Shownotes
Katie Pate is the Senior Associate AD and Director of Development at George Mason University. Throughout her career within intercollegiate athletics, Pate has excelled in many leadership positions as a head basketball coach, a broadcaster, an external relations leader, and a fundraiser. She previously worked in athletic administration for both Appalachian State and Longwood University.
In addition to her administrative success, Pate had several coaching stops, including head coaching positions with Belmont Abbey, Lenoir-Rhyne, and her alma mater, Coker College, plus stints as an assistant at Marshall, Georgia State, Coker, Wingate, and USC Upstate.
As a student-athlete, Pate was a first-team All-Carolinas-Virginia Conference pick and a three-year team captain at Coker.
On this episode Katie shares her journey through the world of basketball, from her early days as a player to her current role in athletic administration. The conversation highlights her experiences as a head coach, broadcaster, and fundraiser, emphasizing the lessons learned along the way. Pate discusses the evolution of women's basketball and her personal experiences in a male-dominated sport, describing how she navigated the challenges and opportunities presented to her. Through her narrative, she reflects on the importance of mentorship, particularly from her stepmother, who was a pioneering figure in women's basketball, and how that influence shaped her desire to coach and lead others. As she transitions into her current role, Pate emphasizes the significance of building relationships with donors and the community, and how those connections are crucial for the success of athletic programs in today's competitive landscape.
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Be sure to grab your notebook before you listen to this episode with Katie Pate, Senior Associate AD and Director of Development at George Mason University.
Website - https://gomason.com/staff-directory/katie-pate/538
Email - Kpate3@gmu.edu
Twitter/X - @coachkatiepate
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The Hoop Heads podcast is brought to you by head start basketball.
:It's extremely powerful learning how to lead from the back of a line and not having to do it from the front in support of the vision of a leader.
Katie Pate:Katie Pate is the senior associate ad director of development at George Mason University.
Katie Pate:Throughout her career within intercollegiate athletics, Pate has excelled in many leadership positions as a head basketball coach, a broadcaster, an external relations leader, and a fundraiser.
Katie Pate:She previously worked in athletic administration for both Appalachian State and Longwood University.
Katie Pate:In addition to her administrative success, Pate has had several coaching stops, including head coaching positions with Belmont Abbey, Lenore Ryan and her alma mater, Coker College, plus stints as an assistant at Marshall, Georgia State, Coker Wingate and University of South Carolina upstate.
Katie Pate:As a student athlete, Pate was a first team All Carolinas Virginia conference pick and a three year team captain at Cokerdeh.
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:Be sure to.
Katie Pate:Grab your notebook before you listen to this episode with Katie Pate, senior associate ad director of development at George Mason University.
:Hello and welcome to the who pets podcast.
:It's Mike Clensing here tonight without my co host Jason Sunkel, but I am pleased to be joined by Katie Pate, the senior associate athletic director and director of development at George Mason University.
:Katie, welcome to the hooped spot.
:What's up, Mike?
:It's great to be here tonight.
:Thrilled to have you on.
:Looking forward to diving into all of the very diverse things that you've been able to do in your career.
:Let's start by going back in time to when you were a kid.
:Tell me a little bit about some of your first experiences with basketball, what you remember about just getting into it as a young girl.
:Well, so I'm going to give my age away.
:So I am 49, going on 50th in February, same birthday as Michael Jordan.
:Nice.
:So, yeah, I like to hang my hat on that birthday, February 7.
:That's a good, that's a good birthday.
:Yeah.
:The Goat.
:That's another podcast episode we can talk about.
:You want to talk Michael Jordan?
:Let's talk Michael Jordan.
:That's a topic I'll never get bored of.
:I'm on that soapbox constantly on the podcast.
:So I love it.
:I love it when people try to get into some type of a debate.
:It's a lose lose for anyone that tries to question it.
:But, no, I think the interesting part, Mike, is when I was introduced to basketball.
:So this would have been, oh, gosh, early eighties, and we weren't quite there yet.
:Right.
:The opportunities were available.
:The sport was starting to grow and emerge, but it was really the pioneers in the forties, fifties, sixties and seventies that had laid the groundwork.
:And so at the time, our family, we're living in Minnesota, right outside Minneapolis, and there was this thing called the ObA.
:It was the Osseo Basketball association.
:And the first run at this was in the second grade.
:And at the time, the last thing I wanted to do was play basketball because boys wouldn't like me.
:That's what I thought is my, my mind was, I should be in dance, I should be in gymnastics.
:And just because I'm tall, I'm the tallest person in the grade out of all the boys and girls, doesn't mean I should be playing basketball, dad.
:But, you know, dads have dreams, too.
:That's true.
:And so, you know, I jumped right in at an elementary school age with organized basketball.
:Now, at the time, Mike, I really think it's pretty brilliant.
:I, we played with mini balls, the small size basketball, and we played on eight foot hoops.
:And everybody might think that's kind of crazy and ridiculous because you certainly don't play with that ball as you get older.
:But when you think about the size of a little kid's hands, and you think about forming their.
:You know, just that.
:That repetition, that body memory, that.
:That mind memory of shooting a shot, having your hands in the right place.
:I know you've even seen the basketballs that actually have the little hands on them, but it worked.
:And I scored a lot of points.
:You know, those games were like ten to eight final score, but think about.
:What that score would have been if you were playing on a ten foot basket with a regulation ball.
:Yeah, zero to zero.
:Yeah, exactly.
:So painful for parents, but, you know, so just being exposed to the sport, really, as youth basketball as we know it was starting to be developed.
:Now, in hindsight, I look at, I'm like, man, this was pretty cool.
:This was starting to happen all over the country.
:And at the time, there was opportunities for girls to play on boys teams.
:In the 6th grade, I played on the elementary school boys team and got a chance to experience that.
:But the youth sports aspect was really pivotal for me.
:And then certainly it grew into an AAU experience, which is decidedly different than it is now.
:And sometimes when I try to explain it to people, they don't.
:They're like, state championships.
:I'm like, yeah, you played to go to nationals.
:Like, two teams got to go, and you play in the Badger state games in Wisconsin and hope that you.
:That you make it to Orlando.
:So.
:And the parents didn't travel, either.
:We just.
:We sold candy bars to pay for our bus trips.
:And you did what you could, but the early stages of it were pretty special.
:And, of course, you get to see it now, and it's remarkable.
:What do you remember about coaches that coached you in those early years and sort of the influence they had on you?
:Yeah, well, for sure.
:I mean, at an early age, my dad was my coach, you know, not like a lot of.
:Not unlike a lot of kids, where their dad coaches their team.
:And I absolutely, unequivocally remember my first two AAU coaches, Lauren Parsons out of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and then Keith Noll, who is a bit of an icon in the AAU circles, really was the one that built Wisconsin AAU girls basketball in the team Wisconsin format.
:Those guys poured their hearts and souls into it.
:I mean, they believed in it.
:They believed in the development of young people through sport.
:They believed in finding ways to teach us discipline and fundamentals in a way that would perpetuate college scholarship opportunities.
:It was work.
