Anomalies and Divas

Today's Play: Coach Keenan Hickton shares his journey from multi-sport athlete in Pittsburgh to Emory University standout, and eventually to coaching one of the top-ranked Division III golf teams in the country. Keenan talks about what he looks for in recruits—highlighting the rare but powerful combination of confidence and humility—and why rankings don’t always tell the full story. He offers valuable advice to parents on how to support their young athletes through the emotional highs and lows of competitive sports, urging families to stay process-focused, trust the coach, and avoid overreacting to short-term results.

Today's Coach: Keenan Hickton is the newly appointed Head Men’s Golf Coach at The University of the South, Sewanee. He spent the last six years as assistant coach at Emory University, where the team achieved a No. 1 national ranking, placed in the top 5 nationally for most of his tenure, and won 22 tournaments—including three UAA championships. As a student-athlete at Emory, Keenan was a three-time UAA team champion, Tournament MVP, and two-time All-Scholar Team honoree, graduating in 2018 with a degree in Business Administration.

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Picking Teams: A Playbook for Parents is produced by: Amy Bryant and Sasha Melamud

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Transcript

Amy Bryant: 0:00

Music. Welcome to picking teams. Thanks so much for being here, Keenan. We're really glad to have you. And congratulations on your new position up at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. Is it in Sewanee, Tennessee? That's the name of the town, right,

Keenan Hickton: 0:18

pretty much right in Sewanee, Tennessee, yeah, it's two and a half hours from Atlanta, an hour and a half from Nashville, right in the middle. Essentially, if you're driving, you're gonna pass right through it, and you got to go up a mountain to get there, pretty much at the top of the mountain. Yeah. What I love about swan is that the athletic director is the mayor of Suwannee. He is pretty much one of the most incredible people I've met so far. I mean, I think you know that already, 33 years coaching tennis, a very, wildly successful tennis program here, and he just knows everybody here. I mean, it's incredible to watch him work. He just knows every single person here, and he knows how to move people. And I'd say maybe the most incredible thing about him is there are so many people now that know him, former players, former opposing players, former coaches, athletic directors, and Overwhelmingly, people will say positive things about him. You know, a lot of people, at least have a couple enemies out there. I really don't know anyone that at least doesn't respect him or have a positive opinion about their experiences with him.

Amy Bryant: 1:20

Yeah, he's, he's, he's a pretty incredible person. I used to call him Mayor before he was actually the mayor. So that's how impactful he is, and the people that he meets, the impressions that he makes. So we're talking about John Shackelford, for anyone who is wondering, the athletic director of the University of the South and the mayor of Suwannee, anyways, but today, let's we're talking to Keenan hicken, who was the golf coach at Emory for a few years. He was also a standout golfer at Emory University, and is now the head men's golf coach at the University of the South. So Keenan, to start off, why don't you tell us a little bit about your journey to your position there, and please fill us in on your youth sports journey all the way up through college and now to where you are.

