Episode #49: Summer Montabone

In this episode of the Significant Coaching Podcast, we sit down with Summer Montabone – a powerhouse of resilience, leadership, and empowerment. A former high school teacher (who took charge of after-school detention and the discipline committee), retired pro athlete, elite performance coach, and trauma survivor, Summer’s journey is nothing short of inspiring. As a mom to two daughters active in sports, she understands the unique challenges young female athletes face and dedicates her work to helping them break barriers and achieve their personal best.

Summer is the creator of the Dream Big. Be Fearless. mindset workbook series designed to cultivate confidence and mental toughness in young female athletes. She’s also the Amazon Best Selling Author of The Softball Mindset. Drawing from her vast experience in health & fitness, sports performance, and business ownership, Summer shares invaluable insights for parents, coaches, and athletes looking to build resilience and success both on and off the field.

Tune in to hear Summer’s story, her coaching philosophies, and how she’s shaping the next generation of fearless female athletes.

👉 Learn more about Summer and her transformative work at summermontabone.com and explore her Dream Big. Be Fearless. series here.

Transcript

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Welcome back to the Significant Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Matt Rogers. In this week's episode, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Summer Montemone, the creator of the Dream Big, Be Fearless Mindset Workbook series for youth girls in sports and Amazon best selling author of The Softball Mindset. Summer is a former high school teacher, retired pro athlete, elite performance coach, a trauma survivor, and a mom to two daughters in sports. She is a highly awarded professional, leveraging her experience in health and fitness, sports performance, and business ownership to empower women and girls in sports to achieve their personal best. I'm a huge fan of anyone who advocates for female athletes, and Summer is the epitome of female empowerment. She provided so many great nuggets of advice for athletes, parents, and coaches alike during our conversation. If you're enjoying these conversations, I encourage you to follow me on all my major social media platforms, and my website, where you can find weekly conversations with college coaches and athletes, read my weekly blog, Check out my book, Significant Recruiting, or register for the Significant Recruiting Launchpad, my 12 step virtual recruiting classes. You can also schedule a free strategy session with me at CoachMattRogers. com if you're seeking help with college recruitment. All right, let's get to it. Here's my conversation with Summer Monobone. Summer, I've just been amazed we've talked a few times and I've done my research on you and I've put some time into your workbooks. You have this passion to, I don't know, get our country on the right track on how we treat young women and how we nurture them, how we motivate them. Where did all this start for you? Pretty simply, I've turned my personal pain into my purpose. And so I feel like everything that I've gone through and witnessed myself, there was a reason. And so it's like looking at things from different perspectives. So that's the shortest answer right there is turning my pain into purpose instead of a personal prison. And I went through that. I turned 50 this year and I still feel the depth of what I went through as an athlete at 14, 15, 16 years old. And I love that he used the phrase personal prison, because it's almost at some point we have to unlock the door and let ourselves out. And I feel like that's a big part of your writing. Would you agree with that? So really for me, like my biggest rock bottom moment, I'll just jump in was when I had my first child. And so I was just overcome with such severe postpartum depression and anxiety. I had lost my mom about six years previous, so I was becoming a mom without a mom going through some postpartum things I thought were going to be natural that weren't. I ended up and I'm just going to say what it is. I ended up in the psychiatric unit for a week and here I am this, pro fitness athlete, national fitness champion, successful business owner, kind of leader in my family, leader in the community. And so it's Oh, how can someone so strong is what people said, hit rock bottom. And then, Oh, would I ever be able to accomplish anything after having such a rock bottom moment? Because as we know when it comes to different mental health issues, some people have the stigma. And so I looked at it as if I can get through this, I can get through anything. And then I need to help other people. And so I went on a deep dive. My oldest is now 13 years old. Because that postpartum experience actually opened a lot of wounds. For me that were buried. And so that's why I talk to people a lot about things that are buried in people's subconscious. And when I say I'm a trauma survivor, this goes back to like memories I have of third grade, even of certain. So that's the reason why with the girls in sports, I'm so sensitive to either how we talk to them and then also learning what was in my actual DNA wiring, which we can talk about, which a lot of other women and people aren't aware of, that there is some genetic components when it comes to how we either process things, learn things, handle emotions. In addition then to, yes, we have to take responsibility and learn