:It just worked.
:No air conditioning gems.
:I mean, your carpooling everywhere, but making a team was really, really special.
:And I think those guys knew that too.
:I mean, those tryouts were tough.
:You're in the middle of the state and you're trying out against dozens of other kids and you make that team.
:And I would not say at no point, Mike, did I feel pressure.
:I think the youth sports piece was a little bit different back then.
:So we're talking about late eighties at this point, just simply because the parents didn't travel as much.
:They weren't as available at those games because they weren't local.
:You had to travel a long way.
:So the kind of self imposed pressure that we see a little bit now in youth sports and certainly in high school and college, college sports, I'm sure there were kids that felt it.
:I never really did, and certainly not from my AU coaches, but make no bones about it.
:It was discipline, it was fundamentals.
:And you were going to work your butt off.
:Probably a testament to your dad, I would guess, that not feeling that pressure, right.
:That he did it right, coach, he coached you and tried to make you better, but I, he knew where that line was not to cross over it.
:It sounds like, yeah.
:Now this is also the man that fast forward into high school would sit up at the top row of the bleachers at high school basketball games, and he had a referee voodoo doll, which is actually in my office named Refi, and would stand up, he's all six'six and a giant lumberjack, and would remove appendages off that doll during the game.
:So anyway, but it was a great time.
:What do you remember about just you trying to become a better player during that time from, let's say, junior high school into high school?
:What did you do besides beyond the AAU circuit, what were you doing to become a better player?
:Oh, that's so funny.
:You're really taking back.
:So I need to pepper in this one piece, and you probably read about it.
:My parents divorced when I was young and my dad remarried.
:And when my dad remarried, my stepmom was the head coach at the University of Minnesota.
:So I grew up in 3rd, 4th, fifth, and 6th grades while she was a head coach at the U, pioneer of the sport in the hall of Fame, head coach at UCLA during John Wooden's last year.
:All the things.
:Okay, so I'm growing up around Big ten women's basketball on the cusp when the sport is getting ready to explode.
:Tv is just starting to trickle in just a little bit.
:And that was all I could think about was, man, I want to be like that player, and I want to be like my mom.
:So when she decided to retire from coaching and that kind of that transition space from junior high to high school, I was tall.
:Not so tall now.
:511 doesn't really count anymore.
:At the time it did.
:So she retires, and my parents buy a fishing resort in northwestern Wisconsin.
:And that's when training camp started.
:Like, lake northwestern Wisconsin training camp.
:And we had huge basketball courts built out at the resort because my mom ran basketball camps after she retired.
:These kind of exclusive elite.
:It would be like elite training camps now, but we did ball handling drills, like, on the courts, and we had, like, used janky weight equipment, you know, of course, my dad, we had, you know, you typically, you have the door and the door frame, and you measure, like, how tall you are, right?
:For sure.
:We did the.
:We did vertical jumping.
:So he would measure our vertical jumping, like, with a pencil and a ruler.
:And, you know, 34 inches.
:Katie, is that yours?
:No, no, no.
:He still would say, my vertical jump is just enough to slide a piece of paper right underneath my feet.
:There we go.
:Me, too.
:I'm right there with you.
:I'm right there with you.
:That's the story of my career, too.
:So, I mean, unconventional.
:There wasn't machinery.
:There wasn't.
:I mean, there was a broken nordic track machine.
:Sometimes we got on it, sometimes we didn't.
:But at the end of the day, I always remember my stepmom saying, if you could shoot, you'll have a place somewhere.
:And so that's a.
:What I tried to do is just get shots up after shots up after shots up.
:Love to open gym in the 9th grade during lunch hour at Hayward High School in Hayward, Wisconsin.
:It was open gym so anybody could go into the gym and play basketball.
:Well, that's all we did.
:9th grade.
:Like, forget lunch.
:No lunch.
:We're going to hoop.
:Let's go.
:Boys versus girls, girls versus boys, mix teams, you name it.
:That was an opportunity to get some extra reps in and, you know, kind of started to lay the foundation of maybe I'm.
:Maybe I'm okay at this.
:There might be.
:There might be a future here.
:What was your favorite memory from playing high school basketball?
:These questions.
:You did not.
:I did no prep for this.
:Oh, geeze.
:I broke the all time scoring record, which was a really big deal, and it hung for about 25 years.
:And then this little knucklehead, her dad was a classmate of mine, she broke the record, but I'll back up.
:So I don't know necessarily how it is now, but we had freshman, JV and varsity at Hayward.
:And so in the 9th grade I got bumped to jv right away, and after five games I got moved to varsity.
:Well, like a couple games you could split quarters, you could do like two quarters, jV, two quarters of varsity.
:And so then after five games I got bumped to varsity, and after one game I became a starter as a 9th grader.
:From a confidence building standpoint and feeling like, okay, this is, I'm going to take some ownership here.
:Incredible.
:On the mean girl side, really, really hard, because I took a senior starting spot, Laurie Somerville.
:I doubt she's seriously listening to this podcast, but as she was.
:I remember you, Laurie, and I remember all the things that you did, but I think knowing that I had put in some of the work and it was recognized and then had the ability to start at a young age was pretty powerful for me.
:That was a big deal, real big deal.
:It's funny that you say that about the sort of, I don't know what the correct word is, but just not being nice to someone who is younger, who becomes part of a team.
:I played when, when I was playing, so we had junior high, so I wasn't even in the high school as a 9th grader, I was just on the 9th grade, it was the 9th grade team, it wasn't the freshman team, because from the term freshman, I don't think even existed when I was around.
:So we're talking like I played on the 9th grade team at a totally different school.
:So by the time I get to high school and I'm in 10th grade and I'm on the varsity, and I still remember that not so much the guys on the team necessarily, but there were a lot of kids who were friends with guys on the team that maybe I took some of their minutes or their time and them not treating me nice in school.
:And I feel like there was a much greater divide between grade levels.
:You didn't cross mix with, if you're in 9th grade, you weren't really friends with very many kids who were in 10th grade and vice versa.
:And now it feels like my kids have gone through school and it doesn't even make 9th grade seniors.
:It all just kind of flows together and I don't feel like it's the same sort of pressure or just the ostracizing that I think did happen exactly as you described.
:I know a lot of people that were in that same position, that played on a varsity team and whatever sport when they were young and kind of felt like they didn't get treated maybe as well as.
:And I think now, today, that becomes, in most cases, I'm not saying it never happens, but it feels like it's a lot less relevant than it was during the time when you and I were growing up.
:Yeah, I agree with you.
:I think the.
:We'll call it maybe the, you know, in this transfer portal, kind of transfer portal, and these, you know, these young guns coming up through the system, kind of that pay your dues model.
:You've got.
:You've got five.
:You've got five seniors on your team.
:You're going to win the state championship.
:Well, these kids are transferring as often as ever, even at the high school level.
:So, no, when someone interrupted that system, you know, the farm league, and Mike comes in and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, now, Katie, slow your roll.
:What are you doing?
:No, it was.
:There were some challenges there, but it was just, I think one of my first lessons of where hard work goes doesn't guarantee.
