I am a textbook Gen-Xer. Born in 1970, I’m a solid Gen X-er. So I was all over it when by friend, Bamba, came up with an idea to do a Generation X Podcast of some sort….we launched “Latchkey Logic” (Nostalgic Stings from Gen X Things) Kudos to Cy Dodson and Triumph Pictures studios, where we record! We have two under our belt, and hope to drop one a week (as Cy’s travel schedule allows).
Listen to us anywhere you listen to podcasts! (we should be easy to find)
Please drop me ideas and fun comments about what you think! We SO welcome any and all!
As I grow older, I find the “little things” make me happy. I started getting into Erin Benzakein’s Magnolia show “Growing Floret” & reading her blog…I had forgotten how much flowers bring me joy. Just one little flower in my car. I gaze at it when I drive to work in the morning, and it’s the first thing I see on the drive home at the end of the day. Maybe it will summon the energy to ‘spring clean’ my truck now. Time will tell.
I crank out a lot of scripts with my day job, but every now and then a “favorite” pops on my radar. Mary Jo Hoffman, and her “Still Life” story is one of my favorites. Such a wonderful creative life and message! And her new book, Still Life, is just coming out this spring, 2024. I’m in line to get it! So inspiring!
I grew up a coach’s kid. Our family activities revolved around sports. The majority of my time was spent at a small Iowa gym, and having to shoot 10 free throws in a row before I could come in the house and eat dinner was standard protocol. Even the families we hung out with were other coaches. It was the norm.
It wasn’t until my Father, who is in the Iowa Coach’s Hall of Fame, passed away in 2012, that it hit me. As I gazed at the massive visitation line, I was struck with how many people came up to me with a story to share about “Coach McDonnell”. Each story was heartfelt, and I could tell he had made a huge impact on their childhood. My Father always said good coaches are what make the difference at a young age. But what makes a “good” coach, really? And what is it about a good coach that makes adults remember their coaching for years after the fact.
We’re not talking about coaches like Bear Bryant. This is about the youth coaches that are introducing our kids to the sport they want to play – in short, usually their first coach. We as parents know that coaches and sports in general can be enormously influential in the lives of our kids. Involvement in sports helps with physical fitness, teamwork skills and discipline. According to Safe Kids USA, there’s over 38 million kids engaged in some form of sports each year, and almost 75 percent of American households with school-age children have at least one student athlete. Yet, this athletic involvement comes with its own challenges, chief among them, coaches and parents being too competitive. Translation – the sports can stop being fun. How do coaches, along with parents, walk the fine line? How do coaches ‘level the playing field’ so to speak.
Coaches are known for being able to handle pressure. Whether you are on the sidelines of a NFL team, or your son or daughter’s youth soccer team, the pressures are there. And the similarities of all “good coaches” are there, as well, especially the ones that thrive despite the pressures. Everyone will have a slightly different answer to the question “what makes a good coach for my kid?” but similar theme’s rise to the top when talking to both parents and coaches. Being positive and making the sport fun are at the top of the list, as well as being able to develop confidence in every player.
Lori Juhl, mother of a traveling basketball player in the Centennial School System in Lino Lakes, and “team mom”, said a strong coach analyzes each individual player and tries to develop those that are perhaps less talented than the others. “It’s important to keep the team motivated, and be encouraging to the players, not negative,” she said, “coaches can point out the bad, but need to stay focused on the positive. A good coach knows the limitations and ability of each child.”
Brent Cuttell, former President of Cottage Grove’s Youth Football, and youth football coach, said it’s imperative to remember that this is usually the first time that a child is being exposed to a sport. ”You have to understand and say wait a minute, I’m more than a coach,” he explains, “and it’s not about the x’s and o’s, and not about if the kid is the next Walter Peyton or Peyton Manning. Maybe the best thing that happens to this kid is that he starts the whole season, or that he just has fun, or that he improves. I think at a young age, the most important approach is to create a positive environment. The kid should want to play the next season.”
Steve Eckes, current board member for the Andover Baseball association, and youth baseball coach and father, has similar views. “Kids at this age, they don’t come pre-packaged with a perfect baseball swing, every kid is different with different personalities. If you can’t connect with them, you won’t be able to make them understand. You have to talk with them at their level, get down on your knee and talk face to face and be their friend. They have to understand that you care about their development, and that means getting down to their level.”
Connecting with younger kids can be tricky, whether you’re a coach or not. And the most basic skill of taking charge and having a plan can sometimes be the most difficult for a beginner coach. All seasoned coaches agreed across the board: make sure your practices are organized and you have a clear plan. “What I learned is, you should have your drills no longer in minutes than the age of the group your teaching,” said Cuttell, “if your coaching 9 and 10 year-olds, you can’t put in a drill of 20 minutes. They are going to lose focus. Keep the drills short and effective and keep it active, that’s what the kids want. Long, drawn out practices and drills probably have a negative, more than a positive impact.” Eckes also keeps drills short and sweet. “Kids don’t want to stand in line, and kids get frustrated if they aren’t busy. They are there to have fun, not become Derek Jeter. What I see when I see some coaches fail, is going into game mode; showing them the game without the fundamentals. Keep it like gym class, that’s what they like.”
