Breaking the Line: The ECNL Podcast
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Breaking the Line: The ECNL Podcast
Beyond The Whistle: Teaching Principles for Effective Coaching feat. Doug Lemov | Ep. 118
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In a Part 2 of an incredible discussion surrounding coaching within youth soccer, Breaking the Line welcomes ECNL Coaching Methodology Advisor Doug Lemov for an incredible discussion on coaching philosophy, how to develop coaches, how to effectively use training sessions and more.
ECNL President Christian Lavers and ECNL Vice President Doug Bracken dive into all of these topics, diving deeper into topics from Breaking the Line Episode 117, and expanding the conversation to give advice for current coaches, current athletes, and current parents.
If you're a fan of soccer, of coaching, or just of sport in general, you're not going to want to miss this episode.
As always, if you have any questions or podcast topic suggestions for the Breaking the Line podcast, send them to us at https://ecnl.info/BTL-Questions. And please, follow the ECNL on all social channels, subscribe to Breaking the Line, and don't miss all the exciting content being published on the ECNL's YouTube page!
This is the May 14 edition of Breaking the Line, the ECNL podcast featuring ECNL President and CEO, christian Labors, and ECNL Vice President and Chief of Staff, doug Bracken, and a wonderful visit with the brilliant Doug Lemoff, the ECNL's Coaching Methodology Advisor, international best-selling author of Teach Like a Champion and long-time instructor and consultant with sporting organizations around the world. The three of them will focus on the science of learning, specifically, how do young players learn, parallels between coaching and teaching, and so much more. A truly fascinating discussion. The ECNL Podcast is about you and for you, so if you have questions, please submit them to info at theecnlcom. With assistance from our podcast production lead, jacob Bourne, and our producer, colin Thrash I'm Dean Linke it's my pleasure to turn the show over to Christian Labors.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much for that intro, dean, appreciate it. Today I am between two Dugs, maybe a riff on Between Two Ferns, but you know I got two big time Dougs here.
Speaker 3:That is by far the worst open that you've ever had, but we'll take it.
Speaker 4:I kind of liked it honestly.
Speaker 2:We'll take it. On my left I got Doug Bracken, who we all know.
Speaker 3:Doug- yes, here I am, Thank you. Thank you for that very well articulated open.
Speaker 2:Christian. Hey, I'm always experimenting. And then on my right here we have the famous Doug Lamoff. It's been a while since we've had you on the podcast Well overdue and super excited to have you back. Well thanks, it's great to see you.
Speaker 4:Glad to be back. I have been called a wallflower before, but I've never been called a fern before.
Speaker 3:So this is. I think that's a big step forward for me. Yeah, a fern is an upgrade to a wallflower you think.
Speaker 2:I think so all right, I'll go fern's alive, right a wallflower. Is that alive, or is that just a drawing?
Speaker 3:if we go with the format of between two ferns, this could get interesting well it's interesting that's what we do, so d great to have you on man. Always captivated to hear you talk about all the stuff that you bring, so super excited to get into this today. Well, thanks.
Speaker 2:We thought about you because we were talking last episode about coaching and there was a variety of parallels or analogies we drew with teaching good, bad, differences, similarities and that made us think about you and your background in that area.
Speaker 2:And obviously you've been doing a lot of work also with coaches beyond. I mean, if teaching was your first sort of area of expertise, you know, translating that into coaching and how coaches become better teachers is. If I had to describe your career, that's how I would describe it. I'm sure you have a better, more sophisticated way of describing it, but you're working now with an NBA team, you're working with a premier league team, you're working with the international rugby team to build on the expertise you have on becoming a better teacher of things. So we thought we could come on and talk about all that stuff and see what your, where your mind went when you listened to it which we appreciate you listening to and go from there. But maybe start with what have you been up to, give the people who maybe have not heard you before a little bit of background of what you do and how you got where you got. And obviously you're our methodology advisor here at the EC&L. That's what I usually tell people first.
Speaker 4:That, that's at the top of my resume.
Speaker 3:Yes, it is yes.
Speaker 4:I write in my day job. I write books about teaching. So some people might know, one of my books is called Teach Like a Champion. It's about you know just how to win in the classroom and how to make sure kids are learning and you've got them engaged.
Speaker 4:I've always loved the game of soccer, so you know, along the way I ended up connecting with some sports franchises and they would ask me about you know. Like you know, coaching is a form of teaching, so you know we started talking about how to teach better. There are a lot of questions. There are a lot of, you know I thought, myths and platitudes. So I ended up kind of like digging pretty deep into the research of, of learning, you know, beyond the classroom and ended up writing a book called the coach's guide to Teaching.
Speaker 4:And that's kind of gotten me into this mess now where you know about 20% of my time I spend working with organizations and franchises in different sports, mostly in what you described as group invasion games, which are like shared endeavors across, you know, five or 11 or 15 players to try and solve problems together, which is like it's actually super complex teaching work right. In some ways it's more complex in the classroom. In the classroom, you might have to teach kids to add fractions with unlike denominators, but you don't have to teach them all to do it in the same way, at the same time and, you know, in a fraction of a second, with the opposition trying to prevent them from adding fractions with unlike denominators.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it's just sort of a respect for the incredible challenge of of coaching a complex game like soccer Great reference and scientific theory in there, with the complex fractals, all sorts of different, different issues there. So, doug, where do we want to start? Doug Bracken, you have the topic you want to bring up. Or Doug Lemoff, do you have something you you first would find interesting?
Speaker 3:To your point. Christian Doug came to our mind when we were talking last week about coaching, the challenges of coaching and the American coaching experience at the youth level and all that. The reason it came up is because of the parallels from his teaching background, first and foremost. Right, obviously, he's gotten a lot more into the sports piece of it. But I guess the first thing I would ask, because I think one of the things we talked about last week is how challenging it is for us to identify like good coaches, because you know, at the, at the entry point, a lot of these guys are part time or former players and they're just getting into coaching. And how do you see that, based on your experience with teachers and your work in sports?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean I think it's a really hard question and a really like important question there's I think it's one of those like tech maybe his name is Eric Brynjolfsson, he's like he's a tech guy but he points out that, you know, innovations in execution are almost always preceded by innovations in measurement, that the first thing we need to do is to like understand what it is we want to have happen. And I think that one of the challenges of the game of soccer is that coaching tends to be evaluated on wins and that I don't think winning is irrelevant. I think you know what we're trying to do is teach kids the game, whether teach, try and teach them to be athletes, by which I mean, like, successful as athletes and successful as people. And one of the by striving to win, people learn more and they become better people. You know, by striving to win together.
Speaker 4:Often, if we do that right, but the goal isn't really I don't think at least to win, and I think for most clubs, one of the challenges is an ideal coach is about long-term development.
