Episode #126: Heather Macy

🎧  Heather Macy on Leadership & Culture Building

 In today’s episode of the Significant Coaching Podcast, Matt sits down with Heather Macy, the new Head Women’s Basketball Coach at Nova Southeastern University and one of college basketball’s most respected program builders. With over 350 career wins, championship-level turnarounds, and a national reputation for her work in leadership and emotional intelligence, Coach Macy shares the standards and habits that have shaped her coaching career.

From culture building and accountability to developing resilient athletes and creating elite daily environments, this conversation gives coaches practical takeaways they can apply right away.

Before you go, visit CoachMattRogers.com to schedule a free recruiting strategy session, explore the Significant Recruiting book, and check out the brand-new Basketball Recruit’s Journal.

And don’t miss Monday’s Significant Recruiting episode with Brian Olehy—a former coach and a dad using the Significant Recruiting tools and resources to help his daughter Kelsey navigate her recruiting journey with clarity and confidence.

Transcript

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Welcome back to The Significant Coaching Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Rogers. Today's guest is someone who has built winning cultures everywhere. She's gone, coach Heather Macy, the new head women's basketball coach at Nova Southeastern. If you know her story, you know what? She brings over 350 career wins, multiple championship runs, program rebuilds, and a national reputation for emotional intelligence, leadership, and elite. Player development. She's coached at every level, spoken on some of the biggest stages in our profession. Authored a number one ranked leadership book, and she continues to pour into coaches all over the country. In this conversation, we get into what makes her teams compete, how she builds trust, the standards that never change, and why emotional intelligence might be the most important separator in today's game. Before we dive in, make sure you check out coach matt rogers.com where you'll find my book, significant Recruiting and the brand new Basketball recruits journal. If you're a coach, a parent, or recruit, those tools will help you stay organized, stay intentional in your recruiting process, and stay ahead of the game. Let's get into it. Here's my conversation with Coach Heather Macy. I. Coach Macy, so great to talk to you. Thanks for being on the show. Hey, Matt, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Coach, can we just talk hoops for a little bit? We can talk hoops all day, every day. I was the head college coach for a long time. I got out to raise my kids and this is my basketball Jones being doing this podcast. But I've been going to lots of practices and things like that. And if you were closer, I live in Colorado. I'd be at your practice tomorrow if you'd let me. When you wake up in the morning. What drives you to keep doing this? Because you've been doing this at a really high level for a long time. Is it practices, is it offense? Is it defense? Is it relationships? Is it recruiting? Is there that one thing that you're like, I always have energy to do this? I'll tell you, it's really evolved for me. This is your 26 in college coaching and I, embarrassingly will tell you that early in my career it probably drove me to. Get the next best job. Sign a top recruiting class, win another championship. And those were really my drivers and I learned a long time ago that's really how that light will burn out very quickly. And I had an athletic director tell me, love things that will love you back. And I thought that was incredible advice for a young. Driven coach, and I wish I would've learned that quicker. But now my perspective, my wisdom, I love things that love me back. So my driving force, our players, our staff the amazing people that I get to work with every single day, that's what gets me up. It gets me really fired up and excited. And I will tell you here in Davy Fort Lauderdale the weather is about 85. So I'm not envious of you being in Colorado. We're actually having a beautiful day. It's in the mid sixties, almost 70 today, but I'm with you. I hear you. In, in about three weeks. I'm gonna be wishing I was on your staff. I'll tell you that. I was a run and gun press until I can run'em off the floor kind of coach. Tell me if I'm wrong, but you've got a little bit of that in you. I think we did it really well. Way back in the old days, we were at one point leading the country in scoring, leading the country in steals, and I jokingly say in leading the country in fouls. But that's the problem with that system. Yes, I do think we need to shoot it before we turn it over, and I think if we can get it to the rim and send a bunch of them to go offensive, rebound, we are much better. Historically, we have been a really good basketball team. Our whole idea here is to do the same. And I think that we can attract the quality caliber athlete to really do that at an elite level. And you've done it everywhere you've gone. For you, how much of it is basketball players? How much of it is, I've gotta have that balance between toughness shooters. Smarts. Where