:Does not guarantee that starting spot, but I can't get it without it.
:Absolutely.
:There's no question about that.
:All right, tell me a little bit about your college recruitment, what the process was like.
:Obviously, you have your mom, who has lots of experience in that area, your stepmom, and then your dad clearly has been a big influence with refi up there in the stand.
:So clearly he's involved in the process.
:So just tell me what it was like.
:What you remember, obviously a lot different from what recruiting looks like today compared to when you and I were being recruited back in the day.
:So just tell me a little bit about what your experience was like.
:Gosh, that's so great.
:Well, I remember somehow there was a roll top desk that was pawned off on my bedroom, and I had created this drawer, and I had all these file folders hanging.
:File folders of all the letters that I received, because this is, of course, the land of snail mail and real telephone calls.
:And so I saved every letter.
:And I'm a d two girl, right?
:So I played division two basketball, and I was recruited by some division three, few d ones.
:But at the time, there was a showcase cam called WCSS.
:It was Wisconsin coach's scouting service, and it was held kind of southern part of the state, maybe outside Milwaukee, and being up in Hayward, Wisconsin, the northwestern part of the state, the closest big city is Duluth, Minnesota.
:It's not like people are knocking down to get on flights and go watch your school.
:It's impossible to get to.
:You're gonna have to fly into Minneapolis and drive three and a half hours.
:So anyway, down at that camp, and I think probably my sophomore year, started to get some letters, and I was really excited about it.
:And I had a couple division one letters, of course, some letters that came.
:I remember I got a letter from coach vandiver right when she got to Stanford.
:That was a total bribery letter from my mother.
:That's what it was.
:Hey, Ellen, it's Tara.
:You know, because when she was at Minnesota, vandivere was at Ohio State, and we saw Katie.
:I was like, she's not really recruiting me.
:This is just a nice letter.
:But it was so fun to take those letters and look at them and file them away.
:And then you would, you know, you'd get a phone call every now and again.
:And my parents were very much, you know, Katie, you're going to learn this.
:You're going to learn who you like, who you don't like.
:You're going to do your research.
:There's no Internet.
:I mean, you're like looking up in encyclopedias and newspapers and things like that to try to research.
:They're setting these huge things that would cost so much money now, these big binders of information and view books, of course, media guides that were still printed and you could only put color on the front and the back.
:And so just really trying to get a sense of where might I fit.
:I knew I was a big fish in a little pond and I didn't want to lose that.
:So I was definitely interested in pursuing opportunities where I could make a difference on the court.
:Didn't really know what I was going to do or what I was going to study, but in my act, I will make a public.
:I don't care just to prove it.
:Your test scores don't necessarily equal your salary that you're going to.
:So I took the PSAT.
:I will not reveal that score, but I took the act once I scored an 18.
:I don't even know how they do the scoring, but that was the number you had to be eligible.
:So I was like, oh, I'm good.
:That's all I'm going to do is take it one time.
:And so I set up official visits with Michigan Tech, who at the time the head coach was Kevin Borseth, who, of course, is an elite leader of women's basketball.
:Longtime coach at UW Green Bay, just won a bajillion championships, had a brief stint at the University of Michigan, had an official visit at St.
:Cloud State University.
:I'm trying to remember the woman's name.
:I know her nickname was Zip.
:And then I had an official with the University of Minnesota Duluth.
:So I had those three official visits.
:I took the official visit at St.
:Cloud State Hockey School, big hockey school.
:At the time, the United States team trained in their hockey facilities, and it was a pretty big school, so I was like, but we did get to stay at a holodome.
:For anyone out there that even knows what a holodome is, it's basically a Holiday inn with an indoor swimming pool.
:Gotta like it.
:I had one right down the street in my community.
:We used to, when I was a kid, we belonged to the Holiday Inn pool club.
:So that's where we would go swim.
:Cause our neighborhood when I was a kid, did not have a pool, and so we belonged to the Holiday inn, and we would go swim.
:When my sister and I were little, we'd go swim at the Holiday Inn.
:So I'm right there with you.
:Perfect sense to me.
:And then took a visit to umd up at Duluth.
:Same thing.
:It was a hockey school.
:We went to a hockey game, and I really, really liked the girls on the team.
:And after the visit, I said to my parents, I said, I think I want to go to UMD.
:At the time, they were nai getting ready to transition to NCAA Division II.
:So my freshman year was their last year.
:Nai, under head coach Karen Strummy, hugely successful.
:She was a pivotal administrator with heavy duty NCAA committee work over the last several years.
:She's retired now.
:But the worst part about my decision is, my parents made me call St.
:Cloud State and Michigan Tech.
:I had to call St.
:Cloud State, say I was going to UMD, who was in the league, and Michigan Tech.
:I had to call and cancel my official visit.
:Oh, horrible, horrible, worst, worst things ever to have to call and tell people no.
:But, yeah, that's.
:That was my 1st.
:1st step into college basketball.
:And it was fast and furious and certainly did not go how I had planned, but that was.
:That was how I landed.
:Landed at UMD.
:Well, you're probably a better person for having to have to make those calls.
:My son did the same thing with his recruitment when he ended up choosing Ohio Wesleyan, and then with the.
:With the FAFSA being delayed and not getting the information, like, we.
:We built relationships with.
:I mean, he basically had it down to five schools, and we built relationships over the course of his entire spring, AAU, before his, you know, after his junior year, then all summer, then through the whole entire high school season, because we just didn't know what the finances were going to be.
:And so by the time he had to tell four of those five coaches, hey, I'm going somewhere else, that was.
:I mean, I give him a lot of credit.
:He made the phone calls and picked up the, you know, picked up the phone and did it.
:And I think, again, just like I said to you, I think he's a better person for having, you know, made those calls and having those difficult conversations.
:As you well know, in any career that you have, the ability to have difficult conversations is going to help you to advance in your career, and it's going to help you to have more success, because if you try to avoid those for your entire life, you're going to put yourself in a lot of sticky situations that you could have resolved by having one somewhat uncomfortable five minute conversation.
:Well, and as you know, and a sort certainly being on the coaching side, I recognize there was 87 players in line behind me.
:Right?
:Exactly.
:Yeah, it stung for about three minutes, and then the coach picked up the phone and offered the ride to somebody else.
:Absolutely.
:But, no, I agree with you completely.
:The life lessons in between the activities on the court, probably the most powerful.
:All right, so tell me what your vision of college basketball was and tell me what the experience, how it was different from what you envisioned.
:I was a star at Hayward High School.
:I was the all time leading scorer.
:I won all the prizes, all the awards.
:You know, we almost won a state championship had it not been for Katie Voight at Lakeland High School.
:My nemesis, the.
:Yeah, I know.
:It's crazy how we remember these names, right?
:Everybody that, everybody.
:All the losses and the people that beat you.
:I remember those way more than I remember any win that I ever had.
:I could tell you that.
:Oh, yeah.
:Isn't that the truth.
:But.
:So my thought was, it's just gonna be more of the same.
:I had no, no understanding that everybody's a star from where they came from.
