Way of Champions Podcast

This week on the Way of Champions Podcast we dive into the archives with author Doug Lemov. Doug is the author of the international bestseller Teach Like a Champion ,  Teach Like a Champion 2..0  and Practice Perfect.  He is one of the foremost teacher educators in the world, and recently he has branched into the world of coach education. He now consults with Major League Baseball teams and is an...

Anson Dorrance recently stepped down as Head Coach the University of North Carolina Women's Soccer program. In his career spanning 1979-2024, he won over 1100 games, 21 NCAA Championships, 7x NCAA Coach of the Year awards, 12 ACC Coach of the Year Awards, and even one NCAA Men's Coach of the Year award. He also led the US Women's National Team to the 1991 World Cup Championship. He has published 3...

Anson Dorrance recently stepped down as Head Coach the University of North Carolina Women's Soccer program. In his career spanning 1979-2024, he won over 1100 games, 21 NCAA Championships, 7x NCAA Coach of the Year awards, 12 ACC Coach of the Year Awards, and even one NCAA Men's Coach of the Year award. He also led the US Women's National Team to the 1991 World Cup Championship. He has published 3...

Anson Dorrance recently stepped down as Head Coach the University of North Carolina Women's Soccer program. In his career spanning 1979-2024, he won over 1100 games, 21 NCAA Championships, 7x NCAA Coach of the Year awards, 12 ACC Coach of the Year Awards, and even one NCAA Men's Coach of the Year award. He also led the US Women's National Team to the 1991 World Cup Championship. He has published 3...

This week on the podcast, we dive into the qualities of an exceptional youth sports experience with Mike Kelleher and Derek Broadley of Charleston SC in South Carolina. We discuss the importance of vision and core principles, the need for a curriculum that coaches of all abilities can implement, how to get buy in from coaches who do not want to follow the club plan, engaging parents, and the impor...

Ashton Eaton is a 2x Olympic Gold Medalist (2012 and 2016) and a 5x World indoor and outdoor champion in the decathlon. He was the former world record holder in the decathlon and still holds the world record for the heptathlon. At the University of Oregon, he was a 5x NCAA champion and all American. Yet he grew up in Central Oregon a multi-sport athlete who only learned about the decathlon as a se...

It is hard to believe but we have reached episode 400 of the Way of Champions Podcast, and we wanted an incredible guest to celebrate this momentous occasion. Enter Phil Jackson, a 2x NBA Champion as a player with the NY Knicks and an 11x NBA Champion coach with the Chicago Bulls and LA Lakers. He coached all time greats such as Michal Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Kobe Bryant and Shaq, was one of the f...

Acacia Walker-Weinstein joins us this week on the Way of Champions, continuing our October run of champion coaches. Walker is the Head Women's Lacrosse coach at Boston College, the 2024 NCAA Champions. As either a player or coach, Walker has participated in 20 of the last 21 NCAA Tournaments and was a part of Northwestern's three consecutive NCAA titles from 2006-08 as an assistant coach. Since be...

Acacia Walker-Weinstein joins us this week on the Way of Champions, continuing our October run of champion coaches. Walker is the Head Women's Lacrosse coach at Boston College, the 2024 NCAA Champions. As either a player or coach, Walker has participated in 20 of the last 21 NCAA Tournaments and was a part of Northwestern's three consecutive NCAA titles from 2006-08 as an assistant coach. Since be...

In the world of swimming, you would be hard pressed to find a coach whose resume matches that of American Swim Coaches Association Hall of Famer Frank Busch. As a collegiate coach at The University of Arizona, his teams won 2 NCAA Championships and his swimmers won a combined 80 individual and relay national championships. He was a 6x NCAA coach of the year and 11x Pac 12 coach of the year. He ret...

Roy Williams served as the men's head coach for the North Carolina Tar Heels for 18 seasons and the Kansas Jayhawks for 15 seasons. With a total of 903 wins, Williams took his teams to nine Final Fours in his careers at Kansas and North Carolina and won 3 NCAA Championships at UNC. Williams is the fifth NCAA Men's Division I head coach to reach 900 wins, and reached the mark in fewer games than an...

In this weeks episode, John and Jerry discuss their brand new book  The Champion Sports Parent: Practical Wisdom for Raising Confident, Competitive, Mentally Tough Athletes . They wrote this book as a companion to last year's The Champion Teammate, so that parents can best support their children along their athletic journey. Many parents have grown frustrated by the youth sports industrial complex...