how to move forward in a healthy fit way. So yeah, that's how that all started. I didn't, I have two children. I didn't carry either one of them for 10 months. I didn't have to go through the pain of giving birth to them. I'm amazed as a country, we don't give it more respect. We don't give those mothers that are going through all this and working and being athletes like you. I don't know how you do it. I really don't. So what questions do you feel needed to be answered? When you started writing your books what did you feel like the young women, parents, coaches, what answers do you think we needed? So what I just you said to like expectations of moms, right? What I'm seeing in sports is your expectations of kids and girls. The one I see a lot is, oh, they'll get more confident over time, they're just going to grow out of it, or they just need more reps. And I'm just like, no, that's not true. You know what I mean? Like people need to be molded and taught these different life skills, right? How to handle things. And so that's one of the biggest questions that I ask in my workbook of kids for different sports then is how do you handle it? Because again, going back to like part of my story is I was like, why didn't anyone ever tell me about this? What? And so I look at it as now there's a huge opportunity to start teaching. And again, my specialty is girls, not saying that boys don't need this. I just know girls and girls. Do you need something different? And girls often feel more comfortable, right? And that setting. And so I'm asking questions to get young girls now to think about different sports situations, which then is going to help them later in life when they're faced with issues, as a parent or in a career or just a community member. And a lot of it has to do with how do you handle it? Look at this situation, How do you handle it? And so if we practice that ahead of time, instead of expecting kids Oh we've done this a hundred times, but see in sports, we might be physically training things all the time, but we're not necessarily mentally training them. And then I also like to look at the different learning styles, right? There's some people that are like verbal and auditory. There's some people that are more written, right? More hands on. And I feel like. We're missing a big piece of that sometimes in coaching. And so that's where the workbook helps with pen to paper. I'm a big pen to paper person to help girls process things. Yeah, I all of my, all the kids I work with, the first thing we do is we create a journal and every week they have a question that I provide them. I go, this is what you're going to answer this week. This is what you're going to think through and process this week. And then we're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about where your answers came from and why you thought they were authentic to you.'cause I work so much with kids that are getting recruited and I don't want them to go through the recruiting process of talking to a college coach. And those college coaches gonna ask questions about them, and I want them to be prepared. I want them to understand who they are before they start marketing themselves. So I love the idea of your workbooks and what you're doing with it. I'm going to come from a dad male perspective here with this question because I think it's a part of our problem but I think there's some solutions to it as well. How do we evaluate those obstacles that you went through the trauma that you faced as a third grader and as a seventh grader, and then being a professional athlete and getting there, we see great athletes like you almost. 100 percent of them went through something that drove them to be the athlete they were, Nike's done commercials about it, how do we evaluate that? That this was, we see it as a launch pad to greatness. How do we evaluate that and evaluate the need for these kids to be healthy and have that mental fitness? How do we compare and contrast those two things? So one thing I like to mention is, in team sports, I think that's where we have a bigger gap, right? Because there's a coach and there's a team. And how much one on one conversation and getting to know kids as individuals, happens. That's where I see a gap. And so that's one thing with my workbook. I have a supplement of it's called get set for, softball that I encourage coaches to have each kid fill out and then sit down one on one and talk with kids. I actually did this for a team that they wanted me to do it for them. And the information that I got that these coaches had no idea, right? That's how you truly get to know a kid. So that then you can actually help them, right? How do you learn better? Or when you do make a mistake, how do you want to be corrected? Like those types of things. And to me, this is important for adults. Like I work with CEOs and executives all the time and, talking about any team building. So again, whether you are working with kids or adults, that quality one on one time of asking the right questions. and letting them share with you, for one, then they're taking ownership. So I'm so big. I always say to adults, talk less, ask more. Okay. So if you want kids to really grow and move forward, and again, this goes for adults too, a coach or mentor should be about asking questions. Seeing what the kids say, right? And then either guiding them or taking that in because we're missing out on a lot of things by not getting to know kids as individuals. And I say it a lot on sports teams, is that people have diamonds in the rough