Complete Your Square - Coaching the Whole Athlete with Coach Steve Brown

Today's Play: Steve Brown returns to share how he’s now giving back through the Steve Brown Academy and his Complete Your Square approach to student-athlete development. Steve opens up about the emotional toll of transitioning out of sport, the importance of identity beyond athletics, and the power of therapy, mentorship, and purpose. He also offers wise advice for parents: know your role, assume positive intent, and give hard moments time to breathe before reacting. 

Today's Coach: Olympian Steve Brown is the founder of the Steve Brown Academy and creator of the Complete Your Square curriculum, designed to support student-athletes in athletics, academics, character, and service. He competed in the 2000 Olympic Games for Trinidad & Tobago after a standout multi-sport career at Wake Forest. With degrees from Wake, Duke, and UPenn, Steve brings over 15 years of experience in independent school admissions and leadership development.

Check out the book referenced in this episode: Loserthink by Scott Adams

To learn more about Bryant College Coaching, and download our new e-book, click here or go to www.bryantcollegecoaching.com

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

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Transcript

Hi everyone and welcome back to Picking Teams: A Playbook for Parents.  Today, we’ll hear part 2 of my conversation with Olympian, coach and recent PHD graduate Steve Brown.  

Amy Bryant 00:17

Well, let's talk about how you're giving back now, because, you know, tell us a little bit about what you're doing. I know you're not at Lovett anymore, but we, we definitely are working in similar spaces now. So yeah, get tell us a little more about that,

Steve Brown  00.31

right? So did 21 years at Lovett and started pursuing a doctoral program and was introduced to the concept of educational consulting, right? So a lot of, especially independent school admissions, personnel or professionals, it's a natural segue into educational consulting, especially trying to help families get into independent schools and private schools. And so I think my first conference with IECA, which is independent educational consulting Association, folks like, you gotta meet Amy, you gotta meet Amy, and you gotta meet Katie. You gotta be Katie. You gotta meet all these folks who win, who are who work with athletes, right? And so got a chance to meet you and several other folks who were in that world, working specifically with student athletes. And so that's where my niche, or where I felt that I can be of most of a benefit. So helping, I think there has to be some history here. So there's an organization called Breakthrough collaborative. It's based in Los Angeles. It's been it's now in 24 cities. It's been on love it's campus for the last 25 plus years, but it's a six year program to assist kids from underserved communities to college so they will come on love it's campus the summers before their seventh grade, eighth grade and ninth grade years they help reinforce their academic foundation for the year prior, and then help them when they graduate and go off to high school. They monitor their academic progress, help them with A, C, T, S, A, T, prep college applications, get them to college. And I want to mimic that program for the Steve Brown Academy, and I wanted to create and so not necessarily just from underserved communities, because you and I both know we have a lot of families who come from the Independent School world, private school sector, and they're just as clueless as many other families, right? We're all ignorant, just in different areas, right? So a way to help families in that respect, get to college, wherever they are in their athletic life cycle. But then there was a parent whose child was headed to Harvard. He was a football player, and she said, Well, you know, Educational Consultants helping my kid get into college? There they come, a dime a dozen. But if you could have helped my child transition his first year at Harvard, I would pay for that. So just like Steve Brown, we work like crazy to get to the school or get that d1 offer, or get to college and play, and then you get there, the athletes are better the I don't know if the pressure is is greater, but the expectations are greater. Your school world school work, you got competition within your locker room with teammates. That's a lot for anyone to handle, right? And so then I was like, Okay, maybe we can help student athletes as they get there and to transition how to maximize that experience, wherever college they go to or university. And then, as you and I both know, the collegiate life cycle, or should I say, the athletic life cycle is a finite one when I had my last competition in the Olympic Games in 2000 I tell people I probably had about four to six years of undiagnosed depression because I didn't know what else to do. And I had degrees and I had options, right? But I was doing that ever since I was in fourth grade. I was doing that, but when it was time to walk away, which is part of my dissertation study, I was initially going to study the relationship between athletic identity and identity foreclosure. The idea is I put all my eggs in the athletic identity basket to get a d1 scholarship to go to Emory and play tennis, but when it's time to step away from sport, that transition can be difficult or not. If I don't know much more about my identity, that's right, and too much of us because we're so zoned in and you could scratch out athletics and pencil and medicine the arts. Yeah, if I don't focus on learning more about what else interests me, it's hard for me to go. What am I supposed to do now? Well, you're, you know, you graduate, you're an Olympian, you're former NFL player, played in Canada. Like, what do you mean? It's like, I don't I don't know what I like, I don't know what I dislike. 

