12 minute read
Teaching Doesn't Stop At 3 P.M.
TEACHING DOESN’T STOP AT 3 P.M. | Life Lessons From Coaches
By Leslie Virostek
Daily practice sessions. Long bus rides. Pre-game rituals and post-game debriefings. In season, many Choate Rosemary Hall students spend a great deal of time in the company of their coaches, creating a strong sense of familiarity and conferring opportunities for observation and conversation. In addition to a student’s strengths as an athlete, a coach is likely to know what their favorite class is, what kind of food they like, what music they listen to, and who their best friends are.
“The coaches help build your confidence, accountability, humility — there’s so much they teach you,” says varsity soccer player Kameron Mohammed ’25, who came to Choate from the UK’s Nottingham Forest FC Academy three years ago. His Choate coaches share his passion for the sport but also see him as more than a soccer player. They are mentors with whom he is comfortable having deep conversations about life. He says, “Especially for me being an international student, having a tightknit relationship with someone who is a model is very important.”
An athletic coach directs practices, implements game strategies, teaches the sport, and helps players develop as athletes. But Choate Rosemary Hall’s coaches have a far broader agenda and exercise a much greater impact than that. They see their job as teaching transferable life skills and helping students flourish in sports and beyond. Students affirm that their coaches know them well, care about them deeply, and become the adults they turn to for advice and guidance.
Mohammed, who will be at Colby College next year, says Coach Charlie Fuentes has played a key role in his Choate journey. He says, “I learned so much more about myself, about who I want to be, where I want to go, and he guided me through that.”
Alumni such as Heidi Howard Allen ’95 attest that bonds forged with Choate coaches are not only important, but enduring. “Coaches have a profound influence on your life,” says the former field hockey, ice hockey, and lacrosse standout, who was inducted into the Choate Athletics Hall of Fame in 2021. “They’re mentors, they’re your role models, they become parent figures, and then later they become friends.”
WHAT IS IT ABOUT COACHES?
“Any great coach is a great educator,” says Director of Athletics Tom White. “These are people who love working with kids, who can meet them where they are, and who know how to connect and communicate with them.”
He notes that coaches concern themselves with the development of the whole person, not just the athlete.
Choate coaches are characteristically thoughtful and intentional about their role. Fran O’Donoghue, who has coached numerous sports, including field hockey, girls lacrosse, softball, and cross country, says, “My number one agenda is to build kids’ self-confidence in terms of their ability to know themselves and be able to take on challenges.” She doesn’t want to see overconfidence or false bravado. Rather, she is trying to nurture confidence and self-awareness that are “based on having worked hard, set goals, and worked to attain them.”
Ben Small, whose coaching experience at Choate includes nearly three decades of guiding varsity divers, says,
My job is to develop students as athletes and young adults: How to handle adversity, how to push themselves, how to be part of a team, how to show leadership, and communicate, and be supportive of one another — and to provide another venue to explore themselves and their interests.
Students experience a wide range of emotions on the playing fields — more so than in Choate’s classrooms — and coaches are there to share in moments of elation, camaraderie, heartbreak, vulnerability, and frustration, as well as levity and silliness.
Tiffany Rivera coaches track and field and girls varsity basketball. She’s also a psychology teacher and member of the counseling team. Beyond providing support for her team members in practice or after a tough competition, she seeks to help them develop appropriate coping mechanisms and healthy responses to difficult situations. She says, “I’m trying to build my players’ emotional intelligence, and not just their basketball IQ.”
Virtually every Choate student participates in athletics, but few will become professional athletes. Only some will play in college. But everyone benefits from social interaction and physical activity. That is something Will Morris, a longtime coach of boys varsity squash, among other sports, keeps in mind when he is trying to create positive team experiences for his athletes. Ideally, our graduates will want to replicate those experiences when they leave Choate, he says, noting, “We want to give students the tools to live healthy lives.”
Jim Davidson, who has coached girls varsity basketball, cross country, and track and field for more than three decades, concurs. He says, “There are so many aspects of sports that are fulfilling and fun that I hope will inspire our students to be active their whole lives.”
LEARNING LIFE LESSONS
Students say they derive a variety of life lessons from their coaches’ methods and expectations. Lola Wennmachers ’25 notes that members of the crew team are expected to take responsibility for such tasks as loading and unloading boats and rigging and derigging them. Coach Stephanie Neul emphasizes the value of teamwork on land and on the water, handling equipment with care, and representing Choate positively — on the preseason trip to Florida and everywhere. “Coach Neul specifically makes a big effort to ensure we are really polite to other people and behave with respect,” says Wennmachers. “She leads with a lot of attention, and she’s very thoughtful in terms of how she runs the program.”
Annie Cady ’26 states that her swimming coach, Nolan Silbernagel, “teaches us indirectly what hard work is — how to put in the work — and how that directly relates to an outcome that’s positive most of the time.” But even if you don’t achieve the result you want every time, she says, “you still have to go back and work hard again.”
Cady, who also plays on the varsity lacrosse and field hockey teams, says that the coaches she has worked with — including Fran O’Donoghue, who is her advisor — are role models for a growth mindset. She notes that at the start of every season they must take a diverse group of players who have different experience levels, skills, and personalities and figure out how to make that team function well.
