Interview of Carol Bruggeman

Grace: Yeah, so I'm taking this Global Leadership class and we basically just kind of been exploring leaders we've read about like Lincoln past presidents. We just read I don't know if you've ever read David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell, right? So we're kind of just exploring leaders. And this project is we're supposed to pick a leader that we feel has had like significant contributions to their place and Coach Matthews told me about you and I've known about you for a little bit. So yeah, so I thought it would be a good fit.

Carol: What a great class man, I it's so fortunate that you're able to study that sort of thing at the time in your life that you are to really start thinking about your leadership philosophies or just you know, how decisions were made and what goes into it. So, I think it's just a really cool class.

Grace: yeah, it's been really eye-opening. There's we've learned a lot.

Grace: Okay. All right let's jump into it. Uh, so tell me about your softball journey. How did you get into as a kid? I know you played at Iowa like you're from Iowa. So, kind of tell me the beginnings, I guess.

Carol: Sure thanks for asking and I will be as brief as I can. But the journey it really started. Yes, I grew up in Iowa and my dad was a an Umpire and an official for many sports. So he did he coached as well and he was a high school teacher in principal. So he was just very involved in that sort of thing. And one of the things he umpired was men's fast pitch softball. Because when I was a kid gosh in the Iowa, Minnesota South Dakota, Nebraska area, I mean men's fast pitch was a thing. I mean it's still kind of is but not like it used to not like it was and I used to tag along with him to the ballpark. You know, I'm sure my mother just said you are in charge of her, you know take her with you and I've got I really was enamored by the speed of the game and the athleticism and even as a little kid, I just thought how hard they threw the ball and how fast they could run. I was really intrigued by The Game and even though I played all sorts of sports growing up and in high school and that really softball was always my favorite and my kind of my, you know, just most passionate about and so I played in high school and and then went on to playing college at the University of Iowa and was a really cool time to be at Iowa and it means more to me now than even it did then in terms of Dr. Christine Grant which hopefully you'll come across that name in your leadership class. She was the athletic director at the University of Iowa when I was a student athlete there and then went to graduate school there. And as a matter of fact when I went to graduate school there she not only taught some classes that I had. She was my personal academic advisor and Dr. Grant really is she just passed away about a year ago year and a half ago, but she was an industry leader on Title IX and you know, when when a lot of the the college has said, okay, we're gonna adopt this 60/40 rule, you know, 60% of participation can be men. She said that's not equal. It's 50/50 and Iowa’s been 50/50 ever since, you know started to go so she's just yeah research her a little bit Dr. Christine Grant and so, you know, I went to school at University of Iowa and she was there and just had a lot of great mentors and you know played softball there and really Grace I really struggled with I had a business degree. I was really interested in that side of things but I also had this passion for athletics and I really didn't my career path was like I didn't know which way I was gonna go-

Grace: Yeah, that's my name question. Like how did this influence?

Carol: Yes, and I will definitely get to that but my I remember talking with my parents at the time and just saying man, I really could get these great jobs in business. I had some nice offers, but it just I just couldn't say yes, but I really didn't know what you know what it was gonna be and I remember them saying and it really was the right words at the right time to me and my life of like go to school go to grad school. You never can go wrong with getting more education. No one can ever take it from you and and you're just you really like to learn like and so I did that I went to graduate school and became a graduate assistant coach before it was a thing now. It's a thing it wasn't really a thing back then but again, I was at Iowa equality and worked for Gayle Blevins who was a very successful softball coach there and fell in love with it. I'm like this is

it. Coaching is it. And so, after I got my master’s degree I was hired by Carol Hutchins at the University of Michigan. You might know her name. It wasn't the Carol Hutchins she is now, but she was you know, but I mean she's she is as a person in a human being but you know now she's the winningest coach in division one softball history. So, I got my start with her how lucky am I and we had a great time. We're still dear friends. So I was her assistant for five years then went on to start the program at Purdue and was the head coach there at the ripe old age of 28. I was hired to be the head coach to start the program at Purdue and was there a long time and loved every minute of it and then finished my coaching career full-time coaching career at the University of Louisville. And that was just an awesome experience as well. So whether you think it's a blessing or curse, I was at the power five level my entire career. I loved it, but some people would say, you know, it's a lot and it is and then I just to finish the career story. I just I was just ready for a new challenge. Like I could be a college coach I could do what Coach Matthews is doing right now and be just as happy. I loved every minute of it but just felt like I was ready for this new challenge and even when I was coaching, I was very involved on like our NFCA board of directors and you know, I was speaking and just doing different things. And so I thought this was a great opportunity to give that a try. So I've been the executive director now of the NFCA for since 2016 and I feel like my world has just exploded and opened up because now it's not one team, one goal, one school. It's the softball world.