Keenan Hickton: 2:09

Yeah, sure. I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I have five brothers and sisters. I was a middle child four out of six, and I was lucky to be a part of an athletics family. So my dad played college tennis. My mom was a college swimmer. We all played a lot of sports growing up, from swim team to hockey to soccer, eventually I settled on basketball and then golf. So I played a ton of basketball from like seventh grade through junior year of high school, and was playing golf at the same time, and was lucky to have an athletic director and basketball golf coach who really cared about his students and the players he was coaching. So he kind of directed me towards my love of golf, which was rapidly developing, and I think part of that was related to a career ceiling in basketball, but Golf was something that had just gotten into sophomore, junior year. So eventually that led to me connecting with Emory University, as well as a ton of other universities, and very fortunate to find Emory. I don't think I had a junior career or numbers based on some of the kids we've been recruiting over the last five, six years at Emory. It's really incredible, but I was fortunate where Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh Golf was just at a high level at the time my junior and senior year. So I was competing against some junior golfers who ended up going to Notre Dame and liberty and Penn State, and just being able to play the same tournament, you know, have the same scoreboard on the same course, and post some very competitive results Coach schoberg, who obviously was an influential figure in my life, was able to take a chance on me with that. So one of the things I'm definitely passionate about with recruiting is I am so jealous of how much juniors and seniors in high school know about college sports now. Met with Recruits this week, and they know our Sewanee golf schedule for next year. They know our results for the season. They come prepared with the names of the best players on our team. They know where I came from and how long I've been here. And I mean, it's kind of funny to say I'm really hopefully not that old, but 10 years I did just get invited to my 10 year high school reunion, so apparently I'm getting old, but I had no idea what an Emory golf schedule looked like. I signed up kind of blindly because I loved Emory University. I just walked around it and fell in love with the school, and I knew that it was a good school. So if golf didn't work out, the school would work out. But I had no idea that it was going to fulfill so many of the things that I wanted it to fulfill. I was so happy when I found out we had morning workouts, and I was so happy when I found out we played golf six days a week and played qualifying on the weekends and traveled around the southeast to play tournaments. And so happy that the level of Golf was kind of a perfect level where I could be a good player on the team, but also be incredibly challenged when we had outstanding teammates or players from other teams to compete against. So, you know, that's my simple athletics career after college coach COVID wife was actually going to have a baby, and he asked me if I would be the volunteer interim coach for our first tournament. At that point, I think I'd been to 42 straight Emory golf tournaments. I kind of knew the drill and took the team to a tournament. I wasn't going to start my job until January, so I took the team to the first tournament, and we just had a really amazing week. The team won the fall preview, and just it was just fun, very lucky that they basically were able to figure out how to have an assistant volunteer assistant coach while I was working. So I was a crazy person who was working at a consulting firm Monday through Friday in Atlanta. And instead of flying out on Saturday to do something other people might consider more fun, I was flying to wherever Emory Golf was playing an event to be an assisting golf coach, because I just loved it that much, and effectively did that for four and a half years. I mean, I worked at a consulting firm from January to 2019 through May of 2023 before Emory made it a full time assistant coaching position, which is when I made a crazier decision that was built on the love and passion for golf and coaching to go be a full time assistant coach at Emory and also teach private lessons and in private coaching on the side and leave the consulting firm. So it's a decision I'm very happy I made, obviously, but that was basically a year and change of full time assistant coaching, although it certainly feels like I was a full time assistant coach for five and a half, six years. ,

Amy Bryant: 6:33

Yeah, yeah, one of our previous guests on the show is talking about how little coaches get paid, and the fact that you were a volunteer coach for four and a half years, it sounds like and sometimes fulfilling head coaching responsibilities without ever getting paid is just proof that we as coaches, we don't do it for the money. Y ou definitely, no,

Keenan Hickton: 6:53

I don't think anyone necessarily doing these roles for the money. I mean, there's certainly perks. I definitely enjoyed some golf I enjoyed some range balls that I might not have been able to hit and and mostly, I mean, I just love it. I mean, the the network and connections I made, you know, connecting, basically, I felt like I basically had nine years of Emory teammates straight I had when I was a freshman, I had seniors, juniors and sophomores, and then we had kids that started at Emory three years after I left, who I feel like being each other's wedding someday or something. So I feel like I was an Emory golfer almost for nine years. I really got to benefit from that. But, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it takes a certain type of person that's built for it, and that has the desire to do the harder parts of things, where maybe in a van ride on a Tuesday, quite a late hour coming from a quite a lonely city, but it's not so lonely in golf when you got friends and people that are chasing their passion and dream together,

Amy Bryant: 7:47

wow. And so then from there you went and got recruited to go to Suwannee.