Speaker 4:You gave the example in your last podcast about I think it was Trapattoni who said a good coach can make the team 10% better or 30% worse, and you were sort of saying, christian, I think you were opining on the fact that you could take an eight and two team and make them nine and one potentially, and I respectfully disagree with that in the sense that a coach can make.
Speaker 4:A coach can probably make a small difference in the short run, and certainly at the elite level I think I have to take Trapattoni's word for it but I think over the long run, over five or six or eight years, a coach makes a profound difference.
Speaker 4:You know, when you talked about like it's about finding the right players, who makes those players? I mean, unless it's well, I think coaches who focus on long-term development and think about what they're teaching players and can help players to learn both like, master skills, but also master the idea of like building out of the back and master the ability to read the game and to see what's happening and to do those things with your eyes up and to know what you're looking at, those become great players. And I really do believe that coaches can do that. And so for me, I think identifying great coaches goes along with being clear on what you're trying to master, cause then you can look and see like, do I see some evidence that at the end of the season, the players on this team have grown and developed. So I think that, like I think there's work to be done, but I think it's really important to talk to clarify what are we talking about when we're talking about a great coach.
Speaker 2:Yes, let's, let's unpack that a little bit, because I think you're 100 percent right in the difference between elite or adult pros, sure, and the ability to influence that, and then you go all the way back to the start of the game. And at the start of the game some of the challenges that I think underpin a little bit of that similar comment is you know, when we look at let's just take eight, nine, 10 year olds, they have so much they need to learn, and that's probably your point is somebody who's teaching appropriately can make a huge impact at that point. You're also dealing with variables that you don't have at the older level, like birth order is going to have a huge impact on where that kid is in their learning and performance at age eight. That you don't deal with. You know, generally older you can have physicality differences in maturity, you know, and all the way as physical, emotional, mental, that again they even out over time.
Speaker 2:You're correct, you can make such a bigger difference in learning at the young age, probably. But you also have other variables that you have to deal with at the young age that you don't. How do you identify then? Because this concept of long-term development I feel like, and Doug Brock, and I assume you'd similarly agree. There's a lot of people that hide behind that phrase, because it's gray and amorphous to a lot of people of you know. Oh, it's in the long-term judge me later, you know and winning doesn't matter at all.
Speaker 4:It can also be an excuse for shoddy coaching, also Correct. I just want to put. I want to answer your question, but I want to push back for one second. I don't think it's only at the youth level that long-term development matters. I mean, I think if you look, there's a lot of fascinating work on this.
Speaker 4:But the English FA at some point, you know, in the early 2000s, went through their under 19 team and they evaluated all the players in their player pool and they predicted who was going to be an elite pro and the outcome of it was basically they were totally unable to predict Guys that they were sure were going to make it. They'd already gone through maturity, they were young men at this point. Half the guys who were in that elite pool never made it past, you know, never made it past league two, you know. And the guys that they were a lot of guys that they were sure going to make it never made it and a lot of guys they didn't see coming still made it. So I think that long-term development still matters, even at like 16, 17, 18, 19.
Speaker 2:It to guess, you know, at any of those ages we talk a lot. When you talk about investing in youth development as a pro franchise, what age do you do that? Because it's such a bad investment by the percentages.
Speaker 3:So I think you're right and I guess it puts really that question in the middle of how do you I mean, I think we could probably all define long-term development in a general way- Let me ask you this Christian and just interjecting on this, I think I understand what Doug is saying is that maybe in the early years that we're talking about, we're talking about their technical acquisition and learning the game generally, and as you get older, development doesn't stop right, it just becomes different. As you get older, I mean, development doesn't stop right, it just becomes different. Like maybe you've acquired these skills and the ability to travel, ball pass the ball, strike a ball, whatever, and now your development is mental or tactical or whatever, right and and psychosocial, yeah psychosocial the male the male brain in particular reaches maturity at 24.
Speaker 4:Female brain a little bit earlier, but like that's you know.
Speaker 3:The reason I brought that up is because I think a lot of times when people use the words long-term development, they pin it to technical ability, yeah, and they don't talk about the other parts of development that are important along the chain to Doug's point. And so I think it's important for us to point out that long-term development is not just about skill acquisition.
Speaker 2:Yeah, technical skill acquisition Correct, and that's a fair point. And I guess what I was centering on then is, when you look at that phrase long-term development what are some metrics? Because it ties back to one of your first questions is how do you identify somebody who's a good coach or a good teacher? And it's ultimately going to be tied to long-term development. But that concept is so gray, it's so overused. People that are not really doing it use it as much as people who do sometimes. How would you answer it in saying what are things to look at that show somebody is really good at teaching with a viewpoint of long-term development and success?
Speaker 4:Yeah, For me at least, I think the three things that I would and I say this as a soccer dad also the three things that I think are really important to be developing in young players are one, I mean, skill development is critical. You have to be able to do the things that you want to be able to do if you understand the game. Development is critical, right, you have to be able to do the things that you want to be able to do if you understand the game. Two, you need to have a really good mental model of what the game looks like when it's played. Right, I found this like this is like a frustration for me sometimes with my own kids, which is I didn't feel like coaches were teaching them to play the game right, that they were socializing them to play a very unsustainable version of the game that relied on kids who were early athletic, early athletically dominant, like basically streaking down the wing and taking you know 12 touches, 12 heavy touches, sprinting by another player and booting home, you know booting on the winning goal, and coaches were, you know that made the coach look like a winner and the coach was happy with that deal. But I don't think, like I don't think most of the kids on that team very few of the kids on the team that I'm thinking of in particular here played in college Like I don't think that they understood what the game looked like when it was played right, and I think a cognitive scientist would describe that as a mental model, which is one of the things you have to do to make good decisions is have a clear picture in your mind of what it looks like when it's played right.
Speaker 4:I think kids who grow up in Europe and watch a ton of European football have a really intuitive sense for like this is what the game looks like when it's played right. And kids who grew up in the US maybe don't watch that much soccer sometimes I mean a lot of them do but if you don't, you don't see a lot of what the game looks like at the end. You're still kind of beholden to this idea of, oh, success is more touches on the ball maybe, as opposed to success is like two really deft touches with a pass that cuts out. You know two lines of defense and if I'm, if I have that picture in my mind from an early age that I'm always shooting for that goal, I'm always kind of understanding what, how. The things that I learn relate to that.
Speaker 4:And then I think the third thing is perception. Right, you can't make a decision about something you don't perceive. And so understanding what you're looking at, I think that you know, like a rondo is a beautiful drill, I think, a beautiful exercise, I think, because you spend a lot of time on the ball and you're developing skills. But you're also learning to look for and understand body positioning and body cues and body shape and space. And unless you're looking at those things, unless you've learned to look for those things and I'm starting from a pretty young age it's going to be really hard to develop game. So for me, like the you know first.
