Way Of Champions Podcast

Anson Dorrance recently stepped down as Head Coach the University of North Carolina Women’s Soccer program. In his career spanning 1979-2024, he won over 1100 games, 21 NCAA Championships, 7x NCAA Coach of the Year awards, 12 ACC Coach of the Year Awards, and even one NCAA Men's Coach of the Year award. He also led the US Women’s National Team to the 1991 World Cup Championship. He has published 3 books (Vision of a Champion, The Man Watching, and Training Soccer Champions) and has a wonderful podcast where he interviews the best of the best, the Vision of a Champion Podcast:  https://ansondorrancesoccer.com/podcast/ While we spoke today, we all decided this would be a two part interview, so today we recorded part 1. We took a deep dive into his decision to retire as head coach, staying on as the third assistant this season and the new responsibilities it comes with, and then pivoted to self-awareness. His insight into helping players and programs to succeed was incredible, and we dove deep into the importanc

This week on the podcast, we dive into the qualities of an exceptional youth sports experience with Mike Kelleher and Derek Broadley of Charleston SC in South Carolina. We discuss the importance of vision and core principles, the need for a curriculum that coaches of all abilities can implement, how to get buy in from coaches who do not want to follow the club plan, engaging parents, and the importance of high quality player evaluations and effective feedback.  Mike Keller is the CEO of Charleston SC, and previous president of the Charleston Battery of the USL. He spent years working in the English Premier League helping to revamp the Academy system for elite youth players, and spent years as the CEO of Global Image Sports where he oversaw the West Ham United International Academy in addition to working with thirteen professional football clubs including Glasgow Rangers, Chievo Verona, Wolverhampton Wanderers and FC Utrecht. Derek Broadley is the Technical Director for Charleston SC, and former Technical Dire

Ashton Eaton is a 2x Olympic Gold Medalist (2012 and 2016) and a 5x World indoor and outdoor champion in the decathlon. He was the former world record holder in the decathlon and still holds the world record for the heptathlon. At the University of Oregon, he was a 5x NCAA champion and all American. Yet he grew up in Central Oregon a multi-sport athlete who only learned about the decathlon as a senior in high school when he was considering going to play Division III college football. Gabriel Castaño is a graduate of Penn State University and a 2x Mexican Olympic Swimmer in the 50 freestyle (2020 and 2024), and was once ranked as high as 4th in the world in his event. He, too, spent a childhood as a multi-sport athlete, competing mostly in road cycling and mountain biking after watching his father race motorcycles as a child. He began swimming in high school, and joined swim team to be with some friends, yet improved rapidly as he fell in love with the sport, eventually becoming an NCAA swimmer and Olympian. I

It is hard to believe but we have reached episode 400 of the Way of Champions Podcast, and we wanted an incredible guest to celebrate this momentous occasion. Enter Phil Jackson, a 2x NBA Champion as a player with the NY Knicks and an 11x NBA Champion coach with the Chicago Bulls and LA Lakers. He coached all time greats such as Michal Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Kobe Bryant and Shaq, was one of the first coaches to bring meditation and mindfulness practices into professional sports, and so much more. In our conversation today, recorded for the 2023 Way of Champions Conference, Phil tells us about his storied coaching career, getting star players to buy into the team culture, coaching challenging individuals such as Dennis Rodman, lessons learned from Vince Lombardi, and more. It is a masterclass of coaching. Enjoy. THE CHAMPION SPORTS PARENT IS AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!! WE ARE LIVE! This book is a great compliment to The Champion Teammate, as your parents are a huge part of your culture. Click here to order now or e

Acacia Walker-Weinstein joins us this week on the Way of Champions, continuing our October run of champion coaches. Walker is the Head Women's Lacrosse coach at Boston College, the 2024 NCAA Champions. As either a player or coach, Walker has participated in 20 of the last 21 NCAA Tournaments and was a part of Northwestern’s three consecutive NCAA titles from 2006-08 as an assistant coach. Since becoming head coach in 2012, she has led BC to 7 final fours, national titles in '24 and '21, three ACC regular-season titles and two ACC championships. She has coached three Terwaaraton Award winners, 35 All Americans and is a 2x IWLCA National Coach of the Year.  In this incredible conversation from the 2022 Online Way of Champions Conference, Walker discusses here 2021 National Title run, her philosophy on player recruitment and team culture, how she implements the Way of Champions methodology from her time working with Jerry, and so much more. There is so much gold here so get ready to take notes.  THE CHAMPION SPO

