The Importance of Courage in Coaching

Hugh McCutcheon is a native of New Zealand, where he was national team volleyball player. He played on the New Zealand junior and senior national teams from 1988 to 1990 before coming to the US. He soon began an illustrious coaching career, leading the US Men's National Team to Olympic Gold in 2008 in Beijing, and the US Women's National team to silver at the 2012 London Olympics. He then became the head coach for the women's volleyball team at the University of Minnesota from 2012–2022, leading the team to numerous NCAA tournaments and building them into a national powerhouse. After announcing his resignation from the volleyball team at the conclusion of the 2022 season, in January 2023, McCutcheon became the assistant athletics director/sport development coach at Minnesota.

McCutcheon has just published a brand new book Championship Behaviors: A Model for Competitive Sports Excellence which is the major topic of our discussion today. It is a wonderful handbook for getting the culture, skill development, and leadership aligned to have a successful season, by someone who has accomplished this at the very top levels of competitive sport.

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This week's podcast is brought to you by our friends at Sprocket Sports. Sprocket Sports is a new software platform for youth sports clubs. There are a lot of these systems out there, but Sprocket provides the full enchilada. They give you all the cool front-end stuff to make your club look good– like websites and marketing tools – AND all the back-end transactions and services to run your business better so you can focus on what really matters – your players and your teams.

Sprocket is built for those clubs looking to thrive, not just survive, in the competitive world of youth sports clubs. So if you've been looking for a true business partner – not just another app – check them out today at https://sprocketsports.me/CTG.

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