is that at for you, in, in building the teams that score so high for you? You, your teams typically are one or two in scoring in your conference. Where does that all begin for you? I think it, it all starts with the players, but understanding. What type of player and what type of people you want to coach and what fits best inside the system. So we look for two types of players, what we call are switchable and dependables. And so a switchable for us is the kid that's somewhere 5, 10, 6 foot tall or so that can guard in multiple positions in multiple ways. Offensively. Able to stick to open three, but at the same time be able to take her in and post up a smaller player. So those are like switchable and allows us to generate offense from our defense and then the dependables. And so the dependables are the kids that we always can count on to set the right screens, to pull the rebounds when we need it, and to go make the right place. So when we're on the road recruiting, our staff is constantly communicating in those same terms. I found a great switchable or I found an amazing dependable, and I think we need probably a balance of switchable and dependables. And then we leave inside of our roster somewhere, two to three players that are what we call specialists. And so those are kids that a, shoot it way better than everybody else. Or be a bigger kid that we can throw it to the post when we need a bucket. And so I think what we've been able to do in just a relatively short amount of time is to be able to really create a 15 player roster that every single one of those kids fit inside of this blueprint. And our staff all played in this exact same system. And so their ability to identify has been just absolutely tremendous. And what they've been able to do. And then I know who I can coach and who I can. Yeah. And what their personalities look like, what their work ethic looks like. And I'm in a stage right now where I really won't compromise that. Meaning that kid who just really toughs to be around every day and doesn't wanna work as hard as it takes to be successful. We have the ability not to. Go down that path and we've been able to, I think, put a lot of like-mindedness and a lot of alignment in the human beings together. And then they all from a talent perspective, fit under those three different criteria. I love that. I always sent my staff out to find a junkyard dog. I wanted that kid that could just, that was just gonna outwork everybody out. Rebound everybody, defend. To the point that they would scare the person they were defending. Does that person fit into that switchable, dependable specialist area? I guess it depends what they're, if they're six foot tall and they're long and athletic and able to shoot the three to do it. But no I think to be able to sit down and guard is I think we can teach a lot of those things. I think it's also a willingness. I also think if you have a player who has incredibly high competitive index. The competitive index will override anything else. So if the competitive index is really high and what it requires to win is to sit down and guard like crazy and rebound like crazy, people with high competitive indexes in those moments will rise to those occasion. Absolutely. And I, and that's where my thought process was with the junkyard dog. Give me a competitor. I'll teach'em how to do everything else. I know, quite honest with you, I've been doing it so long, I'm not gonna teach'em how to do the other stuff. And it's interesting I've had so much experience that an assistant may bring a player to the table and go. Oh, coach, you can teach'em how to do X, whatever that looks like. And I go no. We go recruit X. That they know how to do it. Can we refine this and can we take that percentage up right by seven 10% sure. With some of the things we do, but to bring it up 30%? Probably not. And the funny thing, when I was an assistant, it would the, in the recruiting process, the head coach would never end. Hey, what's their free throw shooting percentage in recruiting? Yeah. And so we would get'em and they would be a terrible free throw shooter and never be able to get, be in the game, late game because they weren't making free throws. And so I learned as an assistant that like if you've got a, if part of this whole equation and you're in a league that you know is gonna be a two or three possession game every night, because most of the time four to five bid NCAA Tournament League are going to be as such. They better make sure that the rotational players are a certain percentage so that they can close games for you. What does that recruiting look like for you guys? When you're out on the road? Are you looking for a replacement or are you looking for a player and then you'll adapt? What does that look like for you guys? When you're sitting at a on a court and you're watching a kid play? Are there things that like, okay, that kid does, what does A or does B, is that important to you? Oh, there's no question about it, and I think what we've gotta do is continue. We feel is get better players than what we have on the roster. Right? And then our challenge to the kids at home on that roster is to, can you outwork our ability to recruit and identify talent? So if we can