Amy Bryant  5:30  

 That's not a path forward. That's what I've accomplished. Where am I going from here?

Steve Brown  5:36  

Correct? So in an ideal world, I would love the Steve Brown Academy to assist again, male and female athletes, wherever they are on their athletic life cycle, with what I call, sorry to be nerdy, but as a math major, completing the square is how you solve a quadratic equation. So I looked into, has anyone patented the phrase, complete your square? And they hadn't, so I've patented it, but it's a it's a mantra to what I call the four areas of success, based on a book that I read called I dare you, by William Danforth, who's written in the 30s. And it said that the if you work on these four areas of your life, the body, the brain, the heart and the soul, then your probability of success will increase. So the body, you have to be healthy before you help others. The brain, you have to be a lifelong learner. The heart, you have to be able to interact with others. And the soul, you have to understand as a greater entity other than yourself, right? So the body is, hey, we can train athletes. We do athletic training on the side. So we got that piece. Academics, I'm a math tutor, but we can work on how important that is. The heart is. Was going to be character education, and there's a leadership curriculum called habitudes that was created by Dr Tim Elmore here in town organization called growing leaders. So they have character education curriculum, and they have one specifically for athletes and the soul part was not necessarily sure where your spirituality lies. It was going to be service. So complete. Your square is athletics, academics, character, education and service, right? It's not rocket science, but those four areas were going to be a holistic approach to preparing student athletes for wherever they are in their life cycle, athletic life cycle. So

Amy Bryant   

yeah, and how's it going

Steve Brown  

once I get out of my own way? I'm I'm fine. No, what do you mean by that? It's going good. It's going good. So I have, I've done a lot of again. You and I and several other folks can relate to this. When you're when you want to be exceptional, right? You want to do your due diligence. You don't want to just go out there. You want to go to practice before I come out and compete, right? And so, so much of my time, more recently, and I would say the last few years, is learning what it takes to be an educational consultant, learning, okay, to what what areas, what areas do I need development in, right? So I felt like I was a really good athlete, but I need to learn how to coach properly, right? So got my level one and level two certification for USA Track and Field. I've done a lot of volunteering for elite 11 and a lot of local camps to learn different coaching styles, right, how to communicate with today's athlete. And then the character piece I've gone to training with growing leaders to understand how to share that with not only middle school athletes, there's a social emotional learning piece to it, but also how to put forth a curriculum for high school and college athletes. And then the the last piece was to understand, okay, how do you, how do you incorporate service, right? And so it, love it. For example, we had what was called sing, which stood for service initiation for ninth graders, and so we would go into the Atlanta community for a day and a half. We'd go to soup kitchens. We'd go to men's shelters, women's shelters, to learn how to give back, but also how to how to be sensitive to people's circumstances. So a lot of my work has been foundational, and now it's like, as you said, Steve, can you finish this doctorate and get started next time I see you, you better be done. So this summer will be my first inaugural group of Steve Brown Academy. Steve Brown Academy cohort, as we call it, 

Amy Bryant  10:32  

yes, well, it's funny for anyone listening. You know, I'm a lifelong coach, I guess you would say so. When Steve and I first met maybe three years ago, I'm not sure that's the first time we met, because I think that we met back when you were training for 96 or maybe 2000 because you were at Emory training. I'm pretty sure we met on the track. But anyway, good memory, yeah, yeah, yeah. But anyways, when we re engaged our friendship and became, you know, better friends, that was about three years ago, and the first thing he said to me was, I gotta finish this dissertation. So ever since then, I've been on your butt about that. I mean, you didn't know you were get you, you were establishing a relationship with somebody that is as annoying as me, but I I frequently send Steve text messages like, are you done yet? Hurry up