Keenan Hickton: 7:53

Yeah, I really, you know, I really did not seek it. It speaks to coach Shaq and John Shackleford, where he's trying to make everything at Suwannee better. And we had a really standout season the year I was a full time assistant coach at Emory, we had a team that finished third at the National Championship, which was actually the highest finish ever for Emory men's golf. And specifically, we had one player who was named the National Player of the Year and earned an invitation to the Arnold Palmer Cup team, which is a hugely prestigious honor in the game of golf. So I would say the Emory golf season maybe made its way to some Google searches, probably, which is how coach Shackleford became interested and in August. I mean, I was super excited to coach the Emory team this fall. We have some seniors I really care about and continue private coaching in Atlanta. But about August 5, or something like that, Coach Shackleford reached out and through coach Browning tennis coach at Emory, it's all very interconnected. And just saw, does this person look look like they're ready for a head coaching job? Are you interested in it? And I really didn't know. I mean, I'd had some other opportunities to do that, but nothing really. The shoe never fit exactly. But sawani Being close enough, I suppose two and a half hours away. It's, it's actually a pretty easy drive. I just figured it was at least worth the trip to come up there. And coach Shaq is a pretty good recruiter himself, I think, over 33 years so I was definitely interested at hello. I think the major considerations were they have a nine hole, wonderful golf course on campus that's a top 10 ranked college golf course in the country. They have phones for a good golf program. They had built a decent golf program before. I had a lot of respect for their previous two coaches, one of whom was a friend and was definitely instrumental in recommending me for the position. And I would say I was also pretty aware of their players. I mean, you become pretty aware. I knew that we'd played with them in the national championship last year, and I definitely saw some potential. So I'm spoiled. Maybe it didn't feel like I was going to start a golf program from scratch. It's like, wow, I'm only 29 years old, and I get to be a first head coach, and I feel like I have a team that could maybe win the whole national championship. What an opportunity.

Amy Bryant: 10:11

Well, yeah, I mean, you guys are right now ranked in the top 10. Are you in the top five too? Just about you

Keenan Hickton: 10:16

actually got to rank fifth at the end of the fall, which is the highest ranking in Suwannee golf history. So we're really proud of it.

Amy Bryant: 10:24

That's great. Yeah, well, I'm so proud of you, too. And yes, you might have walked into a little bit of that. You got some players that you didn't have to necessarily work for, but to be able to groom them, to be able to achieve what they've achieved in such a short period of time is testament to you and your coaching skills, and I know you'll continue to groom your coaching skills as you go. You are young, but you are wise beyond those years, for sure. And the more you do, the better you'll get. And I'm excited to watch your success there. So, yeah, absolutely. So as you know, this podcast is really like the audience is really parents and so to start our line of questioning, why don't you talk a little bit about your recruits there, now that you are starting to recruit for your next group of players, what are you looking for? ,

