, they
• 21:29
  will see you tomorrow.