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Coaching at any level is a very, very hard profession and so many women cannot see themselves doing that because there are not a lot of mothers who are celebrated as moms, as coaches.

To go out and lead a program and then to also be a mother.

These people are superhuman to be able to do that.

Emily Jo Roberts is currently the Director of Women's Coaching and Nil Strategy at Wasserman, where her role is to create, grow and celebrate female coaches and other industry leaders in sports.

Roberts was previously a college basketball coach with stops at Appalachian State University as an assistant women's basketball coach and recruiting coordinator at Elon University as both the Director of Operations and assistant women's basketball coach, and at the University of Memphis as the video coordinator.

She also coached high school basketball on both the girls and boys side as an assistant coach before coaching at the college level.

Emily Jo played her college basketball at the University of North Carolina Wilmington where she earned a degree in Communication and Media Studies.

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Get ready to take some notes as you listen to this episode with Emily Jo Roberts, director of women's coaching and nil strategy at Wasserman.

Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads podcast.

It's Mike Klinsling here without my co host Jason Sunkel tonight.

But I am pleased to be joined by Emily Jo Roberts from the Wasserman Agency.

Emily Jo, welcome to the Hoop Heads pod.

Thank you.

I'm excited to be here, thrilled to have you on.

Looking forward to diving into all of the diverse things that you've been able to do in your basketball life.

Let's start by going back in time to when you were a kid.

Tell me about your first experiences with the game of basketball.

Who got you into it?

What do you remember about the.

The first time you got involved with basketball?

Yeah, so I grew up in a really teeny town.

I grew up on a peach farm.

My family owned a peach farm in South Carolina, so I grew up working it in the summers.

But I.

Where basketball really kind of started was.

I mean, that's where my work ethic came from.

I think it's like working on the peach farm and when I really got into the game of basketball.

My mom was a high school basketball coach, so she coached for almost 35 and had.

We were trying to count the other day, like 25 championships.

Like, we couldn't.

We.

We stopped counting at some point.

She was unbelievable.

Legendary high school women's basketball and volleyball or girls basketball and volleyball coach at the high school level in South Carolina and pretty, pretty well known in the area.

And so I just was a follower of her and in her footsteps and was constantly around her team.

And they were all my big sisters.

I mean, I still keep in touch with that group or so many of them in so many way.

Um, so I just, I kind of fell in love with it at a young age, just being around it from being around my mom.

I mean, I was constantly on the bench with her and the, the, the, the young assistant coach.

Like, I thought I was really coaching and turning over coaching cues.

You know, I was constantly riding my bicycle through practice and there, you know, the players knew that they had to just watch out for Emily and that.

I mean, that was kind of, you know, I was just always around the game.

I just kind of had that.

The luxury to be around very good technical basketball coach that.

And I was lucky enough I got to play for her as well.

And I think I, the.

I was one of the first ever seventh graders in South Carolina to play varsity basketball.

It was a long time ago and right before Ivory Lada, she followed in my footsteps.

So we'll get to say I got to be ivory at something nice.

There you go.

Yeah.

And so when I.

But in the seventh grade, I played in a state championship, I was 12 and I had 12, 13, a little French braid playing against 18, 17, 18 year old grown women.

And, you know, I mean, I was fearless in that way.

And I just remember I there was.

I made my first ever three pointer that I shot.

It was in same same gym that Dawn Staley and her team plays in.

So every time I go there, I'm like, I'm, you know, playing a few state championships here and just that I remember that moment as a seventh grader in that state championship game.

We ended up losing by 18.

It was not our best game or our best day out, but it was a moment I realized like, oh, this is something I really love more than I.

My mother never pushed it on me.

I just always wanted to be around and I wanted to learn.

But that was a moment for me where I was like, oh, I'm good at this and I want to be good at this and I want to be better at this.

And absolutely fell in love.

I think it was probably when I took a charge and hit my head so hard and I was sitting on the sideline and my mom looked over and she's like, are you ready?

And the trainer was like, I think she might have a concussion.

And my mother goes, she's my daughter, she's fine.

And that was the moment I knew.

I was like, I'm going to be, you know, a pretty tough basketball player for the rest of my life.

So the joys of playing for parents.

There you go.

All right, so we're going to get.

There's a.

There's a lot to unpack right there.

So first question is when.

When did you realize that your experience growing up with a mom who had keys to the gym and you just always had access to be able to get into a gym and be around teams and be around coaches.

How old were you when you realized that, hey, not everybody else is getting this same experience.

You remember, did you have a light bulb moment of like, man, like my teammates don't have the same opportunity these same.

Just the ability to just be around the game in the same way that you did?

I mean, I was sneaking into the gym at like fifth grade and I was sneaking in.

I was taking my mom's keys to go get into the gym without anyone knowing.

So it started early, the access before I even started playing.

But I really think a lot of that came my access came from too.

My uncle coached at UNC with Sylvia hatchell for almost 40 years and brilliant basketball mind.

And so the access, I think for me, because I grew up in a really small town in South Carolina, came from me.

When my mother would actually send me away from her and send me to UNC's women's basketball camp for basically a whole summer, she would just kind of hand me off.

And it started.

I started doing that when I was in sixth grade.

And I didn't know I loved basketball.

I just knew I loved to go to UNC camp and have fun and spend my uncle's money in the camp store and eat pizza.

Nothing better than that old school camp.

I'm right there with you.

That's right.

That's right.

Where pizza was all we had.

And so I think that was like a really.

A moment where I realized I had access that a lot of my teammates didn't.

In a small town, like getting to go and do that.

We didn't have a lot of aau.

It was YBOA in that time period.

My mom coached it just so that her players would have opportunities to be seen.

And she had players that played at high Division 1 levels, from lower Division 1 to Division 2, all over.

And she coached, coached it and did that just for her team at the time so they would have that access.

And so from a young age, like I was around all of that and I got access to that really early.

But you know, as a player, you know, I.

I got to go into the gym with my mom if I wanted to and say, hey, will you come shoot with me at 6am before school?

And she would.

And you know, she.

She certainly didn't give me any special treatment other than.

She probably yelled at me more than other for sure.

But she, you know, that access, I mean, it was.

It was probably when I was a seventh grader and I realized I wanted to be really good after we lost that state championship.

You know, I was in the gym every day and every day, you know, at that point she gave me her keys and the code to get into the gym.

And I would try to bring teammates along and I started to just get a group of players to come play with me and shoot with me and work out with me.

And, you know, we played in three more state championships, you know, throughout my high school career and, you know, were really good and really well known in that time period.

So, you know, I didn't just have the opportunity to do it for me I had the opportunity to bring people along and do it with me, which was just a really cool experience, being able to grow up in a small town and have your mom as your high school coach.

And like I said, we ended up also taking our teams to Carolina for their team camp.

So, like, everyone also then got to experience that as we got in that same space.

Like, what Chapel Hill was.

How magical a place Chapel Hill was.

There you go.

You're showing them around.

Hey, this is this, and this is that.

I could.

I could see.

I can already.

I could see.

I could see it in my mind's eye as it's happening there.

I thought I owned this.

I'm sure you did.

I'm sure you did.

There's no question about that.

If you're there every summer and you're bringing.

You're bringing friends along, you are the tour guide.

You were definitely the tour guide.

So as you're bringing your teammates into the gym, are you thinking about what you're doing as I'm starting to coach my teammates, or are you still looking at it as I'm utilizing my teammates to make us all better players?

But you weren't necessarily thinking about it from a coaching perspective, Like, I guess, how dialed in were you on?

Hey, maybe at some point I want to be a coach because my mom is a coach, and I love basketball, and I know that at some point I want to do this.

Or were you just focused on, hey, we just lost the state championship.

When I'm in.

You know, when I'm in seventh grade and I want to be the best player I can be, I don't know if either one of those perspectives rings more true for you.

Yeah, I mean, I think at the time I just.

I wanted to be really good.

I knew I wanted to go play in college.

After that was a moment where I was like, I know I want to go play in college, and I want to be really good.

And.

And I think I just wanted.

And I knew that if I wanted to be really good, I had other people around me be really good, and I just wanted them to come along and do that.

And I wanted to have that same, you know, energy and excitement in the same way.

And some did and some didn't.

But, you know, when I was young, I thought we could all do the same thing.

But I.

As I've grown, I've learned to enjoy the fact that people are different and they work differently and they have different views about things and they see the world differently.

But I think that was most important thing to me was like, I want to win a state championship.

We lost that one.

I had the taste of defeat.

I don't want that again.

I want to go in, and I want to win, and I want to be really good.

And so just bringing people into that space, I do think it was an element of.

Obviously, my mom was a coach.

She was a very good coach.

And my uncle at UNC, being the kind of coach he was and being able to be around the game in that way.

My aunt was also a coach and won a few state championships in South Carolina.

My grandfather won some state championships in South Carolina.

So, like, I knew that there was an element of coaching probably in my future, just the way that I saw the game, the way that I was a coach on the floor.

But I think it, you know, when I was kind of bringing my teammates along, it was more about, like, I want to win, and that's.

And I know that I need other people to win.

All right, so when you're in the gym and you're doing things, whether you're working out on your own, whether you're working out with teammates, whether you're.

What did that process look like for you in terms of figuring out what you were doing to try to work on your game?

Were you talking to your mom?

Were you just being creative as you're in there trying to figure stuff out?

What were you working on?

Because I always say, like, again, I grew up in a time before all the Internet and trainers and all this stuff.

I mean, I'm an old guy.

So, like, I was just in the gym, and basically, like, I had two workouts that I did when I was playing.

I had one I did when I was by myself.

And if I was lucky enough to have somebody else to work out with or that wanted to shoot with me, I had another workout that I'd do with them.

And other than that, like, I look at all the things that players and coaches, you know, have access to now, and just the creativity and all the different.

And I'm like, I did the same boring stuff for, like, four years of high school, and then four years, I got really good at my workout.

I don't know if it really.

How much better of a player it made me, but I got really, really good at that workout.