get both groups working together, so our staff working like crazy to have more talent that is on the current roster and our current roster, recognizing. That I'm gonna outwork my talent every day, and then these two groups come together. It can really be magical. I agree. And it's, and it's the best way to recruit too, because your upperclassmen know that there's no slouches coming in. They've gotta be, they've gotta take that next step every year too. I think that as you recruit highly competitive people who understand that they joining the program that. It's striving in the national spotlight every single year. Yeah. I think that competitive advantage is huge. I think the kids' work ethic is huge because otherwise, simply talented players don't wanna be in this kind of an environment. We're in a elite environment that if you're not striving every day in your life to be elite, not only your, the basketball practice or the basketball element, like we're looking for people. Who wanna be elite in every area of life, whether it be academically or socially. It's just, it's who they are every day. What does it mean to you when you were interviewing for this job, knowing that the men's program was so successful? Did that, was that something that you looked at and go, they're doing this right? This is the school that I want to be at because of how they're competing. Did that do anything for you? Coach Crutchfield is the one of the most amazing people that I've ever met. And so to be able to work with him every day and watch his practices, I feel like I'm in a basketball school and, I'm learning, I'm taking away, I'm stalling and implementing it. And no, it was a huge element of me knowing that this was the right fit because of. Such similarities in, we, we wanna play fast. And they've proven that the system works and I've I was picking his brain every chance I could get and begging him to teach me the intricacies of the system. And yeah, I guess working alongside him every day allows me to do that, which has been such an advantage. And we've installed so many of the different things that I'm just really appreciative of him. He's been nothing but incredibly kind and. The way that they run their program and the way their guys are, and their staff, and there's just really great alignment with with both the men's and women's staffs here at Nova. I I think there's more trophies to come for both of you. I'm so excited about that partnership and what you're bringing down there. Coach, when you look at your background, when you look at your history you've been at a number of schools, you look at Pfeiffer, your first year, you went 14 and 15. You look at East Carolina, you had a 12 and 19 year. Early on Greensboro, you had a six and nine year. Barry, you went nine and 19, and then that following year, you're one of the most dominant programs, not only in your league, but in the country. What do you feel like you are doing that you can go in and build a program that quickly?'cause that's so rare. If you can improve your win-loss record from year one to year two by four or five wins, it's a lot. You've had seasons where you've improved by 8, 10, 12 wins. What do you feel like you're doing differently when you're taking over a program? First I think you gotta infuse the passion behind it, and then you've gotta make sure you've got the right people behind it. And so sometimes that takes a year. Yeah. And I understand that sometimes it takes longer and I know a lot of coaches are saying, Hey, we need some patience. But that's really not the business that we're in college athletics For sure. Our big thing is, let's be honest with people, and I think that has shown some of the reasons that we're able to turn programs around relatively quickly is the honesty. And we tell the truth in the recruiting process. We tell the kids the truth every day, and I think that they can appreciate that. Combined with that, we're super consistent as coaching staff and we're consistent in our decision making. We're consistent in our communication, and I think because of that, even if it didn't work out and we made changes, I think the respect is there on, hey, that makes sense to do it. And then the way that we work and the way that we prepare. Absolutely not for everybody. And so identifying the people that it's for and the people, it's not that make'em bad, that make'em good but we do different types stuff. Yeah. And we need that same kind of mindset and that same kind of mentality, but we also know who we are and what we want to do. And every year we aren't changing everything. And it's, so I think some of that is really important as well. Is that when kids are in our system for one year, they get pretty good when they're in it for two man, they're really good. And so then all of a sudden, if they're in it two and three and four years, you're starting to see some incredible things. Audrey Jennings, who was with us two years at Greensboro then was with us and her final two years at Barry. So she played inside the system for four years. She's currently playing professional basketball, but she scored 1700 points in how we play. Wow. Four year period of time. And so that kind of thing I think speaks to the system that the longer that players