Speaker 4:I think this is why, like, talking about great coaching is hard to separate from like what is it that we're trying to teach players to master? And like, one of the first things I would do if it was my club is like, let's say, under 12, I'd be really clear. I'm like you're trying to teach skill. You want kids to acquire skill, you want them to perceive the game well and you want them to have a picture of what they're trying to accomplish, a really good mental model of the game, and you know better than me as to whether that exists at many clubs so so you're saying one way you could potentially identify a talented or an effective coach is coaching points that give a bigger picture of the game.
Speaker 2:It's principles based maybe in that mental model.
Speaker 4:Coaching points that are talking about perception and what they're seeing socializing players in the rondo to have their eyes up, although the first thing I have to do is get my eyes up off the ball and if you learn to do that at age 8 or 9 or 10, you're always looking for the rest of your life.
Speaker 4:And if you don't start doing that until you're 15, you've missed five years of reading the game.
Speaker 4:I think a lot of playing soccer is a lot like learning to read, but a lot of it is like is when people in research talk about learning to read, they talk about reading at the speed of sight, which is as soon as you. If there's language in your in, if there's print language in your, in the language that you flew it in, like there's a sign and it says no parking, you look at that sign and you can not not read it in your, in your, in your native language. You read it faster than you can decide not to read it or make a decision not to read it, to ignore it, and that is how fast people who are fluent readers read signals. And really it's not much different on the football field right on the soccer field, which is you have to like read the cues very quickly, which means you have to be looking at them, constantly thinking about what you're seeing, and seeing game-like situations from a very early age. If your eyes aren't up and you're not looking at the print, you're not going to learn to read.
Speaker 3:I'm assuming your answer is going to be yes, but I'll throw it to you anyway. Do you think that there are coaches that are better in certain stages of development and that there are certain things that maybe I bring to the table that make me really good at the skill acquisition piece, yeah, versus maybe the psychosocial piece later in the you know for sure.
Speaker 4:And can we just talk about, like, how important just crowd management is at any age group, particularly the younger age age groups? That, um, a huge part of being able to coach in younger age groups is to be able to, like, organize chaos and keep kids on task and have the learning keep happening. Keep the balls keep rolling. It's productive learning.
Speaker 3:That's a really, really hard thing to do like ask any classroom teacher christian right now needs some tips on this, because he's coaching a bunch of eight-year-olds.
Speaker 2:Well, what I was going to say is it's not taught. It's not taught in coaching courses.
Speaker 4:Nothing is like that's taught it's not taught to teachers either fascinatingly, no-transcript why you don't actually need to do that and why you shouldn't actually have to do that. And you say that, like, actually, people are learning better when we're just you know, it's an instruction, you know. And when there isn't direct instruction, Don't stifle their creativity. Doug, yes, when we're just exploring, when it's hard to accomplish, what do smart people do? When they're asked to do something that is hard to accomplish and no one explains how to do it, you rationalize why you shouldn't be doing it anyway. So, like, I would say like, if we're talking about you, 12 coaches I think you know you were also talking on your last podcast about just the challenge of people leaving the job but like it's, it's a hard job. When you have a job that you, at the end of sessions or at the end of a end of a day as a teacher, you don't feel successful. A teacher, a coach who feels like they're failing because they can't get the kids to do productive things in their training, is a is a coach who's got one foot out the door already. I think people don't persist in things where they feel like they're struggling.
Speaker 4:To me, one of the most important things that you would do with a U12 team is you would install a set of systems and routines for like everything you do Right, and I think, like the cognitive science is really, really clear on this which is the way you get people to self-regulate, which is to make productive decisions reliable, is to just make it a habit. Right, we show up at the field and the first thing we do is we start doing rondos as soon as we arrive, right, and you know, maybe at the younger age, you know, maybe this is like pre-rondo capacity, but we have an activity that we do right away and we do it the same way every time. So I don't have to explain it to you and ask you to stand there for a minute while I try to explain to you something you have no idea how to do and then hope that it goes well. I want you to be productively engaged from the first minute, and so we're going to have like a habit for the way that we always start training, and it's always going to be the same and I can still make that really joyful and fun for kids. And then I'm going to have habits for things like when I blow the whistle or when I say stop when I say pause.
Speaker 4:You're going to put your foot on the ball and you're going to look at me and that allows me to very quickly give you directions. Great, now try it with your left foot, Go. And as soon as I have systems and procedures and routines like that so I can cause productive things to happen with a group that is inclined towards chaos, then I feel successful. Then the learning starts to happen, and I do think that with the under 12, you know like a lot of it is very mundane things. I think this is why a lot of very successful coaches at that age group are often, you know, often like to have good classroom experience. They may not know the game as well as someone who's a great U16 coach. They're just great at causing productive learning to happen coach.
Speaker 2:They're just great at causing productive learning to happen. So would you say that in some ways the first and foundational skill of coaching and I think I've maybe paraphrased you and saying the first thing for learning is you have to have control of the classroom and control the field, and at a young age it is sort of manipulating or shaping behavior from total chaos to hey, there's the beginning of a pattern of behavior habits to ultimately now I understand. It also strikes me that at the older age groups that skill is kind of defined as man management and culture building. But would you say that that in many ways take away the sport itself? But the ability to create the environment is the most or one of the most important skills in coaching, absolutely.
Speaker 4:And it's it's mundane and it's not sexy, so it's easy to overlook and no one is like no one. You know people are hiring you because of you, because you played at a high level. You're a good player. You know no one's like oh, you're really great. Like you give really good, clear directions to young people so they understand exactly what the task is. And you say what the task is and nothing else. And then you say go and you instantly start narrating back, just back to players whether they're following directions. So something like this.
Speaker 4:This is the case in the classroom. We call this like the what, what to do directions, and one of the things that great teachers have in common is they can give really good directions. Like ball at your feet, foot on the ball, track me this time we're dribbling inside the circle, you're trying not to touch any other players, but you're focusing on using both feet, your left and your right. Go. Yes, christian, just like that. Oh, doug, I love what you're doing there. Make sure you stay inside the circle, kevin. That's just like give directions, show appreciation, acknowledge when students do it, make small corrections as soon as players do it wrong, right.
Speaker 4:And then if I have a player who's really off task I could bring, like Christian. Come over here for a second when I ask you to dribble inside the circle. When you go dribble around the field screaming ha ha ha, look at me, I'm SpongeBob. That's not very productive and it doesn't help us learn. So I really want you to stay inside the circle. Show me if you can do that now. Oh yes, christian, the circle go. Show me if you can do that now. Oh yes, christian, much better. Right, like that's, like nobody's hiring you because you know how to do that, but um, that is often mundane. Things like that are the secret sauce of productive learning environments, whether it's the classroom or on the soccer field I'm trying to tie back to your question how do we identify a good coach?
Speaker 2:I have two points here from what you've said in this discussion. Number one is increasing control of the environment in terms of good habits and focus, and number two is simplicity and clarity of language, such that instruction is very clear. Would you agree with those?