So just what did it look like for you when you really wanted to try to get better as a player?

How'd you go about doing that?

Yeah, I mean, again, the luxury of being able to go to UNC's camp and to be able to Be in that space.

And like, yeah, I mean, Coach Hatchell at that time, she was really involved, and so were her players.

And, you know, my uncle coached them, so I knew them well.

They were like sisters and family and still are.

And they would take me to the side and show me some fun, you know, I'll never forget Nikki Teasley.

I don't know if anyone remembers the name Nikki Teasley.

I mean, she was the Magic Johnson of women's basketball in her era.

And, you know, she taught me all these really cool moves that I would go back and try to do and work on.

I did not have her arms.

You have long arms to do these things Nikki was doing.

And I was trying so hard, but, like, I had access to, you know, that world, which was a higher level, playing that.

Again, we didn't have access to social media or a lot of video or things like that, so I had access to that.

My uncle, again, his level of knowledge of the game, he would give me some stuff to work on.

My mom and my grandfather, too.

My grandfather would come into the gym with me.

I mean, I was.

I'm five, seven, maybe five, six and a half if we're lucky.

And he taught me how to block a shot from behind and my time.

And in our level in South Carolina, that wasn't a thing women did or young girls.

Did you foul?

Typically, but I was blocking shots at five, six, I mean, bigger shots because I was coming.

And he taught me how to do that in one day in the gym.

And so I just had access to things.

I think a lot of people didn't.

And I was really privileged and really lucky to have that kind of access to the game and to the level and the knowledge of.

Of the game.

I mean, I was really, really lucky to get that.

And I enjoyed sharing it with other people, bringing my teammates along and trying to teach them the same thing or something new in that.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Very cool.

All right, so I've had a bunch of conversations of fathers who have coached sons or sons who are coached by their fathers, but I don't think I've ever had a case of a daughter being coached by a mom.

So talk a little bit about that.

You already said that.

The experiences.

Mom maybe yelled at you a little bit more than she did other players, which I think is typical.

Right.

Of a.

A.

A parent and a child relationship, coaching wise, that the coach tends to be harder on the child than they do on the other players.

But just talk a little bit about what the relationship was like between you and Your mom, both player, coach, and then how you kind of navigated the mother, daughter piece of it alongside that.

Yeah, it's such a.

Such a fun question.

I love talking about this.

My mom is.

She's such a, you know, just a pivotal.

It has been so pivotal in so many women, young women's lives, not just mine, which is, I think, such a beautiful thing to be able to see.

But I got her all the time.

You know, when they got her, just parts of a day, I got her all the time.

And, you know, she was tough.

They called her the Bobby Nida women's basketball in South Carolina during that time.

It was a compliment, right?

Exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah.

But she was.

She was tough, and she didn't take any, you know, anything from anybody.

And especially, you know, she stood up for her team and for her players and her injustices, especially for women that, you know, we were experiencing if we were not getting the treatment that we deserved or the things that we deserved.

And she won, and she was really good, and she was super well respected.

So, you know, when it came to her coaching me specifically, and she was tough on everyone.

Like, I got it next level tough.

And she was.

She made sure to know that because especially as the first ever seventh grader in South Carolina to play.

I know girls about high school basketball team.

Like, it had to.

It had to make sense, and she had to know and people had to know she was not showing me favoritism, and she never did.

She was certainly much harder on me.

I'll never forget, there was a story one time I caught a cramp in my calf, and I was riling in pain on the floor, and she just looked at me.

She's like, can you roll off the court so we can finish this drill?

And then a few plays later, teammate of mine, she kind of tweaked her ankle a little bit, and she was.

You know, she came back, and the next day it was pretty swollen.

And, you know, my mother's looking at her.

She's like, well, you know, Steph, why didn't you tell me what happened here?

Like, you didn't tell me.

We could have.

We should have been icing it.

There's things we should have done.

We could have wrapped it.

She was like, I don't know.

You told Emily to roll off the court.

I didn't want you to tell me that.

That's definitely.

That is definitely old school.

I.

I remember we were playing.

I was.

I was playing in college, and we were playing in whatever his practice.

Kid goes down.

This is like my first freshman year, kid goes down, looks like he's got like a broken ankle.

I mean, kid, barely.

And coach is just like, go to the other end.

Yeah, Everybody, the whole coaching staff walks the other end.

All the players, you know, the guy returning guys, all upperclassmen, they don't even, they don't even bat an eye to turn around, look at the kid.

Everybody just walks to the, you know, everybody just walks the other end and practice continues and eventually the trainer walks out there and whatever carries the kid off.

It's just different.

Different, different era, let's put it that way.

Yeah, well.

And she would have never done that to anyone else.

She would have definitely.

She definitely did it to me.

She's like, can you just roll off so we can finish this drill?

And I was like, oh, yeah, yeah.

I' um, so, I mean, so she was really tough on me.

And, and I'm appreciative of that.

Like, I think what.

The way that I respond to, you know, things that happen in my life now, I'm really grateful to have had that in my life, even, especially as my mom.

But she never took it home.

When we went home, she was mom.

And you know, she was.

When I say she was just a total, you know, I'm so badass because I don't know another word.

She really was.

She was this incredible coach.

She was a high school English teacher.

And then she would go home and we would.

We had a home cooked meal every night.

We didn't have restaurants in our little town, so she had to cook a home cooked meal every night.

And we did.

And to, you know, to think that that was the life.

And I just got to watch and see what she did and try to try to.

I can barely cook for just myself.

And so, you know, to try to emulate what she did in life is.

And to know what she did, I just have so much respect and I think so many.

She's been such an influential part of so many young women's lives.

And like I said, I got to get her all the time.

I got to get her in basketball, I got to get her in class, and I got to get her at home too.

And it really is a special relationship.

I think coach's kids are really special people and just have a unique perspective on the world just from their experiences of playing for their parents.

And you're right, there aren't a ton of mother daughters.

There's still a ways to go and getting more women in coaching.

But I was really lucky to have that and to be a byproduct of, you know, a coaching kid who was, you know, my mom.

What's your favorite memory from high school basketball?

Do you have one thing that stands out on the court, off the court?

What's your favorite memory?

I will say it's on the court, and it's actually not.

It's not a win, which is interesting.

My sophomore year, we were playing in the state championship for my mom, and we were, Gosh, we were down by two, and we were down by one, and we were at the free throw line and the other team and this for the state championship.

And there's like, I think 3.3 seconds to go on the clock.

And this woman, the other person on the team, is shooting a free throw.

And I look at my teammate, I go, if she makes it, get me the ball.

And she makes it.

So we're down to.

I get the ball.

I take two dribbles, maybe two and a half.

I step one foot over half court and I chuck it and it goes.

It's nothing but net.

And we go berserk.

We're going.

I jump on the scores table.

It was back when Brandi Chastain had pulled her shirt off.

I, like, halfway pull my shirt off and was like, I don't have those apps.

We'll put it back down.

And it was just this incredible moment, and it's still today, one of these most prolific state championship moments and always kind of comes back up in the memories of the state championships.

But there was a replay back then, and so there was a lot of confusion.

The officials, one of them called it good.

The other was standing there in total shock.

And the other one was, you know, had one hand up and the other down.

So there was a lot of confusion.

So they went to the scores table and conferred while we're celebrating and the other team's crying and they called it no good.

And it was one of the most gut wrenching moments I've ever experienced in my life.

And the reason I remember it, though, more than anything is we, you know, we're absolutely just.

It was.

It was demoralizing.

And we're in the locker room and we can't see straight.

We're crying so hard.

We're all, you know, it was.

I don't even know how to explain that feeling.

I've never had it again yet in my life.

And I've, you know, experienced grief and death and all these things around.

I still haven't had that kind of pain that I thought, immediate pain that I felt.

And I will never forget my mother as our coach stood up there and recited Maya Angelou.

Still I rise.

And just that has stuck with me my entire.

I even have it tattooed on my arm.

Still I rise that moment.

And I remember her saying, the pain will subside.

It will hurt right now and it will hurt for a while, but it will subside.

And you will learn from this and you will grow from this, and you'll be stronger from this.

And it is probably one of the most defining moments of my life.

And that's probably the moment I remember more than anything from high school.

That's an awesome story.

I'm going to tell you a story from my life that is almost.

It's eerily similar.

It's not exactly the same, but it's similar.

And I think what's interesting is that when you play and it sounds like you have a similar thought, that so far you've shared stories about your losses.

And when I think about defining games moments, I mean, clearly there are one, games that we won that, that stick out for me, but the losses, I think stick harder.

And so my, my senior year.

So this is a story similar, similar to yours.

And I think it kind of plays into the theme of what we're talking about.

So my senior year, we're playing in the state tournament.

So it was like the, whatever, the third round of the state tournament.

We're playing against a team that at the time USA to the USA Today rankings were, you know, big.

This team was ranked 13th in the country.

And so we're going up against them and we're playing and the game goes down to.

The game goes down to the end and I make a shot with three seconds ago, get fouled, call time, they call timeout, whatever.

We're sitting in the huddle.

The coach is going off, Mike makes it or if he misses it, whatever.

I'm like, don't worry.

It's going, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to make it.

And so make the free throw.

And we're up, we're up three or three seconds ago.

The team has to go the length of the floor and they inbound the ball and they throw it from, they throw it from inbounds, they throw it to half court and then they get it down into the corner in three, in three, in three seconds.

So they get a shot off.

So I'm kind of standing at half court, like looking straight down the floor at the kid who's about to shoot it and I'm looking at his feet and I can still see the.

I can still see his feet.

And, like, in my eye, I still.

You know, you have, like, pictures of certain things in your life that you just have a still picture of it.

So I have a still picture of his feet.

His feet on the line as he goes up to shoot it.

So he goes up to shoot it, shot goes in.

There's.

There's.

Again, no.

There's no video, right?

There's no video of.

Of anything.

So supposedly, multiple people have said that somebody on the team goaltended the shot in, that somebody on their team knocked it in.

