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Long Game: A Heated Rivalry Podcast is a re-watch and deep-dive podcast dedicated to Heated Rivalry, hosted by Declan and Silvan. In each episode, we revisit key moments across the series, unpacking the slow-burn tension, character development, and emotional beats that make the heated rivalry world so compelling. Through thoughtful discussion, close reading, and a fan-informed lens, we explore themes of competition, intimacy, identity, and growth over time, celebrating not just the heat of the rivalry, but the long game it takes to truly understand these characters and their relationship.
New episodes published every Sunday
Silvan (00:00)
Hi everyone.
Welcome to Long Game, a heated rivalry podcast. My name is Sylvan and I'm joined with Declan. So we are going to be talking about masculinity and sport within the heated rivalry universe this week.
Now we have a special guest joining us this week. You may know her as one half of the Shuffleware podcast, but actually she was also a competitive college athlete in both shot put and hammer throwing, which is quite impressive.
and now coaches at a collegiate level. So we are so happy to have you on the podcast, Lizzie.
lizzy (00:38)
Thank you guys for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I, my sister Ren is not a big sports person, so I don't get to talk about sports with people very often.
Declan (00:47)
Thank
Silvan (00:49)
Yeah, and I feel like we're collecting all of you like infinity stones. We had Ren on first and then obviously we've been on yours. And so we've just had such lovely feedback about when are you guys collabing next? And I'm like, with Week in Line schedules, I do this every time.
lizzy (00:53)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, it was it was a joy to edit ours because I feel like there was like a good flow when it was the four of us together and yeah, I did get quite a few comments and messages like my god you guys seem like you guys are like friends i'm like I had never met them before but I appreciate that
Declan (01:21)
Thank
Silvan (01:24)
I think it helps that when we listen to each other's pod, you get the vibe and I knew we would be a good fit. so when Declan and I were thinking about, we approach Ren for you guys, it was such a no brainer.
lizzy (01:27)
Yeah. yeah.
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Silvan (01:41)
So we're going to be talking about sport and masculinity, right? And now ice hockey is such an integral part of the TV show and the books, and it's hard to separate the two. But when Declan and I were talking, we were talking about sort of
you know, lot of the masculinity in the sport and what that actually brings up for a lot of people, both as athletes and even as sort of watchers of the sport. And that's how we thought you would be such a wonderful person to give us more insight into this, Lizzie.
lizzy (02:08)
You
Yeah, yeah. If you don't mind, I can give like a little bit more background about like what I interact with on a daily basis. So I was a college athlete. I was a track and field athlete. That is a coed sport at most colleges, which a lot of people don't realize maybe. So I was training with a group of 20 other athletes, half of them are boys. And then now I coach a team of boys. So I'm I'm around men in sports all the time.
⁓ I'm finishing up my master's in applied exercise science, so I have a bit of like sports psychology background as well. So I think it's such an interesting topic and I think there are so many cool parallels that you can draw with what decisions the characters are making in the show and how that plays into not only who they are outside of their sport, but who they are within the sport as well. ⁓
Silvan (03:08)
And in a way you almost feel like the Svetlana of the heated rivalry universe. You've got this insider sort of knowledge and perspective.
lizzy (03:15)
Mm-hmm.
Silvan (03:17)
And I suppose I'm wondering
lizzy (03:17)
Mm-hmm.
Silvan (03:18)
as a woman in a very male dominated sort of field, what's that like for you both as a coach, but as a former athlete as well?
lizzy (03:31)
Yeah, that's, it's a great question. I actually, the shirt that I almost wore today, it says, the future is female coaches because I went to a conference a couple of months ago with all the other female coaches at my university to talk about how we best support our athletes as coaches and how we best support our female athletes. ⁓ And thank you. Thank you for asking. It's, I don't want to be like, woe is me.
Like female, women in sports, it's a bit of a weird dichotomy, the more I was thinking about the questions that you had laid out, the more I was becoming aware of women, like the general idea of femininity is not necessarily synonymous with what you would expect out of like a really good female athlete.
you almost expect really good female athletes to be more masculine. And on the flip side, expect male athletes to be, good male athletes to be really masculine. And those that are not leaning towards the masculinity, you think kind of less of. And I think that is a lot of where the disconnect is with men in sports and like not being able to articulate their feelings well and all of the issues that come along with that. But ⁓
Being a woman in sports, being a queer woman in sports, especially in throwing, I think is a really great parallel to hockey because it is a very aggressive, it's not a contact sport, but it is like you have to be the best throwers in the world are these huge, super intense, angry people. And I'm not like that. And I've never been like that. And I kind of had to develop that part of myself in college to be able to be competitive with my peers.