play in it, the better that they continue to grow and get. And I think that's really all young people wanna do is see growth, see improvement. And I think because we know who we are, they know what we do every day. They start to get. Incredibly comfortable in how we play, and then they start to get better and better inside of it. And I think you start to see that maybe with some of the win-loss records. You've definitely proven that coach. Without a doubt. I love that philosophy. Let's do a little snapshot with you. A little masterclass. I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you just something that happens in practice. I'm always intrigued. We have so many high school coaches and college coaches that listen to this. I'm always intrigued how a coach handles. The little things because I think most great coaches they teach and coach the little things so well that you don't even realize that's the reason they're winning games. So you're watching practice and one of your players doesn't turn and hit on a three pointer. They just, their hands are up. They're looking at the rim. How do you respond to that? Okay, so first in our press, all five press, and then secondly, in our rebounding, all five rebound. So I think based upon that, everyone on the court understands we don't do things in twos and threes and fours. We do things in fives. Everyone understands that. So whether you're guarding at the three point line or you're boxing out at the block. Everyone's expected to rebound and defensive rebounding for us, Matt, we call'em tough defensive boards, so we call'em TD Bs. Yep.'cause nobody this day and age is simply going to rebounding the bulk. If you're rebounding with your hands. People are coming through that. You gotta rebound, be willing to rebound outside of area and with your body. So if you're checking out from a closeout, we call it a checkout. So you're simply turning and looking to make sure that shooter's not going right, but you've gotta go pursue with your hands above your shoulders, so you are alert and ready to grab it with two hands. So I think when you go into it every single time and you go all five, press all five, T, D, b, period. Now, interesting enough for us, we also send all five to the offensive glass. The big, my big thing with rebounding, and we really emphasize it, is it's the one thing in basketball that you do on both ends of the court. Yep. So the rebounding perspective is offensive rebounding and defensive rebounding. So it must be really important to win and how you rebound. So we emphasize it, we stress it, and we reward it. And I think that you see consistently, our offensive rebounding numbers get really gawdy. That's how basketball games are won. That's how championships are won. So I love it, but I'll press you a little bit. How do you handle it as a coach? Do you let it go? Are you coaching? Are you coaching the whole, are will you stop a practice? What? What will you do when you see somebody not buying into that five or not playing their role? We have segments of practice. So our segments of practice. Consist of segments where we're competing, like today was a competing practice. They knew what we're doing and we were all five oh dry stuff last night and some fitness things inside of it. So it's also the rhythm. It's more around like a football practice. So Sunday we talked, and today we competed. Okay. And so inside of a competing practice, no, I'm not gonna blow the whistle for that. Okay. And stop. I'm looking for the response after you give up the offensive rebound. And how quickly can we move on to the next thing? Now we'll debrief, and during the debrief we'll go back through and visit on some of those kinds of things. Now, if we start to see that player made one mistake, we move on from that. But if that player is consistently doing that and giving up offensive rebounds. We'll work individually with them. We'll stress and emphasize that while we're live coaching. And if that doesn't adjust and that becomes a repetitive problem, it's very difficult to play when you're doing that and not really buying into being able to rebound it. The way you just explained it was that who you were 20 years ago, would you have responded the same way? Oh man. No I'm proud to say that I'm not even who I am. Who I'm not even the same coach I was a year ago. Yes. Let alone 20 years ago. I think that's the evolution of what you want as a professional, right? Is growing, maturing. Evolving with the times. That's the, everybody's losing their minds about this transfer portal stuff. And yeah I jokingly laugh and go, we were doing the transfer portal a decade ago. This is how we were building programs and doing it then. And so I really think we have always been. A type of program that it's not, this is how we've always done it, this is what we're gonna do. I think we've continued to evolve and continue to grow, and definitely I have. Yeah. Individually as a head coach. Absolutely. Yeah. You have to have the success you've had now you've got Auburn Montgomery coming up here the end of the week, right? That's your first one. We do. What are you doing differently in practices this week in preparing for them? Or are you that coach that says, this is what we do, we're