Speaker 3:I would add I'm going to clarify one of those points. It's not. It is create the environment by creating habits and rituals, because I think that's a really important point to make.
Speaker 4:Great clarification and some people are going to freak out at your use of the word control. Yeah Right, but like because I can control this, I think about like when my kids were little, it was really important to me that my kids learned to follow directions the first time. And when I can do that, my son could ride his tricycle along a busy street, along a busy sidewalk. That might freak some other parents out, because I knew that if I said pause there at a driveway or at a street, like he was going to do it and that allowed me to give him more freedom. Ironically and I think this is like very counterintuitive to some people Because you have to it's freedom within constraints, because you have control of the environment doesn't mean you are controlling people all the time.
Speaker 4:It gives you the capacity to bring it back, to shape the environment so that it's optimal and productive and joyful and learning oriented. And that is a really hard thing to do. And I agree with Doug, with your clarification that it all like the fewer directions I have to give, the better. And the key to giving fewer directions is having it be a habit, having it be procedures, doing familiar things. You know like I think some people think they will make training sessions, particularly for young people, more interesting if they do something wildly new every time. Oh, it's new, it's fresh. But actually people take a lot of joy in doing familiar things and doing them really well.
Speaker 4:If you look at what books look like for young children, one of the things that makes them happiest is like familiarity. Good night moon, good night cloud. You know like there are books for young people repeat phrases over and over again, because kids like predictability and they like being competent, they like being able to read the sentence and then there's a word that changes at the end. People sleep on how much children like to be competent at things and know how to do things well and they like predictability oftentimes I love that christian's mind is spinning right now and he's like I have he's a he's a dad of young children different habits I'm to create in my training.
Speaker 2:What's striking me is like these sound so much of the foundation of coaching, especially at the younger ages, but they just morph and evolve as you get older. I mean I'm thinking of there was a great phrase somebody said to me once about the the drill a thousand and one drills for dummies. And somebody said you should consider the title because only dummies have a thousand and one drills. And yes, and so it's like not having gimmicky stuff. It's like when I see somebody show up with a, uh, I mean I, I hate agility ladder stuff because it's not training agility. But if you're going to do something, let's call it a, but if you're going to do something let's call it a foot speed ladder. You're going to do something in foot speed? Like, don't do it once every three months because it's a gimmick, build it into routine because you believe in the outcome versus yeah, and if you show up and you're doing something new every time, you're spending an inordinate amount of time teaching the thing,
Speaker 3:you're doing.
Speaker 4:The principal of a high school that I work with once said we were talking about just like creating culture in high schools, and I was describing some of the things that you would do in elementary school and middle school and I said I know those things don't apply in high school and he said actually they do. They need to be adapted, but you'd be surprised how much the same principles apply. I was thinking about that when you said the word morph and I would say like here's a good example of the way that that idea of like, habit and routine and clear directions with like at U18 are the same, which is I am. We're working on building out of the back and I make a stoppage Right, and I tell my players something Boys, when we're building out of the back, the pace of our passes is very important. Right, speed matter. We have to strike the ball at pace. It has to be on the ground so we can receive the ball on our back foot and snap our hips open and look up and play the ball. Great, let me see that right. So I've made a stoppage. I've talked about something that's important. Hopefully I have really clear directions that I've given.
Speaker 4:There talked about one thing right. One of the things we talked about with like eight-year-olds is then you have to tell them when you see them doing it and correct it when they don't right, and so if you have one direction, then you can start. As soon as you're done with your stoppage in live coaching you can say yes, christian, that's the way we strike it. Strike it harder, doug, you know it's got to be. No, it's got to be on the ground. Dean, right, so I can hear I'm giving a tactical direction. This is the way we play the game. But if I give one really clear direction and I'm careful about aligning my feed, my lot, my live feedback, to my stoppage feedback, I can now help you see whether you're doing this correctly and help you focus your attention on completing this task. And, ironically, like we will probably grow faster as a team if I'm disciplined about during my stoppage, telling, implicitly telling players I am looking for the thing that I told you about during the stoppage in the play afterwards and I will narrate it back to you whether you're doing it or not Helps players to learn and self-regulate.
Speaker 4:And we'll probably learn faster than if I make my stoppage and I tell players five things to do right. Boys, we're building out of the back. The ball has to be struck on the ground. We always have to receive the ball with our back foot and outside backs you have to press high and we have to be looking for gaps to expose in the opposition. And here are three other things I want you to go. And now everyone's focusing on something different and no one knows that they're doing it well and I've forgotten all the things I mentioned, so I can't tell players whether they're doing it right. And all of a sudden we have a culture where people's perception is what the coach said at the stoppage, like he's forgotten. You know that's verbal vomiting. There's no sense of follow through. It's a big word salad and no one will notice if I do the tactical things that the coach has just asked me to do. And when you don't have cultures of loving accountability, where words matter and the things that we talk about matter, you get non-productive learning.
Speaker 2:Let me summarize, because I think it was another one right. So we have to your clarification, doug, creating habits that create a more controlled environment. You have clarity and simplicity of language. You have creating familiarity, even in terms of the exercises, within no gimmicks. And then the fourth point that I would add to that, based on what you said, is quick might be the wrong word, but timely correction and feedback that is close in time to the action, to either to stimulate more of it or to correct part of it.
Speaker 4:And a very simple thing that I would add, particularly younger age groups, is like time with the ball rolling. How much you know if you just took a stopwatch to most sessions how much time during the session is the ball rolling, how many balls are rolling, how much time making physical decisions, physical touches and mental decisions right off the ball are players making in an average session? I think that that's a really important measure, that that's one of the things that comes, I think, from having like clear routines and systems and clear directions. But, like you know, you've seen the practice where kids are getting twice as much, twice as many physical and mental touches as they are in the in the practice on the other field across town. You aggregate that over five years and it's going to be a huge difference in player competence.
Speaker 2:Well, and I would add one more to that which I think you would agree with, is that even at the younger ages, as much as possible, there has to be transferability. There's a point that repetition is necessary, but if this is a clearly not, it's no decision making, there's no transferability to it. You're losing a lot of the value of what you're doing.
Speaker 4:Strongly agree, I think, when we were talking about, I think, the things that we're trying to socialize in young players is perception, skill and a mental model, and that perception skills go together. That I haven't taught a skill until it's connected to the perception, which is like together. That I haven't taught a skill until it's connected to the perception, which is like I can teach you to do things with a soccer ball. The question is, can you look up like? This is why eyes are up and read the cues from the spacing on the field or the opposition and say, oh, this is the time for my craft term, this is not the time for your craft term.
Speaker 4:That the skill isn't complete until it can be connected to a perceptive cue from a game-like environment. And so, yes, I need to have a fair degree of automaticity, but I also need to need to connect it to the perceptive environment that that player is going to play in. And so I think that's like a common in pretty good practices at the young level like there might be a lot of time on the ball and a lot of skill work, but it's not really connected to perceptive cues. And until it's linked to the perceptive cues that tell you. Now's the time to do it. Here's now. Here's how to do it. Here's how to read the read the space it's not going to show, it's not going to transfer to the game.