that they are missing out on. because either they don't know how to communicate with them or they don't know how to connect with them either. So true. I work with, I, I was a head college coach for a long time and a high school head coach and I'm finding so much joy now as being a consultant when a head high school coach will bring me in. And just the other day I was in a high school gym working with a group of kids and I told them at the end of our practice, I go, this person that's coaching you, they don't have time to get to know you every day. They have a full time job. They come here to coach for two days, for two hours, and then they have to go deal with their family and their own responsibilities. So it's your responsibility, as much as it is theirs, to really work on that relationship. But more importantly, You're not going to get where you want to get to just by showing up for two hours. You need to be challenged. You need to be pushed. You need somebody that's going to coach you hard and help you get where you want to go. So you've got to remember. As a teenager, and it's so hard for them. I know it was so hard for me is you've got to be able to hear the words and not the tone. You've got to be able to talk to your coach and go, coach, this is really how I need to be coached. This is how I get motivated. And am I missing the boat there? No. So the thing is though, I look at it this way though. But how are kids supposed to know what to do if adults don't model the behavior for them? Yeah. Yeah. I'm as guilty as that as anybody, and I were I love your ideas because over the last 10, 15 years I've been so focused on doing a preseason meeting with every kid. And it's so hard, especially if you're a football coach or a lacrosse coach or a field hockey coach, you might have 40, 50, 100 kids, and it's so hard to build a relationship with each of those. Finding that 20 to 30 minutes to ask those questions that you're talking about, I think are essential to making sure that athlete understands, hey, I'm here for you, I have your back. There's going to be some hard days, but You can come in and talk to me. You can come in and say, coach, I'm struggling. And the more we infuse that, the better we get. What are some of those questions? Let's say we only have 15 minutes with a kid. What are some of those questions a coach should be asking? I know you mentioned a couple of them, but if I only have 15 minutes, what do I want to hear from that? Student and what do I want them to hear from me? So before I answer that I just want to mention something real quick since you were using football right as a example and obviously football With kids in high school versus 10 year old softball team or two different things, right? Developmentally and even just leadership structure, right? Because in a football team, you should have a head coach You have multiple right? So just leadership structures. So sometimes we need to be aware of that too and maybe we can talk to that but as far as questions like This would be basic for anyone. If I could only ask two questions, I'd be like, what are your strengths? Tell me what you are good at. What are you best at? What are your strengths? And some kids, they're going to be able to list maybe one or two. You might have the kid who can pound out a whole bunch, but in my experience, a lot of girls struggle. They have a hard time sharing something positive about themselves. Okay. So this is going to tell you a lot about. the kid, right? Their confidence level for one, sometimes based on how they answer. And then two, sometimes what as their strength and they see in their strength might not even be in alignment. So that's why it's so beneficial to see what they say. And then the second one would be same with weaknesses. What are your weaknesses or what do you need the most improvement on? So if those were the only two questions that I could ask, that's, what it would be so second again, would be weaknesses or what do you need improvement on or on a sport thing? It might be what do you want to learn how to do better? What do you, what is your, Kind of goal or what would you like to learn might be the third thing. Yeah. It's the learning part that I think is the challenge. I want to be able to dunk a basketball. Okay that's great. How are you going to do that? What's your plan to learn how to dunk a basketball? And more importantly, why is it purposeful? Yes. I'm a softball player. I want to hit lots of home runs. Okay, what's your purpose? Why is the home run so important to you? So I love, I think those simple questions can open up a huge conversation to create that relationship, right? Absolutely. And I love what you said about purpose, right? What's the purpose? What, so what, and sometimes going on will what will happen if you hit that home run? What's the worst that'll happen if you don't hit that home run? So that sometimes is like the resilience piece of building up. What if you don't get that home run? And then it's funny because we asked some kids similar recently too. And then sometimes we're just like, okay, that's a great goal. But then. Trying to see for kid, is it actually realistic for you? Sometimes we have to be in alignment with where we're at and our strengths and what our capabilities are. And it's not necessarily just like I said, these big lofty goals or be like, Oh yeah, you can do whatever you want, but. Some kids do need a dose of realism at times too, their minds are, and brains are still developing. And it's amazing how quickly they can develop