Keenan Hickton: 11:16

Yeah, so specifically for players. I mean, I'm I'm recruiting good players, right? I mean, I think the the most challenging part of this opportunity is I have done a ton of recruiting myself at Emory and as a player. As a sophomore, I was, hopefully John viewed me as the kid to bring to have lunch with and do some recruiting as a player. And then six years certainly helping with recruiting. But this year, I mean, we were already done recruiting when I left Emory for the class of 2025 so I show up on August 30, and I have to make offers for roster spots to people I have never watched play the game of golf, and I am not a numbers based person, but this year, I kind of have to be. And fortunately, there are some people that do very hard work developing numbers based recruiting. So in golf, you have Junior Golf scoreboard, and you have something called Tugger to UGR. I actually don't know what the acronym stands for, but they, you know, they produce rankings. You know, you're the 50th ranked, 200th ranked, 200th ranked player in the country. And I do think they are great indicators of success. I basically studied our Emory recruits for 10 years, and you can definitely draw a graph from what their junior ranking was to how likely they are to be an all American or a successful player. But there are certainly some anomalies in that, and I certainly consider myself one of those. So I'm never going to base too much of it on ranking, but this fall, I had to base it on ranking if you want to get into numbers. I mean, I think players that are ranked in the top 200 to 500 in a junior golf scoreboard database often are ready to play Division Three golf upon arrival. But that's an ever changing phase. And I cannot emphasize enough how, how little I like being numbers based on from a recruiting standpoint, in terms of just like personality and what parents and coaches. You know, I'm interested in seeing, first of all, Sewanee is a fantastic school similar to Emory. So I certainly need to see a history of academic success and academic discipline, that suggests that the student is eligible to be earn admission to Sewanee individually. I also look for great communicators. I mean, I definitely base a lot of it on personality and communication. I mean, I love players that are communicating effectively directly to me about where they're playing, about what scores they're shooting, about what they're working on with their coach, maybe sending swing videos. It's not everything, but I like it. I think those are going to be players that are going to be great communicators when they're here on the team. They're going to be people that I can read and understand what they're going through, people that are going to be easier to coach, hopefully, because apparently, they've been easier to coach by parents or recruiting service for how to earn an invitation to play college golf. If I had to really say one thing I look for, I am definitely specific. I don't want to give the secret away, so someone fakes it the next time I meet them on a recruit. But when I meet with someone and they're here, I'm basically analyzing their self confidence combined with humility. It's weird to say it may be like that, but I think that golf is a very individual game similar to tennis, for sure. I definitely think that a lot of good golfers and tennis players carry themselves with a certain amount of self confidence, and they have a confidence and belief in their abilities. So I certainly believe that someone that can present their ability to play golf, just in a conversation, can tell me not everything, but perhaps a significant amount, about their ability to contribute to a division three golf program, and then I really combine that with humility, because certainly I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive. I know that you have some really confident people that may be borders, like Eric and cocky, and I just would rather not have that in the Suwannee golf program, right? I just think there's so much more to college sports and building a program. So I really very specifically seeking, when I meet with someone, do they have self confidence in their ability to be a good golfer now and be a good golfer three years from now? Are they someone that I would love to have in the locker room because they carry themselves with humility and know that just because they won the tournament today doesn't mean they're a better person or better human than someone else on our team. I just think those are really high quality characteristics in a future Suwannee golfer.

Amy Bryant: 15:48

I love that. I really love that. I think you know the word that comes to mind when you're talking about the super confident athletes that are out there is when I was recruiting at Emory for the tennis team, I tried to stay away from some of those kids. If they didn't balance it out with humility, we would call them divas. We didn't want the Divas on our team, so we tried really hard to stay away from those kids and a diva being somebody that that really put themselves first and weren't able to transition to putting a team first, which is not an easy task. When you're playing an individual sport like golf or tennis, right? It's not easy to suddenly start thinking about, wait a minute, we're playing as a team here. I have to be with these people every afternoon for four years in a row, or I have to support them in matches on the weekends and tournaments. And it's not easy for everyone to think outside of themselves when they haven't been throughout most of their junior playing career. So yes, I love how you said balancing the confidence of the humility. I think that's key. I love that when you were saying that there are some anomalies out there in the recruiting process, and you describe yourself as one of those anomalies because you didn't have the ranking that perhaps coach was looking for when somebody is that anomaly, and you're willing to take a chance on a kid that is the anomaly. What? What is it about them that would cause you to take that chance? Because I talked to a lot of parents. I talked to a lot of parents that are like, you know, my kid doesn't have the ranking, but I really know he's good enough, or I really believe she's, you know, strong enough to make that program, that team, if she just, you know, worked a little harder if she gets there, you know, she gets if the coach takes a chance, she's going to be fine. So what is it, what is it that they need to have? Yeah,

