As a player, Sean was a Goalie at Springfield and was twice names All American.

Sean coached Endicott University from 1998 to 2015, leading them to 8 CCC Championships, as well as taking the Division 3 school to as high as 5 in the National rankings. He has coached 21 All American players. And in 2020 led the the Cannons in the Premier Lacrosse League, to the Championship.

Sean is a terrific leader and role model and in this interview some of the highlights for me were:

• The role that positivity plays in correcting and sustaining culture
• The pillars of respect, trust and accountability that shape his teams; and how he talks about bringing these things to life in everyday actions.
• And The story he tells about starting as a head coach at 26 years old with a team and writing to each player individually, and then maintaining that connection over the years.

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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Today’s episode is focuses on the topic of Serial Winning Coaches

And Dr David Turner and I are joined for the discussion by Professor Cliff Mallett and Professor Sergio Lara-Bercial who have just written a book called Learning from Serial Winning Coaches based on their research interviewing 17 of these coaches across 10 sports and 10 different countries.

Cliff Mallett is an Olympic and World Championship medal winning coach. He is a distinguished Professor of Sport Psychology and Coaching at the University of Queensland, Australia. And has developed a world-renowned online program in sports coaching and consults nationally and internationally for many elite sporting organisations.

While Sergio is also an international basketball coach who led teams into 4 European Championships. He is a world-renown Professor of Sport Coaching at Leeds Beckett University, England and VP for the International Council for Coaching Excellence. He also conducts applied research in coach development and youth sport and consults globally for organisations such as FIFA, UEFA, FIBA, NIKE and the IOC. 

There are so many great ideas in the interview but a few that stuck with me afterwards were:

•  The idea of connection before correction when it comes to coaching, as you cant teach anyone until you have connected with them and they know you care.
•  The importance of a shared purpose, holding each other accountable and respecting the individual when it comes to building connection within the team.
•  And How the great coaches have a philosophy that contains clear values and principles that they use a framework to guide their work, particularly when they face dilemmas.

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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Kevin is an American paralympic athlete and now Wheelchair Rugby coach.

As an athlete he won 2 Bronze medals at the 1988 Paralympics, before transitioning into coaching Wheelchair Rugby in 1992. His team, Lakeshore then went on to 5 consecutive National Titles. This led to him being appointed Team USA coach where we won a silver at 2002 World Championships and a Bronze at the 2004 Paralympics. In 2009 he was appointed coach of the Canadian National team and led them to a silver medal at the 2012 Paralympics and gold at the 2015 World Wheelchair Rugby Challenge. He is presently the head coach of the Japan Wheelchair Rugby team where he led them to Bronze at the 2022 world Championships.

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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Our Great Coach on this episode is rugby's Damian McGrath.

Damian started life as a teacher, but then in his words “took a gamble” and moved into professional coaching. He has now coached teams across multiple countries, in both rugby league, Rugby union, as well as Rugby sevens. He has coached at Club level with the Leeds Rhinos in England’s Super League and was England’s Assistant Coach at the 2000 Rugby League World Cup. In 2015 he became Head Coach of the Samoan National 7s team leading them to a Cup success in Paris. He then took over as Head Coach of the Canadian National 7s team leading them to a historic Cup success in Singapore. He also coached national Rugby 7’s teams of Germany and Kenya.

He has just released a new book: Can You Be Fluent In Success?

The highlights are:

•  How he uses the play by Thomas Moore, A Man for all season to describe the roles a coach must play.
• The story she he shares about the bass player Herby Flowers who played the famous riff on Lou Reeds son Walk on the wildside. To illustrate how coaches get the most from the options available to them.
• His theory on the doubt percentage and how he uses this to find that little bit extra in people.
• And the idea of a mental highlights reel and how he has used it during his career to fortify his confidence.

 If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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Muffet is an American Basketball coach who led the women’s team at Notre Dame for 33 seasons.

In all she led the team to 9 final fours, 7 championship games and 2 NCAA champion ships in 2001 and 2018.

She was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011

and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and Legends of Coaching award in 2017.

Some of the highlights include:

• Her thoughts on empowering young women and doing this through a mixture of listening and encouraging them to use their voice to talk about things that are important to them.
•  How believing in people after they fail at something is one of the most important things a leader can do.
•  Her view that women are often not taught that it is not OK to be competitive and ambitious, and the work she does to help women understand that it is OK to be like this on the court.

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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Doug is a former Ice Hockey Head Coach, GM, and sportscaster and he has just written a terrific new book called Draft Day: How Hockey Teams Pick Winners or Get Left Behind.

 Doug is a great story teller and some of the highlights of our discussion were;

• The importance of scouting staff, and how in Hockey they have to cover Canada, the USA. And key parts of Europe like Czech, Slovenia, Slovakia, Sweden, Finland and Russia.
•  How he talks about the tension between scouting and analytics, and describes analytics as the salt and pepper you put on your meal.
•  The way he talks about trading for the future, not the past.