Speaker 1:Okay, we'll take our first break and hear from a couple ECNL corporate partners. When we return, doug Bracken will ask Doug Lemoff about teacher mentorship and how that works.
Speaker 5:Nike is a proud sponsor of ECNL. Nothing can stop what we do together to bring positive change to our communities. You can't stop sport because hashtag. You can't stop our voices. Follow Nike on Instagram, facebook and Twitter. The ECNL is pleased to announce Quick Goal as the official goal provider and partner for ECNL girls and ECNL boys, a new partnership created to support the growth and development of the country's top players, clubs and coaches at all national events, including national playoffs and national finals. The quick gold coaches corner will provide hospitality and social space for ECNL girls, ecnl boys and collegiate coaches. Quick goal will also be the presenting sponsor of the national championship winning ECNL girls and ECNL boys coaches of the year and the ECNL girls and ECNL boys goals of the year. Quick Goal looks forward to helping the ECNL continue to elevate the standards of youth soccer and provide more opportunities to players on and off the field in the coming years.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to Breaking the Line, the ECNL podcast. Once again, here's ECNL Vice President Doug Brackett.
Speaker 3:So we've identified these quality coaches, and I think we talked last about how challenging it is for us to do that. So now, how do we mentor them? You were telling us a story about teacher mentorship and how that, how that looked.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I was really struck by your, your conversation last week, and you're talking about how hard it is to coach coaches. It's just hard to find the time and you're, you know, you're coaching a team from six to eight on Tuesday night and you're, you know, so is the guy you want to develop. Um, or you're coaching four nights a week and you've got one night off to see your family and, yeah, you could drive over to the field and coach the young coach, but she'd be really nice to have dinner with your own family. Right, and we face this all the time. One of the schools that I ran we had when we met, when we identified who our great teachers were in, in this case, like there was this one guy who was just, he was obvious, like the data supported it, but he was brilliant watched him teach. One of the interesting things about him was he could sometimes describe what he did and sometimes he couldn't, but he was so talented and so our goal was like, how do we replicate Bob? Right, this was like an organizational. If we can get three Bobs in this school teaching math, like we're going to change the game for these kids, and if there's just one Bob, well, it doesn't really matter what 30 kids Bob is teaching Could be our school, could be some other school Like.
Speaker 4:The test of the organization is our ability to replicate Bob, and what we ultimately did was we had, you know, like mentors, young teachers who we hired who had no teaching experience. They would teach alongside Bob, and I think that this is interesting because you could probably do this Like once I've identified a great coach, I almost never want him to coach alone. So the model with Bob was when he would take a mentee for three months at a time. So like in September there's a brand new teacher and the first period of the day the mentee teacher just watches Bob teach, just kind of like. I mean, humans are fascinating in the way that they imitate. Right, there's all this.
Speaker 4:What cognitive scientists describe is that humans over imitate. Sometimes you copy things without even realizing that you're copying them, just because you've seen it over and over. So one they would watch Bob a lot and they would suddenly like start teaching a little bit more like Bob without even realize what they were doing. The second thing in the second lesson of the day, bob and the co-teacher would teach together, and this is the one that I think is most applicable, which is, bob would do something like we're gonna do a problem now and I'm gonna assign the problem and while the kids are doing the problem, I'm gonna walk around and I'm gonna gather data on how they're doing with the problem and then I'm gonna stop them and I'm gonna give them feedback.
Speaker 4:I'm gonna ask them questions about how they put the problem up on the board. We're going to solve it together and notice that I'm going to cold call some students and I'm going to ask and I'm going to try and involve everyone and notice that I'm going to try and do this in two minutes and then I'm going to send them back to do it again.
Speaker 2:So Bob is directing the attention of the mentee coach.
Speaker 4:Exactly so. When the mentee coach is watching, he's not's amazing and like, look out, like he's watching for the right thing. So Bob is telling him what to focus on, and like this is whether the learner is a soccer player or a coach. One of the most important things in learning is directing people's attention right. You can really only pay attention to one or two things at a time. Novices generally don't know what to pay attention to, certainly not as much as experts. So first thing great point, christian he's directing the novices attention to the thing, the most important thing. But then in the second lesson, bob says on the second problem, you're gonna do it and you're basically gonna try to copy what I do. You'll put your own stamp on it. It'll be a little bit different, but you're gonna try and copy what I did. And so a couple things happen there. It's a really sure you know, it's a short sequence of five minutes when the, when the mentee has just seen a model and so, um, he's, the mentee's pretty successful at doing this. And then they stop before they're overwhelmed by the complexity of actually there are 16 other things that are coming at me fast now like they do something really successfully. They learn it, they master it, and then bob takes back over. And so if I'm on the soccer pitch I might do something like where you know I'm gonna do a stoppage, I'm gonna try and keep it in a minute or less. I'm going to tell the players one thing that I want them to do and then I'm going to start socializing. I'm going to then give them verbal feedback. Six of the eight things I say aloud are going to be about telling them whether they did the thing that I'm going to do. And then you try it. And then Bob can be like that was great, try to do this a little bit too much, or it's actually great if you can cause them to be looking at the thing that you're giving them feedback on. I'm going to try and do that now so you can see what that looks like, and then you'll get a chance to do it again. So they're just kind of back and forth throughout the session, but the master is giving the, the mentee coach, both like opportunities for manageable challenge that they feel successful at. They're sort of mastering skill by skill and they're seeing a master do it throughout and then, like the way we did this with Bob was like then the third lesson was you know, when the person is ready, they just go off and do it on their own, and I think that that kind of like side-by-side co-teaching is really underrated as a development tool.
Speaker 4:And if you have a, you know, um, christian, I've seen Doug, I've never seen you coach, but Christian, I've seen you coach. Uh, you did a session here in Albany is one of the best sessions I've ever seen, and I think you can't say I'm not just saying that publicly I think that if you spent a month with a, with someone who's pretty hungry to learn, and they watched you do sessions like that and you like sent them out to be like here's what I did, pay attention to it. Now you try it, I think in a month they would be a, really they would be a damn fine teacher, and you could probably do that with six or eight coaches over the course of the year. So I just think, like having your, if you have identified a great coach and you can help, you can maybe just like talk through methodologically here are three, here are three or four things that we think are really great and now I'm just going to like co-teach with young coaches to sort of ramp them up through this sort of shared experience, then I can set them off to be on their own, and I think to me that's like a much more efficient, a potentially efficient, model for developing young people in the game. Efficient model for developing young people in the game. And I also think that this is important because one of the challenges we faced in the school that I was running is like people talk about the challenge of attracting teachers to the teaching profession, but actually a lot of people come into the teaching profession.