Steve Brown  11:30  

in a good way. So there was a, there was a critical moment. And the reason why I mentioned January 6, because that was, that was critical. But I called it the I called it the trifecta, right? So the doctoral program is actually an executive style program. It's a three year program. An executive means that we, of the 25 of us in the cohort, we spend one week out of the summer and one week in a month. So 2018 I applied to five schools, University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, oh, for five, didn't get into one school, but it was going to reapply. You reach out to schools, find out. Okay, what can I improve on my application? Well, a teammate of ours passed away December of 2018 that was devastating. I would talk to him on a Thursday. He passed away that Saturday, same age, but we go up to his memorial service in Philadelphia. A wreck, right? But I decided to go. I wonder if Penn has classes this weekend. They did, visited, a re applied, get in. Okay, so I'm going to start the summer of 2019 my Olympic coach passes away the spring of 2019 devastating, because we really grown, grown close together. Our father's 20 year anniversary. Excuse me, 30 year anniversary of his passing was December of 2020, and my birthday was the same day. We had the extra visitors to the Capitol. Mm hmm. Two days later, our middle brother passed away. So that was three deaths, back to back to back. And my wife, at the time, said, You need to go talk to somebody. I was like, No, I know she's like, yes, you do, because you're bringing this stuff home. I didn't realize that, again, you could chalk it up to being a male, an adult, an athlete, not wanting to share my pain, I never addressed issues properly. And so I started getting therapy, and it was amazingly helpful to be able to articulate that you have a problem. I always felt, as someone called it survivor's guilt, right? When you hear the when you hear Olympic Games, when you hear traveling around the world like my life has been an incredible Disney movie, right? But I never thought I had real problems, when, in fact, if it's a problem to you, it's a problem, right? If you don't address it, I call it death by 1000 paper cuts, right? Because it will be addressed one way or another. Some address them with vices, right? Alcohol, drugs, insomnia, whatever. But that therapist really helped, and I still see him to this day a couple times a month, but it really taught me how to take care of myself, and if I don't take care of myself, There's no way I can help other people. That's great. Well, that was a huge, a huge part of why the doctoral program has taken so long, and the school has been ridiculously supportive. You know, they know life happens to folks. People leave the program, they come back, and so the support has been there. I've learned a ton about myself, and I'm in a better space, mentally, physically, to be able to be a benefit to you know, this, this aspiration of helping other student athletes. So, absolutely so being able to be vulnerable and speak like you don't have to address things alone, right? There's counselors on campus, there's individuals in your family, there's other folks you don't know, but you gotta be able to talk out some of this stuff, because we both know there was a young, young athlete more recently with, you know, LSU, who who had a situation with a car wreck, all of a sudden he's about to go in the draft, but because of what was overwhelming him, made it, made a decision that within the last week or so that everyone's shocked by but, but yeah, it was. It was, it was one of those things that you never know what folks are dealing with, but no one can help you if you don't share those things either, right? So, yeah, yeah, my book, by the way, you know, get my book. 

Amy Bryant  16:20  

what book? Tell us about your book,

Steve Brown  16:22 

yeah. So it was funny. It was when we got into the Olympic trials in the semi finals, top four make the finals. This is very bad, but I have to tell this story. So when I got out of the blocks, I was dead last, behind everybody. I can see everybody's back as I'm moving up in the race. I'm next to a guy by the name of Eugene Swift, and I'm like, I need to grab his arm, because I need to make the finals. So I literally grabbed his arm off the last hurdle, and I pulled him back, and I got third, and he got fourth. The Karma came the next day, because Allen won. They got the gold. Eventually, Mark crear got second, he got the silver. Who got third Eugene Swift? So kid, if you make bad decisions, it's going to come back around. Yeah. But when I walk off the track, a reporter from the AJC, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, put a microphone in my face. He said, What are your chances of making the Olympic team? I'm a math major. If you got a lane, you got a chance, that's probability, right? So that's going to be the name of my book. If you have a lane, you got a chance, right? And in life, we all have a lane. Not every lane is better than us. So it's a memoir of my journey, if you will. Um, that's coming out. So if you have Elaine, you had a chance. Don't, don't still, but

Amy Bryant  17:47 

you're going to finish your dissertation before you start on that book, right?