gonna prepare for, to do what we do really well? Or how much time are you setting aside to prepare for Auburn Montgomery's offense and defense? I am notorious for the level of preparation. Meaning I'm like no stone unturned. I probably watch more film and look at more stats and analytics more, probably more than I really need to. But it's just super important for me that we give our team the best possible chance to win. And I think the way our coaching staff prepares is really important is specifically me as the head coach. Our assistants will have the scouting report, but. I pretty, that's, I joke with'em. I'm like, you guys are typing up the scalp. But I do every scalp, right? Meaning I am watching full game tape when, right now, it's very different than it was in the old days, Matt, where everybody was driving wherever and exchanging DVDs and BH s tapes and this software and the way that. We're able to get into the synergies and all the other analytical software that we've got. It's just really lazy. You could just click and play and so you could put these scouts together relatively quickly. But I am pretty meticulous relative to watching full game tape. So we'll go back and look at. Their last year stuff and returning players and then where players transferred in from and pull their individual clips from those schools. I think we do a really nice job having our team prepared at the same time focusing on what we know we do well that we've gotta do every single night. Emphasizing that, is there a point where you worry about. Overwhelming your kids. This was always my concern that I was giving them too much to remember, to think about instead of, this is what we do, we're gonna go do it. Yes, we're gonna be ready for this pick and roll. We're gonna be ready for this type of press, a trap or this type of screening that they do. Do you ever worry about giving the girls too much? Not really. Okay. To be quite honest with you, I think that I think they embrace it. I think that they go. They want to know. I think that they they crave that. And I think it also calms some of their nerves. Yeah. Like they're going in it and they're saying true. No, there's no surprises. Like we are well prepared. Things that would happen on the fringe we're well prepared. And I would tell them like, we've got game goals, numerical game goals. So we have six of those. And I'll go into and go, guys, we're gonna have to reach all six of these goals to win this game. There's some games, we go into it and I go, listen, we could go two of six and still win. But they know as we're going in these numbers and we'll show'em. It's crazy through the years that the players know that these game goal numbers are indicative of whether or not we win the game or not. So don't get so caught up with what's happening at the scoreboard. Stay focused inside of our timeout and staying with this process of. We are right on track in the game goals, and if you'll stay focused on the game goals, the end result will take care of itself, even though maybe in the second quarter. Yeah. It doesn't quite seem like it would. Yeah. There's a ton of significance to that. Would you mind sharing your six numerical goals? Sure. I'd be glad to. So we look at how we're rebounding and now we do this every year. So if coaches are paying attention to this you've gotta go through it and look at what kind of team do you have relative to your competition, right? And where the rebounding margin should, could be, and set something that makes sense. Sure, I would like to be plus 10 and rebounding, but depending upon the kind of team I have, maybe plus five would be successful this year or plus eight. Yeah. So you would need to set that in it. Then we have a deflection goal. And so a similar thing, like if we're playing really up tempo, the deflection goal could be plus 40. If you know that you're gonna play a little more of a matchup zone the majority of the year, you don't wanna set that number weirdly, and you also don't wanna set that number that it doesn't fit the tempo of your team. The same thing with what we're doing charges. So we feel like a charge is. Kinda like a dunk in the men's game. Absolutely. It, the ability to take a charge. Not only do you get the ball back, you give the other team a foul. And right now women's college basketball's four quarters and you're shooting two after the fifth. That's so significant. How huge, quickly can you get into the bonus is a really big deal. And then. I think that teams that understand value, understand winning. So the less than 15 turnovers, whatever that number is for the coach at that year. And even though we're playing fast we wanna shoot it before we turn it over and get it to the rim. So we need to turn it less than 15 times to get the amount of shot attempts that we wanna get every single night. So teams that understand winning, understand value, they also understand free throws. So that's our fifth one is the free throw percentage, and our final one is fill goal percentage. So I think those are the six that we have factored in as winning and losing. And how many have really gotta hit? What do you, is free throws how many you attempts or are you looking for a percentage above 75%. And then obviously we do a