Lessons From What Made Maddy Run
Highly recommended for all coaches
I previously shared some takeaways from presenting at the GMS Baylor clinic at the end of July.
Some of my best lessons learned from that clinic have now come afterward.
A coach-friend that I’ve gotten to know through these clinics gifted me a copy of What Made Maddy Run. I sat down the next weekend on a Sunday to start it and I ended up knocking it out in one sitting. It’s a quick read as-is. If you’re a coach (yep) and a father (yep) of a daughter (yep) I’d imagine it will be as tough for you to put down as it was for me.
Not because it’s necessarily enjoyable to read. It’s a heartbreaking book, as you might imagine given the subject matter. It’s definitely worth reading. If you happen to be like me and check both the coach and parent-of-a-daughter boxes, it might be mandatory reading. I can only imagine how painful it must have been for the Holleran family to participate and share this story with the world, so it almost feels like a duty to not let that sacrifice be in vain.
I had two takeaways that matched my existing worldview and one that’s really challenged me to figure out.
Takeaway One: Play The Long Game
This matches up to, “Don’t peak early,” and the general feel of avoiding prodigy-production. My daughter is only 3 and I can feel the pressure already. “What talent does she have? What areas can she advance ahead of other kids in?” Maddy and the rest of the Holleran family don’t seem to be out of the ordinary in this regard. For those of us who have been connected to the world of high-level juniors volleyball, her story will ring familiar.
The addition to this takeaway is that “The Long Game” is always longer than you think. I think there’s an idea that a 13, 14, 15 year-old kid who works really hard, who builds their college resume, who postpones some of the enjoyment of being a kid in order to excel is playing The Long Game of preparing for college. But it’s really not.
I’m only 35, so I’m at the older edge of the Millenial generation. But I could see separation even between myself and those who are on the younger edge of my generation in terms of how they went through the college process. I think the status (more on that next) of college wasn’t quite the same for me as it was for others, partly because my parents didn’t come from an upper-class background.
My dad didn’t graduate high school and there was never any thought of my mom going beyond high school in her education. Me going to any college was a win for them and any college I considered seemed equally wonderful. I saw some of my peers in the blender of the college decision process, but I saw it much more in the younger edge of my generation and MUCH more so for the current generation.
What I wish I could tell these kids is how little your college decision matters. Or should I say, how little it matters relative to the sum total of all the other decisions you will make day-in-day out while you are actually at college, much less once you move on from college. Even if your college selection is one of the most important events in your life, it means it has a 0.001% impact instead of the 0.00001% impact that most of your choices do.
To a lot of teenagers, college seems like the end-game. But it’s, at best, the beginning.
In the volleyball world, it seems like college isn’t even the end-game. It seems like being-as-good-as-you-can-summer-between-soph-and-junior-year-so-you-can-verbal is the end game for a lot of young female players. There are a lot of college coaches right now who are looking at athletes who arrive at college like it’s already the finish line. Because really, they’ve felt like it is.
Takeaway Two: Don’t Play The Status Game
The college decision process mirrors another bubble market: real estate. Both the decisions of what college to choose and what house to buy are heavily influenced by factors that will have very little impact on what your actual experience will be, and the factors that greatly influence your experience are often hidden.
The real estate market even has a term for this: curb appeal. To put a harsh lens on it, curb appeal is the collection of stuff that will make you want to buy a house but have almost no impact on whether you’ll enjoy living in that house or not. A lot of the college bubble is predicated on curb appeal.
Without revealing spoilers, part of the story of Madison Holleran is making the wrong decision, ultimately choosing the more prestigious school over the school that likely would have been a better experience for her. Everybody involved in juniors volleyball has seen this. The player who chases the D1 scholarship over a D2 school that would have been a better fit. Chasing the school that will make for a better bumper sticker on the back of the parent’s car rather than the better fit.
There’s even a telling story about her earlier life. Having ice cream over a friend’s house at the end of summer before 9th grade, she ends up in tears, scared that she’s not going to make varsity as a freshman. It’s not explicitly said, but the feeling I got was that she wasn’t scared of not having the joy of playing varsity as a freshman, she was scared of not making varsity as a freshman, because she was expected to make varsity as a freshman.
This applies to coaches too. I’ve seen plenty of coaches who chased the more prestigious job and suffered for it. The need to climb the ladder is real for a lot of coaches. Are you really taking that job because the higher salary is going to enable you to provide better for your family? Or because you think coaching in that conference is finally going to validate you as a person? Because… it won’t.
As a general rule, the less cool your job is, the happier you’ll be in it.
Takeaway Three: WTF Do You Actually Do?
Everything I said in those two takeaways is great and all, but the bigger takeaway from reading a story like this is that you might not be able to do anything at all. And it’s possible that the normal problem-solving techniques you might use as a coach might make things worse.
Again, without spoiling things, there’s an interaction between her and her coach as things build toward the tragic ending. Because you know how things end and have gotten a glimpse into her mind, you know that the meeting between her and her coach was another tipping point in the wrong direction. But if you didn’t? You’d walk away thinking the coach was incredible. Even her own quoted text messages talk about how nice and amazing her coach was. And yet, that may have made things worse!
At all of the Gold Medal Squared clinics, Saturday morning opens with a Q&A. Almost always, there’s a question along the lines of, “what can we do for injury prevention?” Kids are playing multiple sports and getting over-use injuries. But also, kids are specializing too early… and getting over-use injuries. What can we do as coaches to help? What can we add to practice? What strength and conditioning and rehab and prehab can we include in our high school and club practices?
I suggested that the answer might be to do less. It might be to recommend your athlete to some local physios that you trust. But it also might be to do nothing. It might be to limit your scope to volleyball and communicate to athletes that you trust them to learn their bodies. It might be to ask them, “how’s your body feeling today,” and have them really know that it’s okay if the answer is, “not my best.” And it’s really freaking hard to build a relationship of that quality.
One of the hardest things for us as coaches to do is limit ourselves. Limit our scope. Let our athletes figure things out. As adults in general, it’s really hard for us to limit our scope. It’s really hard to subtract.
I don’t have an answer for my third takeaway. But I do know that I would have probably handled Maddy’s final meeting with her coach the same way as her coach did. Or at least, I would have strived to handle it that way. And I would have done that athlete a disservice.
My final takeaway might be that there are some problems that only our athletes can solve. And they might need more space to solve them.
Let me know if you’ve read this book. If you have takeaways that you’d like to (anonymously) share that you think might help the readers of the group, please let me know.