In the world of swimming, you would be hard pressed to find a coach whose resume matches that of American Swim Coaches Association Hall of Famer Frank Busch. As a collegiate coach at The University of Arizona, his teams won 2 NCAA Championships and his swimmers won a combined 80 individual and relay national championships. He was a 6x NCAA coach of the year and 11x Pac 12 coach of the year. He retired from Arizona in 2011 and became an assistant coach for Team USA for the 2004 and 2008 Olympics, and then National Team Director for the 2012 and 2016 games. During those two games, his swimmers won 64 medals, including 33 golds, as he oversaw swimmers such as Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky.  Frank and John met at a swimming conference in Mexico City in Fall 2024 and had so many great conversations that they decided to record their thoughts on leadership, the importance of team dynamics in individual sports,  the importance of team values, being a truth teller, and developing people and not simply athletes. Enj

Roy Williams served as the men's head coach for the North Carolina Tar Heels for 18 seasons and the Kansas Jayhawks for 15 seasons. With a total of 903 wins, Williams took his teams to nine Final Fours in his careers at Kansas and North Carolina and won 3 NCAA Championships at UNC. Williams is the fifth NCAA Men's Division I head coach to reach 900 wins, and reached the mark in fewer games than any other head coach with 900+ wins. He is the only coach in NCAA history to have led two different programs to at least four Final Fours each, and the only basketball coach in NCAA history to have 400 or more victories at two NCAA Division I schools. He is also 14th all-time in the NCAA in win percentage among men's college basketball coaches. He was inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006 and the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007. Williams started his college coaching career at North Carolina as an assistant coach for Dean Smith in 1978. Four years later, North Carolina won the national championship

In this weeks episode, John and Jerry discuss their brand new book The Champion Sports Parent: Practical Wisdom for Raising Confident, Competitive, Mentally Tough Athletes. They wrote this book as a companion to last year's The Champion Teammate, so that parents can best support their children along their athletic journey. Many parents have grown frustrated by the youth sports industrial complex and want to know how to create an exceptional sporting journey for your athletes. They have you heard about concepts such as confidence, mental toughness, and competitiveness, but are not quite sure how to help their athletic child develop these important character traits, while overcoming adversity and the inevitable ups and downs of playing sports. This book is the culmination of their decades of working with Olympians, World Champions, All-Americans, and over 100 championship teams. They have interviewed some of the world's top athletes, coaches, and authors on this podcast, conducted hundreds of workshops for coac

In this replay from 2019, John talks with Ted Kroeten (@Joyofthepeople), founder of Joy of the People, a free play soccer program in Minnesota. Kroeten leads the way in rethinking and delivering player development always championing kids and possibilities based on his experienced, dedicated, and innovative soccer career. Joy of the People’s mission statement provides a clear idea of what they’re attempting to provide:   To support the idea of play as an important part of a child’s development, to build small soccer spaces for kids to play, to serve disadvantaged youth, and to build community spirit.   Here are some highlights from the Podcast: What happened when free play was introduced into practice? How does the now defunct idea of “10,000 hours” play into free play and increasing performance? An amazing story of a soccer club famed for youth player development, with numerous expensive player transfers, yet they sign their players after the age of 16  The younger teams get beat in competition, but how

Juwan Brescacin (@jbrescacinjones82) is a former collegiate football player at Northern Illinois University and the 15th overall Canadian Football League draft pick in 2016. He played 8 years professionally in Canada, winning two Grey Cups (2018 and 2022) before retiring and founding the High Point Athletes Foundation. Today he is pursuing a masters in psychology while mentoring young athletes and teaching them the mental and physical skills needed to exceed on and off the field. In our chat today, we discuss Juwan's athletic journey, overcoming devastating injuries, being mentored as a young athlete, and winning his final Grey Cup as a senior player helping young players lead the team to victory.  Learn more at https://www.highpointathletes.org/ OUR NEW BOOK IS AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER! Jerry and John are so excited about their new book together The Champion Sports Parent: Practical Wisdom for Raising Confident, Competitive, Mentally Tough Athletes. Release date is October 1, but we are taking preorders now an