Keenan Hickton: 17:29

I think there's a number of things. First and foremost, Golf is a pretty expensive sport to get into. Not a lot of people get into when they're five years old. Not a lot of families can afford to go travel around the country, paying 1000s of dollars to play in these tournaments that are required to get a ranking. So the first question I might sit down, if someone has the confidence to say, I'm the anomaly, ignore the rankings. It's okay. Well, why? Why doesn't the ranking exist? And you know, back to my point about confidence, I really like when people aren't scared of that question. Well, I'll tell you why it doesn't exist. It doesn't exist because I haven't played in the junior golf tournaments. It doesn't exist because I was a basketball player, soccer player growing up. I definitely like when people or other sport athletes converted to golf, because I think if you're a baseball pitcher and you've stood on the mound alone and had to throw a ball down the strike zone, I mean, that's something that you're effectively going to have to do in golf if you were a tennis player growing up. Some of the best golfers I had as teammates at Emory were really good high school tennis players, because they've played an individual sport, one on one, and they had the forehand and backhand and serve to build a stroke, which is a very similar thing that you're doing in golf. And then, yes, certainly really talented basketball players and lacrosse players that maybe played golf on vacation with their family and were pretty good golfer and could shoot a score on their own on Saturday with their dad. But yeah, it's a very different thing of, can you play a competitive tournament, three rounds of golf in Alabama, or can you just play good on the weekend on your home golf course. So number one is, why doesn't the ranking exist? Are you from Minnesota or New York, and it's really cold outside for six months of the year? Number two, did you play other sports and did you have did you handle pressure? Competitive pressure? Well, I mean, college sports can be a really fragile, competitive environment. It's challenging no matter what sport you're playing right now, especially at the Division Three level, the level is just increasing dramatically every single year. We have really talented, quality golfers that 10 years ago might have made wonderful golfers on the Amy or Suwannee golf teams, but there are so many good players. It's going to be a fragile and competitive environment, and young people and attach so much personal meaning to their performance and ability that I like when someone played basketball or soccer or lacrosse, and they've had to face that and overcome that before and handle pressure effectively, and then the last thing is just the skills. If I go watch them play, I mean, do they hit a serve, or do they hit a drive at the same speed as someone on my team right now. Do they just totally lack the coaching and awareness? Like, do they hit great serves and forehands they just don't know how to construct a point? Or do they hit a great driver and a great putt? They just, you know, why did they aim over there towards the the out of bounds stake? So, you know, there's little things, from a skill standpoint, honestly, the most important of any of these things, I would say, is the last one, which is, do they have someone else in their area that they know is committed to playing golf at Cincinnati or Notre Dame, maybe their high school teammate? And I play with them every day, and I know I can beat them. And now Talk is cheap, obviously, but frames of reference, I think, are extremely important, because ranking is over time. Ranking is tournaments that you're traveling to. But is there a frame of reference? I mean, I can think of millions of example in tennis where you have a player that they don't have a ranking because they keep losing first round to someone who's going to North Carolina or Harvard and, well, they can't build a ranking because they lost in the first round, but they lost 63675, to someone who's getting to North Carolina. And then the golf equivalent of that might be a recruit is one of lacrosse and soccer state championship, and they literally picked up golf as a sophomore, and they were like on the JV team of their high school as a sophomore, and now they're a senior, and maybe in 10 of their senior year tournaments, three times out of 10 they beat their number one player who's been committed to Cincinnati or Kentucky for two years. And it's like, well, wow, that's give me something. Give me like, some piece of physical evidence of you played 18 holes against someone that's going to go play in the big 12 or SEC or ACC, and you were right there standing side by side, competitive with them, that's something that I feel like, okay, we have some

Amy Bryant: 21:43

that makes sense. It's funny that you use the evidence example of playing somebody that went in Carolina, because there was a player on my team at one point in time that she made it all the way into a tournament for all the best players in college tennis, and that includes d1, players, d2, player d3, players and Naia and junior college players. And wound up playing a player from North Carolina who happened to be ranked top 10 in the country, in division one, and I think had that same score, 6376, she lost. You might know her name is Ysabel Gonzales Rica.

Keenan Hickton: 22:16

There's a very specific score I happen to remember, yeah, might have been Brenda Graham. She was playing against her.

Amy Bryant: 22:23

Yeah, so it's funny that you brought up that example. But anyways, to get back to what you're saying, the fragile and competitive environment that our athletes are exposed to, I think that's really something that we can dive a little deeper in for our parents, because as parents, we are not with our child when they're in this fragile and competitive environment. They're at college. They're usually away from home for college, and they're experiencing all sorts of new things, not just the stress of competing at a high level against people from from all over including Carolina, perhaps, but they're competing alone and without the support of their parents on the sidelines, and especially for an individual sport that's really new for them, and then they're experiencing, obviously, the stress of school, the stress of new social lives, the stress of living on their own, the stress of the independence that they're facing. So what do you think are the most important things a parent can do to support their child as they experience all of these stressors,