But anyway, there's an official standing on the baseline right next to the play.

Like, like, literally, like, right there on the baseline.

He walks off the floor.

There's a guy from across the court at the scorers table that runs in, and he calls it a three.

Now, as this is happening, our fans are on the floor because they saw.

Thought it was a two.

The other team's fans are on the floor because they thought it was a three.

And so, long story short, it ended up being a three, and we lost in overtime.

And then one of the kids from that team ended up being my college teammate.

And so he and I, like, you know, then we have stories about, like, what was being said about the other one.

Like, in the locker room, like, they said, I.

So I played at Kent State.

They had me going, like, they're like, their coach told them, well, this kid's going to Kansas State.

He's, you know, like, what is just this whole, you know, it's just this whole thing.

So I guess the point is that when you think about the moments that, like, stick with you, like.

Like when I think about that, like, that.

The.

The raw emotion of that, like, it just never, like, you can never.

I don't want to say you never get over it, but you never get over it because that opportunity just go.

That opportunity just goes away.

And so it's always interesting when I hear somebody that shares a story, when you say, what's your best memory?

And your best memory is a loss.

And I don't know if I would say that's my best memory.

But when I think about some of my most vivid memories of basketball, like, that's it.

Because as you said, it kind of is a defining moment of, okay, can I.

Am I.

Am I crushed by this?

Or can I get back up and, you know, live to fight another day?

And obviously, in that season and in my high school career, I didn't get a chance to.

To fight another day, but you move on.

And so it's just interesting when you really start to think about how wins versus losses.

And I'm sure you know, you won a lot more games than you lost in your life.

That's right.

And yet the losses are the ones that, you know, become ingrained in you just because one, they don't happen very often.

And to that emotion of, of losing is.

It's so tough.

Well, the, the, the other really brutal part of our story was that I got really into video.

I actually thought in college I was going to go work for espn.

I wanted to make all the one shining moment videos.

Like I was like, that's my, that's gonna be my job.

That's your jam.

And that was gonna be it.

So I got really into video in high school.

From this moment is I went and took our VHS and I took him out and I stopwatched him over and over again.

And it was released at 0.3 seconds.

Just brutal when you know, like there's, there's just.

You can't, you can never go, you can never go back.

And it's just so like I'm a cat, so I'm a Cavs fan.

And this, this will be dated by the time that the episode goes out.

But so, you know, obviously they collapsed, they completely collapsed last night.

But then the NBA puts out their two NBA puts out their two minute report today.

And both of the offensive rebounds that the Pacers got on the off of free throws, both should have been wiped out because they're not allowed to run in from the three point line before the guy releases the ball.

And so on both of those.

And then Halliburton on the winning shot, he was in the, he was in the key over the line before his ball hit the rim.

And so the NBA said, well, both of those should have been lane violations.

And you know, and so I mean you can't, you can't go back.

But it's just when, you know, you know, like I can still see that kid's feet on the line.

Like I, I see it as clear today as I saw it in that, you know, in that moment.

And yeah, you just, you just never get it back.

It's the way it goes.

You don't, you don't.

And it's sticks in here.

I'm so.

That that memory of me jumping on that scores table has not left me.

Yeah.

But again, it's a, it's good that you used it in the right way.

Right.

You were able to use it to, to fuel yourself to continue to improve.

And.

And something that again, when you.

When you look at your.

When you look at your arm and you look at your tattoo, and it takes you back to that moment, and it takes you like, hey, this is something that's going to drive me for, you know, for the rest of.

For the rest of my life.

Talk a little bit about your college recruitment.

What that was like.

Yeah, I tell.

I actually just told the story the other day.

So, you know, I was.

I.

I didn't know really what it was going to look like for me.

I.

I spent a lot of time at all of these.

We didn't have all the camps the kids have now, and I didn't play a ton of au.

We didn't have that world.

So it was really a high school level recruiting.

And I ended up going to Penn State on a visit, and I thought, okay, this is where I'm going to go to school.

I'm so like, this is it.

I went to a, you know, Nittany lion football game on a Saturday.

I was like, this is where I'm going to school.

This is it.

My mother had decided that you.

Not decided, but told me that I was going to go on the official business that I had already committed to.

And I said, okay, fine, I can do that.

And at the time, the UNC Wilmington coach had coached at UNC before with my uncle.

So she was a family friend.

We knew her, was close with her.

And also, Pat Sullivan was the assistant coach at UNC Wilmington at the time.

And I was.

I knew about Pat Sullivan and the 93 national championship.

And, you know, he missed the two free thr.

It was always a running joke with him.

That led to the Chris Weber timeout.

We were like, you missed those Fritos.

You know, Anyway, so a big fan there.

And so I was like, you know what?

Okay, cool, I'll go on this visit.

And that was back when the Wizards were doing their training camp in Wilmington, and that was Michael Jordan was bringing it back to Wilmington.

And so I go on my official visit.

It's that time period.

I meet Bill Guthridge, Brandon Haywood, Jerry Stackhouse, because they all knew Pat Sullivan and came in while we were on us.

I meet all these guys.

I'm like, oh, this is amazing.

What a fan.

And I forget who else was there.

Juan Dixon.

So many of these basketball guys that I kind of were growing up watching at the time.

And then I meet Michael Jordan, and I committed on the spot.

There you go.

That would have been enough to.

That would have Been enough to sell me.

So one of my biggest disappointments, Emily Joe, is I had.

I knew a guy that was from the Cleveland area, that he was connected to Nike and the Nike camps and whatever.

And so I got a chance when I was in college to go work at Jordan's camp.

And he always played, you know, like, he'd always play with the counselors.

And so, I mean, again, I just, like from the time ever.

I mean, since Jordan came on the scene, I was a Jordan.

Just again, from the shot and the whole, the whole thing.

And so, you know, you go there and he was, you know, he was there and, you know, I saw him a couple times and he was supposed to play.

He's supposed to play like the last night of camp.

He always played with, like, the college guys or whatever.

And the night that he was supposed to play with us, the rumor was that he was out at.

He was out with Mike Ditka gambling somewhere.

That was the.

That was.

That was why.

That was why he didn't come and play the.

The week or the.

Whatever the camp that.

The camp that I was there.

So, yeah, I could.

I could completely, completely relate.

Completely related.

Michael Jordan had shown up on any of my visits.

I think I would have been.

I think I would have been right next to you.

Let.

Let.

Let's.

Let's commit right now.

Well, I have it.

I say too, like, my.

The highlight of my college career was I met him again.

I had.

So when he.

He would come into the training room, you were, you know, everyone.

They cleared the whole training room for him.

Like, no one.

And it was like, told, like, you don't talk to him if you see him, which typically you didn't.

They had him pretty, like, you know, corridored off.

But if you see him, you don't talk to him.

Like, you don't approach him like that's a no.

Everyone else was fair game, but, like, not Michael.

Okay, fine.

So I, I rolled my ankle badly.

Like someone stepped on.

It was a bad.

It was am.

Immediately it was swollen.

And so they took me to the training room and I knew it was kind of eerily quiet in there, but I wasn't paying attention.

I was in so much pain.

I was grimacing.

I have sweat all over me, and I'm sitting up on the table and I kind of feel someone moved beside me.

And I just kind of happened to look over and it's Michael Jordan.

He's coming in to get taped.

And my ankle's like, just massive.

And he goes, oh, man, what happened to your ankle.

Are you all right?

And I don't remember what I said.

Who knows what came out of my mouth.

I think tears came out of my eyes.

I wasn't crying for the pain.

So that was the high.

That was the highlight of my college career at that point too.

Awesome.

Well, see, there you go.

You got a, got a high school memory of dancing on the sports table and you got a training room memory from college.

I like it.

Well, the reason I went there, I got it again.

So there you go.

Got it back twice.

My impression of Michael Jordan when I walked by him in the hallway was that basically he was like a walking muscle with 0%, 0% body fat.

And I was amazed by his ankles or so skinny.

And this was it, this was, this was pretty early and he was, I think, I think I went to camp in maybe 90 or 91.

So not, you know, not, not his rookie year.

But you know, he was still not in the second, not in the second three peat era.

But man, I just remember him being just a seriously like a walking, a walking muscle.

That's what I remember.

Like just zero.

A lean muscle.

Hard to explain when you saw him in person up close, what his body felt like and look like compared to like, you know, Ben Wallace was there one year and he was just a muscle, you know.

Right.

Yeah, but Jordan was just, yeah, I mean just wiry and like again, honestly, look like, look like someone had taken like you'd see in a health class like the, the skeleton with all the muscles and just had taken the skin and like just wrapped, just wrapped some skin around that.

Like let's forget about the fat layer.

Let's forget about the fat layer completely.

Let's just wrap the, just wrap this, this muscle in some skin and that's what, that's what Michael looked like back in the day.

So.

All right, so as you're in school, what are you thinking about career wise?

Are you starting to think that coaching.

Are you still into your film?

Where are you at mentally as you're, you know, as you're going through academically in school?

I mean, listen, I had a really good time in college.

I was part of the.

Also the reason is going to school at the beach.

So like I was having a good time.

I wasn't really thinking about career, honestly, except for I, you know, I started to really get into the video thing and that started.

And in that high school experience I was like, you know, kind of enamored by it and the one shining moment.

One shining moment videos like absolutely took me in.

But I also loved video.

So video wasn't super accessible when I was in high school to watch your games and be able to, like, break things down.

But, you know, we had a little bit of access to that because, again, my uncle, having been at Carolina, he's a video and just brains guru, basketball mind guru.

And he was really into the film side of things.

So he had kind of passed that along to my mother and to me.

And so we had a little bit more of access to video and some VHS tapes.

So I'd watch my games a lot.

And I was really into that and just kind of studying myself.

So video kind of became a thing.

So I decided to major in communication studies with a basis on video production.

And Wilmington was a pretty prolific film school.

Cause we had Dawson's Creek and One Tree Hill were.