Speaker 4:What happens is they leave. They leave quickly because they don't master the skill and at the end of the day, they've been like eaten alive by the difficulty of the classroom, and so a successful coach is a coach who's likely to stay and continue wanting to grow, because they've seen themselves grow and so they're committed to they're like you know, we all know that there are young people in the profession who are not particularly responsive to feedback and you like tell them things that they could try and they're like okay, thanks, but then they don't. They don't do it because they think they know better. They don't think they don't and they're like okay, thanks, but then they don't. They don't do it because they think they know better. They don't think that, they don't think they're going to get better. I think people are motivated by evidence of their own success, and so I think that this is also a coach who's kind of set up to be a efficient and productive and hungry learner for the rest of their their time in the field.
Speaker 3:So would I be better off as as a club operator? Would I be better off trying to identify those with potential and spending my time with them rather than spreading my time with all the coaches?
Speaker 4:I do think this is really interesting in that one of the biggest traps you get in schools in developing teachers is the principal will spend all year trying to develop the weakest teacher in the school because it's on fire in his or her classroom and at the end of the year, oftentimes that teacher leaves of their own, of their own accord, or because the principal is like this really is not the right job for you. Right, that's a? It's a trap because the most, the most valuable resource in the organization is being spent on the on the like, least promising, least likely to pay off asset that a much better use of their time is to develop is to invest in the strong people or invest in replicating the strong people. Right, who are the talented people who are going to grow quickly? How can I invest in getting them near my best coaches? Because they're going to be with me for five years and I want the people who I want to keep to know how important they are in the organization. I mean, one of the things you talked about on the episode was just the financial challenges of paying people. This is obviously a challenge in teaching and one of the things that we learned really quickly is that non-financial compensation is really important, that you keep people in the organization by telling them that they're really important, meaning like I'm going to give you this opportunity to coach alongside christian. He's our, you know, he's our, he's our ace u18 coach, because we really think you're talented and you're like, oh wow, like they've tapped me, they think I'm good, I want to stay here. Like they've invested in me and they believe in me. I mean, we can talk about other forms of non-financial compensation, but like people really respond to that.
Speaker 4:Generally speaking with teachers, would I like to pay teachers more?
Speaker 4:Yes, I would like to pay teachers more, but I'm not going to be able in the next two years to solve the fundamental economics of the teaching profession and for the most part, the people who took the job knew what they were going to be paid when they took the job. Right, they knew that. So now my job is done and they wanted the job and they wanted the job and so I know I have the potential if I can keep them happy and I can make them feel like they're important and they're winning and they're making a difference in the world and they're great and like we see a future for them and, like this organization, believes in me and cares about me. Those are the people who stay, and I want to.
Speaker 4:I think, like the trap is I end up focusing that too much of that time on the people who we know aren't going to work out, instead of the people who are like these are the people I should be investing in, and so maybe I have someone who, like someone else, who like, coaches up the people who are just like this person's on fire and it can't but like the most valuable resources in the organization go to the high quality people who we want to keep.
Speaker 2:It's really interesting, as you say, that I mean, we talked a lot last podcast on the challenges of the career path and coaching and part of it was keeping people in, and I think in this discussion you know number one you've laid out a couple of things very much that clubs can do to develop coaches better and help the coach in their practice better. We've also identified those same things as something parents can look at as a better metric than just wins and losses. But it's such a confusing market out there and what I mean by that is there's so many proxies for long-term development right, that's what we started with, right, and I'm going to use one or two that I think people think oh, this is a proxy that says this coach is invested in long-term development and does a good job. Well, you identify very specific actions and behaviors that the coach does Right now. The build out of the back oh, anybody who builds out of the back must be in long-term development because they're going to tolerate losing the ball and giving up lots of goals because it's long-term.
Speaker 2:And that is a proxy that so many people think that, if you know, if you don't pass the ball seven times sideways from the goalkeeper to the center, back to the outside, back. Well, you're not long-term development. In contrast to that, you're talking about no, what is the coach doing? Your previous example, talking about the pace of the pass and the orientation of the hips as they're building out of the back, not just the fact that we're trying to play a certain way. And that's the second one. That I think is this proxy false proxies, I should say is these style of play, and I can't stand this concept that's now going around like well, we're going to rate the style of play as a proxy for long-term development, because I think it's just both of those things are just rife with potential disinformation and abuse of of of context.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's really interesting, which is it's kind of a it's. I mean they're not unrelated, but it's a it's a. It's a flawed and, and you know, ambiguous measure at best, Because I could focus on building out of the back without really being able to teach the game. And I do think that one of my favorite coaches is Tim Bradbury.
Speaker 4:I don't know if you know him, but his knowledge of the game is so encyclopedic and when he talks about switching the field of play, I just remember the session where he was talking about switching the field of play. I just remember the session where he talked. He was talking about switching the field of play and he was talking about okay, when you're playing over the top, to switch the field of play, is it a driven ball or is it a chip ball? And why, like, it has to be a driven ball? A chip ball is too slow. The idea is to, like, shift the field of play faster than the opposition can shift right, so it has to be a driven ball. So that means you have to drive it on a long drive with the top of your foot, and he has the boys working on this right.
Speaker 4:I was asking him about it afterwards and I was like how many coaches do you think know that level of detail about how to switch the field of play, how to build out of the back? Our coaches are often heirs to an environment that they grew up in that underestimates knowledge, just knowledge of the game, technical knowledge and the belief that all the knowledge exists in players and if you just ask them the right question, the understanding will emerge. That is not true. There are a lot of things that we actually have to understand about the game to be able to teach players right, and I think the first step is just understanding how important and deep the things we're trying to teach players to be able to do successfully is.
Speaker 3:I think one of the big things that I've seen just watching is how little individual player coaching is going on. There are, like bigger, you know whatever statements, but how very little detail to an individual player of this particular thing in this particular moment, to achieve this particular whatever.
Speaker 2:It just doesn't it's just the air. The phrase, doug, that I love and I forget I this stole this from somebody is that teams don't learn individuals do. To your point, if you're not coaching an individual, there's probably not a lot of learning going on to in this generalized comment to a generalized group. Would you agree with that, doug Lemma?
Speaker 4:I definitely think that individuals I mean I want teams to learn in a coordinated way, but the individual is the unit of learning. And when you were talking about building out of the back, I felt some guilt because I kind of obsess sometimes on whether teams build out of the back. But I do that because you know, my son was a center back and I spent a lot of years watching. You know the great majority of coaches spend the great majority of their time on the offensive side of the ball and the center, mids and the strikers get a ton of coaching. And if you're not playing out of the back and the goalkeeper is bypassing the back four like, you can spend months with your, with your child child, not getting any instruction at all.