and how slowly from a parent and a coach's perspective, it feels like they are developing, I've got a 15 year old in my house. who is probably the opposite of what you and I are talking about. She's got this confidence that I never had. Still don't have that. She has. And I feel like my wife, we're constantly trying to lower the ego a little bit to match her reality because it, her confidence doesn't match her reality as an athlete, so what do you do in that case with kids? And I'm sure you run into girls like that, and especially in this day and age, They get 400 views on Instagram and all of a sudden they're feeling pretty good about themselves, right? Yeah, those different factors that we're dealing with, huh? So yes Yeah, so I mean it what you said you know the purpose or how are you going to get there? How are you going to make that happen? How are you going to achieve that? You know just walking them through those steps because if it's something that's Maybe not realistic or they're not ready yet or or what do you plan to do every day? So you get one percent better so you can Meet that goal. But like I said, I like to ask too Well, what's the worst that happens if you don't meet that goal? And the one reason I ask that question is because I owned a fitness center for 20 years and working with People that sometimes like they're weighing their whole self worth You On losing that last five pounds and what is the worst that's going to happen if you don't lose that last five pounds? Because we're weighing our worth sometimes on that. So the same thing with kids and you've mentioned it before, like what is developmentally appropriate? Like you're talking about a 15 year old, and you were talking about high schoolers and kids going on to college. One reason I love my nine, 10, 11, 12 years old is because I feel like. Most people do not know how to bring things to their level, but yeah, high expectations. We're like treating 10 year olds like pro athletes. And it's mentally appropriate mentally and physically. And like you said, you might have that person. Who's not whatever normal is right, but people are on all different levels all the time and like it's okay we've heard. Hi. Oh gosh, I don't even want to say this but like the ohio state michigan game the other day They talked about a guy that apparently was recruited for lacrosse and somehow ended up playing football. Yet we tell kids if they don't know what they're doing by the time you're 10 years old, you're never right. And I'm like, that's a prime example of somebody who switched sports at the college level, even so Yeah, everybody is going to be different and recognizing our differences too. That's typically someone that has no background to be giving that type of advice. Okay. Yeah. Wayne Gretzky was an unbelievable hockey player at 10 years old. Yeah. But he was one in a million. Okay. So there's just certain things that I think people that haven't coached a lot, they take that one nugget of information and they pass that on to a 10 year old or a 14 year old or a 15 year old. And it's really hard for them to grasp that because there are so many intangibles that went into that one person being as great as they were, so I. I'm going to go back to my daughter and I know you and I both talked to a lot of parents with teenage daughters, and we have a lot of conversations and online about this as a dad. I feel like I'm constantly asking myself if my expectations are too high. Do I need to lower my expectations? Is that the wrong question to be asking? So maybe it's not lowering the expectations, but looking at them from a different angle or a different perspective. So maybe that's what it is. And I'm all about looking from things from a different perspective. Help me out with that. What perspective should I take? I mentioned obviously obviously I'm a woman and going through my teenage, and all that and things that I learned becoming a mom, lots of different things. So girls are actually wired. A lot of them are more likely to be perfectionistic. Like it actually can be in their brain that they have these perfectionistic. tendencies. Okay. And while sometimes that might be good, it might actually be holding them back. I have a little adage sometimes for women is like gun is better than perfect. Okay. So some girls might hold themselves back in sports for a certain reason, because they feel like they can't do it perfect or to their high ability. They also, a lot of times internalize things. They don't want. someone to really see how they're truly feeling. And so same with women. And this is why I, after, like I said, what I went through is I'm like, there's so many women walking around pretending they're super happy. And I looked back at my career. And I had to learn how to smile and perform all the time. And I was like, but I wasn't really feeling it in here. So there was a disconnect. Everyone thought I was happy, whatever, but inside I wasn't. And so girls in particular are really good at that, right? Because if we look at boys, they might show their aggressions and frustrations. You know what I mean might be a little bit more apparent whereas girls try to hold that stuff in And so we don't always know what they're going through And a lot of the times it's rooted in that perfectionist that they don't want anybody to think something's wrong They don't right so so it's rooted in that and like I said, it actually Has been shown in different wiring in the brain not saying that this applies to everyone But it's something to be aware of