Grace: You’re overseeing a lot of people.

Carol: Yeah, this international connections and the business side connections with all the companies surrounding softball and I have the pleasure working for ESPN now during the spring season and get to do the analyst work, which is really cool and I work with USA softball. I'm on the national team selection committee. So, I wouldn't have been able to do all those things had I stayed with coaching and again, I would have been happy. But now I'm I just feel like this world is opened up. So long, I tried to keep it brief, but that's like the career journey.

Grace: No, that's great. And you answered a lot of things.

Carol: Good! But your next your other question was you know, how to what was your question? In there when I was talking I can't remember like how did I know or I don't know I can't remember.

Grace: Yeah, it's kind of like how did your experiences early on influence you getting into coaching kind of yeah answered that but-

Carol: Yeah, I well my dad was my first coach when I was little little and and like a lot of people moms or dads the first coach and he you know, just he was always willing to you know, go practice with me or do whatever so he had a big influence, of course, my mother did as well, but my brother did too. He's four years older and in the house, he “Ruled The Roost” but outside of the house. I was like his little sister and he's like, you know, she's playing with us. I could play baseball with others. He's doing that, you know, he was great. He was a terrific big brother. So um, but yeah, I think just the influence of watching fastpitch softball when I was a kid and I think growing up in the state of Iowa and I know Iowa gets a bad rap about some things but it's one of the leading States in terms of education and it's one of the leading States in terms of equality like I graduated from high school in 1983 and I wore metal cleats in high school and back then it was like that was like unheard of I think we were the only state in the country all the all the women's teams had to wear plastic cleats because it was, you know too dangerous but in Iowa I'm and so I remember one of my first practices at the University of Iowa when we're all running around and a lot of my teammates are tripping because it's cleats it’s metal cleats for the first time and all this stuff and I'm like, what's the problem, you know and it's like well all these all these young ladies from Illinois and you know, Wisconsin they just never wore metal. And so I think growing up in the state of Iowa with that mentality of “Hey, everybody's the same and everybody's equal and give everybody chance”. That's just really stuck with me, too. I just feel very grateful for that.

Grace: That's awesome. That's really cool. So, what has been the shift between coaching and being an executive director been like? Do you still feel like you wear your coaching hat?

Carol: Oh for sure. I mean I'm a coach right here. You know, like I, I think like a coach. I mean 25 years is a long time. So I think like a coach I feel like, you know, two things the reason that I enjoy this role so much is because I did coach the people I serve are fast pitch softball coaches of all levels high school all the way to division 1 to travel ball that you know everybody so I've been in their shoes. So it's a little easier to think. Oh, yeah this time of year this is what they're thinking and doing and we need to do x y z or you know, so just the experience of coaching and the connections of coaching have served just served me very well in this role. I feel very fortunate to have had that I think it'd be tough to be in this role and never have coached. I think for any industry if you're serving a group if you haven't walked in their shoes, it's hard to truly serve. So that's been good. But the biggest I think the biggest difference is

you know, I was just used to every day going out to the field, you know for a couple hours a day and that was a big adjustment for me mainly because you just get so used to that cycle. It's what you'll go through someday when you're not playing, you know, you're like wow, why am I not going to the softball field like this is weird. So that was a transition is, you know, just not going to the field and having practice every day, but there's been other transitions and that was just it still is a little odd for me. But yes, I still coach and help some of my former players who coach teams and I'll always be a coach at heart and you know, that's really what the analyst job for ESPN is your coaching in the booth, you know and coaching. So that's really help fill my coaching bucket too is you know being able to be on campuses and talk to coaches and of course just you know coaching the booth and the best thing is I'm undefeated in the booth, you know, great. That's great.

Grace: Do you feel like you are called into leadership, or do you feel like you seeked it out like you feel like you kind of have a natural ability to lead or is it something you had to work for?