:It wouldn't matter if it was a walk on, it wouldn't matter if it was your leading scorer.
:And I did not like to do work outside of practice at that point.
:And I'll never forget this.
:One of the first preseason practices we had at UMB, and coach strumming was tough.
:She's a very tough, very good coach, unlike anything I'd experienced to that point.
:The toughness that I'd had in AAU was just a sliver of what I was getting ready to go into in college.
:And we were big.
:The team was very big.
:Big ladies, tall, just strong.
:And we started doing track, workouts, well, I'd never done a track workout.
:Workout.
:That's a track workout.
:And, you know, I'm like, in the infield, passed out, freshman, rookie, and they're like, oh, here we go with this.
:Like, this kid right here, you know, like, she didn't do her workouts in the summer.
:I partied, I did all that junk, and it was a rude, fast awakening just how serious everybody else took the sport, and it was really put up or shut up time.
:And I'll be honest with you, Mike, I failed my first year.
:I failed my first year.
:I made terrible mistakes off the court, and, you know, the story is compelling afterwards.
:But my lack of mental preparation and ego, frankly, led to some big mistakes that could have really impacted me long term, but had a few really good people in my life who said, there's another chance here, we can reroute.
:Let's hit the reset button.
:But it wouldn't matter if you were going to a juco.
:Somebody is better than you.
:And I wasn't ready for it.
:Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things that I think it's probably easier to avoid that today from a standpoint of there's just more information available, there's more stories, there's more things you can see.
:There's more people to talk to.
:Whereas, again, in the era when you and I were heading to college, I mean, I had really, again, no idea what I was getting into.
:I mean, my recruiting story is just like the school that I ended up going to.
:I actually turned down an official visit from them because I thought I was.
:I was waiting, saving my visits for Ohio State and north Carolina.
:And, dude, you know, that's what I just was like.
:I didn't know.
:My high school coach didn't know, my parents didn't know.
:And, you know, that was kind of the way that I approached it.
:And so, again, you just had no idea.
:It was much, much harder to sort of get a gauge on, well, who am I?
:Where am I?
:How do I fit?
:And so I could totally relate to the idea that you kind of come in and you don't know, because, again, as you said, you're kind of in this.
:You kind of are in your little fishbowl and you're doing your thing.
:And maybe, you know what?
:I might have known what some kids around greater Cleveland were doing, but other than that, I mean, you talk about kids in Columbus or Cincinnati.
:I have no idea.
:Like, when my son was playing this past year and making college decisions, like, he's all over Twitter looking at every guy in the state who he's played against in AAU and saying, this kid's going here, this guy's going here, and this guy's going there.
:I'm better than him, or I'm worse than him or this kid's.
:And so you have this comparison of, you're like, okay, I kind of can figure out sort of where I slot.
:Whereas you and I were going in completely, completely blind.
:There were no, like, here's my top nine school social media graphic.
:No, there was not there.
:Definitely.
:That would definitely.
:That definitely did not exist.
:All right, so what do you.
:When do you get a handle on what you want to do academically, career wise?
:Is coaching at all what you're thinking about, obviously, with the influence of your stepmom, your dad, as your coach?
:You know, you said kind of initially, maybe that wasn't a direction that you were thinking, but when did coaching sort of becomes an idea that you thought, hey, maybe when I'm done playing, that might be a direction I want to go?
:Or did it not occur to you until you were completely done playing, and then you're like, oh, man, I got to figure something out here.
:Yeah.
:No, I would say for sure 100%.
:When I transferred from Minnesota Duluth, I went to a little, tiny d two private school in Hartsville, South Carolina, called Coker college.
:And as soon as I got there, and my head coach there, she was really young.
:She was really young.
:She was great.
:And I'll share this.
:I have an opportunity, so I'll be inducted in the hall of fame there February of this year.
:And so, thank you.
:And so I called Coach McBride about two weeks ago, and, of course, she picked up.
:She said, katie, I'm like, coach, what's going on?
:You're not gonna believe this.
:And she.
:I think she was a bit of a reminder of what I really admired about my stepmom.
:And I knew very quickly, under her leadership and her belief in me and a willingness to say, okay, we're going to do a reset because I believe in you.
:It was all I ever wanted to do.
:I want to be a college basketball coach.
:That's what I want to do.
:I want to do what my mom did.
:I want to do what Coach McBride does.
:She tied me in.
:We got special permission for me to attend the WBCA national convention.
:My first convention was in.
:Oh, gosh.
:Bob Huggins was the head coach.
:Oh, gosh.
:Where was it?
:Was it Cleveland?
:No.
:Cincinnati?
:No, it was when he was at Cincinnati.
:Yeah, he was at Cincinnati.
:That was my first professional development as a.
:I was, I think I was a junior in college, but I knew.
:I knew I loved basketball and I loved leading and, you know, had an opportunity to be a team captain and things like that and felt like, you know, I think I could.
:I think I could do this, and I really love it, and I really don't want to do anything else.
:I thought I wanted to be an athletic trainer.
:That was a lie.
:And there's way too many science classes, way too many.
:So I think I would say my sophomore year, the light came on, and that was it.
:That's all she wrote.
:We start thinking about the game differently and look at it from the perspective of a coach, because people always ask me that and say, did you think like a coach while you were playing?
:And my answer to that was always no.
:Like, I always was focused on being a player, and I never really looked at the game from the coaching perspective, but a lot of coaches do.
:And then a lot of people sort of have that light bulb go off wherever, all of a sudden they realize, hey, I think when I'm done, I might want to coach.
:And now suddenly they're looking at things differently.
:So I don't know how that applies to you.
:Same film.
:It's when I got introduced to film, and we had done a little bit of that my freshman year in college, but again, just my focus wasn't there.
:Barely.
:Barely watched film in high school.
:I mean, hardly at all.
:And then when I got to Kocher, we watched film, and I was like, well, this is like, why this?
:And why flare this way or why chase on this screen?
:Or why do we go over the top?
:And what the rationale and kind of the strategy behind it was intriguing, and I could see it.
:It wasn't like being in the action where you're trying to execute a play and make sure that you don't screw it up and have to run lines.
:That definitely caught my interest and started to be a bit of a student.
:Yeah, that makes sense.
:I mean, I think to your point, that, well, first of all, watching film, I'm sure during your college career was quite an experience, kind of.
:Kind of like mine.
:I always laugh because I think about sitting in the locker room and our coach hitting the rewind button, saying, hey, I want to see that play again.
:And hitting the rewind, it would go like two minutes back.
:Then you'd have to rewatch all this irrelevant stuff, and you just like, you know, so sort of watch film.
:I'm sure it was just a painful, painful experience for coaches in the late eighties, early nineties when I was around.
:So now the technology makes it, makes it much easier to be able to, to watch film.
:But I can totally see where, again, as you start diving into that x is an o piece and sort of distancing yourself from, hey, what do I have to do?
:As opposed to looking at the whole picture?
:I mean, my, my perspective as a player was just, what do I have to do?
:And not necessarily looking at the whole picture, which obviously, as a coach, that's, uh, you know, that's where you have to get to.