Steve Brown  17:48  

Oh, I've been working on it like crazy. So, yeah, it's a bulky

Amy Bryant  17:55  

Brown. Steve, Brown. No, 

Steve Brown  17:56  

but yes, yes, yes, yes.

Amy Bryant  18:00  

Get that dissertation done. Oh,

Steve Brown  18:04 

well, all, all I have left is my getting my my subjects to do, fill out my surveys and

Amy Bryant  18:10  

well, and maybe on this podcast, we'll be able to get you some more subjects.

Steve Brown  18:16  

So yeah, African American male athletes who've participated in the football, basketball or track, if you're in an independent school, oh, man, we'd love to have you participate in this survey, because we'd love to share the results with schools all around the country, National Association of Independent schools, schools here in town, on how we can what's going well and what we can improve upon because The idea is many team sports and even even individual sports like ours, with track and field and tennis, the team is the identity, not your identity, right? And so we're examining that social, emotional, academic success of athletes in that environment, and private schools kind of thing, right? So, so yeah, it's a in football and basketball. They're usually very visible revenue sports get a lot of attention. So yeah, I wanted to hear from that perspective, and those were sports that I also participated in. Like I said, left bench is a role. Team. Everybody's got a role, 

Amy Bryant  19:31

everybody's got a role, and everyone and those roles are needed. They're important, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And Steve Brown Academy will help you understand your role once you're in college, I mean, and feel comfortable with your place on that team. I think that's really important. I love how you said that. I love the idea that you have for your business and supporting student athletes, not only in the transition to college, but while they're in college, being able to coach them and continue to coach them through those ups and downs. As you know, it's a roller coaster.

Steve Brown  19:58 

I gotta brag on you for a minute. Oh, no, no. I read a lot of your articles on what's what parents roles are during this process. One of the things I wanted to talk about was, or teach, is, everyone has a role. As you said, I feel like the athlete's role is to perform on the on the playing field, in the classroom and have a good experience with their you know, the folks that they come across, parents have a role as well. One thing they're not supposed to do, or we're not supposed to do, is live vicariously through my child, right, right? And be in a supportive role. And I think there's times where if a child doesn't do well, an athlete doesn't do well, they're getting on themselves. First. Chances are the coaches is getting on them while also praising them. The last thing they need is for a parent to get in the car and get on a case. So your articles really help with that respect too on so just and the college counselors have a role. Coaches have roles, so understanding it's a team effort. Yeah. Yep. So, yeah. So your articles are extremely helpful when you talk about what parents can do to to help their student athletes. So yeah,

Amy Bryant  21:09  

and I love the way you phrase that, that as parents, we don't want to necessarily vicariously live through our student athletes. I always laugh because, you know, it's I, I attend a lot of sporting events, of kids, my own kids, especially, but other kids too. And I love it when I watch the parents on the sidelines see their kid accomplish something, and their joy is it's very hard to separate their joy from from their child's joy, you know, like it's, I'm looking at them and I'm thinking to myself, are you thinking in your head, we did it? Like, are you saying, Yay, we did this? Because, really, your child did this. Your child did this. Your support helped them get to this place, but, but you didn't do it. You know, this isn't about you anymore, about the child, you know, and and so, yes, support them, but let's not live through them. Let's, let's have our own lives, our own existences. Let your child have their own life, their own existence. Let's support them. Let's celebrate them. Yes, for sure, but, but we didn't do, you know, we didn't do it. Yeah,

Steve Brown  22:13  

I have a bad story on that one, so

Amy Bryant  22:15  

please share. 