Carol: That's a great question. I think a little bit of both mainly mainly I think it came pretty naturally for me. No, I just when you know now that you've asked that I'm looking back at teams. I've been on or different places. I've been or roles I've had and It's always come naturally for me to think of others. It's really tough for me to talk about myself or to like even this interview is a little you know, but to talk about myself or to talk about yeah, just one person. It's easy for me to think in terms of teams or you know motivating leading innovating like those things. I'm always kind of churning in my mind about that. I feel like I always kind of have been but the reason I say both have I had to work for it because I think any leader needs to work for it. I mean if you stay put you're you know, you never you either getting better or worse. It's really not this in between. You're you want to be heading toward that any better. So I feel like because I've been in a lot of leadership positions. That means you've had to make a lot of decisions that impact a lot of people or impact a lot of things and the more decisions you make and the more you put in those positions then you do. You know that's working for it. You just learn based on experience. Well last time I made the decision of this and this is what I consider, but I should have considered this a little more so I'm going to this time so I get asked that a lot with assistant coaches who've been long-time assistant coaches. Like when do I know? I'm ready to be head coach or I think I'm ready here. I'm not sure. I'm ready. You know, what do you think? I only have one answer for them all the time. I mean number one there. Everybody's ready. You just jump in. It's like jumping in the swimming pool you just go but you know when you're not the leader it's easy to make suggestions. It's a little more challenging to make decisions. And when you're an assistant or when you're a periphery person in any organization, your job is to make suggestions. Well thought out suggestions but you're really suggesting suggesting suggesting. The leader has to make a decision and stick with it and have reasons behind it strong rationale that went into it. If you get asked question about it being able to answer that question. So you got to think through it before the decision. So yeah to me the you know leadership is about being able to make decisions that impact others and just being able to really see the big picture of all of those things.

Grace: Okay, cool. I love that. Okay. A common theme with the leaders we have discussed this semester in class is failure and how their failures influence them as leaders. How have you learned from obstacles and challenges faced?

Carol: Well, there's not one person on this Earth who hasn't been kicked in the gut, you know at some point in time. I mean, I'm sure you have too and your career so far you just you know something didn’t go your way or you feel wronged or you just give it your best shot and it didn't go well. I mean that just you know that happens. I think you know being able to bounce back quickly. I would say be like a tennis ball like you know, like if you threw something on the ground that didn't bounce very high. It's not going to bounce back very quickly, but a tennis ball, you know, it can bounce back better than it was before, you know higher and quickly so it might go down fast, but it comes back fast. So being able to have the skills. The your circle of people sure you've learned a lot about that with leadership. But you know as a leader you have to have your circle of people and I feel like your circle of people needs to be sure two or three people within your industry because you have to bounce ideas off of them, but they also need to be people some of that has nothing like for me something has nothing to do with softball maybe something someone that has something to do with business maybe something that has to do with communication skills. Like just you need a you need a circle, but they can all be alike. And so when you have moments of failure, you're gonna you need that circle to rely on and lean on to help you and get you through that and encourage you but also like, you know, just help you move forward so you can talk about things but

I think just being able to learn from that situation and you know always always take the high road. So even if you feel wronged or you know, it wasn't a decision you made but you ain't your impacted by it. Just taking the high road always ends up the best way and I feel like in this day and age with social media and everybody getting attention for you know, venting or calling someone out or you know, just gosh, you know just it's really tough to be a leader right now because everything you do is scrutinize and everything you do is public. And it can be taken so out of context, you know, if you say one thing so just just being able to manage all that and still being able to take the high road and not say or do anything that down the road you wish you didn't and I feel like that always just you know is the best way to go. So when you have those failures not blaming someone else or bashing someone else even though you might feel that way and you do need your circle to maybe let it out.

Being able to learn from it and move forward and move forward quickly.

Grace: Yeah. I saw like during covid you were very successful. Like what was that like during that time? I mean, it's kind of a scary time for everybody.

Carol: That was a tough. That was tough for everybody in the world, you know, when not just for me certainly, but a lot of people were put in some tough positions and and for the NFCA to be a nonprofit organization, like the bottom line is just wasn't a lot of revenue coming in and when coaches had to make a decision when administrators are coming to them and saying you got to cut 50% of your budget. Well anything with professional developments gonna go first, you know, or even awards for student athletes, like it's just, you know, there's other things like you got to turn your lights on, you know, like you got it you gotta do those basic things. So, you know, that's where I was just very thankful for all the things that you and I been talking about. It kind of came naturally to me to say, I mean we were three weeks in and I'm like this is not good. We have to make some decisions now and I remember calling a board of directors meeting and moving forward and we kind of made some big decisions financially and big decisions organizationally kind of before universities did in the rest of the country, but I just felt like it was like let's we need to make some decisions here quick. So trusting trusting the instincts really doing the work to validate what was going on in my head and my heart like this is not going well. How can we how can we come up with a solution and then having a solution to present to the board and to people and then