:So what are the conversations like then, with your coach at coker as you get done with school?
:And you start thinking about, okay, what's my first step to actually get into the profession?
:What do you remember about those conversations then?
:What are the things that you do to try to get your name out there and get an opportunity?
:So I distinctly remember.
:So I went through a head coaching change there at Coker.
:So coach McBride left and took the head job at UNc Pembroke, which was a bigger d two school in the peach belt conference, state school.
:And then we had a new coach come in, Ann Walters.
:Just a tough, tough lady, but very, very good.
:And I had a medical red shirt.
:I had had a shoulder injury, and I was getting ready to spend the summer studying in Spain.
:And I could either take that last year or I could graduate at the end of the summer.
:I thought I'd add a degree in Spanish just so I could travel.
:I don't really use it very much anymore.
:But anyway, I sat with coach Walters and I talked about it, and she said, well, what do you want to do?
:And I said, well, maybe I'm thinking about coming back and using my last year.
:And she said, we could build this out where you're almost like a player coach type of thing.
:And for the first time, she really challenged me to be the player as well.
:It was her and Jean Hill, who's the head coach at Georgia State University right now, a dear friend of mine.
:And they both kind of sat me down and said, if you'll get in the best shape of your life, you'll be the player everybody knows you can be, and you'll be able to lead in a way that's indicative of the coaching profession.
:And I decided to do it.
:I did it.
:It was the best thing I ever did, is I decided to use that last year of eligibility.
:And because I had had so many credits at that point, my schedule was fluffy, and I was able to spend a ton of time in the office, kind of almost serving as an intern, a coaching intern.
:And it was totally to prepare me for what was next.
:Now, what I knew was coming is that Gene, who's at Georgia State, was getting ready to graduate, leave, and go take a job at Lander University.
:So the part time coaching position that he was vacating was going to be open.
:And so coach had talked to me about taking that spot.
:We need to know about that spot was that it paid $2,500 over a twelve month period of time.
:And it worked in conjunction with a part time work study coordinator job that paid $6.20 an hour.
:You could only work 20 hours a week.
:And I was like, sign me up, man.
:I am in.
:We're done, we're done, we're done.
:Where do I sign?
:And that's what I did.
:So took my seat, took that red shirt.
:Year we had an incredible season, had a lot of personal success, team success, and prepared me for life as a very young, unintelligent, division two assistant coach.
:What did you know immediately about it?
:That you're like, this is the right.
:This is the right choice?
:How'd you know?
:What about it did you immediately gravitate to?
:I wasn't afraid.
:I realized that I had learned more than I knew.
:I did that all of the sitting in the office and watching film and all the time of.
:Of whether it was leading in a drill or leading from the back of a line, all of those things were going to transfer over to the profession.
:I enjoyed connecting with the players and almost serving as a translator between the head coach and the player that, hey, she scanned on you because of this.
:This is why this is important.
:And being able to find that thread of relatability between the head coach and the player.
:And as we know, the assistant coaches are always kind of in the friend zone and they're the ones that are trusted by the players.
:And the head coach's office is the Bermuda Triangle, but I was the one that they weren't afraid of yet, and I enjoyed that.
:I enjoyed being able to share on that experience and to help kind of service that conduit between the head coach and the player.
:Yeah, that assistant role, I think, is one that it's really interesting to just kind of talk to.
:So walking through it with my son this year, again, as a freshman in college and the division three level, you have one head coach and they have one assistant coach, and then another guy who's kind of a volunteer, who's around sometimes former player, and it's just interesting having the conversation with my son, just trying to navigate the two, the two relationships and figure out, hey, how do you, how do you bond with the assistant coach versus.
:How do you bond with the head coach?
:How do you approach one versus the other?
:And again, it's interesting from a player perspective, but, you know, you think about that as a coach and just how, again, no matter what you want to say, the relationship between that assistant and the players versus a head coach and the players, it's, it's different, and there's just no way around it.
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:When you think about, and obviously, we'll talk about your time as a head coach here in a second, but when you think about your various experiences as an assistant coach, what do you think are one or two top lessons that you learned that made you a better head coach when you got that opportunity?
:That's a great question.
:Finding personal value in serving as someone's right hand.
:I can't read.
:What school t shirt do you have on?
:Kent State.
:Kent.
:Okay.
:Okay.
:So this is gonna, this can be, here's my Kent State story.
:And this will kind of epitomize the question, which, by the way, one of my high school teammates, she's in the women's Basketball hall of Fame there.
:But my dearest friend, mentor, and basically brother is their head women's basketball coach, Todd Starkey.
:And when I was able to serve as Todd's associate head coach back at Lenoir, Ryan and I just got a chance to see him a few weeks ago, he was inducted into the hall of Fame there.
:He basically forced me to go down there is, I got to tell you, there's probably been no better time in my life professionally than serving as his associate head coach.
:And that's coming from someone who loves to be at the front of the line.
:What he taught me and the space that he allowed me to grow in and lead from in support of his philosophies and values and beliefs in the program and what he was trying to execute, but giving me the space to find myself in his world, it changed my life.
:It absolutely changed my life.
:It's extremely powerful learning how to lead from the back of a line and not having to do it from the front in support of the vision of a leader.
:And did we agree on things all the time?
:Absolutely nothing.
:And most of the time, I'm like, you're wrong about everything all the time, and I don't even like you.
:But he took the time to teach me his why in the decision making, whether it was from a player personnel standpoint or if it was a formal schematic standpoint.
:And that was absolutely invaluable to me.
:And I'd already been a head coach twice after I was in that position, but I didn't learn those lessons.
:The first at Coker when I was a head coacher at Belmont Abbey College, but I learned them after that with him.
:And I damn sure took that lesson with me into college athletics, administration, and building my teams on this side of the house so that just, I can't say enough about his mentorship for me.
:And that lesson of giving assistants the opportunity to lead where they are, I.
:Think that's something that, and we've talked to a bunch of coaches on here, Katie, about this same topic, and it comes down to an ability to, I guess, I don't know if delegate is the perfect word, but the ability to delegate and so many coaches that we've talked to have expressed the idea that, hey, when I was a young coach, I kind of wanted to do everything and have my hand in everything and control everything.
:And clearly, when you first become a head coach and you're trying to put your stamp on the program and you don't yet know who you really are as a coach, it's completely understandable.
:And then they all say, after three years, five years, ten years, I started to realize that when I hired good people and then gave them the space, like you're describing, to be able to do what they do, to utilize their talents, that it just exponentially made what we could do as a staff so much better.
:And yet they all said that it took a long time to be able to sort of get to that point where you, whether it's you trusted somebody else or whether you just trusted yourself to be able to give up that control over all these different aspects that, again, you want to have your hand.
:There's a reason why anybody who gets to be a head coach at any level, there's a reason why you've had success leading to that point to give you that opportunity.
:And so you feel like, I got to have my hand in all this stuff because it's me.
:It's my program.
:It's my name on it.
:And so to give it away is a little scary, but it's amazing how many coaches we've had conversations with.