Steve Brown 22:16 

Yes, it was, it was travel volleyball. I don't know, 11-12, maybe, and I don't know if you're familiar with but we go down to Orlando. Is Disney complex. You have to pay to get to stay to play, as they call it. You have to stay on the complex. Is great, and the courts going all around. And my daughter's not really playing that well, oh, she's doing okay. Well, she's doing Actually, she's doing great. But the kids are not really doing that well. I mean, it's very intense, right? But these were first year young ladies playing, and it was understood. It was part of the growth process. All of us have gone through it. But for whatever reason, during the middle of between game one game or something, I decided to go over to the coach, and I said, this is unacceptable. He was go, oh, okay, thank you for that, mister Brown, so as the game goes on, the second game, my wife kind of nudges me and says, look who's sitting on the bench. And our daughter was sitting on the bench, right? Uh huh. Later on that afternoon, we go out to Disney and the little restaurants and things like that, and we go to Ghirardelli, and they're around the pool, they're eating ice cream, they're having a ball, and that's what it was all about. And as well as competing, I went to the coast the first thing in the morning. I said, I apologize. He said, I did the same thing. He said, but understand our job is just to continue to improve. And they did. The season went great, but that was a that was a moment that I said I would never be that that parent, and I had to be, I had to be checked right? And man, they improved over the years. It was, it was amazing, even within that season, and they grew together as a team through their successes and their areas of development, as I call them, right? So, but yeah, that was one of those moments where it was like, Oh, so now, you know everything, right? Trying to learn the hard way. And she had a ball, and Daddy wasn't embarrassing her anymore,

so she wasn't finding herself on the bench, right. right? There were times where everybody had a role, because, because her dad, she was she was cheering for her teammates, she did her thing. And so I was like, hey, Imma be over here cheering. I would be supporting the team and whatever you need. So that's great.

Amy Bryant  24:53  

That's right. I mean, it's such a good lesson, and thanks for sharing that story with us. Because, you know, there's not a lot of parents that are willing to share what they what they've done wrong in I put that in quotes because you're really not doing anything wrong. There's no right or wrong here. It's just what what you know is best for your child. And so you definitely learned that lesson, and you know, I'm glad that you can humbly recount it to to us, because I'm sure other parents have made that same mistake. But I can tell you as a coach, you know, if I were in that coach's shoes, and I have had some parents come up to me and do things like that, and you're just like, my first thought is, do you think that I'm watching the same game as you? Because I am. I'm watching the same game. I know this is unacceptable, and I'm working through it the way that these players need it to be worked through, which I know because I've worked with them since day one. I think sometimes parents forget that they are seeing a snapshot at game time, and that's it, and it's they're not getting the the before. They're not getting the you know, they don't know what happened in the locker room before the game. They don't know what happened at practice for the previous weeks unless they're actually standing there, which I don't recommend parents do, like give your child space, but you don't know everything. All you're seeing is a snapshot in time, and that snapshot in time is a very important piece of the whole journey, the whole process, like you pointed out, it includes time around the pool with their friends. It includes hard lessons from your coach. It includes days where your team's not playing that well, because when you experience not playing that well, then you know what it feels like to have to dig out of that hole and play better. So like all of that is part of this process, and we've gotta as parents, trust the coaches to do their jobs and and support our kids, because it's not our role to coach our kids. Agreed, agreed. Do you have any other advice for parents?