Coaches are willing to learn themselves,” she says. “They are willing to think about: What does it look like for everyone to do this together? Is each athlete going to succeed the best they can?
Before varsity volleyball players step onto the court, Coach David Loeb asks them to gather themselves completely and be prepared to give 100 percent for their team and themselves. Piper Cameron ’25 says this has helped her to approach experiences — in sports, in the classroom, and in other settings — with intentionality and purpose. Cameron’s ice hockey coach, Tom White, has a similar method but a different expectation for his JV players, who are still developing their skills in the sport. Says Cameron, “We set an intention before every game, and it’s to learn and have fun.”
She has appreciated how her coaches have demonstrated “patience with our learning process.” This is a quality she wants to internalize and emulate long after she leaves Choate. She says of her coaches, “They just lead by example. More than anything else, patience and understanding is what I’m going to take away and use every single day.”
KNOWING STUDENTS WELL
“My teachers were generous with their time and always made me feel supported in my academic journey,” says Caroline Wilson ’09, an accomplished swimmer and water polo player who was inducted into the Choate Athletics Hall of Fame in 2014. “With that being said, I feel my coaches knew me on a much more personal level. I spent so much more time with them, between two-hour practices every day after school, long meets and tournaments that involved hours and hours on the pool deck, and time spent traveling all over New England for various competitions, and even to Florida for water polo preseason. They saw me at my best and at my worst. I remember feeling that my coaches knew me better than any teacher, adviser, or dorm parent I ever had.”
Wilson, currently the Director of Financial Aid for an independent school, was a team captain at Choate. She says working closely with her coaches in that capacity developed the leadership skills that benefited her in college and that she still employs today.
Coach Stephanie Neul says that supporting students’ growth as athletes naturally leads to caring for students more holistically. When she meets with her rowers individually outside of practice for video review, goal setting, and discussing their progress, the conversations often extend beyond crew into other aspects of their life at Choate and beyond.
“If someone is feeling stuck in terms of progress or not going as fast on the rowing machine as they hope to, it’s a good opportunity to talk about how they are taking care of themselves outside of practice, i.e., sleep, fueling, stress management,” she says. “Similarly, if someone seems upset or frustrated or unfocused at practice, I’ll check in with them about their general wellbeing. More often than not, it’s not crew that’s the issue, and then that turns into an opportunity to let that athlete share what’s going on if they want to, talk through an issue, maybe troubleshoot or maybe just vent.”
Coaching relationships are not just built day to day, but also year to year, season after season. Vishnu Palreddy ’25, a varsity diver, appreciates feeling known and seen by his coaches. For example, sometimes in a practice or a competition he finds himself on the edge of the board overthinking the mechanics of a dive instead of trusting his muscle memory. Fortunately, Coach Ben Small can diagnose this difficulty from the deck.
Says Palreddy, “Mr. Small has known me for three years, so he can tell when I’m kind of getting in my head. And he tells me, ‘You’ve done this so many times before. Don’t overthink it.’” Palreddy notes that being able to set aside unproductive mental chatter is an important skill.
There are so many things you can’t control, but what my coaches have taught me is to control what you can. It’s a powerful truth that is beneficial to everyone in every walk of life.
ENDURING FRIENDSHIPS
Head of Student and Academic Life Jenny Elliott, an assistant coach for girls varsity squash, believes that coaches represent timeless Choate values. “Our school community centers relationships,” she says. “We know that our students are able to thrive, take risks, and grow when they feel seen, valued and supported by the adults around them. Coaching offers adults opportunities every day to build lifelong relationships with young people. These bonds serve our students during their time at Choate and, in so many cases, in the years and decades beyond their Choate experience.”
Katie Vitali Childs ’95 is among the many alumni who can attest to the enduring influence and importance of their former coaches. She first met Coach Todd Currie as a third former on the varsity swimming and water polo teams. He became such a positive presence and trusted figure that she asked him to be her adviser, a role he served for the rest of her Choate experience.
In 2022, decades after graduation and a distinguished career as a college water polo player and member of the U.S. Junior National Team, Childs came back to Choate to coach water polo. Though Childs, who was inducted into the Choate Athletics Hall of Fame in 2010, had expert knowledge of the sport, there was much to learn about the logistics and intangibles of helming a team at her alma mater. But her old mentor was ready to help. Currie, who had stepped down from coaching a few years earlier, came back to the program.
He had some great guidance for me,” says Childs of her former coach who is now her assistant. “To have support like that — it really is something special.
Howard Allen still keeps in touch with her Choate coaches, noting that her admiration for them inspired her to become a coach herself. Among other things, her Choate coaches taught her about putting the team first and how to be a selfless leader. Though she’s currently a small business owner, she coached at Choate from 2005 to 2007 and also served as a college coach for many years. She says, “I knew my coaches at Choate had had such a deep impact on my life, and I wanted to be that for someone else.”
Howard Allen says the influence of coaches cannot be overstated. “You’re a teenager, and those are some pretty important years you’re spending with those role models,” she says. “They’re the ones that dare you to dream and then help you accomplish your goals by working hard and being determined. I’m forever grateful.”