⁓ I feel like I did that in a healthy way. I think I had a great coach who helped me do that in a healthy way. I think that doesn't always happen. ⁓ I think having a female coach, I'm speaking from the perspective of my current athletes, I think they can learn a lot about empathy and vulnerability. And it's okay to be frustrated and it's okay to have these negative feelings. You just need to work through them in a productive way.
And it's just interesting to see how they who have always had male coaches interact with me, especially their college age boys, like they're kind of goofy to begin with. ⁓ And so them learning how to interact with ⁓ like a younger female coach is really interesting. college sports is sports in general are, I think, not necessarily synonymous with being a woman a lot of the time. And I think that that's
unfortunate, but I think that that's something that we're like trying to work towards addressing. And there is a statistic, it's like less than like 20 % of women's collegiate sports teams in the US are coached by women, which is, which is kind of crazy to me. And I learned that at the conference and I'll opt to pull the actual statistic and I should have looked it up before this, but there's a it's it's
Coaching is a very male dominated sport. And I don't think that that's a coincidence that we have men that are the predominant coaches and then we have them.
interacting with all of these really young, impressionable athletes. you know, athletes really look up to their coaches as they're developing as athletes. And that's what you're supposed to do. Like, you're supposed to be learning from them. Like, they're your role model. And so I think coaches hold a lot of responsibility as far as like how athletes develop and... ⁓
I think that that's something that we don't see a lot of in Heated Rivalry. We hear about it in the book more, like how the coaches influence the dynamics of the team. We see very little of it in the show. ⁓ But I think coaches play a much more integral role in how these athletes are developing, even outside of their practice arenas, than you would think by just watching the show. Sorry, I went on a tangent.
Silvan (07:46)
No, was so interesting to listen to you. And in a way, I was thinking about the differences in sort of ⁓ college or university, as we say in the UK sports versus that in America. And I feel like ⁓ it's a lot bigger in America from the impression that I get and there's a lot more money behind it. Whereas I don't really feel like that's necessarily the case in UK. I think in the UK, like rowing is really big and
Declan (07:47)
No, no.
lizzy (07:57)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Silvan (08:13)
You know, we have certain universities that are very sports specific universities like Loughborough University, but on the whole, inter college or inter university sport isn't as big in the UK. And I think primarily that has to do with the amount of money that is being thrown around behind that level of, of sport on your side of the pond.
lizzy (08:23)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm not super familiar with like how universities, because I had a teammate who is Canadian and like they did not have university sponsored sports. They had like club that you if you wanted to do sports outside of like grade school or high school, you had to do it through a club. And that was like super interesting for me to learn because we have all of the grade school, high school sports in the in US and then but college is the goal for like most athletes.
Like that's like such a small percentage of athletes in the US population wise are gonna be professionals. So like for a lot of people, if you make it to the collegiate level, like you made it. ⁓ And the amount of scholarship money, which they actually just adjusted this. Last year, they reduced the number of full scholarships that certain schools can, in division one, can give.
to athletes. So it's going to really reduce the roster size of a lot of Division 1, which is like the highest division of school. ⁓ And so, which is a little unfortunate. I think everybody's kind of wondering like how that's going to like trickle down into the lower divisions and how that's going to affect ⁓ scholarship money for a lot of students across the country. Because a lot of people, I did not go to college with the hope of becoming a professional athlete. I wanted to go to college and get my schooling paid for.
by being an athlete and get an education and then do something with whatever I studied. And a lot of people are like that. A ton of people are like that. And so I think it's just interesting to see, we're gonna have to see how that kind of trickles down. So.
Declan (10:05)
Mm.