Steve Brown  27:02 

No, it's, again, just the idea that it's a role. I think it also helps to speak to parents who've kind of been there and done that, so especially those who have older siblings, right to learn. What did they do? Well, what did they wish they, you know, could do different. So I think it's also that that's huge to talk to parents who kind of been there because we had this sense that I know what's best for my child, right? And there are other folks who also know what's best for your child, because they've been trained that way, right? So just being have being willing to, obviously, the kids go to my athletes, you're never too You're never too old to learn, and you're never too young to set an example, right? So just keep an open mind, and at the end of the day, most folks, the majority of folks who are coaches, who are teachers, who who take on these roles, they are doing things in the best interest of your child. That's right. So we would say, in as one of our norms for one of our meetings, assume positive intent, right? Somebody may say something, somebody may react away if somebody may do something, and it may look on, on the surface, they have an ulterior motive. They don't like my kid. They don't, you know, they don't like how things are going, whatever. Again, back to we're all ignorant, just in different areas. They're prejudice. They're there so that they just don't know any better and just assume, assume positive intent. I think it was the author of Doonesbury, the cartoon series. He had written a book around something, around negative I got to get the book. I have it in my library, but one of the things he talked about was we should give ourselves, like a 48 hour grace period before we respond to certain stuff, yeah, before we write that email, before we send that letter, before we go and put our finger in somebody's face and kind of allow things to marinate. It's a great rule. Once I get the book, I look it up, but it was something that can be extremely helpful, especially things that are very sensitive to us and that we care about. We can. We can jump the gun very quickly because of who they are in our lives.

Amy Bryant  29:17  

Yeah, I mean, we can jump the gun really quickly when we think our child's being hurt, right? Because, you know, but, but again, you know the there's different levels to this. Again, your child being hurt is an important piece of this process. You know, it depends on, on the degree of the pain that they're experiencing, right? And so, you know, we know this as parents, what, what they're going through but, but allow that threshold to be pushed when we're talking about sport, and because they'll learn so much more if you allow them to experience a difficult moment without jumping in to try to fix the moment. So I think that's a really important piece of this. But you know, I love the 48 hour rule. I cannot tell you how many times as a coach I received, you know, I've had this conversation with another guest on my show. I call it hate mail. He calls it love letters. You know, when a parent fires off an email because they see something in a game they don't like, or their kid comes home unhappy, or whatever, and they fire it off, and if you just gave it 48 hours, you know, all logic and reason would come back into your sense of self, and you would, you know, perhaps just tone down the hate or the love that's in that in that email that you sent to a coach, and it means so much more, because you're right. I mean, if you were to assume positive intent. You know, you've got to these coaches, myself included yourself included we mean, well, now there's a difference between intent and impact. Okay, so if, if you, you know, if your intention is good, that's great. But sometimes our the impact of our actions, you know, falls a little short of where our intention is, and that's where, as coaches, we can continue learning, we can continue growing. And as long as we have that growth mindset, you know, the impact will continue to be positive. If we do. You know, we're human, we make mistakes, but, but, but assume the positive intact intent. I love that. I really do, but lose

Steve Brown  31:22 

your thing by Scott Adams, okay, really, good book. Yeah,

Amy Bryant  31:25

awesome, good. We'll put it in the show notes. Well, Steve, we're running up on time. I know you're busy writing your dissertation, and you gotta get that done. We, you know, I'm your biggest cheerleader, Steve, I would love to see that done. I would love to have Dr Steve Brown back on the show. You know, next year. I think you're fantastic. I know your business is going to be and already is amazing. And I can't wait to shoot some athletes your way to support. But any any parting words for us? Steve,

Steve Brown  32:02  

no, I gotta, I gotta thank you, because again, like again, you never know how someone's going to accept you. And from the minute we cross paths, the first thing you want to do is put me in contact with other like minded Educational Consultants. Hey, come to come to this dinner. Let's sit down. We have this talk. And so that's that's huge. It's kind of like a, you know, a more experienced player on the team taking it kind of under their wing. So I've always appreciated your direct and indirect counsel and and our and our professional relationship and personal relationship growing so and an honor to be on this podcast. So Thanks for considering. Well,

Amy Bryant 32:42  

it's an honor to have you on the podcast. Truly, you're an inspiration to so many, and your story is going to make a fantastic book as well. So I'm excited to read that. And yeah, we'll, we'll definitely be in touch.

Steve Brown  55:38  

Sounds good? Thank you.