really rallying your people and you know, our internal staff and external softball community, like look we're gonna be okay, but here's here's what needs to happen. Like just think clear messaging, you know communicating at a high level. Well that's always important for leader. And you know just clear concise messages and getting a plan and then you know evaluating the plan. To me that's what leadership is about people want to follow a plan. And if you feel like you have a plan a well thought out plan like people can get behind that and then if and then if something goes wrong. It can be the plan that's you know, like oh, we need a new plan. It's not Grace you're not doing your part and you're terrible. So you feel bad. It's hey, this plan was not very good for you. It's clearly not working. Let's adjust the plan. That's a different feeling for you. So I feel like leaders really need clear well thought out plans and then to be able to deliver communicate the plan execute the plan and if it's going well great reinforce it off we go and if it's not going well adjust the plan, but keep your people moving, you know, yeah.

Grace:

Nice, no, good. Good, okay. I guess how do you measure success? Especially I mean, I'm sure you have different you've had different ways of doing that as a coach and now as an executive director.

Carol: Yeah, that's a great question. I feel like you know, there's always benchmarks with success like as a softball coach, you know, and as a softball player it's you know, did you win did you lose there's a benchmark there, but you and I both know a win or a loss doesn't mean you're not a successful team. You know, it's the long haul. So success to me is being able to take these benchmarks. Maybe it's a financial benchmark. Maybe it's a you know weight room benchmark, you know, maybe it's a for us maybe a membership, you know benchmark and how is that trending, you know from the next benchmark, where's that trending and then back to the plan and adjusting. It's this constant cycle. But measuring success means over time, you know, those benchmarks head in the in the right direction and success also means that you're just constantly innovating and learning, you know think you can be the same you need to be the same core person, you know respectful and kind and driven and all those things but you know, you have to evolve you have to continue to evolve and ask questions and stay up with the latest trends and those sorts of things so that to me is success too. Like when I look at the NFCA five years ago, are we in a better place? Are we doing more? Are we doing relevant things? Those are all questions you constantly asking and if the answers yes, okay, and not just my answer but asking your internal team your external team like do you feel like we've, you know made some progress and how and why and what can we do better and but yeah, that's success to me. Of course measuring the benchmarks because to me what gets measured gets managed if you don't measuring something, how can you manage it? So what gets measured gets managed, but you know over time making sure those little things keep trending in the right direction.

Grace: That kind of leads into another question. I said, okay, how do you feel the game of softball has evolved over the years and do you feel like you've had to change your leadership style along with it?

Carol: So, the game itself. You know, it's still three outs and you know more you got to score more runs than the other team so that the game, you know, the premise of the game itself of course is the same but how the game has evolved has been tremendous throughout my lifetime of playing I played in college where we have the white ball. You could rattle it after the first innings and it would shake and then you wonder why you couldn't hit and you're all using bats from the same bat bag. You didn't have your own back anyway. So the game is evolved. And I think it's evolved well, you know using the yellow ball differentiating our sport from other softball like, you know men's fast pitch and you know, whatever co-ed slow pitch like we have this yellow ball and it matters. It means it's fast pitch and you know moving the pitching plate back three feet really helped the offense again when I played it was a great game. It was a lot of fun, but there wasn't a ton of scoring. Overall and it you know moving the pitching plate back changing the ball. Obviously the equipment is significantly better the bats the gloves that you know, so our game continues to evolve and stay sharp now having you know pitch clock to keep things moving sometimes. I mean, there's just some really good things are our leadership our caretakers of the sport have done to take care of the sports. So yes, I feel like our sport has evolved and has changed but the core of it is still it's an exciting game. It's fast paced, you know, it's a short field and you still have the home runs. You have the big exciting thing or you still have a pitcher who can have 17 strikeouts a game. It's just not all the time. So, you know, there's a lot of things about our game but

Grace: How do you know media has like influenced it in the popularity that?