Funny you have such an interesting sort of set up in regards to college sports. In the UK, sports in terms of the college level, it's like an extra, it's like a club you join to have fun and to fill your time with. It's not this competitive, televised event. It's usually a lot smaller than that and very few sports.
lizzy (10:35)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Declan (10:43)
are ever sort of televised in that way, that's on like a college level. Like for us, college is education. It's you're there to learn. If you're going to get a scholarship or a version of it, it's because you're an exceptional student at a particular topic rather than exceptional at a sport. I think for a lot of people, it's like, like, I can imagine they struggle to balance that with their schoolwork. They have to.
lizzy (10:46)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Declan (11:11)
Like to be a professional athlete, the commitment it takes to hone your body, to get to that level, that's hours and hours of dedication a day. Where's the room for study in that? But then at the same time, I also understand that a sports scholarship might be the only ticket that a kid from a poor background has to get into college.
lizzy (11:19)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Declan (11:39)
without being drowned
lizzy (11:39)
Mm-hmm.
Declan (11:40)
in student debt and student loans. So I can see why it's become a thing that's so relied upon now. And it can be a gateway for kids to get really good education without being indebted for the rest of their lives. But it's such a curious setup that it's done that way. Just a question for you, do the kids make money off this when they're college?
lizzy (11:43)
Yep.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Declan (12:07)
like sort of performers, because obviously it's televised, it's going to be advertised, like there's definitely money being made, like do they get like a benefit from it outside their scholarship?
lizzy (12:12)
Mm-hmm.
So that's a great question and that has been like really hotly contested and it's been, I graduated in 2021 and they've changed this since I was there. When I was in college, we were not allowed to, it's called an NIL deal, which is name, and likeness. So like we're selling like our, essentially to sponsors, right?
we were not allowed to do that. We were not allowed to make money off of that stuff. And I'm not sure if that was a my institution thing. I feel like it was an NCAA thing, ⁓ which is the ruling body for athletics in collegiate athletics in the US. ⁓ But they've changed that since then so that students can obtain sponsorships and make money off of it, which because people are pushing for it because we're like these gigantic institutions are making so much money off their athletes and the athletes are not
benefiting from it at all. You're putting their face on like all of these different promotional materials for all of these games that you're advertising and they're bringing in like millions and millions of dollars from the university. They're not seeing any of it. So when I was in school, we were not allowed to make money off of it. You can now, which is good, which is a force of change ⁓ in that area. But the whole... In this, I feel like this must sound like crazy coming from like...
coming from somewhere that does not have this, but at the Division I level, you are being like, you sign a contract with the university that I'm going to play this sport for this university. And if for any reason I cannot play, they can revoke the contract and the financial aid that comes with it.
Silvan (14:01)
Wow.
lizzy (14:01)
Yeah.
So
Declan (14:02)
Wow, that's, that's red a toy.
lizzy (14:02)
you are, you are under contract with that university. Yeah, you're under contract for the university. And the great thing I work in, I work for, I coach for a division three school right now, which is they don't, we don't have that. don't, division three colleges cannot give athletic financial aid. So the athletes that we get are athletes who are here purely for like the joy of the sport. ⁓ but they also have a really high focus on academics. And so.
if they were to what for whatever reason need to step away, like I had an athlete who he's getting ready to graduate and he has an internship that was like not gonna work out with the hours for practice. He's like, I don't think I can do it this year. And I was like, that's totally fine. You do what you need to do to take care of yourself. He stepped away from the team and like his financial aid is not gonna change. Nothing is gonna change. And so like, that's the benefit of a division two or division three school ⁓ is that you're not
legally bound to be a part of that team. ⁓ I was, I competed all my years. I never felt like I was being forced to compete. But yeah, like if you stop, if you decide I want to quit the team, you can quit, but like all of the athletic financial aid that you get as a part of that package will go away with it. So...
We introduce a lot of like extrinsic motivators for a lot of the athletes in the US, which I think can lead to a lot of negative feelings sometimes. And they're also at the division one level, there's this sense of like, I always practice with my athletes, like you're a student first, you're an athlete second. That's why we call you student athletes. Like your grades come first, you need to be on top of your shit. You are an athlete after that. At the division one level, you are an athlete first, and they're just trying to get you through your degree.