Were filmed in the area and really popular in the area.

So a lot of film students were there.

But I didn't want to.

I tried the film world.

I was like, it's not film that I want.

Like, I want to make the One Shining Moment.

My life.

My life goal.

This is what I'm.

This is what I'm doing.

I understand.

I was like, who has this job?

And how do I get it?

And is it more than one person?

So.

So that was it for me.

I was like, this is.

I'm going to do this.

And then I started to kind of understand the separation.

I again, had the accessibility to women's basketball at a different level because of my uncle at unc.

And so I had access to the Charlotte Smiths of the world, to the Marion Jones of the world.

Like, I knew them.

I had access to them.

I was around them.

I got to watch them play.

And it was really, I mean, again, privileged and lucky to be able to see women at that space when they weren't on tv.

I was there when Charlotte Smith dunked at the Myrtle beach tournament.

Like, I got access to those things.

I saw Dawn Staley play, like, when she was at Virginia, and they played North Carolina.

So it.

You know, being able to, like, see women at this level, I was like, okay, if men have a One Shining Moment video, I want to make one for the women.

And so, you know, I would just do all these little highlights as I started to learn all that stuff.

And so I was like, this is.

Okay, so this is what I want to do.

I want to do it for the women.

You know, the One Shining moment was kind of what got me into this.

And I want to make this for the women.

And how do we do this for women's sports or women's basketball?

And so that's.

And that was like, that was what I was going to do.

I wasn't really into coaching.

I didn't think about coaching.

I actually probably said, like everyone else in my family, although my brothers, sisters and cousins, that we don't want to coach or teach because that's what everyone else in our family has done.

And we saw what they went through doing, and we're not going to do that.

And so I was like, that was my goal.

That was what I was going to do.

And then I think there were my experiences in college and just Pat Sullivan was probably next to my mom, one of my favorite coaches I ever played for.

And he was unique in so many ways and again, very lucky to have someone of that knowledge, you know, that personality.

He was there my freshman year and part of my sophomore year, and he left to go to the Detroit Pistons.

So big jump for him to go from Wilmington to the Detroit Pistons and still kept up with him and still keep up with him now in CMN UNC from time to time.

But he's just, you know, he was someone I was like, you know, I started to realize, like, this personality as a coach and the effect that he had on me outside of my mom, who I played for most of my life, that, you know, it was.

There was something really special.

And I had some other assistant coaches in that space that really, they started just to, like, they had just such a really profound effect on me from a day to day, from a personal, you know, not just on the court experience.

And I thought, like, what a.

Like what a relationship, because I'd always had my mom and, like, what a different relationship, but, like, having this relationship with someone who, you know, you respect and you care for and you love and they respect and care for and love for you in this way that's like, not familial, but it's.

It's.

It's this different style, but it's so powerful.

It started to, like, towards probably my junior year, I'd say I'd started to think like, okay, this is.

You know, I have some.

I know that this is a world that I'm.

I'm intrigued by and have.

Have been for most of my life.

But it started to really, you know, touch me in a way that I thought, like, this is something I think I could do.

And, you know, even times when I felt like things weren't the way that I wanted them to be, I'm like, okay, if someone else can do this this way, then maybe I could do it it better and in this way, you know, So I saw a lot of good, and I saw some things that I think.

I don't want to say they were bad.

They were just different than what I would want them to be.

And I think, you know, that kind of propelled me into thinking, like, maybe this is something I want to do, you know, like.

And I.

And that's.

As soon as I left college, I jumped right into it.

In coaching high school, did you know.

Right away when you started doing it that you had made the right decision, that that was where you wanted to be?

I mean, was it instantaneous?

No.

My very first game, it was JV girls basketball in Cedar Ridge in Hillsborough, North Carolina.

We lost 79 at 13.

So pretty sure I thought I made the worst decision ever to do this.

I was like, who does this?

And enjoys.

Was not fun.

But again, put my head down and learned and like, okay, I know the game well, but how do I actually transfer that knowledge to these young kids who, you know, when you get some of that JV level, know nothing?

Like, how do I transfer knowledge to them and this passion that I have that they don't like, how do I transfer that?

How does.

How does this work?

And I started to learn a lot about teaching in my first year.

I didn't teach, I just coached.

And I had a different job.

My second year.

I took a job teaching.

So I think actually being in the classroom and being a teacher made me a better coach.

It taught me so much about, you know, just communication and.

And being able to explain things and being able to really bring.

Help people see the good in themselves and bring that out in themselves and teach them things that they never thought they could do in a way that they understood.

And I really took a lot of pride and I enjoyed that.

And I think teaching again in a classroom helped me do that.

But my first year, the end of our first year, so that was our first game, we lost 79, 13.

We played that team again the last game of the season, and we only lost by two.

So, you know, I felt like I was like, okay, like, I've got something here.

Like, you know, and honestly, like, we.

We had some pretty decent players.

I understood also that, like, good players make good coaches.

Early, you know, doubt about that, you know, but we have a way to, like, touch them and help them grow and help them see a potential they maybe never thought they had.

And I was really able to tap in that early in my career.

And JV girls basketball was really what did that for me.

And teaching, I think teach, where it was a big part of that for me.

Did that sell you on being at the high school level?

Obviously, your mom's influence and being a high school coach.

Did you think, after that first year, I'm just going to continue on that career path of I'm going to teach and be.

Eventually be a high school varsity coach, and that's kind of going to be where I'm going to hang my hat?

Or did you, in the back of your mind, eventually, obviously, you get to the college level, but did you think maybe that was something that you'd be interested in or where kind of.

Where was your thoughts at that point?

Yeah, it's such.

You know, I have so much respect for people that coaches that get out and do this at the high school level, at the JV level and, you know, at the youth level, it's just.

There's so much.

There's so much power in, like, the.

Like, what you can bring to young people's lives in that age.

They're so susceptible.

They're susceptible to learning.

They're susceptible, you know, to so many other things.

And you just have this position to be in their lives in such this positive way.

And it's a hard job.

It's a really hard job still.

And some of the best basketball minds and coaches I know are at that level.

They really.

I mean, some of the best basketball minds I've ever talked basketball with are at that level.

And.

And I don't think people often think of, you know, that is the space when I'm.

I'm constantly talking about that.

But I knew for me that, you know, I kind of grew up in a small town, and I think I was living in a small, Ish city at the time.

I would say Chapel Hill is not a city, but whatever we want to call it.

And I just knew I wanted to find a bigger space, and I wanted to be in a different.

I wanted to experience something new.

I had an opportunity to go play overseas after college, and I turned it down because I was a little nervous about leaving.

I had never.

Honestly, the most we had traveled at Wilmington was to, like, Philadelphia on a plane.

That was like our one plane trip.

That was the only time I'd ever been on a plane.

And I thought, you know, I was scared to go to Iceland to play.

And so I didn't take it.

And so I think for me, I sat with that in that moment of kind of thinking about what does this look like, for me, I love coaching.

I love playing an important role in these young people's lives, but I actually want to affect more people, and I want to do more.

And for me, I thought I can reach more people at a higher level.

And to me, I was like, okay, the college is about reaching more people, not you can do so much in a space at that high school level.

But for me, the college level is like, I could reach more people and I could do more that.

And I want to change the game.

I want to change the game for women, and I want it to get the respect it deserves.

And I want people to start respecting the game in the way that it should be respected.

And I wanted to be a part of that.

And I just felt like at the high school level, you know, you're doing such an important job, but like you're reaching, you know, just this minute group of people, and I want to do more.

So I started to really kind of push for opportunity to get in the college space.

And that was probably my third year of coaching and teaching in high school.

I said, okay, I'm, you know, I'm going to make a.

Do this and go for it.

And so I just started applying to jobs.

I applied to 41 jobs, and I got two letters back.

One was from Sherry Cole, Oklahoma.

It was a handwritten note.

The other was like a type note.

I don't remember who it was from, but Sherry Cole.

I haven't forgotten Sherry Cole to this day.

And I talk about her all the time, you know, to Jenny at Oklahoma and just, you know, Danielle Robinson, who played for Sherria Oklahoma.

She's our client now.

And I talked to her.

I'm like, that was the one coach.

She took the time to hand note write me and say, I think I was applying for her head assistant position.

She took.

Took the time to respond and go, you know, you're not the right fit for this position, but the right fit's going to come to you.

And, you know, keep, keep this passion, keep this energy, and, you know, the game deserves you.

Something like that in that realm.

I remember most of it.

I still have the card.

I keep it in my, my desk drawer.

But, you know, that was another moment for me that I had someone that just kind of helped propel.

Propel me into what I, you know, I was like, you know what?

You're right.

I'm going to do this.

I didn't get a job that year, which is fine, but the next year, my first job at Memphis as a video coordinator, making $12,000 a year literally in a video closet that I turned into a wonderful space.

That was my first job working for Melissa McFerrin at Memphis and John Calipari was there for that first year.

And then, you know, Josh Pastner came in after on the men's side.

So it was really a rich basketball heritage that I got to experience in that place too.

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What was the learning curve like for you in terms of your growth from an X's and O standpoint of sitting there and being able to watch the film and just having access to the better technology that you obviously had at the college level compared to high school.

And I know that talking to different people that have had the opportunity to either start their career or at some point, you know, get in the video room.

They all inevitably talk about just the fact that I'm watching so much video of our own team and then I'm watching so much video of our opponents that it's almost like you're going to finishing school of, of learning so much from all these great coaches.

So it sounds like just from you shaking your head, I could tell that that experience was similar for you.

Gosh.

And again, we're like video.

It's kind of.

I had a little bit of like the tech.

I didn't have to learn the technology.

I was pretty savvy in that area.

So that was thankfully good for me because it was hard in every other way, but.

And again, my uncle at Carolina, he had been using, you know, he was one of the first coaches at that level who had made that jump or that transition to Sports Tech.

Yep.

And he, I mean, he was.

He was kind of ahead of his.