In this replay from 2019, John talks with Ted Kroeten (@Joyofthepeople), founder of Joy of the People, a free play soccer program in Minnesota. Kroeten leads the way in rethinking and delivering player development always championing kids and possibilities based on his experienced, dedicated, and innovative soccer career. Joy of the People's mission statement provides a clear idea of what they're a...

Juwan Brescacin (@jbrescacinjones82) is a former collegiate football player at Northern Illinois University and the 15th overall Canadian Football League draft pick in 2016. He played 8 years professionally in Canada, winning two Grey Cups (2018 and 2022) before retiring and founding the High Point Athletes Foundation. Today he is pursuing a masters in psychology while mentoring young athletes and...

Brett White is a seasoned sports coach and leadership expert with over 17 years of experience in football (soccer) coaching. He currently serves as the Head Coach for Bonnet Bay FC's First Grade team in the SSFA Premier League. He has a rich history of fostering talent and managing large teams, having served as the Coach & Player Development Coordinator at Bonnet Bay FC for over 40 teams.  He is a...

Dr. Joe Baker (@bakerjyorku) is the Tanenbaum Research Chair at the University of Toronto, Canada. He is a world-leader in research on talent identification, developing sport expertise, relative age effect, and high performance athlete development and has held visiting researcher/professor positions in the United Kingdom, Australia and Germany. His research considers the varying influences on opti...

In this excellent conversation from 2021, we are joined by Rasmus Ankersen (@RasmusAnkersen), an internationally known author, speaker, and film producer and one of the worlds leading experts on talent identification and development. Today he is one of the founders of Sport Republic, which is the majority shareholder of Southampton FC, where he also works as the Director of Football. He was also t...

Ken Rouff and Jean Linscott are the authors of What is the Goal? The Truth About the Youth Sports Industry . Today we discuss their new, book, many of the problems with the youth sports industrial complex and how it more often than not negatively effects children and drives them out of sports. Ken, jean and John share their own parenting experiences as well.    Jean Linscott, Ph. D., is a clinical...

Neill Collins is a former professional soccer player, with nearly 600 appearances across clubs such as Sunderland, Leeds, Wolves, Sheffield United, and the Tampa Bay Rowdies. As a player he won promotion to the English Premier League with both Wolves and Sunderland, and played under managers such as Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy. In 2018 he became head coach of the Rowdies, and during his tenure rea...

Mike Lee (@whoisMikeLee) is a globally recognized keynote speaker, internationally sold author, and coach who shares high-performance leadership lessons from inside the hearts and minds of NBA's elite. His work helps individual contributors, leaders and organizations elevate engagement, win the war for talent, and create cultures of belonging in a world of disruption.  For 15 years he spent time w...

Maggie Mertens www. MaggieMertens.com ) is a writer, journalist, and editor located in Seattle. Her essays and reporting have appeared in The Atlantic, NPR, Sports Illustrated, ESPNw, Deadspin, VICE, The Cut, Glamour, Pacific Standard, Refinery29, and Creative Nonfiction, among others. Her work has also appeared in The Year's Best Sports Writing 2021 (Triumph Books), Women and Sports in the United...

Tara VanDerveer was the head women's basketball coach at  Stanford University  from 1985 until her retirement in 2024. VanDerveer was a 10 time Pac-12 Coach of the Year and the 1990 National Coach of the year, and led the  Stanford Cardinal  to three  NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Championships : in 1990, 1992 and 2021. She took a leave of absence in 1996 to coach the US Olympic Team to gold...

Urs Koenig is a veteran executive coach, professor, ultra-endurance champion, former UN Peacekeeper, author, and keynote speaker. All these seemingly disparate paths led him to one idea: that the best leaders lead from a place of humility. Urs has captured those ideas in his new book,  Radical Humility: Be a Badass Leader and a Good Human . His lessons come from Big Events like having to pull out...

This time of year there is a lot of fear in sport, We see it in the Copa America and Euro Soccer championships, Olympic Trials, and even on the youth level as our kids tryout for teams. In this podcast replay from 2021, we are joined by Owen Eastwood (@oweneastwood), one of the world's most sought after high performance coaches. He has worked with the England Men's Football (soccer) team during th...

Dr. Jay Martin is entering his 48th season as the Ohio Wesleyan Men's Soccer Coach in 2024. During his tenure his teams have amassed 750 victories, making Martin the winningest NCAA Men's soccer coach of all time. His teams have also won 2x NCAA Championships and 26 Conference Championships, so he knows a little something about culture and winning each and every day. So when he says "Coaches don't...