Keenan Hickton: 23:22

I think by far the most important thing parents can focus on is finding a coach who's results based, or sorry, process based, not results based, and committing as a parent or family to be process based over results based, especially with the game of golf, because the game of golf is very challenging. I know players that I've played with that have played professional golf after college, that have gotten in a van and driven six hours to a tournament and shot 8379 85 terrible golf scores finished in the bottom of a high level Division Three event, and it is like the loneliest six hour drive home, and that was one bad result for someone I'm thinking of specifically that had a wonderful career and all kinds of success. And that is going to happen in a college golf career for sure, and it's going to happen in a basketball career and a volleyball career and a tennis career. And best thing a parent can do, and I think the best thing a coach can do also, is demonstrate the awareness of we are defining a process, and we will acknowledge the results. And if the results aren't existing for a long period of time. Maybe we need to recreate the process a little bit. But if we're committing to a process that we think is going to produce success over long term as parents and as a support network, we really need to commit to that together. Because, I mean, I can think of 1000s of examples, and when I think of examples in my nine years of having parents and having teammates parents and having kids, I assistant coached and their parents and kids I'm now coaching and their parents. I'm thinking of overwhelmingly positive examples. But certainly there are, you know, some negative examples where it's like, we're gonna all go to dinner, the five of us as a team. And I always tell my players before we go to dinner, I'm like, if your parents, especially the ones that are not really college golfers or something themselves, dive way too deeply into Hey, why did you make that triple bogey on the seventh hole today? Let's just reframe that question as a positive and change the subject smoothly, because I never want to be the coach that says no team dinners in between tournament rounds like these. Parents are traveling to Greensboro, North Carolina, sometimes to watch their child or their grandchild play, and I want them to have dinner with us, and we should all have dinner, and I want to get to know them, and I want to build these lasting relationships with players and families, but the only way we can continue doing that is if that dinner table conversation is really process based and not results based, because it can't get too high and can't get too low, we can't have we shot the first round lead, and we have three more rounds to play, and the conversation is like we're popping imaginary champagne at the table and celebrating The amazing performance of the day. And it certainly can't be the opposite, where we just shot the 12th play score out of 13 teams today, and maybe we did the very best we could just, you know, we just didn't get lucky. The wind was blowing when we were hitting the ball, or ball bounced in the cup and went out of the cup. I mean, these things can happen. And if we can really be committed to a long term process, I think that's really important. I can caveat it by saying, yeah, if the result, there's a time to be results based if your child is the hardest working kid, and everybody can vouch for that, and they have committed to a process with their Swing Coach and with their college golf coach, and for two years, the juice just hasn't been worth the squeeze, and the results aren't showing, probably in the off season, we need to think about a new Swing Coach, or we need to think about why the process has not been working, but certainly on a day to day, month to month, week to week basis, I think I was very lucky to have parents that played college sports and were very aware of that, And just because I three putted on the first hole. It wasn't like let's over react to one result on a day of 72 holes of golf, or tournament of 72 holes of golf. So I think I cannot say that strongly enough. I think the best parents that support their colleges athletics careers are the ones that are unconditionally loving and process based over results, over long periods of time. It's

Amy Bryant: 27:44

great. I bet you didn't think that you would have to be coaching the parents as well as the players when you came into this role.

Keenan Hickton: 27:52

It's a really fragile subject. I'm sure, yeah, I'm sure a lot of coaches will relate to that. I did think that, I guess I would say just I've been become aware enough for nine years, I've seen that in different ways. Just witness it with all programs. Probably the most I've witnessed it, honestly, was in junior sports. I mean, that's where it actually even shows, sometimes more than college sports. In junior basketball, you know, I that's probably the most extreme versions of that, where I witnessed it, and that's the harshest time to me, because you have someone that's coaching an AAU basketball team. And if you think some coaches like yourself and myself do it for the love of the game, I mean, this person has another job, and they are going from their job to coach eighth graders on Tuesday night for two hours, and then they're in Ohio coaching seven games in four days or something. Hence, parents are really in their ear at kiddoba After the game about playing time and things like that. Just think that's such a such a negative environment. And obviously those are kids that are 14 years old or 17 years old, where they can really learn negative things. Yeah.