Declan (15:23)
Thanks
you
Wow.
lizzy (15:54)
And
that is like, and that's an issue with the system. Like that's my big beef with it is like, I'm an, I love school. love higher ed. You should be going to an institution for your schoolwork. And if you're really great, but, and I get a little caught up thinking about it sometimes because like, I love academia, but like some people love sports and like, that's what they want to do with their life is they want to be an athlete and they should absolutely be able to do that. And so I kind of go back and forth on like,
where we're at with that as far as like the prioritizing academics over sports. I almost wonder if like there's a world in which you could treat going into sports as going into like a trade kind of. Like it's like it's kind of like a substitute for like academic schooling if that's what you really want to do with your life because like there's value in being really good at sports but ⁓ it's kind of the division one college life is kind of insane. The short answer
to do they have enough time to do all this stuff is no, they don't. ⁓ They miss a lot of classes for competitions. They have to make them up. Sometimes they don't make them up. I think a lot of athletes get a lot of, because the US is so like, go sports, go US. I think a lot of faculty kind of give them preferential treatment because they're athletes. ⁓ And it's not, they gotta get treated like a commodity.
And I don't love that. And I think that messes with their self-worth a little bit, which, yeah. So, but none of this stuff is anything that Illya or Shane would ever have to do with, because neither of them are from the US. They just came into. But if they're playing with teammates who grew up in the US, that's the environment that they, that those athletes were brought up in. That's the environment that the coaches were brought up in as well. So.
Declan (17:28)
Yeah.
Yeah, and the kids obviously are kids, so they're at a developmental stage in their lives where they're really, really vulnerable to this stuff and they are absorbing and taking in the sort of environment they're in. Like it's building them, it's molding them into people. And if you have a coach that emphasizes sacrificing your long term educational goals for sort of short term sort of gain for your sport,
lizzy (18:02)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Declan (18:14)
which they're not really gaining from, but the organization, the university, the sponsors are gaining from. That will give them a skewed view of the world whenever they don't go professional and then they're like thrust into the real world and all of a sudden they're not prepared to be treated like the rest of us are in this sense of like a normal person. Yeah, that's fascinating.
lizzy (18:21)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Like a normal person. Yeah. Yeah.
Declan (18:41)
That's a lot of pressure to put on kids and can imagine a lot of them burn out as a result of that. Because university is a burnout thing anyway, like even like me, like I didn't do sport in university at all, but even my academic focus was hard. It was really difficult and I didn't have my attention drawn away by other things. But I pushed through, but if I had another huge commitment on top of that, I don't know if I could have done that.
lizzy (18:44)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah.
Mm
hmm. Yeah, it's, it's so much and actually now that I think about it, my institution, I know a lot of institutions that are bigger, they will limit the degree areas that the athletes can go into based on like the level of commitment. Like you could not go into nursing school and be a student athlete because like you have to go to clinicals and like the coursework is just like too.
it's too time intensive, like you couldn't keep up with it. I did chemistry and like they were kind of on the fence about letting me do that. And I was like, listen, babes, I'm doing chemistry, whether you like it or not. ⁓ But a lot of a lot of like the like, we call it like professional studies, degrees are pretty limited to athletes. So you see a lot of athletes go into like, business or marketing and stuff like that. And primarily because a lot of those classes are offered online as well. So
Mm.
Silvan (20:03)
As were talking, Lizzie, one of the things that was coming out to me was these athletes are treated like commodities. There's a lot of investment and they want to see this return on that. And in a way, as Declan, as you were talking, I was thinking these athletes are one injury away from losing everything that they've sort of trained for and built up for most of their childhood lives in a way. And bear in mind, lot of my knowledge is from Friday Night Lights.
lizzy (20:23)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Silvan (20:33)
So ⁓ I fucking love that show. And that was high school. And if that's what it was like in high school, I know American football is this whole other thing, especially in Texas. Like it's this whole other entity in itself. So I'm not going to compare the two necessarily, but I was thinking about how then, you know, how, how behavior in sport gets rewarded. So for, you know, characters like Shane and Ilya and Hayden and Vaughn and the rest of them, how
lizzy (20:37)
Yeah.
Yes. Yeah.
Silvan (21:03)
Does their behavior sort of get rewarded both on the ice, but then off the ice as well?
lizzy (21:12)
That is a good question. And I think, again, I mentioned earlier that we don't see a lot from the coaches in the show. We hear about them a little bit more in the books and especially in the long game, you hear about the coaching aspect more. ⁓ But I think in most cases, from my experience, a lot of times a captain will be a little bit of a mirror of what the head coach wants them to look like. ⁓ And so I think
Ilya seems like he really gets along with his team, which is great. He seems like he's got a good vibe. ⁓ And I can't help but think that maybe the way that he is, his personality probably matches his coaches a little bit. And I think in the same way that Shane's sort of tendency to be a little bit more stoic, a little bit more, what's the word? He's not...
