Tony OcConnor is a rowing coach.

As a rower he represented Ireland at 2 Olympics and won 5 medals at the World Championships in the men's lightweight pair.

After retiring he took up coaching and now lives in New Zealand where he is also a school teacher. In 2021 he was appointed the coach for the New Zealand men's eight, which won gold at the Tokyo Olympics.

As part of this, he also featured in a documentary called The Rowing Teacher.

This interviee was recorded in May 2024, and the the gold medal team Tony talks about has disbanded and did not go on to compete in Paris 2024.

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at paul@thegreatcoachespodcast.com or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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Today's episode focuses on the topic of Coaches as Educators.

And I'm joined in the discussion by two great coaches.

The first is Valorie Kondos Field. Ms. Val, as she is known, led the UCLA gymnastics team from 1991 to 2019, collecting seven National Championships along the way. She now leads the course "Transformative Coaching: Introduction to Philosophies of Coaching and Leadership" at UCLA.

Kirk Walker, the Associate Head Coach of the UCLA Bruins softball team, has a career that started in 1984 and has contributed to six Women's College World Series championships.

We cover a lot of ground in this podcast, and some of the highlights for me were:

The alter-ego coaches can let their worst side come to the fore. This alter-ego is the person who thinks they have to have all the answers, is black and white on issues, and does not encourage discussion. Keeping this person in check requires you to focus on what success is, and that is Coach Woodens' success: the piece of mind that comes from knowing you did your best and grounding your team in fun.

Using sport as a metaphor to educate people about life supersedes the importance of the X's and O's and wins or losses. Therefore, your role as an educator is your "major mission."

Influencing people is perhaps the fundamental role of leadership, and when you do this, you are educating people.

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you; please get in touch with us at paul@thegreatcoachespodcast.com or contact us through our website, thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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Our Great Coach on this episode is Tom Herman.

Tom is An American Football coach. After graduating univsierity he began his coaching career in 1998 at Texas Lutheran as a receivers coach. He then took a position in 1999 at the University of Texas at Austin as a graduate assistant under the mentorship of Greg Davis. He then joined Texas State as the offensive coordinator in 2005.From there we went to Rice where he helped set up the program. Then in 2011, Urban Meyer selected Herman as his offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for the Buckeyes. He was then hired by by Houston as its new head football coach in 2014, before joining power house Texas as Head Coach in 2016. Then in 2022 he was announced as the Florida Atlantic Owls head coach.

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at paul@thegreatcoachespodcast.com or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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