Ahead of his era and ahead of his time when it came to the video space because he understood and knew the importance of it.

So I just, I was always around him too.

When I was coaching in high school, he was at Chapel Hill and I was coaching at a high school in Hillsborough, which is 20 minutes away.

So I would go just like sit with him.

I go watch their practices all the time and study.

So the transition was, for me, just learning this new coach, Melissa McFerrin, who I was working for, and again, rich basketball heritage there and learning her style and understanding that and the types of players that she worked with.

But then, as you mentioned, getting to study all of these other coaches and all these other games and all these other people was eye opening to me because I had not done that at that level before.

But I felt, I mean, I would stay in that.

My little video closet.

It was literally a very small video closet that I put a little mini fridge in.

I was like, I'm rocking.

Got my own.

You got the life.

You got your $12,000 salary.

You got your closet, you got it all decked out.

You're living it.

You could find me in there from like 6am to like 3am and I was having a ball.

And I loved every second of it.

I mean, loved every second of it.

And it was, you know, I knew how to work hard.

Peach Farm, like, I had.

That was a part of me from.

From a young age.

I.

That you.

You didn't have to ask me to do that.

But just getting that much basketball and that much knowledge, I.

I was soaking every bit of it up.

And I loved it.

I couldn't love it anymore.

And it was just an incredible experience.

And it was honestly one of the first times that, you know, I'd been around a program the way Melissa ran it.

And she ran it like a business.

And you look at where we are in this nil space now at the college level.

She ran her program like a business, like that.

You know, she was a good coach, great coach, but she was a businesswoman.

And I.

That was eye opening to me from that perspective.

Like, okay, if I want to be a head coach, I'm watching what this woman does from a business standpoint here and like to see that.

That again, just another piece of like, you know, that propelled me into this trajectory of where I am now in my career.

All right, talk about the next step after Memphis.

After Memphis.

So my grandmother, who I was very close with, was diagnosed with breast cancer, and she was back in the Chapel Hill area, and Charlotte Smith ended up getting the job at Elon.

And Charlotte Smith, who I told you, played at Carolina, coached with my uncle at Carolina, known for her 94 national championship shot, also for ducking in a game, called me and asked me did I want to come.

And it was.

I was a video coordinator, and she wanted me to come as her dobo.

So it was a pretty lateral move.

It definitely made more money than my $12,000 a year and didn't have my own office, but that was fine.

And she asked me to come with her.

And I was kind of hesitant at first because I was like, I'm enjoying this experience.

The video is, like, the basketball path for me that I want.

If I go dobo, is that the path that it's going to take me to?

So I was kind of questioning at first, and then when my.

My grandmother, I found out maybe two days later, was diagnosed with breast cancer.

And I called Charlotte, and I was like, I'll be there tomorrow.

I'm taking the job.

And so I went back and lived with my grandmother in Chapel Hill and commuted to Elon and had that experience and got that time with her.

And it was my first coaching job because Charlotte gave me a lot.

She gave me so much.

She knew I wanted to be a coach, and she knew I was kind of making that, but she let me be involved in so many opportunities from coaching.

So I was still doing some video.

I was doing everything, Canvas and everything, which was exhausting.

But it was also.

I learned so much in that experience.

She's a wonderful leader.

She's also an incredible basketball mind.

She's one of the.

I would say, one of the, like, sharpest basketball minds that has the ability to make adjustments to certain things.

Anybody I've ever been around.

She has an incredible basketball mind.

So I would just sit and watch film with her.

You know, she'd be watching film in the office, and I'd just go sit behind her quietly, let her talk out loud, talk to herself, and I'd just be back there listening while I'm trying to do all my dobo duties, you know.

And so that was my next stop, was being adobo there for her.

And we had an assistant coach leave after that first year, and she came right to me and said, will you step into this spot and take this role as an assistant coach.

And I was in.

I was ready to be on the court.

I was dying not being on the court.

I wanted to be involved.

I wanted to coach and speak and again play a role in the lives of these young people and how they could see themselves be better.

And she gave me my first coaching up.

What's something that in that first year or two there, as you're taking on all those responsibilities, what's something that you really enjoyed that maybe is unorthodox or maybe that's something that people don't always equate to.

Again, the on.

You know, obviously people outside the profession think of the on the court coaching and not so much stuff off the floor, but what's something that you enjoyed?

An aspect of coaching that you liked that maybe wasn't the.

Wasn't the.

On the floor.

It wasn't the video, maybe even wasn't directly basketball related, but something that you kind of took to.

Yeah, there's a few things for me and this is not going to be a popular opinion, but I loved bus rides.

I loved bus rides.

I loved them.

I mean the snacks, like the work I could get done and I don't sleep on them because like I can't sleep on a bus or a plane.

I just can't do it.

It.

So I loved bus rides.

I go and take pictures everybody sleeping and they would be so mad and it would be so.

That was so funny.

Did you do that when you were playing?

Did you do that while you were playing?

Well, we didn't have, we didn't have camera phones, but yeah, I wish.

No, but I mean, but I mean you were awake.

It's funny because like I now, now I could sleep like literally if I close my eyes now and I stopped talking and just sat here in a hardback chair, I could be asleep in like three seconds.

But when I was playing, I was the only person who be on the bus, you know, like whatever.

The game would end at 10pm and you'd have like a four and a half hour bus ride home.

And within like 10 minutes, everybody on the bus, you know, maybe the coaches were awake for an hour watching film, but everybody's, everybody's asleep within an hour.

And then I always was in the very back seat, had my light on, I got my book, I'm reading or a magazine, my headphones on.

Like it was.

That was me.

That was.

I could, I could never sleep anywhere.

So I'm right there with you.

Again.

Again.

Yeah.

No, still can't fall asleep.

I think coaching did that to me.

Okay.

As a player, I.

I just.

I could never do it.

I couldn't sleep on a bus, couldn't sleep on a plane.

I just, you know, I've never had coffee a day in my life, so we don't know what this is.

All right.

So you like the bus rides?

I can relate.

I understand.

Completely understand.

Yeah.

That's a good one.

I like it.

I got to watch a lot of film on the bus rides, too, so that was probably another reason.

Yeah, there you go.

That.

That all makes.

That all makes sense.

So as.

As you're going through and you're.

You're.

You're doing your coaching, part of it.

And I think a theme that has kind of run through the conversation here is that you're starting to look at the bigger picture of that impact.

Right.

And how you want to do that.

So at this point at Elon, are you starting to think about how can I advocate more for women in coaching, for females within the game?

How are you starting to get involved in sort of that bigger picture idea at this stage in your coaching career?

It honestly started when I was adobo there.

Charlotte gave me a lot of opportunity to speak up.

And what was really wonderful about Elon Musk, it wasn't always right, but it was wonderful that they at least thought this way, is if they were going to do something for their men's program, they were going to do it for the women.

And what I was always trying to impress upon them, and I don't think I had all the words then because it probably wasn't what we know of it now.

The way we look at the blueprint for women's sports is different than men's.

And I didn't have that language then, but I would always say, like, I appreciate that, that you want to do the same for us as you do for them, but we're different.

And we.

We just give us the same percentage, the same amount, and allow us to do the work that works for us versus just doing the same thing.

And it was a constant battle.

So it started really in that dobo state when, you know, I'm talking about scheduling and, you know, we're talking with the marketing people about how this should look.

And Charlotte asked me to stay in on some of that as I was an assistant coach, because, you know, my.

I was always very vocal, and I've always been very vocal, especially speaking up about injustices or things that I thought were wrong.

And Charlotte allowed me to be that she very much respected that about me.

Me Sometimes had to tone me down a little bit.

I was.

I was a little hot headed in my younger days, maybe still am, but definitely more than.

But, you know, you have to learn, you know, but that.

That she knew that about me and she was.

She was proud of that, you know, for me to be that.

And she kind of honed that and.

And helped me grow that my voice in a.

In a.

I would say, a more intelligent way and how to get things done differently.

Because, you know, Charlotte was a thinker, so I learned a lot from her about how she thought before she spoke when I was just always talking.

And so I think, yeah, that was certainly a space that did that.

And again, Elon was a wonderful experience from the administration down in what they wanted to do.

And they would listen when we would have these conversations.

There would be some nos, some nos, some no's, but eventually it was like, okay, we hear you.

And it would start to change a little.

And seeing that change and watching that change and then watching it actually really work, because in my head, I thought, this is.

This got.

This makes sense to me.

And then they would actually do it.

And I was like, oh, why did they listen to me?

I don't know if this is going to work.

And then it would work and it was good and it was successful.

And I thought, okay, yeah, I mean, I.

I am.

I do see this the way that.

A little bit differently than the rest of the world seeing this.

And they were grateful for that.

And.

And they started to come to me for other things that I had no idea what to talk about.

But I was.

I was, all right, I'm gonna figure it out because, you know, I want to know that too.

So it was an incredibly pivotal moment for me to have someone like Charlotte as a boss actually let me use my voice to speak up for the things that we felt like, needed to be done right or correctly for women.

Because that wasn't always the case throughout my career.

It certainly wasn't the case at my stop after Elon.

And a little bit of why I probably left coaching.

And that's because my voice was really stifled in that position.

Yeah, it's hard when you have an idea of what you want things to look like.

Right.

And you're not necessarily able to fulfill that vision when you're in a spot where, okay, here's what I want to have happen.

Here's what my ideal vision of it is.

And then if you can't make that happen, yeah, it's easy to see where you might say, okay, I could go from this position to another position to another position where maybe I get stuck in this.

This spot where I can't have that larger impact.

So talk a little bit about just the decision to leave coaching and then how you figured out, where am I?

What does that look like?

Because obviously at a certain point, right, you had kind of accepted the fact that you were.

You were going to be, you know, enthusiastically accepted the fact that you were going to be in coaching, and that's where you want it to be.

And so then I would think again, especially with your family legacy to.

To kind of wrap your head around, wait, I'm not going to have a basketball season and I'm not going to have a team to be a part of.

Like, that had to be.