:They're like, as soon as I gave it away, everything just got better.
:And it's kind of an amazing thing.
:It is.
:It is.
:I was actually, I was on another podcast this morning.
:We were talking about this very thing, and I shared a quote.
:I have no idea who said it, but it says, be stubborn about your goals and flexible about your methods.
:And I shared.
:It took me way too long to recognize the fact I sucked at late gameplay calling.
:I hated it.
:I didn't like it.
:I didn't like pressure cookie cooker situations.
:I liked the big, overarching concepts.
:And so finally one day, I was like, I'm really bad at that, so why don't I just hire it?
:And I went on and I hired a high school guy, Brad Mangum at Alexander Central High School.
:I picked up the phone, I said, hey, let's go have dinner, man.
:And I sat him down.
:I said, do you want to come to, you want to come to the college side?
:Because I need a guy who can run late game situations.
:I know you're a pro at it.
:I've watched you.
:Let's do this.
:Take that part of my program over for me because I'm not good at it.
:And so I think with age, of course, and season, valid self analysis, at least for me, is a whole lot better.
:And listening to people that are smarter isn't quite as difficult.
:Yeah.
:Self awareness as a coach or even as a human being, is a very, very underrated tool and skill.
:If you are able to self evaluate and are self aware of what your strengths and weaknesses are, and you're willing to maybe not admit is the wrong word, but willing to recognize what your strengths and weaknesses are, and then, as you said, find people who can fill in those gaps for you, I mean, that's a powerful way to build what you and your program can do, as opposed to being stubborn to the point where, hey, I know I can do this.
:Even though you may have a track that says, that says otherwise.
:It's the definition of insanity.
:Okay.
:That is true.
:That is true.
:All right, let me flip that last question.
:On you.
:So as a head coach, what did you learn during your time that then allowed you to become a better assistant and then allowed you, and we'll use it, use this question maybe to transition into the administrative side of it.
:And then what did you learn about sort of administering staff as a head coach?
:You obviously told us one lesson that you learned, that you have to be able to allow people the freedom to be able to lead.
:But just what are some things that you learned as a head coach that helped you in your subsequent positions, both as an assistant and then as getting into the administrative side of it?
:I think, just frankly, a degree of empathy for anyone that sits in that chair.
:You know, even right now, I'm working for a first time athletics director.
:You might as well be a first time head coach.
:Our head men's basketball coach, first time head coach, that it's one of the loneliest places in the world.
:And so, certainly going from being a head coach down to an assistant is being able to, you know, when I left Lenoir Ryan, I went to Marshall University, worked for Tony Kemper, who's now down at Central Arkansas.
:Tony's first head coaching job at Marshalle.
:And he needed someone who knew what it felt like to sit in that chair.
:He was wise beyond his years to make a decision to put his bet on the staff at a mid major.
:And so that things like, he's a male head coach and you have female women's basketball players coming into your office and wanting to close the door, I'm like, dude, leave the door cracked open.
:Like, seriously, just the basic business practices.
:I mean, little tank, it would never would have thought of it.
:Well, I thought of it because something happened to, like, other friends of mine and just good business practice, right?
:And so I think for me, in all those different ways of, you know, the trains coming down the tracks, it ran over me ten years ago.
:I'm here to protect you from it.
:You don't have to do what I say, but I'm telling you, if you don't do this, the train's gonna run over you.
:Is being able to serve as, again, that translator, that person that says, hey, here.
:Here's what's coming.
:Let's get ready for it.
:I've been here.
:I've seen this.
:Let's make a plan or let me help you make a plan or be assistive in whatever that capacity is.
:But I think now, for me, it really part of my responsibility today is I need to make sure Marvin Lewis has what he needs.
:And I need to make sure that someone, if it's not me, is just asking how Marvin Lewis is doing.
:Like, how are you doing?
:How'd you like to be a first time athletics director in this climate, at a high mid major, sitting in the a ten, wondering, how are we going to raise eight to $9 million to make sure our men's basketball team qualifies for an NCAA tournament and lifts the position of an entire institution?
:No pressure.
:None.
:First gig, I was like, are you sure you made the right decision when you did this?
:And he's like, don't talk to me.
:But so I think even in the smallest way and in the biggest way, just recognizing the big chair is the big chair.
:And it doesn't matter.
:All the professional development, all the conversations that we can have to prepare ourselves to sit in that chair, there will be things that you simply can't be prepared for.
:But having an audience and a team around you that really can serve as trusted advisors, that you're not in it, you're not doing it by yourself.
:You've got people.
:You've got your own people.
:That's a role I've really learned to fall in love with.
:It's a great, great point because I think when I think about the things that I've done in my career, so during my day job is as a teacher, and I feel like teaching is very similar to coaching in a sense of when I close my door and I have challenges and I have issues within my classroom or right now, I'm teaching elementary phys ed within my gym, a lot of times, it feels like I'm the only person in the world who is experiencing those problems.
:And I know that lots and lots of other teachers that I've had conversations with feel the same way.
:And then because you very rarely get time to step outside of your classroom and talk to colleagues, first of all, in your building, but certainly colleagues that are working somewhere else that you do.
:As you said, you feel very, very lonely.
:You feel like you're the only person in the world that has these problems, and all of a sudden, you talk to somebody else.
:You're like, oh, there's lots of other people that have these same issues and.
:Not a lot of people.
:Maybe if we talk to each other, we might be able to figure these out, or maybe there's somebody out there that's already experienced this, and all I have to do is ask them.
:And now I have a solution.
:Instead of me pounding my head against the wall.
:And coaching is very similar, especially again, if you're a young coach, maybe you haven't built up sort of your network of coaches and people that you can call and mentors and that kind of thing.
:It can definitely feel like you're on an island.
:And I think that's a very, very good lesson, especially for young coaches out there, that you want to be able to rely on your staff.
:You want to be able to hire people that are not just going to say yes to every single thing that you do.
:They're going to tell you like, hey, crack the door open.
:Hey, you got to do this.
:Hey, this is something that you need to think about because it's just going to allow you to build not only on your own experience, but on the experience of the people that you have that are a part of your staff.
:So I think that's a very good lesson.
:Tell me about the pivot, the change to athletic administration away from coaching.
:Was that a conscious decision that you made or was that a case of an opportunity was presented to you and then you're like, oh, well, I never really thought of that.
:Let me consider whether or not that might be a good option.
:So just how do you get to the administrative side of it and leave the coaching side of it?
:Yeah, so I think the first part of it is when people think about maybe the weight of administration or the experience that you've got to have.
:The beauty of JuCO and Nii and D two and d three is that you're going to wear multiple hats at those levels.
:So you invariably pick up all these administrative responsibilities even when you don't want them, but there's nobody else to do them, so you have to do it.
:So, you know, it was a steady stream of nearly 20 years of picking up administrative responsibilities without even knowing it.
:And when I was at Georgia State with Jean Hill, who I referenced earlier, you know, I moved from Huntington, West Virginia, to Atlanta.
:I love Atlanta.
:And I thought a bit of a geographic here would make me kind of fall back in love with coaching because I really struggled at Marshall.