Speaker 4:You know, like people tend not to coach defensive body position. Defensive body position is really important. Defensive tackle position is really important. If you don't spend time on the ball, you tend not to get coached and I think the asymmetricality of like who gets coached on the average team is actually really fascinating. To try and gather some data on this, like if you took the 11 positions and you built a heat map of where the average coach spends their time, I would guess that they spend 75% of their time on 30 to 40% of the kids.
Speaker 3:Wow, yeah, I think it's important for us to connect this to the other stakeholder in this, which is the parents. Yeah, glad you mentioned that, because I always say there's three stakeholders there's the coaches, which is the parents. Yeah, you know, because I always say there's there's three stakeholders there's the coaches, there's the players and there's the parents. And if you think that one of them, meaning the parents, aren't part of it, you're dead wrong. You better understand that that's, that's part of this.
Speaker 4:So, when you talk about aligning parents on identifying that long-term development is happening, or what is quality, or you know what is it they look for, I think this is like the most ironic thing about youth soccer, which is, if you, if you did all this, you invested in long-term development of players, like, one of the things that could go wrong would be you would develop players from 8 to 12, and then some other club would poach them. Some other club that focused on winning or some other things, that was just more successful or had a bigger player base, would poach them because they can take the better players. And I think that one of the things we need to have happen who is the stakeholder with the greatest interest in the long-term development of players? Their parents, hopefully, like hopefully they recognize that like, winning at younger, at you nine, is not that important. What you want as your player to like grow and understand the game and be you know, be great at some point, be good and successful at some point in the future.
Speaker 3:Rather than I want to feel good about my kid being awesome.
Speaker 4:So I think I just yeah, exactly. So I think that if it's, if I have a club, I think one of the first things that I want to do is gather the parents and say this is what. This is what success looks like here at this club. But this is what, this is how you should think about it. And so, yes, cheer for your children to win. That's great. We want them to try to strive to win every game, but don't confuse winning with with learning and growth and development for your child, and these are the things that you should be looking for. These are the things that we're focused on both, like this year with the U12s. These are the three things, the five things that we really want to see develop in our players. But this is like how you know you're, you know you should be looking for our ability to connect passing sequences and you should be looking for your child's ability to play with both feet, and you should be. You know more touches and sequences not necessarily better for your child. You should be.
Speaker 4:If I can help parents know what to look for and why, then one they're more likely to reinforce those things you know when they get in the car and not be talking about like, yeah, you should keep the ball yourself, you should have shot that. You know like. They can actually be aligned to coaching points and I think they're more likely to stay with a program if they understand what you're trying to do and they see it happening. Otherwise, of course, they devolve to wins and losses and glory moments for their kid because they, in many cases, they don't know what else to look for. So I think as a club you just have to get out ahead of it and help parents to know what they should be looking for and how to think about their child's growth and where it's going. You know it's very emotional being a parent. It's very easy to lose the plot as a parent, and so I just want to help. I just don't think you can over-message that enough.
Speaker 2:Well, I think we could go on for a long time in this discussion, because it's just unpacking and unpacking. I know you got to go doug, but I guess we'll give you the last word and then maybe doug bracken.
Speaker 3:We can, uh, sum this up after doug I did want, I did want him to be part of the bracken brain buster, but I, I, I understand the time can you can?
Speaker 4:I kind of get like a little like what is the bracken brain buster this time around, because the bracken brain buster this time around.
Speaker 3:I don't know where I came up with this, but I kept thinking about it all day. And that is if you were an animal, what animal would you be and why?
Speaker 2:I mean, we were talking about coaching eight-year-olds today, so I guess the bracken brain buster is just you know.
Speaker 3:getting back to that, Christian is neutral on this one, because usually if he doesn't like it he gives me a really bad face. But so yeah, that's where I'm at. That's my Bracken Brain Buster.
Speaker 2:He's really stumped now. I mean this.
Speaker 4:Are we going to? Yeah, come on, you guys are going to go after me.
Speaker 3:No, let's do it. I want to hear this. We'll get your answer, then we'll talk and we'll come back to the Bracket Brain Buster with everybody else.
Speaker 4:We just got a new dog and we probably spoil her, probably treat her better than we treat our children, unfortunately. But she's got a pretty good life and I do think I've learned a lot from that dog about how important connection is Like. When I first got a dog I thought it was basically a trade, like you fed them and then they were vaguely loyal to you. But she would take connection, she would lie next to you, you know first, before she took food from you. That I think like dogs do remind people a little bit of how much like, how much social connection and like belonging and belonging matter. So I'll take, I'll take dog, but particularly Pepper, the Lamont family dog.
Speaker 2:How to win friends and influence people.
Speaker 3:No one on this panel is going to have a better answer than that. I can promise you. I can promise you so you did well. You did well there. Well done.
Speaker 4:That was a lot of pressure.
Speaker 2:We appreciate you being on Absolutely. Thank you, thanks, appreciate you being on Absolutely.
Speaker 4:Thank you. Thanks for having me on. I enjoyed it. I hope I didn't cure you of any misapprehension that I would have something interesting Speaking as a fern. I hope that I was able to be useful in some way. Always, Always a pleasure, Doug.
Speaker 1:Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you, doug Lemoff. And, as you heard, we're not done, doug. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you, doug Lemoff. And, as you heard, we're not done. Christian and Doug will put a bow on today's discussion and he'll throw the brain buster around to Christian, jacob Bourne and myself, dean Linkey. We'll do all of that when we return after a couple messages from ECNL corporate partners.
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Speaker 1:Welcome back to Breaking the Line, the ECNL podcast.
Speaker 3:Once again, here's Doug Bracken, and now we bring everybody else in for the Bracken Brain Buster. Christian, do you want to do a little debrief on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, a little bit different format this time. I mean I think it was. What I really liked about that discussion is that there's so much generality and ambiguity in what people talk about in those areas and you know this phrase long term development that everybody throws around without any sort of depth into what does that actually mean? I actually think there were some really good specific points that if we could get more parents looking for those behaviors and coaches, we could get more clubs rewarding and training those behaviors and coaches to his point, and I think it was slipped in a couple times. But a coach who's unsuccessful is a coach who's about to leave, and unsuccessful in that context meaning feeling as though they're not making a difference, feeling as though the team is not or the individuals are not improving the environment's not getting better in terms of learning. And if we could change that, you probably have a little piece of improving that coaching career path because you have coaches feeling better about what they're doing, because they're better at it and you have parents who are better able to identify what they're should be looking for in evaluating, because, again, it's really cliche to say that it's not always about the winning.
Speaker 2:Everybody says that, but then the other end of the continuum is this cliche of like just because you play out of the back means you must be teaching and long-term development oriented, and you might just really not be good at teaching or coaching. Your kids are just playing in a certain way because you kind of want to. You just don't know how to teach it. Just like the style of play thing. I would argue that style of play should largely be irrelevant if you're teaching players to think and decide, because the style will emerge, as opposed to having a style that says, well, this means you're doing a good thing or not, and I think it just makes things trite and they get weaponized in the youth environment when people don't really understand the detail of what they should be looking for when evaluating what's good and what's not.
