BRISALO

✦ PAUSE ✦

I watched a college athlete cry at the end of one of her last games as a senior.

Not because they lost. The team won. She cried because the season wasn’t over – tournament was right around the corner. Because somewhere in the middle of a season that was supposed to be about her growth and her love of the game, her coach had made it about something else entirely. And she had carried that quietly, the way athletes do, the way women do, until the last out at the bottom of the final inning.

I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

Not about the game. Not about the score. About what she had been carrying all season long — not in her legs or her arm, but in that quiet place inside where you tuck things away because the game must go on. Because you don’t want to be the problem. Because you told yourself it wasn’t that bad, or that it would get better, or that this is just what it’s like to be coached.

That kind of weight doesn’t show up on a stat sheet. But it shows up everywhere else. The dirt on her cleats would wash off. The rest of it wouldn’t.

We talk about coaches almost entirely in terms of wins and losses. Rankings. Results. Percentages. But nobody was asking that coach: how are you treating the humans in your care? The scoreboard looked fine. The scoreboard said they were season champions, but were they?

Coaching without seeing the person isn’t coaching. It’s management with a whistle.

✦ SEE ✦

I’ve been thinking about the ones who got it right.

Mrs. U

I saw Mrs. U at a graduation party this weekend and tears welled in my eyes before I could help it.

We’ve stayed connected over the years — Facebook has a way of doing that. But standing in front of her, in person, talking for an hour — it was different. Because there’s a difference between knowing someone shaped you and actually feeling it all these years later. She is part of why I am the way I am. And getting to tell her that — even just with welled up eyes — meant everything.

She was my high school teacher and FHA parliamentary procedure coach, and she gave me some of the most practical gifts I still use every single day. Meticulousness. The tap of a measuring cup. The knife sliding clean across the top. The patience of a seam sewn right, a drawer organized, a room that has order in it. She taught us that how you do something is as important as whether you do it — and I have lived inside that truth my entire adult life without always knowing where it came from.

She also gave me accountability and a deep, abiding detest for hypocrisy. But mostly she gave me herself — her standards, her care, her belief that the details matter because people matter.

She saw me then. She sees me now. And somehow that is everything.

Mr. Thomas

My band director from fourth grade through senior year. Nine years. Think about that — nine years of someone shaping not just how you play, but your discipline, your standard of excellence. A superior rating wasn’t something he demanded. It was something we demanded of ourselves — because that’s the culture he built. In marching band and concert band alike, we belonged to something, and that something had a standard.

I learned that lesson the hard way. First chair bassoon. Sleigh Ride. Winter concert. He told me what to do. I didn’t listen. The whole room knew it. IYKYK!

He taught belonging. He taught that your part matters, that the whole thing is missing something when you don’t show up. And he taught it through years, not a semester.

Mr. Topp

The boys track and field coach. And here is what I noticed then and understand more deeply now: I was his statistician — not even an athlete in his program — and he still poured into me. He got his point across through humor and kindness. He had standards. But he gave grace. He gave understanding. He met athletes — and those just trying to help — where they were.

When you do not fear a coach, you get different results. Mostly humanistic ones. You become more of yourself, not less.

Mrs. Knapke

My third grade teacher. I don’t remember the curriculum. I remember that she taught me compassion — and I carried that. Noticing others came naturally to me. But slowing down and being present with myself — that took forty years. She planted the seed at eight. I’m finally letting it grow.

✦ BREATHE ✦

A few weeks ago, my new trainer (second time around) Billy looked at me and said: “I’m great. You know what makes me great? I’m high maintenance. You have to treat yourself like you’re high maintenance.”

I laughed a little and said the thing I’ve always been quietly proud of: “Billy, I pride myself on being low maintenance.”

He didn’t laugh back.

“That’s the problem,” he said. “I have higher expectations of you because you are you.”

My eyes filled with tears before I could stop them. Yes, the tears have been flowing freely lately.

That’s your body knowing the truth before your mind can argue with it.

I have spent years — honestly, decades — making myself easy. Not needing too much. Not asking for too much. Calling it a virtue. And Billy, in about twelve seconds, named what that has actually been: not humility. Survival.

Here’s what I keep sitting with: I have spent nine years coaching other women and men out of this exact thing. Helping them name their value. Helping them stop performing smallness. Helping them take up the space they were made for.

And I realized that I have been coaching myself like that earlier mentioned softball coach all along.

✦ GROW ✦

Mrs. Knapke taught me presence. Mrs. U taught me precision, accountability, and to stand up for what I believe. Mr. Thomas taught me excellence and belonging. Mr. Topp taught me that a standard and grace are not opposites — that you can be stern and still see the person standing in front of you.

None of them did it by making me afraid of them, belittling, or speaking down to me. There’s a coach out there right now whose team just won a championship. I wonder what their players would say if anyone thought to ask.

That’s the thing about great coaches, great teachers, great leaders — they don’t produce compliance. They produce people. People who carry them into kitchens thirty years later. People who cry with gratitude at the end of a season. People who understand that being in someone’s care should make you more yourself, not less.

So here’s what I want to ask you today — and I mean it as a real question, not a rhetorical one:

Who are the Mrs. Uetrechts and Mr. Thomases in your story? Who shaped you so quietly and so thoroughly that you still carry them — in your hands, in your standards, in how you show up for the people in your care?

And then the harder question: are you coaching yourself the way they coached you? Are you meeting yourself with grace and a standard? Are you letting yourself be high maintenance — as in, worthy of investment, worthy of tending, worthy of someone having higher expectations of you because you are you?

The ones who shaped us believed we were worth shaping. Maybe it’s time to believe it too.

With big hugs and so much love, Stacy