:I was coming up closer to 20 years in the business and waking up at four in the morning to catch a flight in Huntington, West Virginia, for a conference game at UTEp.
:I had no kids.
:I got an ex husband.
:I never see my family, and I'm in my forties.
:I'm like, what am I doing here?
:You know?
:And so even at Georgia State, when I found that I didn't love teaching the skill of basketball, which, of course, at this point is the last thing you get to do anyway, if I didn't love that part.
:I was doing a disservice to myself and to the kids.
:And so I started to think about what on earth, what I do.
:I had teached, I had taught before.
:I loved that.
:I loved being in the classroom.
:So I thought, well, maybe I could go back and get my doctorate.
:I could get in the college classroom.
:And I did the one thing that I would never advise anyone, which is to leave a job without having one.
:But I called it a sabbatical, Mike.
:I said, I'm a faculty member.
:I'm a faculty member of life.
:So I'm going to take a three month sabbatical.
:I'd hired a career coach and I got into some consulting work briefly in Charlotte.
:And just, you know, I've told this story a million times, but it just happens, right?
:You get older and if you're focused on your network at all, you hardly interview for jobs.
:And I was trying to figure out my life.
:And I took a call from Griff Aldrich, who's the head men's basketball coach at Longwood University, and his college roommate was Ryan Odom.
:And Ryan and I worked together at Lenoir.
:Ryan, this was after, this is post UMBC, when they're the first 16 seed and they beat Uva and all the things.
:And Griff calls and says, hey, our new ad's trying to hire an external leader and she wants to go outside the box.
:Are you still trying to find yourself?
:And I knew Griff just because of Ryan briefly.
:And.
:And I thought, Farmville, Virginia, man like.
:But I had taught marketing classes at Lenoir Ryan and I had been in the marketing space, and I'd really kind of tried to create a niche for myself in that area.
:And Michelle Meadows took a chance and I was prepared to go back to coaching, be an assistant at a D two, and teach in order to make payroll at, I don't know, 43 years old.
:So it was like going back to the ramen noodle, the $6.20 work study job.
:But I will say this.
: my contract wasn't renewed in: :There was an athletics director change.
:And it's always a really important part of the story that I like to tell Mike because I didn't do anything wrong.
:She just.
:I just wasn't her person.
:Right?
:Yeah, we won a bunch of games.
:It was fine.
:For all intents and purposes, I had done exactly what I was supposed to do, but I just wasn't her match.
:And the beauty of going through a non renewal and finding success after is the freedom that comes with it.
:I couldn't get to that without therapy, friends, and a whole bunch of other things.
:But if you stay in a business long enough, like a lot of other businesses, it's going to happen to you and is okay, because what was on the backside of this, of course, if you would have told me when I was staying at my mother's house in my early forties, thinking, oh, what am I going to do with my life?
:That this is where we are now, I wouldn't have believed you, but the seeds were planted.
:They'd been planted for a while.
:All right, so at Longwood, what are the responsibilities of that job?
:What were you doing day to day?
:Well, it wasn't.
:I was there for six months, and then we went into Covid.
:So my whole life was cut out fans, cut out pets.
:We had a pet program where you could.
:We could do cutouts of your pets.
:And it was.
:I mean, it was a full blown education on health administration.
:So add that to the list.
:Right?
:Yeah, but.
:So it was external overseeing marketing, promotions, a little bit of communications, and trying to elevate a small big south men's basketball program and women's basketball program.
:Rebecca Tillett, who's now the head coach at St.
:Louis, has won chips at both places, trying to find them some relevancy in a small Virginia community.
:And through Covid and everything that went with that, I picked up broadcasting heavy on that side.
:I did color commentary for all the men's games, all the women's games.
:Loved it, fell in love with that piece.
:We had some sports center top ten plays, and you could hear my voice in the background, so I really got a kick out of that part.
:But filling the gaps was a necessity because you never knew who was going to get sick or who was going to be down for the count.
:And we could not have fans because the venue was too small and the court was too close to the bleachers.
:So trying to create an experience that show, you know, would show well on television, really became one of the big pushes and how we could, how we could get some revenue generation out of that.
:So it was wild.
:Doesn't seem real, like now when you look back on it, it's just I still, sometimes I'll look back and think, and like, was that really real?
:Did we really experience that?
:And I was fortunate in the sense of that my kids were not.
:I have two in college now, and thankfully they weren't in college.
:They didn't have to experience the shutdown.
:Obviously, their high school and whatever was closed, and they were home for a significant portion of time.
:And clearly, they missed some things as a part of that high school experience, and they missed whatever parts of a season, whatever, but they didn't miss going to campus.
:And some of the things that kids were at the college age that, you know, that you were experiencing.
:I mean, it just seems like that.
:Was like, where were you when?
:And it's funny.
:You're right, Kent.
:I was watching the start of the Mac women's basketball tournament.
:I was getting ready to watch Starkey's game against Kent.
:And I had just gone to the quarterfinal conference tournament game for our men.
:It was at Radford College.
:And I remember they brought out all these hand sanitizers, and I'm like, is it like.
:And then just like that, it was all for me.
:Boom.
:Yeah.
:I had one of my fellow teachers come to the door of my gym, just dropping off her class.
:And this is the conversation I remember her saying.
:She said to me, she goes, I think maybe we're going to be out of school for a day or two as a result of this.
:And I'm like, I think it's going to be two weeks, is what I told her.
:I think we're going to be out two weeks.
:She's like, no way.
:She's like, no way we're going to be out two weeks.
:I think so, you know, and then, boom, all of this, you know, all of a sudden, the whole world just, just shuts down.
:So it's.
:It's crazy.
:So in between, you go to app state before you get to George Mason.
:Mason.
:Let's.
:Let's jump.
:Let's jump over the app state experience and go right to.
:Go right to George Mason.
:Tell me about what you do, what your title that we.
:That we read off at the beginning.
:Tell me what that actually means.
:And again, kind of what your day to day looks like in terms of what you're doing to.
:So if you see someone with the title and it has the word development in it, basically, if you're on the other side of the table of that person, it basically means hide your wallet because I'm coming for your money.
:There you go.
:There you go.
:So I have the responsibility of overseeing our fundraising team in kind of four buckets, and it used to be three buckets, and we've added a fourth.
:And this is kind of at the mid major and high mid major level.
:So I oversee our director of annual fund.
:Annual funds typically are the scholarship dollars that people that participate in the scholarship space or small sports specific giving, then major gifts, those are usually pledged out gifts.
:Of the five to six, seven, eight figure variety, naming rights would fall into that category.
:I oversee our capital giving campaign.
:So, buildings, we're going to build something.
:We're building a basketball and academic performance center.
:And then the fourth one is the new one, and that's nil.
:So, of course, in the state of Virginia, as well as the state of Tennessee, probably four or five months ago, we had some state legislation pass outside of the House case settlement and the 900 other court cases that says we essentially can pay athletes now outside of the revenue share.
:Of course, the NCAA says no.