I know when I first walked away from that, from coaching, for me, that was.

That first year was completely just the strangest feeling because there was.

There was no, I mean, there was basketball season, but there.

But I didn't have a basketball season.

I was participating other people's basketball seasons as just a fan.

And so that was very strange for me.

So just how did you go about.

About a.

Making that decision?

What did you kind of debate back and forth for yourself and then how did you map out what you wanted to do with it with the idea in mind that you wanted to continue to be able to have that impact that we've talked about?

Yeah, I mean, like I said, you know, my last stop was at App State and my voice was really stifled.

It was, you know, I was met with a lot of resistance when I was using my voice.

And I think, you know, after three and a half years there, it was.

I was really exhausted by the fight of that, you know, trying to rebuild work, to rebuild a program.

And as hard as I work and, you know, just was spinning wheels and it was, it was a.

It was a difficult stop.

And sometimes that happens in this business.

I never thought it would happen to me.

I'm a deeply loyal person.

My uncle was at Carolina for 37 years with coach Acho.

Like, that's just who we are, right?

And I thought that would be me, and I thought that would be my career.

And I didn't see it would be any differently because.

Because that was how I looked at things.

But it was an experience that opened my eyes to that.

My experience was going to be different.

And I never thought I would do anything but coach.

And so after leaving coaching in that first year, I struggled in a lot of ways that I Didn't realize.

I think it took me about a year to realize how much I was struggling without basketball, without coaching, without something that I love so dearly, that I was good at.

And I knew I was good at it.

And I had an incredible amount of passion for it.

It.

And now what am I doing with all that energy?

I have nowhere to put it.

I.

I tried an office job around sales because everybody's like, oh, you're recruiting, you can do sales.

And the.

They chain me to my desk from six to eight.

And I was like, there's no three hour practice break in the middle of the day.

I'm not doing this.

I can't do this.

So I didn't really know what I, you know, was going to do or what this would look like.

And in that, in that sp.

In that meantime, I, I found real estate.

And I was like, oh, this is actually.

There's a lot of transferable skills from.

To real estate and coaching.

And, and I thought, this is great.

And I had actually talked to a former coach, head coach, she'd retired and she just did real estate on the side at this point.

And she was the one who told me that.

And so I kind of stepped into it, ended up building this really incredible business in the Triangle area in North Carolina.

And it's successful.

And I was like, hey, this is kind of great.

I'm making more money than I had ever made coaching.

Nobody's given me an itinerary.

And for about a year that was amazing.

I was like, this is great.

I'm learning new things.

I like to learn new things.

There's a lot of.

Again, I'm coaching people in a different way and.

But I really missed, I missed the pieces of coaching that I loved so much.

You know, the impact I had on young people's lives.

Like, I missed so much of that was real estate was not fulfilling all of the needs, it was fulfilling a few of them.

You know, the strategy and you know, telling them like, all you have to do is do this and we can win this offer, you know, it wasn't fulfilling everything.

It was, it was doing its job.

And I actually ended up seeing a sports psychologist named Dr.

Hack out of the Cary area.

And he's world renowned for some things he's done.

And I don't know the exact terminology around it, but he's unbelievable.

A friend of mine was a golfer at unc.

And golfers, they have to have those sports psychologists around them quite a lot.

And he worked with her in college and she was like, I really think you should just go sit with him and talk to him and just see if he helps.

She's like, I talk to him about everything now.

And I'm like, okay.

So I met with Dr.

Hack, and I kind of tell people I think he changed my life in a way that, like, he helped me under.

He helped me kind of get through.

I don't, you know, just understanding, like, leaving coaching and how the expectation and then reality, like, you know, what you expected versus what's reality now.

He really helped me.

You know, I think with sports, we learn a lot of things that are so valuable to, you know, how we approach, you know, our daily lives and, you know, the things that we do.

I think athletes, you know, obviously see and can experience the world in a lot of different ways from just the experience that sport has given them.

And he helped me realize also, though, there were some things that I've had to unlearn from the perspective of, you know, you know, I was just kind of the grinder, grinder, grinder, and never really stopped to think about why, the what, the where, or to actually, like, feel some of the things that I was going through.

You know, when my.

My grandfather passed away, like, I just dove right in back and played a game the next day in high school, and, you know, in tears the whole game, right?

And just went with it.

And he.

He, you know, he has.

He's world renowned for his how.

How do you feel a feeling?

And.

And it's this running joke.

I.

I love to tell this story.

He asked me at one point, he was like, has anyone ever told you how to feel a feeling?

And I was like, what do you mean?

And he was like, well, when you're sad, what do you feel?

And I was like, sad, you know, I feel sad.

And he was like, you know, what do you feel?

And I.

I was like, sad.

I feel sad.

And he said, well, what in your body do you feel?

And he kind of went through this whole mantra and this moment and taught me this moment.

And he does it a lot with football players and football teams and guys that, you know, because it's just a difference of that, you know, that world for them and what the expectation is for them.

And so he was incredible.

And he helped me kind of work through all of that in a way.

And that is what led me to having.

I don't want to say the courage or the confidence.

You know, I've always been fairly confident in things and willing to try new things and not really scared of a lot of things, but to come out of where I was and to step into this new space and say, like, I want to try something new in women's sports.

And what does that look like if it's not coaching?

Because I had gotten, you know, probably my dream job coaching offer while I was out of coaching and I turned it down and I could not say why.

And that's when I decided to see Dr.

Hack.

I was like, I have to figure this out.

Why did I, I spend that and why was I not excited about it?

And he, you know, that I think that experience for me truly was, was, it was mind blowing, honestly.

And it was just a few things that I've carried with me, you know, in the last few years after having seen him and worked with him and talk about that experience all the time.

Because I think it was, it was life changing for me as well.

Yeah, it's amazing how sometimes just a simple conversation of somebody asking you the right questions can get you to see things that you could never get to on your own, even though they might be right there lurking below the surface, but you just can't get to them.

It really is kind of amazing when you talk to somebody who asks good questions or maybe just follow up questions of you give an answer like your answer of I feel sad.

And for some people that would be enough of an answer.

And then for somebody else, you just probe just a little bit deeper and all of a sudden now you're onto a whole nother level of insight that you could never get to on your own.

And I always think that that's, I mean, it's fascinating when you try to figure out yourself, right.

I think the most successful people in whatever they do, you try to be self aware of the things that you do well, the things that you don't do well.

You try to, to be aware of what's going on with, you know, inside your own mind, but then how that relates to the people around you and what your goals are and all these different things.

And yet sometimes we get so stuck in our own head, in our own ways and on our own path that we just need somebody to nudge us off into the brush and not just walking straight down the middle of the path.

And it definitely sounds like he was able to do that for you.

So as you have those insights, then how do you take the insight and turn that into action?

What's the next step?

Yeah, well, I didn't know what the next step was.

It was just really like at this point, I saw a lot of things happening with Women's basketball.

I was kind of one foot in, one foot out.

I was like, I really want to be a part of this.

I don't know how.

I don't know if I want to go back to coaching.

I really miss it.

But there's something in me holding me back.

And I happened to run into an event.

A man named Dan Levy.

His wife is the women's lacrosse coach at unc.

Jenny Levy, who is one of the.

When it comes to coaching and development.

And she is one of the most incredible coaches I've ever been around.

And what she's done over, I think she's now on 37 years there.

She should be studied for her coaching prowess.

She's really unbelievable.

So was a big fan of her and meet him and we just struck up a conversation and that's, you know, Dan is.

I kind of call him the Godfather.

The architect of what representation for women's women look like in the business space.

Because he started his career back in the 90s with Mia Hamm.

And he said he was gonna start a business representing women and only women back in the 90s.

And people said he would never make any money, it would never work.

And then off he went with Mia Hamm and put her in a commercial with Michael Jordan.

So like, like he just kind of figured out that the blueprint is different for women and he built this business off of it.

And then our, our women's group, our women's sports group at Wasserman, you know, Dan and a woman named Lindsay Colis, who's on our basketball side, they, they've done this for the last 20 years in this incredible way.

They figured it out that it's different for women.

And they built that path.

And you know, so I meet him and we were having this conversation and he tells me that, you know, their group's looking to start a.

A women's coaches, an exclusive women's coaches division that has a marketing forward approach.

And I remember it so vividly, almost like I could feel a light bulb come off of my, like, you know, the left side of my head.

I was like, wait a second, what?

And so I started thinking about it and we had another conversation, a follow up.

And he asked me to put something together if I have some interest.

And so I spent a lot of time researching Wasserman, researching like, you know, the way that I want to portray this.

Like, how do we propel women forward in this profession?

Because there are a lot of obstacles.

The barrier to entry for women is a lot more difficult than it is for men, and it's why there are not enough women in the space.

We don't make it easy for women to be in this coaching space.

We actually make it harder for them to be in this space in multiple ways.

And so I just started to kind of develop this concept and this idea, and I put it in front of them, and they were like, yes, this is what we want to do.

This is it.

So they brought me on board and we started this women's coaches division.

We with, you know, it's a super intentional group and with the ultimate goal of, like, doing things that.

Where we see, you know, I call it the Dawn Staley effect.

You know, she's kind of done this really organically where she's just been herself and she's also won games.

And those two things combined have really propelled her into this limelight in a different way than we see coaches in general.

And it's really just her.

Maybe some Becky Hammond, maybe some Emma Hayes.

It's really just them in the women's space of that.

You know, on the men's side, their contracts are higher.

They make a lot more money in there just from their contract and from their work.

But again, on the women's side, as same as talent and athletes, it's not just contract.

There's a lot of marketing.

There's a lot of different pieces to the business.

The blueprint's different.

And so we wanted to figure out what that could look like for women because no one was really doing that.

And I think we built a really cool business, really an intentional group to try to do that.

Lots of different coaches from different sports.

With soccer, volleyball, basketball is really deeply rooted in basketball, because that was my background and.

But it's been.

It's.