Scott Fransen, who coaches girl’s youth B.B. in Minnetonka, explained repetition is very important, in order to build an understanding. “You have to be consistent with your message,” he said, “girls don’t like to be singled out, whether it’s for praise or trying to teach them something. For girls, the experience is equal part sports, to social interaction. Have a plan when you go into the practice, and remember that you’re trying to prepare them for the next level, and hopefully, to develop a love of the sport in general. Have fun, and there always needs to be a lot of praise, a lot of recognition and high-fiving.”
But how about the parent or team that gets the coach who doesn’t high five or praise, but tends to be a “yeller”. Just as there are similar threads to what defines a “good” coach, there are similarities that go the other way, as well. Parents agree: effective coaches should not use embarrassment and humiliation as teaching tools.
Seasoned, successful coaches agree with the parents. “A coach that plays favorites or that doesn’t communicate well is rough,” said Fransen, “then there’s a lack of understanding to the kids on what they’re trying to do on the floor, and there’s dysfunction in what the team is trying to do.”
Coaches who refuse to be flexible also pose challenges to the kids and their parents.
“You have to be flexible with what your team is telling you they need,” stressed Cuttell, “you have to adapt to what you’ve been presented. You as the coach owe it to the team to adapt to them, without losing focus of the goal. A ‘bad’ coach is somebody that is unwilling or unable to be flexible or adapt to their team. If you come with a Vince Lombardi attitude, it’s not going to work.”
Congrats to our entire team on the #11 Emmy Nominations! Minnesota Bound has two nominations in best Magazine Show category and a winter adventure that Cy Dodson & I produced and shot for Bill Sherck is up for Special Event. (edited by Pete Herman-Franzen) Super excited! Bring on Oct. 14th!
It’s been a LONG time coming…but my heart warms at this news. Thanks to many factors, including the Iowa Hawkeyes Caitlin Clark, women’s college basketball is having it’s moment.
I was a D3 player at Briar Cliff University from 88-92, and March was always our favorite time of year! Having a father who coached girls high school basketball helped instill a love of sports. My Dad, Jim McDonnell, is in the Iowa Coach’s Hall of Fame and was known for his coach wisdom’s, including “anything can happen in March”. He was right. (and usually was most of the time).
So proud and grateful to be working with such a great team! Minnesota Bound won for Best Magazine Show, so as Producer, I get to have some hardware! Personally, this Emmy #6 for me – and I’m entering into year #27 at Minnesota Bound. I’ll take it! #grateful #IwasyoungwhenIstartedthisjob #uppermidwestemmys
We won #5 Emmy’s overall for the evening! Well done team at Ron Schara Productions!
Their predicament was so heartbreaking, so absurd, that Emily and Courtney Goude coped the only way they could.
The twin sisters had squished the contents of their entire lives into garbage bags. They were lugging their stuff out of Courtney’s rusty PT Cruiser, about to crash at a friend’s place, because an altercation with their mother left them with no place to sleep in the middle of a Minnesota winter.
As they gathered their plastic sacks, the sisters’ eyes locked. That’s when they lost it.
“We just could not stop laughing,” Courtney recalls.
“If you told this to a friend, they would say, ‘This isn’t funny. This is sad,'” Emily says.
But it lightened their suffering, if just for a minute, to joke about their situation: homeless together at 17.
The Goude twins have always been a rock for each other, and they’re counting on that bond, and a tiny posse of supporters, to propel them through the next four years.
They started school Monday, just months after they became homeless, as first-year students at the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minn. They are best friends — and now, college roommates.
The start of the school year always carries the whiff of possibility. Those bound for university life can find their friends, pursue intellectual curiosity and learn who they are. But for Emily and Courtney, it represents something so promising that you almost ache for it. It’s a bridge to a future with avenues they haven’t even imagined for themselves.
“I know I’m going to spread my wings into the person I’ve always wanted to be,” Emily said, just minutes after getting out of her first class on Monday. “I’m excited to meet new people and create a new life for myself.”
If they can pull off a four-year degree, “that would be huge,” Courtney said, “because no one in our family has graduated from college.”
When they were born, Emily came out first, 25 minutes before Courtney. Today they are both athletic, at 5 feet 11, and wear their hair in long beachy waves. They are identical twins, with identical voices (my transcription software can vouch for that), but they point out to me that Courtney has a nose ring; Emily bleaches her hair a lighter blond.
Now in a dorm room decorated with holiday lights and selfies with friends, Emily’s eyes start to tear up. “I’m probably going to cry a lot,” she explains from her bunk bed. Courtney pats her on the knee.
They don’t talk about this often.
“We have a very special bond,” Emily says. “As much as someone can hear about what we’ve been through the last eight months, the only person who will ever really know completely is Courtney.”
“Stuff has been happening even before January,” says Courtney.
“Literally our whole lives,” says Emily.