that. Typically girls are more it's more prevalent in girls Yeah it's funny though. I feel we've put so much time as a community into ending bullying and hazing and we were starting to see like my 11 year old boy that we're starting to see them correct other people. Hey, that's not right. There's a, even though there's a, an introvertedness that's there that I don't know if it was there when we were kids, but now there's a little bit more of a focus on justice now than I think when we were growing up, I think boys and girls are more conscious of, I don't want to be bullied. We don't have to be bullied. We have adults that are saying that's wrong. I don't know if there was enough of that going on when we were. In the 70s, 80s and 90s. So I guess my question is, what do we do for all of these kids to give them the rope to say, Hey, this is how I want to be treated, but also acknowledge that they can handle more than they think. Does that make sense? Yeah. So I think this is a whole, just a society problem is learning how to communicate. Like social, like we talked about social media, phones, people do not know how to communicate anymore, whether it's communicating their feelings and writing, communicating with another being. And my, one of my favorite quotes is communication is the key to successful relationships. And so if we don't know how to have those peer resistant skills, the whole self esteem, what we thought about ourselves and then the communication, or even peer resistance skills, teaching kids how to say no, and the reason I say that's important is because women struggle with it today. They don't know how to say no. We have too many women that are people pleasers and saying yes, and then they're not happy that, that type of thing. So it comes down to communication and how to use our voice appropriately. What is the difference between being assertive and aggressive? How do we respond to situations? And that's why I said in my workbook, it's like, how do you handle it? Like you need to think about how should you handle a situation? So you mentioned like bullying. One of the, one of the journal prompts in my workbook, I talk about that, somebody told you were terrible at playing, soccer or whatever, to think through that, that maybe that person was having a bad day. Maybe it's really not about you. Because a lot of times kids, they're going to take that to heart. And even the woman, I women I've worked with, we'll take that to heart. And I'm talking women that are like VPs and things like that, who, when they're being honest, like they, they take things right. And so learning how to look at it from a different perspective, how to talk to ourselves, and then how do we communicate back to that person? Hey, I'm sorry if you're having a bad day, that's not the appropriate way to talk to me like that type of thing and being able to stand up for ourselves. And I understand, You might feel what I said was rude. I, whatever it may be like using our voice in appropriate way and trying to look at things from different perspectives. So communication, number one. I love it. And my wife and I were probably. We're probably a little more old school than we like to let on, but, our kids will come home and they'll call each other a name or they'll come home and complain about somebody called them something. And, our question back to them is are you, right? Are you what they called you? And they'll stand there, stamp their feet and go, no. Then I go, why is it bothering you? Why is it bothering you that this person called you something that, you're not. And I think we've done it enough with both of our kids that their resilience. Mentally and I'm crossing my fingers for those of you that are listening to this. I'm hoping that's something that's a trait we're helping nurture that they can take with Into their adulthood and it's always been so important for me I talk so much about self worth with the kids I coach and the kids I work with That nobody can take that away from you. You can give it But no one can take it away from you. And I think that was the biggest lesson I learned growing up is I gave myself worth away and I blamed the coaches for taking it away from pushing me too hard or not treating me well, but in the end I was giving myself worth away. I don't think I understood that till I was 40. Do you run into that as you're talking to, from teenagers to 50 year old executives? Absolutely, and one way I say is, the pen, you're the author of your story, don't let somebody else take the pen or right you hold the pen, don't give away your power, so yeah, so what you're sharing very similarly, and that we all need reminded of this that we are in control, and one of my favorite things for women as being, I want them to be fearless decision makers and CEOs of their own lives. Same thing for the kids. You are in control of your own life. And obviously, like you mentioned with kids, every once in a while, my 13 year old tries, tries to, Remind me of either things that are going to happen when they're 18 or maybe in school. It's gone the other way No, i'm in charge of my right and it's i'm still your parent, right? So but what you mentioned is like you're having conversations at home And not everyone is doing that right but from the same token Not all adults Learned how to have those conversations either right or to have those and so sometimes people will talk about generational cycles that are happening But what you said to what I think is important is i've had to have some of those same conversations