It's what I say that I've been able to do there, that if you think about all the stories I've told over the course of my life, I've been able to use my voice to fight for the things that I feel are necessary and needed for not just women in sports, but women in coaching.

And, you know, oftentimes when women as coaches speak up about some things that they're experiencing at their universities or their institutions, you know, they need to see better and they want.

The bullseye becomes on their back, and it becomes really difficult to do the job.

And oftentimes they're shunned for that, or there's a lot of things that go into that.

And I'm like, now I get to fight for them.

And, you know, I work For a place where, like, we shout this from the rooftop, we are here to fight for those things.

And that's like the number one.

That's, like how we lead and how we go at this.

And so I'm like, I keep.

I've said this over and over again, like, I found my place, I found my people, and I think I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be with the ability to use my voice, the ability to still have this space in, like, in the coaching world, and the ability to affect lives in a big way.

So having a coach's voice be shut down is clearly an obstacle, right, for women in coaching.

But what are two or three other obstacles that, when you look at what a woman trying to get into the.

The college coaching profession or someone who's already there, what are the obstacles that they face that someone on the men's side might not have to deal with?

So the first one, and probably one of the biggest ones, family planning.

And, you know, whether they want to be a mother, whether they already are a mother, you know, whether they want to, you know, they have a partner who's going to be a mother or who's going to carry a child.

Family planning is difficult for women.

And it's the biggest barrier and the biggest obstacle.

You have so many women who cannot see themselves in this profession.

It's a hard profession, coaching at any level.

High school, college, I don't care what it is.

Coaching at any level is a very, very hard profession, and so many women cannot see themselves doing that because there are not a lot of mothers who are celebrated as moms, as coaches, as, you know, to go out and lead a program and then to also be a mother.

These people are superhuman to be able to do that.

I'm the product of a coach's kid.

I experienced it.

And they're superhuman.

But we do not make it easy for them to make that decision.

Number one, the pay on the women's side is usually significantly less than it is on the men's side.

Title IX doesn't cover coaching salaries, so there's a pay inequity there.

Number two, like universal childcare to help this or some sort of child care to help this process for women, so they don't have to make a decision between their career and being a mother.

And I think that that is one of the biggest spaces that if we saw change there and we're trying to work to create that, we're working with a lot of different spaces that we'll see an increase in women who are parents, who are mothers, who want to be mothers, who want to be parents in the space.

And if they can see how this could work for them and their family, they'll stay in it and be in it.

And the game will grow from that.

The game will grow.

The women's game, the men's game, all the games that women are a part of as leaders will grow because when women lead, we win.

We all win.

How much of that is involved in the education of young women who maybe aren't at the stage of starting a family yet to help them to understand that, hey, you're in this and now you're getting to the point where maybe you do want to start a family.

Here are options, here are the ways that we can make that feasible for you.

I would think that that just again, the education, the ability to see someone else who's already doing it and doing it well, both from a family and a coaching perspective, I would think that has to be a big piece of the puzzle.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, education certainly is important, but the hard part is like what are we educating them to do?

The resources are so limited.

The resources are so limited.

It is so difficult, you know, And I'll give you just an example.

We started so Nalia Chonwa, who is assistant coach at Michigan and played in the WNBA for 13 Canadian, you know, on the Olympic team for the Canada national team.

She is, she's wanted to be a coach since she was 13.

She is a phenomenal and a brilliant basketball mind and a wonderful connector of people.

She's going to be, she is a great coach now, but I kept saying she was going to be an amazing coach.

And at the time she's looking at entry level jobs coming from the WNBA in her first coaching job and she's going to make 50, 60 thousand dollars a year.

And she's a single mom.

How is she supposed to pay for childcare care?

There is no resource for her.

We went after everything we could find everywhere and there's no resource for someone like that.

So she's going to go leave, she's going to go take a different job where she can make more money.

And this profession that she wants to do, that she wants to be a part of, that she is going to be so good at, she wasn't going to be able to do.

And so I was selfishly out trying to find a brand.

I was going after the marketing side and the outside brand dollars to get someone involved to sponsor her a grand grant to help pay for childcare.

So that she could coach.

She could take a coaching job.

And we ended up working the Alex Morgan foundation on the soccer side.

Alex picked it up in a massive way and started something called the Coaching Moms initiative for her foundation.

And so her goal is to give $10,000 coaching grants to coaching moms throughout the year to be earmarked towards childcare just to help them in that way.

But then an even bigger part of that that she's taking on that that's the most incredible piece of this.

It's not just resources in that way.

She's telling their stories, and she's telling the stories of, you know, people like Courtney Banghart or Marissa Young, who's the Duke women's softball coach, or Kim Barnarico, who's at Michigan.

She's telling these stories of these women who have done it at all levels and who are doing it at all levels and telling the story of how they did it.

And so many of them talk about how important family is and their community is in that process.

And that's great.

It's wonderful to have a great community, and you need that in so many ways.

But they all talk about how hard it is without the resources they feel like they needed to have.

So the biggest thing is education is huge.

But starting to tell these stories so that one they can see, like, how people did it, and we can celebrate that.

But I think that they become the very people fighting for the things that are needed for them as moms, as parents, and for also the people that are going to follow behind them because we're so far behind.

And until we fix the resource problem here, it's so hard for women to step into the space.

It's not hard.

It's a hard job for them to be a coach.

They're not scared of that.

It's a hard job for them to be a mom.

They're not scared of that.

It's hard to do both and to do it effectively without a lot of help.

And that's not fair to one side of the equation when we can figure out resources to help them stay in this space.

I do think that when I hear you talking about that, that in terms of the resources and looking and finding, where do you get the.

Where do those resources.

Where do they come from?

And obviously someone as an individual coach, right?

Like when you were.

When you're coaching, you don't have the time, the energy, the ability to be able to go out and find the type of resources like you're describing, right.

That's where what you guys are doing at Wasserman is you're advocating for.

Not you may be helping one individual coach but you're advocating for the entire women in coaching profession which again allows you to scale it.

Right?

Because one coach just can't.

Like I might want to be able to look for those resources.

I might be super motivated.

But again it goes back to how do I balance.

I have a job, I have, I have a family.

Where do I find the time and the energy to be able to go out and do some of the things that research wise, communication wise, reach out, talking to people, to be able to, to make that happen.

So when you start to look for those resources, how do you, how do you even start that search?

Like where, when you think about how do we do this, how do you even start in terms of just brainstorming like where, where do the ideas come from?

Who do you reach out to?

What does that process look like to, to be able to try to get those resources in place?

Yeah, I mean honestly Wasserman and our reach, you know Lindsay Kolis who is in our group, she's our kind of pro basketball agent and has some Olympic athletes as well.

She's the most incredible connector of ideas.

Like if you come to her with an idea, she's just so amazing at connecting it and putting it all together.

And this really was stemmed from a conversation with her because she represented NAT at the W level.

And this was the conversation when I brought this pain point to her.

And so off we went to reach the brands that.

Because you know Wasserman is we represent talent, artists, musicians, entertainers and brands of properties.

And so we reached out to some of our brands and it was like, well where's this, what is this?

Is this just charity?

Like what does this look like?

And we were working that space well then Alex Morgan's foundation, again we represent Alex on the soccer side, tapped into this and was like yes, this, this fits the pillars of what her foundation's trying to do in a, in, in a really cool way and something that no one else is really doing.

I also have good relationship.

We coach and tapped into that group which is about growing women in coaching and they have some stuff around being a mom and groups that they get together and they talk about things that they do that are helpful.

The best kind of stroller that's packable to carry on the road.

They have these groups that they work with.

So we partnered the Alex Morgan foundation with WeCoach to build this coaching moms initiative out and we were able to do A lot of really cool stuff.

And just really almost.

We're not even a full year in yet, and we've done a lot of really cool stuff together.

And, you know, I think that.

But that's the reach of Wasserman.

Like, when you work with something, I mean, with this large global agency and our women's sports group acts like, you know, this boutique small space where we're.

It's personal and it's a partnership and we care for people, but we have the resources of the global agency and that's where we were able to tap into that.

And honestly, like, connecting with Alex Morgan, there couldn't be a better, you know, source to get this out with her influence, you know, from the social and the media perspective.

Yeah.

I mean, having.

Having a spokesperson, having a front.

Having a front person.

Right.

That can.

That people can relate to, obviously, is an important piece of it.

And then when you start looking at the foundation dollars and being able to provide that and then giving somebody, it always comes back to.

I think for me, when I think about just being able to put funding in place.

Right.

That.

That a lot of times they're.

There are people that want to help, but they don't know how.

And sometimes when you provide people just with the framework of like, okay, here's what we're trying to do.

Here's the framework for how we're going to do it.

Can you step in and provide us with whatever, whether it's time, whether it's funding, whether it's energy, whatever people have to give.

Sometimes people just don't.

They want to do it, but they just don't know.

They just don't know where.

And as a result of that, they end up doing, you know, doing nothing.

I think about that on the ch.

On the charity side.

Right.

Like, people are.

People want to be able to give to like, their local food bank or whatever, but maybe they just don't know how to do that or where to do that, or they just want to be able to.

To give somebody a framework to be able to.

To be able to have those, you know, to put those resources in place.

So.

All right, let's.

Let's take a second obstacle.

What's another one that you see out there for.

For women in coaching?

Beyond.

Beyond the resource piece.

Yeah.

And this one's kind of an interesting one that as I started to get into this and work with Lindsey's former players or players who were transitioning out of their playing career from the WNBA and wanting to get into coaching and wanting to understand what this looked like there's a stigma around former players.

And I think that's one of the hardest ones that I grapple with in this space is I was having a conversation with a coach, coach who I respect and as a good friend, and I was bringing a name to her who was, you know, currently that person was playing professionally and we were talking about after their career, like, you know, they want to get into the space, like, would you consider her for, you know, an opportunity on your staff that you're going to have opening?

And her first initial response was to say, well, I've hired a former player before and I've been burned.