And the story he tells about his biggest draft mistake and how it ended up costing him personally 30 million.

If you have any comments or feedback you can reach us at [email protected]

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Mike Hesson is New Zealand cricket coach.

He started his coaching career in his early 20’s while playing in the UK. From there he progressed through Assistant coaching before accepting a the role as Argentina’s head coach in 2003. He returned to New Zealand and became Head Coach of Otago and leading them to the 2008 one-day trophy and the 2009 T20 championship.

In 2011 he took on the job of Head Coach of Kenya before being appointed the Head Coach of the New Zealand national team, the Black Caps in 2012. He went on to take them from a One-Day international ranking of 8th to 2nd by the time he left the role in 2018. He finished his tenure as one of the most successful coaches I the nations history with highlights including a record breaking 13 game winning streak. He has gone on to coach the Kings in the IPL and Islamabad in the Pakistan Super League.

Some of the highlights include:

•  On being comfortable with silence and not feeling like you have to always fill it as a coach with information. But instead using it as a space to observe and gather information so you can be helpful later on.
• The way he uses questions to help lead people, as he believes that the majority of the team the player has the answer they just haven’t been asked the right question.
• The importance of authenticity and in his words “if I want my players to believe in me and trust me and have relationship with me, they need to know that it's actually me rather than me trying to be somebody else.”

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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Vern is that rare individual who has coached at the elite level across multiple sports. His foundation is in Track & Field coaching, however over a career that spans almost 50 years he has worked in Major League Soccer, Major League Baseball, the NBA, Cricket, the NHL, Softball, Swimming and with San Francisco Forty Niners. Kansas City Chiefs. He is also the author of 9 books and over 100 articles. By any sense of the definition he is a coaching polymath.

In this terrific interview some of the key highlights were:

• Verns view on The importance of pointing out an athlete’s negative self-talk and working with them on reframing it.
•  How he defines mental training as mind plus muscle equals life.
•  The importance of rhythm when it comes to analyzing elite performance.
•  And How he describes his philosophy of trying to help the best be better. And how he tries to achieve this as a coach by helping prepare the athlete for the path ahead, not preparing the path for them.
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If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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Anson Dorrance on Building Competitive Cultures, Values-Driven Leadership, and Developing People Beyond Sport.

There is no algorithm for leadership. So we ask the world's great coaches how they do it.

UNC women’s soccer coach Anson Dorrance joins the Great Coaches podcast from Chapel Hill during spring break to discuss how he built his coaching philosophy by adopting key qualities from mentors, including Dean Smith’s humility and training measurement. He recounts being introduced to soccer in Addis Ababa after a privileged sporting upbringing, and explains that his real expertise is competition: designing environments so competitive that athletes develop a “gift of fury” and the capacity to win. Dorrance describes the “competitive cauldron,” where every practice is recorded, ranked, and now analyzed in minute detail by a student analytics team, providing rapid feedback that drives deliberate practice. He shares a current leadership experiment pairing top and bottom culture performers, and emphasizes principle-centered living, peer-evaluated core values, and a human-development legacy that advances women’s leadership and ethical decision-making.

Q. What am I an expert in?

Q. Am I leading myself before trying to lead others?

Q. Have I built a principle center, or am I living on obedience and comfort?

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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There's no algorithm for leadership. So we ask the world's great coaches how they do it.

On this episode of the Great Coaches podcast, gymnastics coach and consultant Aimee Boorman joins from Florida to discuss her global clinic work, a book in progress, and a project she believes will change gymnastics. She argues great coaches stay true to their values, remember athletes are humans, and include them in the process through open communication rather than intimidation. Boorman emphasizes protecting athletes’ emotional stability by reading body language, tailoring challenge levels to individuals, and “outsmarting” fear responses by shifting the narrative so athletes choose to engage. She shares strategies for competition calm (treat meets like practice), warns against perfectionism and score-fixation (including prohibiting young gymnasts from looking at scores), and recounts supporting Simone Biles’ decision to skip a camp to safeguard her wellbeing despite consequences. Boorman also discusses appropriate athlete independence, coach-athlete trust in a high-risk sport, handling separations, continual coach education, and the legacy of kindness and joy.

Q. Where in your life or work are you conforming to a "traditional" approach that conflicts with who you truly are — and what would it cost you to stay true to yourself instead?

Q. When you challenge the people you lead or parent, are you calibrating to their individual breaking point — or are you applying a one-size-fits-all standard that risks pushing someone past theirs?

Q. Are you willing to apologize to those you lead when your delivery doesn't match your intent — and what might that vulnerability build in your relationship? 

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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