With my kids and other kids based on how coaches have talked to them because i'm not all coaches are created equal And i've had at my you know kitchen table with kids saying, you know Sometimes adults don't make good decisions either and sometimes adults don't choose their words wisely They don't communicate and i've had to talk 11 year olds through that So that they see right because they feel defeated right, I wish more coaches were open To again learning their communication because you look at coaches like john wooden And then we have this coach over here who thinks because they yell and scream and be ready Oh, that's building mental toughness. I disagree, right? There's a there's different ways to build Mental toughness, right? So anyway it's because I it's a part of one of my problems as a coach. I'm constantly reevaluating myself. And I grew up with yellers and screamers. I grew up in a household of chaos where I had a parent that wasn't afraid to just say whatever was on his mind, any way you wanted to say it. And oftentimes it could be really hurtful, even when he was jesting and, and I had two older brothers that teased and picked, and I was very resilient by the time I was 18, there wasn't much I hadn't heard and couldn't deal with. But the problem is that we pass that on them. We become so comfortable with it. Because we went through it, that we assume that it's going to be okay treating others that way. And so I talked to athletic directors so much, club directors about coaching your coaches. Don't assume that it's because this person has a history of success. Don't assume that they don't need some coaching. They don't need some reminders. Are you finding that there's a lack of coaching of the coaches from that standpoint? Absolutely. And to be honest, that's one, like I have my workbooks for the kids, but one of the things that I enjoy doing more is coaching coaches. And like I said, I coach other leaders, executives, CEOs because like you and I, like our training, and like my degree is in education. Like I have been a coach my entire life, and learned. And it's about being a specialist in behavior too, right? Getting to know people, understand their behaviors, getting, what's what, how do they tick and how are you going to help them move forward? And not everyone has that training. As we all know, the best athlete doesn't make the best coach and sometimes the best coaches weren't the best athlete, right? They maybe saw things from a different perspective and are able again to communicate it in a way for people to understand and grow. So yes, I truly see that more coaches Need coaching and you got to give it up, especially, I'm like, again, I'm in that younger, I have a 10 and a newly 13 year old. So you have a lot of volunteer coaches. Thank you for volunteering your time, but at the same time, I'm not going to allow my child to be subjected to behavior that is inappropriate or isn't going to help them grow because this person does not have the proper training. And like we talked about where they don't understand what is developmentally appropriate for a 10 year old. So yes, I definitely see we all need more coaches. I've always had a coach in some capacity. Like I say, in business and fitness, whatever it's been, I didn't get to where I was or am without having a coach or mentor, you can always learn, you can always grow, but self awareness is the number one thing. And as we have some people that actually are coaches and we have others that are hence head hunters or trophy chasers, and there's a difference. And so sometimes the lack of self awareness is there of what they truly, what their purpose is, is it to help the kids or is it like you mentioned ego earlier? I want to pat myself on the back because so funny you say that. Cause I spent some time with a sports psychologist in the last couple of months for myself, but also to learn. And I told her, I said, I find myself walking out of a gym after coaching for a couple hours, almost weekly, where I go, I get in my car and I go, why did I say that to that kid? Why did I react the way I did in that situation? It's, I'm 20 minutes removed and I'm asking myself, why did I do it? That way, and it was such great advice she gave me. She said, she goes, I want you to take that situation again in your head. And. rework it now, how would you do it differently? If that situation were to pop up again, how would you handle it differently? And it was such a simple direction, but it was so amazing to me and how it affected me. Because I sat there going looking back at it, looking from a cloud, looking down at what I was doing and getting to do it over. I'm asking myself what was the big deal? Why did I react so heavily? Why did I overreact? Why was that so frustrating to me? And this is the way I wish I would have handled it. That doesn't always do great for the kid in that moment. But as I've gotten older I'm better at going back to a kid and say, Hey man, or, Hey, listen, I didn't handle that well yesterday. I'm not sure why, but this is what I wish I would have done. So those are the type of things. I feel like I'm going to be 70 years old. I'm finally going to be a really good coach. You know what I mean? But there's things like that. I wish somebody would have shared with me when I was 22 years old. Yeah. So how do we do that? How do we get all these coaches who are overwhelmed, overworked, underpaid, sometimes very undereducated in their sport. How do we teach all of them some of these lessons that we've learned the hard way? First