And I thought we're going to pin all former players into one bad experience with one person like that that feels like we're holding them to an unattainable level, an unattainable success.

That doesn't make sense to me that that's a response and I heard it more than once and I like, wow, this is actually an issue, this is actually a problem.

And so kind of really playing that out with different levels.

You know, one of our athletes is, she's won four WNBA championships, a national championship, and was an all star seven or eight times.

And I was told she didn't have enough experience to be a coach.

And I was like, wait, we don't respect her experience as a player, as a four time WNBA champion, a national champion, a seven time, eight time WNBA all star.

Like we don't expect her experience, like we don't respect that.

But you know, we look on the men's side and you know, Steve Nash is taking the Brooklyn Nets job right away.

Steve Carr got a pretty early job in his career and what he did there, JJ Redick, like, I listen, I love jj.

He coached his fourth grade son's team and off he is to the Lakers, like, okay, that's awesome.

Yeah, off he goes.

But like for women, they, they don't get that there's not that same level.

We, for some reason with women, there's not a separation of the athlete, the player and the professional that they could be.

It's, it's all still bound into one.

And too many conversations I had made me realize that.

And so we, I don't know if we figured out like the avenue of how we helped change that other than us just simply being an advocate and a resource and continuing to fight against that, that ideology and against that stigma, which I found a lot of success.

I mean, my response to that coach was a little blunt and abrasive maybe because I was like, are you kidding me?

That that's your response?

And I kind of went through that.

But then we had a real conversation about it, and she goes, maybe I need to check myself at the door.

Because, I mean, I'm.

Listen, I've worked on staff where, you know, a lot of bad things happens in.

In different ways.

And, you know, you don't just go after one group of people for that.

And I don't know why former players were getting that.

And if you even look at Don Staley, like, you know, we have coaches who have.

They're.

They're incredible basketball.

And just because I hear this all the time, just because they were a good player does not mean they're a good coach.

And, And.

And that is.

That's fair and that's true.

But that doesn't mean they can't be a good coach.

It doesn't mean that you can't mold them and mentor and grow them to be that.

And, you know, for some reason, there's a.

This, like, prima donna mentality that comes with it.

I go, no, no, no.

I think it's how you.

How you grow them.

How you.

There.

There's.

There's still a level of learning in them, but it's how you grow them.

And, you know, when the NCAA came out with the two, you know, non recruiting assistant spots, I thought, this is going to be really great on the women's side, and we're going to see more former players come into those spaces because now they can be, you know, they don't have to have this recruiting background, which I think was a lot of the word experience that I was hearing, which I understood.

I thought, okay, now they can use their assets on the court and they can player development, the X's and O's, they can really be deeply involved in that.

But it didn't happen.

We actually did not.

We've been studying the numbers.

There was not an influx of former players or women in general in those spaces.

And so I think that's still a barrier that we're still working with.

Like, how do we divest from that?

Like, how do we change that and create a new space where it's not how we look at women who are former players of the game, especially who, you know, these women who have played for no money and gave their lives and their bodies to this.

Like, how do we change that?

And we're still working on that.

I think there's still a lot to go there, because I think when we have more players like Dawn Staley who played the game understands, like, just has a different perspective when she communicates with players in that way.

It's not to say someone that didn't play the game is not a good coach.

It's to say, though, she has a different and a unique perspective that she brings to this.

And when we celebrate that, support that and grow that and have more of that, our game will be better and the women's game will grow in a different way from that.

And I hope we see more of that, and I hope there's more space in that.

It's almost like the generalities are going all different kind of weird directions in what you're saying in that you have, okay, well, someone who's a player doesn't necessarily.

Just because you're a great player doesn't make you a great coach.

But then also, the inverse is true where just because you're a great player doesn't mean that you can't, you can't be a good coach.

And obviously, if you played, especially if you played professionally, like, there's clearly a passion for the game.

Nobody gets to that level of success, whether it's in the WNBA or overseas or wherever.

Even if you're playing at the college level, you don't get to that.

You know, you don't get to that point in your career without having some dedication and love, love for the game of basketball.

And, and sure, obviously everybody has a different ability to, you know, to be a great coach or not be a great coach.

But I think what, what I hear you saying for sure is that what we want to do is we want to look at the individual merits of each person and not blanketly say, well, this person's a former player.

Let's, let's exclude them because I'd rather hire somebody who whatever had, again, doesn't have that came right out of college and became a coach as opposed to playing 10 years of professional basketball.

It just just, it seems, it seems silly.

The stereotype seems silly going both directions, if that makes any sense.

Like, it's just, you know, you're like, no.

100.

Yeah, I don't understand how either one of those statements from a, from a generality standpoint makes.

Makes any sense.

It certainly doesn't make the, make the profession better.

And I, and I think you make a great point that it's just like anything, right?

When you hire somebody, you know, you think back to your first job at Memphis.

It wasn't like you walked in on day one and you were like, hey, I.

I'm the.

I'm the best video coordinator that's ever been.

I'm number one, the country.

Like, there's.

There's a lot of that.

Yeah, there you go.

There's.

I understand.

There's a.

There's a.

There's a learning curve.

There's a learning curve somewhere in there that, you know, you take in.

And if you.

If you bring in somebody who's passionate and smart and wants to learn and all those things, then.

Then you can.

You can mold them.

And I think that's one of the things that, honestly, when I think about the interviews that I've done here on the podcast, Emily, Joe and I think about.

About people that I respect that are head coaches.

One of the things that they always talk about is their ability to develop their coaches.

Right?

And you have your coaching tree and that, you know, hey, I brought this guy in.

And especially I've had a ton of Division 3 coaches on here.

And, you know, when you're talking About a Division 3 staff, you're usually talking about one person.

You're talking about somebody young who's not making very much money, who eventually probably is going to move on to their next opportunity.

And so I've had a ton of coaches just come out and say, you know, part of my responsibility is I got to grow my assistant coaches.

I got to.

I got to help them to learn and to understand, and then that's going to allow them to move up in their career.

And.

And it sounds like maybe on the women's side that it's not quite as prevalent as it is on the men's side in terms of that development of, you know, of coaches that are on.

That are on staff.

And you hope that.

Again, one of the things that I've loved about doing the POD is just the number of people that are willing to share their knowledge and talk about the game.

And regardless of whether you're male or female, that's been something that has been super refreshing for me when I have conversations, is the number of people who love the game and just want to see it grow, like they don't care.

It's.

It's not like it was 30 years ago when I can hide all this great stuff that I'm doing.

And I.

I'm not going to tell you.

Well, I mean, every.

Everything.

Everything now is out there.

So people are so willing.

Every.

Everybody's so willing to share.

And I think that that's the direction we're headed.

And you guys.

If you guys can continue to push that, you.

On the women's side, to me, I think that's a goal that everybody in the game, regardless of gender, regardless of position, everybody should want to care about the game and grow it.

And to me this is a pretty simple way to do it.

Yeah.

And that's where I think at the basis of all that we're doing, obviously it's a business, but the goal is to grow women in leadership positions in these spaces and everything we do, if we get a marketing deal, how does it help do that?

That like that's kind of the goal.

And you know, from, from all of that with our coaches, we, we also, we were able to start up an nil group that we heard just pain points that, you know, the rev share dollars and collective dollars and where women were really kind of missing out in those spaces.

And you know, we were able to, I think we've able, we're, we're building a really cool nil group that's going to, I hope, help propel that side of the business too.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean that's an area that, that coaches at every level need help being able to try to navigate that.

I mean you throw that on top of all the responsibilities that they already have coaching wise and then you throw nil on top of it and any outside help in terms of being able to navigate that and figure out how do we make this work, to me is just, I mean I clearly if, if things stay the way they are or continue to evolve, it's going to be an area that every coach, every school is going to need somebody that's going to be able to help in those with, with that because it's just, it's so, you know, like go back five years ago and you, you fast forwarded to right now today and nobody would have ever in a million years guessed that the college basketball landscape was going to look the way it does in terms of the portal and in terms of nil.

It's just a completely.

The whole college basketball world has been turned on its head compared to where it was when you started your coaching career when you were playing.

Same thing for me.

It's just, I mean it doesn't, it doesn't look anything like it did before.

So we are coming up on an hour and a half so I want to ask you a final two part question.

So part one of the question is when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge?

And then part two of the question is when you think about what you get to do now every day, what brings you the most joy.

So your biggest challenge first and then your biggest joy.

Yeah, I think the biggest challenge is continuing to move the needle for women leaders in this space.

It's a challenge.

It's continued to be a challenge, and I think it will continue to be a challenge.

You know, there's just a lot that has to really change to see, you know, those numbers really move and change.

But it's one that I'm here for, and I'm here for the fight, and I'm thrilled that I get to be a part of that fight.

And I would say probably my biggest joy is getting to use my voice and my energy and my passion to fight for women and women in spaces to be leaders in the sports world.

Very well said said.

Before we get out, I want to give you a chance to share how can people connect with you?

Find out more about what you're doing.

So share website, email, social media, whatever you feel comfortable with.

And then after you do that, I'll jump back in and wrap things up.

Yeah, find me on LinkedIn, on Instagram.

EmilyJo Robertscore and you can go to our Wasserman site, our Wasserman at the Collective.

So the Collective is the umbrella over all of Wasserman that is focused on, you know, empowering and growing women in spaces and getting brand dollars and marketing.

So, you know, basically all you've seen around women's sports and women's basketball, particularly this growth, Wasserman's, the collective group has had their fingerprints on that, which has really been cool to be a part of a group that's doing the work that they're doing.

So definitely check that out.

The Moms, Alex Morgan's foundation, the Moms in Coaching or the Coaching Moms initiative.

Check that out.

That's a really cool initiative that I think is doing really, really cool work.

Work.

So awesome.

Then we'll get all that in the show.

Notes.

Emily, Joe, cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to join us.

Really appreciate it.

And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode.

Thanks.

Thanks for listening to the Hoop Heads podcast presented by Head Start Basketball, Sam.