really interesting thing I, we implemented this year in Coach Crutchfield. Really stresses it, and it's been huge for us. We keep fouled individual fouls throughout practice. I love that. And then we've got our two teams. And so we, when we get into our live segments, we'll go ahead and say okay, and we learn our players like you're going into the live segment with three fouls because we'll give thousand the drills. You're three s going into the live segment to, to train that kid and how to. Practice and play with three fouls. And then the other part I think has been really cool in how we are gonna play uptempo wise is that, so we are in a live segment and now individual fouls are now team fouls because we do divide the teams and we don't switch'em up as we go. So we have the teams divided and we'll start the live segment by saying, Hey, you guys have one team file, or you guys are already at five. So that every everything in live segment, every foul is two free throws. Which will adjust what we're running defensively. And it's also adjusting like how aggressive they can be in passing lanes or inside of traffic. And it speaks volumes'cause it's same thing they're gonna be hearing in timeouts and at the end of quarters. But the problem is that as coaches. We tend to only talk about that stuff inside of the games. Yeah. Smart. So for us, yeah we coach 20 some years, but these kids, play, I dunno, play 30 games a year. They're playing 120 total career games. And that's the only time that really the coaches are talking about some of the strategy or that they learn how to play it without trouble and then we wonder why they're outta rhythm. Yep. So I think one of the best things that we've really done a nice job of this year. Is creating a practice environment that will simulate game days. I love that. Yeah it's so huge and it's so necessary in terms of getting the kids to understand what we're really after and what we're doing. You can't expect them to learn that in the middle of a game, so I love that. What was the field goal number coach that you're looking for? 45%. 45 or higher? What have you found since you've implemented that? It makes your players thinking about good shots and what a good shot is. Has that helped? Oh, I think you can tell the players who are gonna be better scorers, those guys in drills in practice with no defense and they don't miss, and that the kids who probably aren't gonna score the ball very well that they miss open looks in the paint. No one guard'em. So you can see those percentages and we have a shooting off season workout plan and, we can tell'em like, listen, if you're not shooting at 70% with no D behind the three point line, like you're not gonna be anywhere close to taking shots and games. So that's the part that young people have gotta figure out is how to practice at game pace. How to hit an appropriate percentage that will translate to success inside of games. So that's not some arbitrary number, like we know our league and how good our league is and if you're shooting in the thirties you're not gonna win. It's just it's a simple mathematical equation. And yes, coaches do we need to be thinking about who's taking the shot and are they, are we getting high quality? Percentage shots. All of those things obviously factor in games, but it also factors in what kind of shots they're taking. When they're in getting extra shots up on their own or with one of our coaches. Does that then transfer into what we call system shots and it shots that kid will see inside of a game? Love it. Coach, I wanna respect your time. I know you're limited today. Would you mind giving one piece of advice to parents that are going through the recruiting process and what you recommend they focus on if they want, if their child wants to play at the next level? Yeah, I'd be glad to. Recruiting is an inexact science and there is not the same process. One kid goes through that, the next one or the one or two or five after that will go through, which I understand is difficult for families to understand. The other part that families tend to have a hard time with is that, they go through this process one time maybe. Maybe they have two kids in the family that were college athletes, which doesn't happen that often. So maybe you go through it twice in your lifetime. Whereas college coaches we're signing somewhere between three to 10 probably. Players every single year, right? So it's a scenario where you start looking into the communities that people live in. And the advice that parents are getting are advice from people who, A, may have never played college sports, or B, never coach college sports. And that's who you're seeking advice from and guidance. And I can imagine it would be overwhelming. I can also imagine that that it would be some anxiety to it. I would tell you this, if you could take all of the people you're asking advice from and suggestions from and remove the noise of it, and be relentless with distractions and simply keep your kid working at the craft and getting better, you won't have to worry about the recruiting process, because the recruiting process will come to you And, let's just be really direct, in a. A dating relationship, when he is really into you, he is really into