I have to say good for you for being so self aware to even take time to reflect. Like you said on what the situation was, and then even for us to admit and say I wish I would've handled it because at the end of the day, we're all a work in progress, right? We all have something to learn. And, sometimes too, again, this is what I say. We all have things that are buried in our subconscious. And so sometimes like something triggers us, right? At times that happens too. And then we're like, wait a minute, why did I do that? And we hear emotional intelligence a lot too. And, all these different things and it takes practice. And that's why I say mental fitness takes practice just as much. is the physical skills, right? And the mind and body works together. So we have to we have to get it, we have to get it together. Sorry, I forgot what your original question was because I felt that wasn't important. That was important to you nailed it. No you're right on. I want to go back a little bit, but it's the same theme here. How do you talk to young ladies? about dealing with conflict and disappointment. What are some of the strategies that you provide them? Whether, man, my expectations were through the roof and I bombed, or I didn't play as well as I wanted to, or I had really low expectations and I met them. I, I met those expectations for myself because I didn't see myself performing well. How do you want these kids to, to evaluate themselves? Okay, so I'll give you a couple examples because again, when we're talking about 9, 10 year olds, sometimes again, just the emotional mental maturity. It is what it is, right? And again, this is where sometimes people have too high of expectations. So sometimes there can be other factors. Sometimes we have the kid that, at home, maybe they're coddled a little bit too much, and so they cry a lot during certain things. And I'm not saying crying is bad, but if we're unable to recover from it that it now affects you going back out onto the field or whatever, so we need to sometimes look at, how are things handled outside. But as far as assessing, the kid has to assess. Anytime. And again, this goes for adults. Like I said, if you have employees or team members, whatever it be, they need to come up with the answer. Okay. We don't want to tell them the answer. So let me give you an example. With the 10, you girls sometimes during warmups or whatever, like it's just sloppy, right. And trying to get them to understand, Hey, the better you warm up, the better workout or practice you're going to have and how you practice is. Is how you're gonna perform or how you're gonna play and asking them like does that make sense? Okay Yes, so i'll ask them. All right want to scale a one to ten How do you play in the game if one's the lowest and ten's the highest and almost all the time? They're gonna be like ten ten. I gotta we gotta do a ten And I'll be like how are you warming up right now? And a lot of them will be honest and be like, Oh yeah, it's like a five. I'm only throwing a five right now. And so I'll say okay practicing at a five, is that going to help you perform at a 10? No. How, what number do you think is reasonable at a practice? You know what I mean? Letting them come up with it. And you'll instantly see their warmups improve because they can self assess. Sure, you're gonna have the one kid that whatever, whether they're defiant, stubborn, whatever. Sometimes that happens. Might take a little bit more. You might have the kid that says, Oh, I'm throwing at a 10 and you're looking at him going Are you sure about that? But if they can't see it, you can't help them. And so they have to come up with the answer. So I will use that rating scale a lot. People in fitness might, also look at it as like a rate of perceived exertion, right? Use the same thing with kids, get them to tell you, and, assigning a number is helpful then instead of good, bad, whatever. Oh, I'm thrilled. I did good today. What does good mean? Give me something specific. I think you're really on to something, Summer, because the more you talk, the more my brain starts going. It's almost like I need a rubric for each kid at the end of every practice where they can self evaluate. Instead of me as a coach evaluating them say, okay here were our goals today, how did you meet those goals? And it's not just how many balls did you throw across the plate or how many hits did you have? What was your energy level? What was your what was your commitment to your teammates today? How, what was your communication like on a scale of one to 10? I love that mindset. It's hard. It's difficult. But what would happen if we started and ended every practice that way with this is how you're going to be evaluated, and this is how we're going to have you evaluate yourself at the end of practice. What would happen if we did that? Yeah. What do you think? Isn't it amazing? Because when the kids start taking ownership, and they start problem solving, that's how you're growing leaders. And isn't that what a lot of this really is about that we should be growing leaders and individuals, right? So that they can go on and lead a team, whether that team, again, is their team at home, a team and their could be something else outside of sports. And so we have such an opportunity to teach these leadership skills But if we have coaches that are just telling kids what to do all the time, or the other problem is not allowing kids to fail. There's a coach a couple of different times I've been like, quit telling these kids you expect