:Danny White at Tennessee says next year's season tickets, we're going 10% talent fee attached to those tickets.
:And he said, tennessee law trumps NCAA rules.
:But that bucket in particular, as you can imagine, is the slipperiest of all of them, because it's the newest, it's the most ambiguous away from kind of the traditional fundraising aspects.
:And a lot of people, when I tell them what I do, or coaches could never ask anybody for money, I could never do that.
:And all I tell them is, you're actually fundraising.
:You don't even know it.
:My whole life is one official visit after the next.
:All I do is sit across from a table from a person or people that love what we're doing, and we talk about what dream they want to build.
:And it is so deeply relational and so rewarding.
:In that sense, I never would have thought that coaching would translate the way that it does, but it essentially is a perfect fit.
:So, as you have those conversations, and this is a conversation that I've had with a couple of guys that played at Kent, both with me, and saw a couple of them played a little bit after, and you start talking about the.
:The situation with nil versus sort of, I guess, old school donating, where, let's say, I call up the program, like, hey, I want to donate x amount of dollars, and maybe that's going to go to the practice facility, or it's going to go to helping to fund new uniforms, or it's going to buy a shooting machine, or it's going to whatever.
:There's some tangible thing that my money is going towards.
:And then now, when you talk about, like, the collectives, for example, it's like, okay, I'm donating money to this collective, and then that collective is being used to essentially pay a player's salary, essentially.
:And then you have no idea whether that player is going to a, stay there, b, be productive.
:And now I've made this donation.
:And where did it go?
:Versus in the past, somebody could say, well, yeah, I helped to contribute to this new athletic performance center.
:I helped contribute to this study lounge or whatever it might have.
:Might have been.
:So your colleagues in the space, what have you guys talked about in those terms as far as appealing to donors and just the message that you're sending to people?
:Yeah.
:No, it's just.
:It's so complicated.
:Right.
:There's so many layers to the conversation.
:You know, I would say the center point of is it really boils down to, do you want to win?
:I mean, you know, you watch college game day the same way I do, you can listen to Nick Saban, we can listen to all the pundits, you know, and I'll even say in more recent conversations that we've had, going back to something that I said earlier, you don't have to play in the space, but you can't win if you don't.
:And you have no chance if you opt out.
:And you have a chance if you opt in now, you're not guaranteed it, but you're guaranteed nothing if you don't.
:And Marvin uses a really great word.
:I like how he frames this often.
:Is the neighborhood of an institution.
:So what is the university's position in its community, in its region?
:What happens if sports goes away?
:You know, what happens if sports turns great and you capture lightning in a bottle?
:I mean, obviously, coming from app state, I know what that's like.
:You know, I was there when we beat Texas A and M, and college game day came a week later.
:If people don't think it moves the needle, it moves the needle.
:I mean, you know, Kent State could.
:I mean, the Mac is murderers row.
:I mean, who wants to play anybody in the Mac?
:I mean, it's a freaking nightmare.
:And so I just.
:I think that's the part that we come to is it's navigating a couple flagship sports and their ability to move the needle, not just for the department, but for an entire institution, a community, all the employees, the students, it boosts enroll.
:I mean, every single piece.
:You can't deny the data.
:And for someone who has a propensity for sparkles and glitter way more than she does.
:Mathematics.
:The mathematics and the numbers don't lie.
:They just don't.
:And time and time and time again, we have models and examples that are presented to us that validate what happens if your school makes the NCAA tournament.
: tegory of cinderellas back in: :Yeah, absolutely.
:You know, now, is it easy to convince someone to participate in the collective space?
:Not in a million years.
:And I'm not going to talk about tax deductibility and the fact that it's extremely difficult to try to work in a great area to develop, you know, someone who wants to make a big gift that they have any tax, tax assistance with that.
:But you got to talk about it if you want to be about winning.
:Yeah, so true.
:I mean, there's no way around it.
:It's like the rules of the game are the rules of the game.
:And if you choose not to, as you said, opt in, then you're just putting yourself in a position where there are a lot of other places that are going to opt in, and then there's only so much that you can do with that.
:And so that becomes a real challenge if you don't try to take advantage of the rules that are of, that are out there.
:And again, buy into your community and try to get people to see what the value is and have a successful athletic program.
:All right, Katie, before we get out, I want to ask you a final two part question.
:So, part one, when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge?
:And then second part of the question, when you think about what you get to do every day, what brings you the most joy?
:So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy.
:Biggest challenge.
:The amount of time that the business requires, I think that's the biggest thing.
:And work life balance, I don't even use those words.
:I think this is not a business for the faint of hurt.
:You've got to just, you just got to love it.
:And so I'm a glutton for punishment, but it doesn't always make it easy.
:The best part, I think I've been here three weeks.
:We beat Dayton.
:There were, I think, maybe eight or nine in the country.
:That's the best part, being there in those moments.
:But it's the buzzer beaters.
:Right.
:And it's those signature moments.
:But it's also, for me now, these deeply intimate relationships that I have the opportunity to forge with donors and people that believe in the fan experience and the passion of sport the same way that I do.
:I love the fact that I'm given permission in this job to be a fan, and it's without judgment.
:And I can share in that experience the same way my donors do I think some of the donors are like, is she really, she's, she's losing her mind.
:Right?
:And I'm totally fine with it.
:In fact, they write bigger checks.
:There you go.
:That's right.
:This lady's a fan.
:She's serious.
:Let's get, let's get her some cash, you know?
:So I think, you know, the challenges, like I said before, the business just, it'll take from you.
:You know, it, it doesn't matter what level.
:I mean, it'll take from you.
:Business will take from you.
:Sure.
:But if you stick around just long enough, you know, you get, you get to see the miracles happen.
:Absolutely.
:All right.
:Share how people can get in touch with you, reach out to you, contact you, email, social media, whatever you want to feel comfortable with.
:And then after you do that, I'll jump back in and wrap things up.
:Okay.
:So LinkedIn, you just type in Katy Pate.
:You could add George Mason.
:There's a couple Katie Pates out there.
:You'll find me with the George Mason stuff.
:Drop me a message, I'll get right back to you.
:We can jump on the zoom, jump on a discovery call.
:I love to do these things.
:Easiest, quickest way is on Twitter or xocoachkatypate.
:I'm on there all the time.
:I'm a bit of a Twitter maven and happy to connect anytime.
:And if you, if you get me on an email at work, my cell phone number is in my signature so I won't give it out over the call.
:But if you dig a little bit and you send me an email and you get a response, you're going to see my cell phone number.
:So perfect.
:Katie 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.
Katie Pate:Your first impression is everything when applying for a new coaching job.
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Katie Pate:Each section of the portfolio guide provides detailed instructions on how to organize your portfolio in a professional manner.
Katie Pate:The guide also provides sample documents for each section of your portfolio that you can copy, modify and add to your personal portfolio.
Katie Pate:As a whopeds pod listener, you can get your coaching portfolio guide for just $25.
Katie Pate:Visit coachingportfolioguide.com hoop heads to learn more.
:Thanks for listening to the Hoop Heads podcast presented by head Start basketball.