Speaker 3:Totally agree the weaponization of these things like curriculum and long-term development. And you could have a hundred of them. They're out there always. It's hard to navigate it when you're not well-versed in it. Obviously, when you've been in it for a long time and you're well-versed in it, it's easier to kind of see the BS.
Speaker 2:And on that, doug, it strikes me now as like remember the concept of the five whys. Right, If you just keep asking why, you get better and better understanding and insight. So you know, if you take that same perspective to you know, coaching or evaluating coaches why are they doing that, why are they doing that, why are they doing that and getting deeper and deeper answers? You're probably in a really good spot. When the answers quickly evaporate at the first level. Well, why Well? We build out of the back. Well, why? Well? Because that's what you do. That's probably a sign that there's not a lot of depth going on.
Speaker 3:Yeah right, I will say for the first time on our podcast, I found myself writing a few things down, taking notes, because Doug always has some. The one thing I really appreciate about him and I think we can all learn from that and if you just look through the content and what he said, it's the simplicity in the way he presents it that I think we could all learn from and take it from. Take because we all fancy ourselves, as you know, soccer savants or whatever, and sometimes the way we talk and deliver information can be probably overly complicated, and I always appreciate the way he can use language that is really easy to understand and very succinct, which I think was his point about teaching and how effective teachers that he's seen, and so I wrote a few things down, just because I think he does such a good job of that. So that was cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's that old statement, statement of if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
Speaker 3:Yeah, fair, but I thought that was a great expansion on kind of what we were talking about. I think you rightly brought him up as a person to have on to go a little bit deeper and I think what we want to try to do here is bring some more education and out there and more knowledge to try to navigate, because, you know, I think we both recognize that the landscape can be hard to navigate and so, if we can, you know, shed some light on that. We will.
Speaker 2:And the last thing in all of this is there's got to be some grace, because no matter how-intentioned you are as coach, or parents or player, it is chaotic, it is stressful and you know you can have all the right intentions. Sometimes it doesn't quite go that way.
Speaker 3:So have some grace when you're looking at coaches and coaches looking at each other now be honest, as he spoke and you were listening or whatever did you, were you formulating some ideas you'll take with your young, young team out there, or anything?
Speaker 2:Oh always I mean always I'm taking ideas from everything, cause, at the end of the day, you're desperate to try and be effective.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, and so it's. It's interesting, cause you always get new ideas and then you also get some explanation of why some things you might be doing are working or not working when you, when you talk to somebody who can go a little bit deeper. So from the beginning, if you can't, if you don't have, I use the phrase control of the classroom and I think he's right. Some people also, you know they don't like that word control. But if you don't have the attention to be able to direct the attention of the athletes to where you want it to be so that they can learn, you're not going to teach anything, no matter what the age is For sure.
Speaker 3:Okay, everybody ready for the uh, the Bracken Brain Buster, which you already know what it is. So you've had time to think about it and today, first person we're going to go to is Dean Linkey. I'm a dove, I'm a peacemaker.
Speaker 1:A dove? A dove I'm a peacemaker, a dove?
Speaker 3:A dove.
Speaker 1:I'm a peacemaker.
Speaker 3:Every time I see you now I'm going to think of you as a dove, dean the dove, with a Dean face on the dove. Dean the dove, the peacemaker. You know what, dean? I think you're probably right about that. You do seem like Switzerland in the dove version, in the bird version, christian Labors.
Speaker 2:Let's go to you you know, I've had enough time to think about this and I don't know, I don't know, come on, all right, you know what I've always liked? I've always liked eagles. Okay, big, wingspan, up high. Okay, you know, they look, they look very serious. You know, looking around, big, I like this concept of eagle in our country. You, you know, okay, I'm going to go with an Eagle.
Speaker 3:I love that. You see how you just talked yourself into that. That was great Good job. Way to work on the fly. Let's get. Jacob always has an answer ready, so Jacob's up.
Speaker 6:I do. I was pretty ready for this one too. The running joke between the ECNL creative team and also my wife is that I am a golden retriever. I'm always excited to see everybody. I have my tails wagging always. I'm just always having a good time, and I am the king of the Midwestern goodbye, where it takes me 45 minutes to leave a place because I have to say goodbye to everybody and it leads to 10 more conversations. So, to no surprise to anybody that knows me, I am a golden retriever the Midwestern goodbye.
Speaker 3:I've been on a few calls that you're in charge of and they might go a couple extra minutes.
Speaker 2:Can you imagine a goodbye between Jacob and Dean left by themselves? Dean would be busy trying to hug him and tell him how much he likes him and Jacob would be trying to learn more about Dean. They wouldn't say goodbye for like an hour. That's funny. All right, I've thought about this. Obviously be trying to learn more about dean. That they wouldn't say goodbye for like an hour, yeah all right, I've thought about this.
Speaker 3:Obviously I I thought about you. Know, I'm a little bit elusive, I'm a little standoffish, right, keep to myself mostly praying mantis no, so I lurk in the shadows. I'm gonna go with, but I want something that's strong too, so I'm going. I'm a. I'm a Panther, I'm a black Panther. Oh wow, all right. All right, I lurk in the shadows.
Speaker 2:I think you've spent a long time thinking about this man.
Speaker 3:Ever since we started the podcast and doing Bracken Brain Buster, this was on my mind. I was just waiting for the right time to get in there. So we have a dove.
Speaker 2:Dog Bracken from Wakanda.
Speaker 3:We have a dove, we have a golden retriever, we have an eagle and a panther, and then obviously, doug Lemoff was a dog as well. So that was good. I like that question. All right, christian, that was a great show. Again, appreciate Doug coming on, and again, we always say if you have any questions or topics or ideas for us, send them to info at the ECNLcom. Love to hear from you answer your questions.
Speaker 1:Hopefully you guys found this informative and we're all a little bit smarter, since we are indeed a little bit smarter and you will be too, if you can support another great partner with the ecnl, that's continental tire. Get in the game with continental tire this spring. Purchase a set of four continental tire extreme contact sport o2 tires now through may 31, and get 110 continental tire prepaid master prepaid MasterCard by mail. Visit ContinentalTirecom to learn more. Continental Tire, the smart choice in tires. The ECNL Podcast, the smart choice in podcasts For Christian, the two dogs, Jacob and everybody else involved in the ECNL. And for all of you, I'm Dean Linke. We'll see you in two weeks for another edition of Breaking the Line, the ECNL. And for all of you, I'm Dean Linke. We'll see you in two weeks for another edition of Breaking the Line, the ECNL podcast. Thank you for listening to Breaking the Line, the ECNL podcast and remember, if you have a question that you want answered on Breaking the Line, the ECNL podcast, email us at info at the ECNLcom.