Carol: Huge, huge media huge if you can see it, you can be it and as you know, now you can watch softball from February to June and that that was not the case. And so now you have people when I travel and I'll have a bag with NFCA on it. They're like, oh I gosh I really got hooked on the World Series this year. I watched every game and I've never watched softball before and I'm like great, you know, like it just exposes people. I mean, we're always gonna watch but it exposes more people and then, you know get more sponsor dollars behind it, but how evolving as a leader throughout the growth of softball has been well, first of all, it's been a lot of fun because our sport has grown like, you know, there are 150 teams. Probably 30 years ago at division one level now there’s 310 and there's only like 335 divisional 1 schools. So like it's as a leader it's been fun to watch the sport thrive as we try to take care of it through the rules and through the exposure like you said all those things but also, I think as a leader how this growth has it's just people pay attention to softball now. So they're gonna pay attention to what the NFCA is doing and saying and they I would hope that they put their trust that when we say something it's real. It's integrity. It's not it's not just you know, we are very intentional and so having to be very aware that a lot more eyes are on softball across the country the NCAA like, you know, we have a seat at the big table now because we're one of those sports, you know with basketball and football and so just that people are paying more attention. So you have to really even think bigger about how this is impacting everyone. So I feel like I've noticed that a little more and as any leader you probably talk to is going to say, you know, all leaders feel a little stretched, you know for just their time and resources. Yeah. Yeah their attention you just trying to prioritize all of that like yeah.

Grace: Okay leaders help to turn ideas into action and empower others. How do you accomplish this?

Carol: Yes, um, yeah leadership to me and it's most simple form is just the ability to influence period doesn't mean you know, there's been some leaders who've influenced in a bad way like for bad things but they've influenced, you know, like think about a Hitler or somebody like this bad, but they were you know, the influenced. Action items are key. And again, it goes back to making sure that the people you serve have clear roles of what their responsibilities are and being able to delegate not just with words but with actions like hey, this is your responsibility, you know, you're accountable like, where are you and all these benchmarks from them we have for our team internally, you know, we have lots of we call them huddles, you know, like staff meetings. We have a couple of those a week. We have all sorts of ways. We talk to each other without talking to each other whether that's through Google Docs or we have a Trello board, which is a project management digital board. So there's lots of ways to make internal action happen but bigger picture for softball, which is where I like to focus is you know, you are you're probably a lot younger than but there was a time. probably five years ago where our recruiting was getting out of hand like sixth, seventh, eighth graders, were committing you remember that? Okay, that's crazy brutal. It was brutal. Like the college coaches didn't like it. The parents didn't like it players that nobody liked it, but nobody could stop it and it was it was really out of control and everybody said yeah, we don't like it but we can't do anything about it. Finally. We said no, we we have to figure out figure this out. So taking action with a very important item for the sport of softball and for the for the health of everyone, you know, usually you don't make marriage decisions when you're 12 years old. So, why would you make it decision about yourself?

Grace: Yeah, four years.

Carol: Yeah awful. Anyway, it was bad. And so we put a plan together we to your point in action plan. Look we need prominent figures in the sport the Mike Candreas the Carol Hutchins, we need those people that are recognizable Patty Gasso, so fortunately I know them all they were all on board. We need we need current college student athletes who went through this and it really was tough got that done. You know, we need travel ball coaches. We just needed like this whole plus we need documentation of various things that I had to write, you know to the to the NCAA. We put together these videos and and the people that were voting on the NCAA committee. There was 20 of them. We literally went through each member of that committee and okay. They're it. They're at Wake Forest. They don't have softball. But before he was at the University of Michigan and he happens to know Carol Hutchins, so I'd call Hutch and say hey tell this guy why we need his vote that this is ridiculous that sixth graders are you know, so we did this big campaign of action to you know, educate and sent documents and you know, it was a massive plan and a massive undertaking but we got it done and everybody's better for it everybody's better for it. But it was taking an idea and taking a problem that needed a solution and then really just pulling up your sleeves and again talking to the right people formulating a plan and putting it into action and you know fortunately for us that one went quickly. There's been others that have met some roadblocks and eventually get done. But yeah, I think just again having the end goal in mind and then how do you back up and make that happen and what's your time frame? And who do you who are the care the stakeholders and all that stuff?

Grace: Yeah. What advice do you have for building relationships and trust in an organization?

Carol: I think relationships and connections are the secret sauce because there's a lot of leaders out there who can lead their group and they're you know, but they have kind of blinders on but it's the connections with people that matter and the relationships that matter and that'd be my advice to any leader out there is build your network like build it, you know, you may think you're never gonna talk to this person again, but you know, make sure you leave with a good impression and just a real one who you are and you just you never know. So being able to have conversations and influence and connections to me is number one on the list for sure.