you. Recruiting is the same way. It sure is. If that staff is into you and that school's into you, you are not gonna have to question if they're into you or have someone else double check. You are gonna clearly know that is occurring. And I do suggest having a relationship with. It be your high school coach or your club coach, and too many parents and too many players right now had adversarial relationships with those folks. And I do think that's a mistake because it is nice to have someone that can call on your behalf. It's no different than going to interview for a job and your current boss is given you a great reference. I think it's super important that high school coach is able to say incredible hard worker totally a competitor, whatever those things are is really important. And that's really how you show up every single day and do things because the majority of college coaches are doing their due diligence and there's not gonna be a lot of secrets. And there's definitely not secrets on if you're a good player or a bad player because the way that we're able to see video and look at the stats and things online. Similar question. Last one. For that 16, 17-year-old player that would love to play at Inova, love to play at that high level D two level in that great conference. How do they get your attention coach if they live in California and you're not just gonna run into'em, or they live in Minnesota and you're not just gonna run into'em you may not find them know about them. How do they let you know they wanna be recruited? I think the best thing for us anyway is to have your coach call me and tell me about you and that you understand that to play at a level like this you could have played division one basketball if you'd chosen to, because to really compete at what we're doing. We're a four bid league. So we are kinda like the SEC ACC very much Yeah. Of division one. And so there's not players in our league that didn't have an opportunity, haven't already. Played division one basketball and they've chosen a different memorial rewarding path to be here with us. So I think a simple phone call makes sense and it makes sense why you wanna come from California or come from Minnesota to Florida. It makes sense because there's some sort of reason behind it. It's a great academic model. There's family in here. Because whatever that looks like is that, Hey, I took said, who's top 25 in the country and we're calling everybody top 25 in the country because this kid is that competitive that she wants to jump into an established program. Whatever the reasoning may be, I think it needs to make sense. Yeah. To go and do that. But a direct phone call, I think greater than a mass. I agree. I agree. And you wanna know that they've done their research. You wanna know that they're calling you for a reason because you want, you wanna have'em for four years if you can have'em, right? Yeah, no question. And there's no guarantees right now with the climate of recruiting, how long you're gonna have. But as long as we may have'em, we just want the greatest impact that we can get. And and so we put a lot of pride in recruiting the family, recruiting the kid. And having that relationship, regardless if they're with us a year, or four years, is that it's gonna be a life lifelong relationship. Coach, thank you so much for your time today. It's an honor to talk to you. I've been following your career for a long time and it's just so impressive what you continue to do and I think Nova just lock themselves up another future hall of famer. You guys are gonna have a, a lot of fun over the next few years, so good luck the rest of the year. But thank you again for your time. Thanks for the kind words and thanks so much for having me on. And I'm gonna tell you something, I'm the lucky one to be here because NSU, they've treated me incredibly kind and given us the resources to go and be super successful. So again thank you so much for having me on. My pleasure coach. Good luck and with Auburn Montgomery this week. And we'll be cheering for you. Okay, thanks. Go sharks. That'll do it for today's episode with Coach Heather Macy. Anytime you get to learn from someone who has rebuilt programs, elevated cultures, and committed her life to teaching leadership at the highest level, it's a gift. I hope you took as much from this conversation as I did. If you're a parent, a coach, or a student athlete looking for clarity in the recruiting process, remember you can schedule a free recruiting strategy session with me@coachmattrogers.com. You'll also find the significant recruiting book and my brand new Basketball recruits Journal, two tools designed to help families stay organized, confident, and intentional through every part of their recruiting journey. And make sure you come back on Monday for our special significant recruiting episode with Brian Olo. A former coach and a dad who has spent the past year using the significant recruiting tools and resources to help his daughter Kelsey navigate her recruiting path. It's a powerful conversation and one that will help every family understand what this process looks like when it's done with purpose. Until next time, stay focused on what you can control. Stay humble and keep chasing significance.