perfection. This is a game of mistakes. They need to make mistakes to learn, right? Like then the girls in particular are so afraid to make a mistake that it holds them back. So as a leader, we have to allow. or again, employees or w To find the lesson in it too, right? This is how you learn. So when kids can take ownership, the same with, I've seen in lots of groups either oh, the team is not coming together and blah, blah, blah. Same thing. I say, what questions can you ask them so that they create the solution? Because you're never going to be able to fix them. That problem. They have to come up with the answer and quite honestly, at the end of the day, that's what we want is people to make good decisions. And if you look at athletes. Okay, great. You might have this play, you might have done this, but don't you want an athlete who can make a quick decision and take ownership of it? And so we need to be aware of that balance. Yeah. It's so good. I'm thinking about those kids that want more playing time. And how often does a coach go tell many how many offseason practices you've made? Tell me how many days a week you worked on the things that we need you to be really good at on your own outside of practice. Now equate that to your playing time right now and your results and what does it look like? Do you think one affects the other thing? So I just, I love that mindset. We're just not having enough conversations as a community, as a coaching staff. I just want a year as a high school head basketball coach where we had zero staff meetings. I I, there were 18 head coaches in the department, and I didn't meet 13 of them. So all that knowledge, all that experience. It was never shared. And how much better could I have gotten as a coach? How many things could I have shared with somebody else that might've been a trigger for them? And at the end of the day, that's why I do this podcast. I, your wisdom that I get to share with the hundreds or thousands of people that end up listening to this, I just don't think we can have enough of. So I really appreciate the work you're doing and how you're doing it and the care and the passion you have for it. I've got one question for you. Sure. Sure. And you've already given me so many great nuggets today. What's one significant thing you can share with my audience? One significant thing. Why I would, the first thing that's coming to my mind is just caring, like genuine caring, whether you're a coach, whether you're an athlete, do you care, and are you having fun? Because I think that's another big component that is missing sometimes. Is fun and joy and the reason I say that again is because of the adults I work with that forgot how to have fun or at some point sports was no longer fun and we're seeing this right in our High schoolers like the burnout and the fun. So anyway, do you care and is it fun? Yeah, because they go hand in hand really because if you do care Joy is going to come from it. The kids are going to feel that care they're going to feel that joy and you're all going to have fun and I don't know if it's the chicken or the egg. I don't know if the fun comes before caring or the caring comes after fun, but I think you're right on there. Summer tell my audience where they can learn more about you and get your books for their daughters. As far as I know, I'm the only summer mom to bone. So if you type my name on, Facebook or Google, you should be able to find me. And so I do have mindset workbooks currently for volleyball, soccer, basketball, and softball specifically. For girls. And you can find those on Amazon. I am working on some products, like I said, for women as well, to to go back to what you said, like reflection, like personal reflection, personal ownership, personal growth is what it's all about. So my big picture goal is like to get these workbooks into every single girl's hand. So yeah, I'm typically on Facebook. I guess that's, our generation, but I am. On Instagram and LinkedIn a little bit. But again just search up summer Montalbano and you should be able to find me. And as I always tell people because I truly do want to help do you send me a message? I'm going to respond. I truly want to help people. And, I think we just need more of that in the world. Like you said, sharing wisdom with other people. That's how we learn, sharing our stories, being authentic. That's how we grow. And isn't that what it's all about? I love it. I just love it. I'm going to make it a part of my consulting with athletic departments. I'm going to, I'm going to make it have a, make us have a conversation before we do anything about. Our strengths and our weaknesses and things that we're worried about and things we care about. So thank you so much, Summer. I look forward to future conversations, but I appreciate you giving me your time today. Thank you for the opportunity. That's a wrap for this episode of the Significant Coaching Podcast. I'd like to thank Summer Monobone for her inspiring advocacy for young women. I encourage you all to check out her Dream Big and Be Fearless Mindset Workbook series on Amazon. com. It's definitely worth your time. If you're enjoying these conversations, please click that subscribe button and share it with a friend. If you're a parent of a student athlete looking to play in college or a school administrator looking to help your families with their college recruitment, you can schedule a free strategy session with me at CoachMattRogers. com. Hey, thanks again for listening. Have a significant week. Goodbye until next time.