Grace: Awesome. Okay. All right. Final question. What do you want your legacy to be and where do you see softball heading in the future?

Carol: It's a good question. I have haven’t thought about a legacy. The second one's easy for me to answer, but the first one. Legacy it you know, probably a little bit of it is part of the second question, but just that you know wherever I've had the opportunity to serve that it's in a better place than when you know started not because of me but because of just the whole thing like how the whole plan was implemented and how the whole people got behind things and but I think yeah just hopefully that I was kind and you know convicted in values, you know just unwavering. I should say unwavering in integrity and values and all of those things like no shortcuts with that sort of thing. And yeah, just being kind and respectful to everyone and think that's really important and I think just what you know, where do I want softball to go? I would love for softball to be the number one sport nationwide and not just the number one women's sport because we're really close to that and in some places where we're better. We are the best certainly the number one women's sport. But I mean the number one sport because of all the things you talked about Grace with the exposure and you go to a game and usually don't go to just one game you go to more, you know, it's it catches on we but for that to happen we need bigger stadiums. We need to be able to get more people and seats. Just speaking from the division 1 level only. All 16 sites of our regionals and all eight sites of our Super Regionals and the entire World Series sells out. We don't have enough seats. So we need to get you know administrators and just decision makers on campuses behind that and good example is University of Oklahoma best division 1 program over the last several years by far and every level. And had a very average facility for years. I've done a lot of games there and played a lot of games there. Coached a lot of games there and they're building a new facility. They're gonna be in it this spring and it's gorgeous-

Grace: I’ve seen it on Twitter following along with it. Yeah.

Carol: And it has probably 3,500 seats 4,000 seats. They're already sold out. They should have built a 10,000 seat Stadium, you know, so it's okay. It's like, you know, these are good things. I'm certainly not complaining. I am thrilled that the University of Oklahoma has a new stadium but still like, you know, thinking bigger. I feel like we could be the number one sport, you know, youth youth players are drawn to it. I'm a little concerned. We're pricing some people out because it's very expensive to play high level travel ball and some people just can't do it. So I'm a little concerned about that. But that's probably the only big concern the rest of them are just I hope the rest of the world can keep up with our pace because we're you know off we go. So the future for me for softball would be that it's thought of as the number one sport like you got to play it if you're in high school and you could pick in between hopefully you can play a lot of sports. I like multisport athletes. But if you have to pick one in the summer or in the you know, you're picking softball.

Grace: Yeah. No, I think it's been really exciting to see it grow throughout my lifetime. I remember like growing up I had like male idols and I hope like when I have a daughter like she can have female softball idols. So that's kind of my

Carol: Yes, for sure. Where did you grow up?

Grace: Ohio like Cincinnati area

Carol: Oh Cincinnati, okay.

Grace: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean Johnny Bench was a big one. I mean Jackie Robinson love that man. Yeah, so I'm hoping it gets bigger and bigger like you said.

Carol: Yes. I know and that's and that's something we haven't really talked about but you know the high school game the travel ball game the college game. They're all like heading in the right direction and you know, just to get a bigger pro league-

Grace: Yes, I would love to see that shift.

Carol: That's around. Yeah that would help with some of those, you know, because when you ask young players today, their idols are collegiate players, you know, like a Jocelyn Alo, but then you never hear about her again, you know where we could be talking about Jocelyn Alo for you know, the next 15 years of her career. So I mean you are but not, you know, not to the level of how you did hear about her.

Grace: Oh, yeah. I know. Yeah hoping to see it like that

Carol: For sure for sure.

Grace: Well, thank you so much. Yes, you have given me a lot of good advice. I mean, I hope to get into college coaching. I have another year left to play. But yeah, this has been really amazing.

Carol: Your coach will help you with connections and this and that but you let me know. Yeah, and I can help in any way that I can as well I get a lot of text and calls from coaches in the summer looking to hire and a lot of AD’s who call looking to hire head coaches and you know, just it just feel like I'm the, you know coaching central sometimes in the summer. But yeah, just let me know how I can help as well. I'm happy to help along your journey. And yeah, it would be fun. So it's a great profession. It's a great career. That's for sure.

Grace: Yeah. Well, thank you so much.

Carol: Yes and good luck to you this year.

Grace: Thank you. Very excited.

Carol: Yes, good luck and tell coach I said hi.

Grace: I will, I will she says she's gonna shoot you a text soon.

Carol: Okay, great. Take care. Grace.

Grace: You too. Bye. Okay. Bye.