Their dad left them when they were young, and their relationship with their mom had become toxic. Chaos in their Spring Lake Park home meant it was hard to focus on school. Emily was depressed, even suicidal. The sisters were already planning to move out, when on the night of Jan. 14, things escalated. It ended with them locked out of the house, and a threat to throw out all of their stuff if they didn’t pick it up the next day. (I was hoping to have a chance to talk to their mom, but she didn’t return my calls.)
The next morning the sisters called Kelly Jo McDonnell, a mom they had befriended when Courtney was dating her son, Hayden. McDonnell heard them sobbing on the phone and told them to grab their things and come to her house.
When McDonnell got home from work that day, she found the girls in the spare bedroom of her basement. She says she can’t forget the sight.
“They looked like they were 12,” she said. “All you could see was their little eyes. They were holding their stuffed animals in front of them like a blanket.”
“I’m not a social worker, I don’t know this stuff,” she said. “But I’m a mom, and I know when I see a scared kid.”
Emily and Courtney were afraid of going into foster care and being separated, or having to stay at a shelter with strangers. For a while they lived with a grandma, but that didn’t work out. The school social worker said the youth shelters were full.
McDonnell, who grew up in small-town Iowa and still carries a disarming, take-charge sunniness, helped come up with a game plan for the girls: They’d split their time with her and with McDonnell’s brother and sister-in-law in Andover, who lived closer to the girls’ high school in Spring Lake Park, until they could graduate in the spring.
“They’re good girls, they have good heads on their shoulders. We’ve come to love them,” said McDonnell, who lives in Minnetonka with her husband. “We didn’t like the road that was put in front of them. If I can help them to an easier road, I will do it.”
But McDonnell would soon learn how the system is not equipped to take on kids like Emily and Courtney. Although they had been working all throughout high school, they were still months shy of turning 18. They could not lease an apartment, let alone set up their own bank accounts. McDonnell acted as a go-between with the girls’ mom to access copies of their birth certificates and Social Security cards. “We were building their lives from the ground up,” she said.
Least visible, most vulnerable
Young people couch-hopping or living in cars and shelters represent a nearly invisible population. Roughly 13,300 youth in Minnesota who are on their own experience homelessness over the course of a year, according to a 2018 study by the Wilder Foundation. That figure includes about 5,800 unaccompanied kids who are 17 and under. Black, Indigenous and LGBTQ kids are disproportionately affected.
While younger children might find themselves in foster care, teens often have unique needs.
“There’s definitely not a lot of attention paid to older kids,” said Rich Gehrman, executive director of the nonprofit Safe Passage for Children of Minnesota, which advocates for improvements to the child welfare system.
Parents aren’t legally allowed to kick out their children, but it happens, and it’s often unreported. Even if foster care finds homes for the youth, by that point, “the damage is sort of done, they’ve been through hell,” Gehrman said. “A lot of kids in that situation have a lot of trauma they’re dealing with, not just from the moment they get expelled from the house, but everything leading up to it.”
McDonnell and her sister-in-law promised to keep the Goude girls safe. With McDonnell’s support, the girls finished their homework and applied for college. Other caring adults popped into their lives, like a creative writing teacher who tracked them down to make sure they turned in missing papers so she could pass them.
“They started to miss a lot of class,” recalled the teacher, Jenn Prince, who had heard only bits and pieces of their story. “There was some avoidance. They felt like they didn’t want to let people down. They were good students and wanted to do very well.”
But they graduated — even weeks early — and give much of the credit to McDonnell, who showed up to watch them cross the stage.
“They say it’s thanks to me, but I say, ‘No, it’s thanks to you,’ ” McDonnell said. “I put you in front of the right road, but you still have to keep walking it.”
Emily and Courtney moved to St. Joseph in June on their 18th birthday. They’ve been working their jobs on campus nearly every day. The cost of attending the school amounts to more than $60,000 a year, but after financial aid, loans and work-study, they estimate they should pay only a few hundred dollars a year.
Strangers are also working to lighten the girls’ load. It started with McDonnell connecting them with Julie Gravgaard, who coordinates the St. Joe’s community food shelf. Soon Gravgaard was raising money from her local Lions club for scholarships, offering to buy the girls’ books and sharing their story with business owners and neighbors who ponied up cash and gift cards.
Gravgaard told me she realized the kids needed more than food. “They needed someone to say, ‘Here I am. I am in your corner.’ “
“This feels more like home than home has ever felt,” Courtney told me. “The people in this town care so much.”
Courtney and Emily say they’ll take advantage of every opportunity on campus that comes their way, from free tutoring to therapy. Courtney thinks she’d like to be a social worker. Emily plans to major in psychology. By opening up about their hardships, they also hope they can signal to other young people who are hiding a secret that they’re not alone.
In the distance, they also have dreams that hit closer to home. “If I have kids, I’m going to give them the world,” Emily says.
“I just want to break the cycle. We already are breaking the cycle,” Courtney says.
With her sister at her side, she remarks on their good luck.
“Every step that we’ve taken,” she says, “is together.”
I am so proud of these girls! I have been mentoring them for a few years now, and so proud of them and what they’ve accomplished despite what they’ve been through. If you can mentor, I highly recommend it. It’s a way to pay it forward, and there’s so many kids that need our help! #mentoringmatters
Kelly Jo McDonnell 