Amy Bryant: 28:57

I mean, they're really at a vulnerable age, and it's so important for parents to teach them that it's process oriented then too, and for the kids to see their parents treating their coaches properly, because they will emulate that behavior as well. So there's so many lessons that can be taught at that young age, and parents can truly do it right. I would love to hear. And this question is always the most comfortable question for my guest. But what's like, the craziest thing that you've seen a parent do where you're just like, oh my god, textbook parenting 101, never do this to your poor child, who is an athlete?

Keenan Hickton: 29:37

Yeah I'm not sure I can really think of one specific great anecdote, I would probably just double down on all of the things I have seen have basically could be tied directly back towards being overreactive to a short term result and perhaps undermining years of preparation and coaching. I mean, from a golf or from a basketball standpoint. I mean, I've certainly seen parents just keep it as a basketball standpoint, because I'm obviously no one can tie this. There's too many, there's too few golfers on teams. Everybody can tie back directly. But from, you know, early childhood basketball days, I have played for coaches that are very successful coaches. They have won state championships. They've won championships over 25 years, and I have seen parents that know very little about basketball like suggest their kid run the play a different way, and we're running a team sport that's five players against five players, and because a parent that doesn't know anything about the sport to not play it beyond a JV basketball level. They have this ingenious idea that their kids should take the shot on the play. And we're playing for a coach that is historically Hall of Fame, successful. And you could basically repeat that example and use volleyball or swimming or tennis terms. And, you know, I think one thing I would add is people are so hard on coaches, and I understand why. It's because they love their kid and they want their kid to have the best experience, and they want their kid to win the championship. And I completely understand that, even see it with hometown football fans that are, like, really hard on their coach. And part of it's just the fun of being a sports fan, you get to beat up on the coach. But I always really think it's funny when people are hard on someone that maybe they are not the best coach in the country, but they have obviously distinguished themselves as a well above average, distinguished coach. And I just think that's so interesting to me sometimes, again, if you use basketball or use golf, it's like this. Coach has been running top three or top five, division three programs for like 22 out of the last 25 years. And maybe they haven't won 22 national championships, because there's 280 teams trying to do it every year, but they have obviously distinguished themselves as an A or an A minus coach, and they're obviously putting forth their very best effort at their profession. And people love their kids so much that they're so hard on this coach. It's just so mesmerizing, because we would never do that about a doctor lawyer who's the 300th best doctor lawyer in the city of Green Bay, Wisconsin, or something like that. It's just like, wow, they're really excellent at what they do. They are not the greatest of all time. Perhaps it's debatable, but they have distinguished themselves as excellent at what they do, and they are receiving very unfair, harsh criticism and the lack of trust in what they're doing over a long term. So I would say, back to the original example, parents at the National Championship or at the state championship, the biggest event, a pressure, packed event, choosing to have a dinner table conversation or a phone call conversation or text conversation about a complete change of plans on the play, the basketball play, so to speak, we've put years into the success. We've put high school coaches, individual coaches. We've chosen the best college where you get to play for the best college coach. And just to remove it from golf and make it a tennis example, again, it's like, let's just play to her backhand all day tomorrow. Even though it's like, why we've never we haven't been doing that for 10 years. Why like now in the most important event of my athletic wife, do you get to decide we're going to change the plan because you saw something yesterday?

Amy Bryant: 33:26

Because I know Ysa's backhand, yes, exactly,

Keenan Hickton: 33:29

very, very specific call out there.

Amy Bryant: 33:33

I'm going to leave that in, by the way, I'm hoping to listen. She's had two shout outs now i you. Thanks for tuning in to today's play on picking teams the playbook for parents. It was fun to joke a little bit about Issa today, a former player of mine and a special friend to Keenan, as well as hearing another experience and accomplished coaches insights, Keenan will be back again on the show soon to share some more helpful tips for parents, remember to tell your friends about us and send me your questions by clicking the