Brett White is a seasoned sports coach and leadership expert with over 17 years of experience in football (soccer) coaching. He currently serves as the Head Coach for Bonnet Bay FC’s First Grade team in the SSFA Premier League. He has a rich history of fostering talent and managing large teams, having served as the Coach & Player Development Coordinator at Bonnet Bay FC for over 40 teams.  He is also the Football Manager at HFCA Cambodia - Happy Football Cambodia Australia, where he works with underprivileged and impoverished young people, using football programs to instill hope, dignity, community and football opportunities.  In addition to his extensive coaching background, Brett has dedicated a decade to mindset and resilience coaching at leadership, sporting, and organizational levels. He is also the CEO and Founder of Be Leaders and the BE Academy, where he continues to develop, train, coach, and empower leaders, teams, and organizations globally. His new book is Behave, which you can get on Amazon a

Dr. Joe Baker (@bakerjyorku) is the Tanenbaum Research Chair at the University of Toronto, Canada. He is a world-leader in research on talent identification, developing sport expertise, relative age effect, and high performance athlete development and has held visiting researcher/professor positions in the United Kingdom, Australia and Germany. His research considers the varying influences on optimal human development, ranging from issues affecting athlete development and skill acquisition to barriers and facilitators of optimal aging. Joe is author/editor of 9 books and hundreds of peer reviewed articles and book chapters. He works with several Canadian high performance sports teams (e.g., Golf Canada, Wheelchair Basketball Canada) and organizations (e.g., Own the Podium, the Canadian Sport Institutes/Centres, the Canadian Paralympic Committee) in their quests for international success. More info on his research can be found at yorku.ca/bakerj    His new book is called The Tyranny of Talent: How it Compels a

In this excellent conversation from 2021, we are joined by Rasmus Ankersen (@RasmusAnkersen), an internationally known author, speaker, and film producer and one of the worlds leading experts on talent identification and development. Today he is one of the founders of Sport Republic, which is the majority shareholder of Southampton FC, where he also works as the Director of Football. He was also the co-director of football for Brentford FC of the English Premier League from 2015-2021 and Chairman of Champions League club FC Midtjylland of the Danish Super League. His 2012 book The Goldmine Effect is an incredible read and was one of the books that inspired me at the beginning of my Changing the Game Project journey, so to say that I am thrilled to have Rasmus on is an understatement.  In 2021 he released a film called “The Hockey Miracle in the Middle of Nowhere,” the true story of how the small town of Herning, Denmark (pop. 50,000) sent five players to the NHL in a ten year period. No Danish player had ever

Ken Rouff and Jean Linscott are the authors of What is the Goal? The Truth About the Youth Sports Industry. Today we discuss their new, book, many of the problems with the youth sports industrial complex and how it more often than not negatively effects children and drives them out of sports. Ken, jean and John share their own parenting experiences as well.    Jean Linscott, Ph.D., is a clinical child psychologist. She has been working professionally with children and families for over thirty years in hospital-based, clinic, and private-practice settings. She and Kenneth Ruoff are the parents of three athletes who are veterans of the Youth Sports Industry.  She can be reached at JeanLLinscott@gmail.com Kenneth Ruoff, Ph.D., is a professor of history at Portland State University and the author of numerous award-winning books. From the perspective of a historian, he is astonished, in comparison to what he experienced as a kid, at how drastically different a youth-sports environment his family has faced these pa

Neill Collins is a former professional soccer player, with nearly 600 appearances across clubs such as Sunderland, Leeds, Wolves, Sheffield United, and the Tampa Bay Rowdies. As a player he won promotion to the English Premier League with both Wolves and Sunderland, and played under managers such as Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy. In 2018 he became head coach of the Rowdies, and during his tenure reached two USL Championship Final games and was named USL Championship coach of the year. In 2023 he left to manage Barnsley in League One, and was in a 5th place promotion playoff spot when he was fired in April 2024 with one game to play. In our wide ranging conversation today, we discuss his playing journey and the necessity of dealing with adversity and looking at difficult moments as opportunities, and how that has carried into his coaching career. We discuss how to win in the locker room, first, how important it is to connect not just with your top players but those who do not play much, and how to have difficult

Mike Lee (@whoisMikeLee) is a globally recognized keynote speaker, internationally sold author, and coach who shares high-performance leadership lessons from inside the hearts and minds of NBA’s elite. His work helps individual contributors, leaders and organizations elevate engagement, win the war for talent, and create cultures of belonging in a world of disruption.  For 15 years he spent time with basketball’s 1% including NBA MVPs Steph Curry and Joel Embiid. While leading his basketball training business, he was blindsided by a period of personal and professional adversity, and dove deep into the practices of mindfulness and meditation. Today he’s blended diverse backgrounds of mindset, mindfulness, and high-performance to create a counter-cultural approach to the future of leadership. Learn more and connect at www.mindshiftlabs.com. NEW WOC MASTERMIND AND CERTIFICATION PROGRAM As you may have heard, we decided to cancel our 2024 Way of Champions Conference, which opens up the opportunity for us to begin

Maggie Mertens www.MaggieMertens.com) is a writer, journalist, and editor located in Seattle. Her essays and reporting have appeared in The Atlantic, NPR, Sports Illustrated, ESPNw, Deadspin, VICE, The Cut, Glamour, Pacific Standard, Refinery29, and Creative Nonfiction, among others. Her work has also appeared in The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2021 (Triumph Books), Women and Sports in the United States (The University of Chicago Press), and has been nominated for the 2021 Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting. She earned a B.A. in English Literature and Italian Studies from Smith College, and an M.F.A. in Creative-Nonfiction Writing from The New School. Today we discuss her new book Better, faster, Farther: How Running Changed Everything we Know About Women. Maggie is a greta story teller and her book/interview discuss the earliest stages of women's running, from the 1896 Olympic marathon, the myth of women collapsing on the track in the 1928 Olympics that set women's sport back decades, to Paula

Tara VanDerveer was the head women's basketball coach at Stanford University from 1985 until her retirement in 2024. VanDerveer was a 10 time Pac-12 Coach of the Year and the 1990 National Coach of the year, and led the Stanford Cardinal to three NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Championships: in 1990, 1992 and 2021. She took a leave of absence in 1996 to coach the US Olympic Team to gold in the Atlanta Games, and was indicted to the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002. In January 2024, she won her 1203rd game and passed legendary Duke coach Mike Krzyzweski to become the all time winningest NCAA basketball coach for both men and women.  In our wide ranging talk today, she discusses her new role as a coach mentor for Stanford coaches, creating a values based culture, staying relevant as kids change, The growth of women’s sports and the Caitlin Clark effect, and how great coaches take their players and teams to a place they would never get to on their own. Get ready to take some notes. NEW WOC MASTERMIN

Urs Koenig is a veteran executive coach, professor, ultra-endurance champion, former UN Peacekeeper, author, and keynote speaker. All these seemingly disparate paths led him to one idea: that the best leaders lead from a place of humility. Urs has captured those ideas in his new book, Radical Humility: Be a Badass Leader and a Good Human. His lessons come from Big Events like having to pull out of the Race Across America because of a life-threatening condition and watching children in Kosovo enact brutalities they continue to witness in their region. They also come from Small Things like being told off by dad for not preparing properly for a camping trip and getting a dressing-down from a junior officer for a careless mistake. Connect wth him at urs@urskoenig.com NEW WOC MASTERMIND AND CERTIFICATION PROGRAM As you may have heard, we decided to cancel our 2024 Way of Champions Conference, which opens up the opportunity for us to begin a year long mastermind and coach certification program in the Way of Champio

This time of year there is a lot of fear in sport, We see it in the Copa America and Euro Soccer championships, Olympic Trials, and even on the youth level as our kids tryout for teams. In this podcast replay from 2021, we are joined by Owen Eastwood (@oweneastwood), one of the world’s most sought after high performance coaches. He has worked with the England Men’s Football (soccer) team during the 2021 Euros, reaching the Final, and has worked with organizations such at NATO Command, South Africa Cricket, Scotland Rugby, the Royal Ballet, and Team GB. We discuss his fantastic new book Belonging: The Ancient Code of Togetherness, in which he sets out the thinking behind his methods of unlocking success, and how they can be adapted to different groups and teams. In the process, he discusses evolutionary science, personal development and philosophy, as he draws on notions of belonging, of shared vision and the spiritual wisdom of his ancestors. We discuss both the biology and psychology of togetherness, fear vs