Declan (22:11)
Sensible?
lizzy (22:12)
But like, he's very sensible. He doesn't have like a lot of like outward shows of emotion. I can't help but think that that's more or less either what his current coach is like or what his past coaches have been like. ⁓ And so I think a lot of how we get, how we present ourselves when we're competing and we're practicing is we're trying to be a mirror of what our coach expects of us. ⁓ And so
again, the emphasis on like how much coaching goes into how these athletes are. I think Ilya, from like a hockey player's perspective, I think he's like a very stereotypical hockey player. Like he's just like, he's quick to anger, he's rough, he's aggressive. He kind of like...
And this is interesting because I see similarities between Ilya with a couple of my athletes and I see some that are more like Shane. And Ilya is one of those people where if you were teaching him something new and you asked him to like, you show him once and you say, can you do this? He would not think about it. He would just do it. With varying levels of success, he would just like, no thoughts, head empty. He's like, I'm just going to do it. No thinking.
Shane would be the opposite and he would want to understand each individual piece of the movement you're asking him to do. He would want to see it done multiple times. And so I think that it's interesting to see those differences in them. But I think you see those differences in athletes in our world now and they're both successful in their own ways. And so I think there's merit to
each of them, I think they are both masking, masking their struggles in different ways. Ilya is kind of steamrolling over his and like not essentially, it feels to me like Ilya is not slowing down long enough to like let himself feel them. Whereas it feels like Shane is very aware that he has them, but is like putting them in a little box and like putting them in the back corner of his mind. And he's like not going to look at them. ⁓ And so
This whole idea of wanting to suppress your emotions to better your playing capacity is somewhat rooted in, I don't want to say science, but it has like a basis. And it's this concept of like trait versus state anxiety. ⁓ And so people with trait anxiety are anxious people, which to me feels... ⁓
I am a person with trait anxiety. So like, I just am an anxious person all the time. Kind of all the, like, I just, I exist on like the bell curve of anxiety. Like I kind of always exist kind of near the top. And then people with state anxiety are people that only have anxiety when they're like in, they're like coming up to an event. So like, I think most athletes have state anxiety. So like they're normally fine. And then as they're getting closer to an event, they experience anxiety.
If you're like at the bottom of the bell curve and you have state anxiety, you... the anxiety will help you. ⁓ Okay. I went on a tangent and I don't...
Silvan (25:35)
No,
I love that. I feel like I'm learning something new. Please keep going. So what happens if you're at the bottom and you just don't experience any anxiety at all?
Declan (25:36)
Yeah.
lizzy (25:48)
There's this, I don't even want to say theory, like it's pretty well accepted that there's a bell curve of how much your anxiety and how much your inner emotions and the emotions that are heightening your experiences, how much they can help your performance up to a certain point, at which point they become detrimental and they start negatively impacting your performance. And so it's a big bell curve. People with trait anxiety that are just anxious people, they exist like partially up the bell curve already.
So if they experience any state anxiety from a competition coming up, it takes very little of that additional state anxiety for it to like negatively impact their performance. Some people that don't have trait anxiety just sit at the bottom and they get to experience the full benefit of like the anxiety that companies, it's like, it's a good anxiety. It's like anticipatory anxiety. They get to experience the full
Declan (26:45)
Yeah.
lizzy (26:47)
⁓ range of like it helping you perform well. And I think that that's something like a lot of professional athletes are very aware of that bell curve. Even if they don't, there's a specific term for it. Hold on, I have it. It's the Yerkes Dodson bell curve if anybody wants to look it up. ⁓ but even if athletes don't innately know what that looks like in their head and they don't know the term for it, they understand that to a certain point their
inner turmoils are going to help them compete up to a certain point, at which point if you let it overwhelm you, it will very drastically negatively impact your performance. And so that is where this whole coaches like pushing for players to like leave their personal struggles like behind them or like outside of the practice field because they want to limit the outside anxiety that you're bringing in so that you can experience
essentially only stay anxiety and like not trait anxiety, if that makes sense. ⁓ So there's a reason that coaches introduce that into players. I think it's obviously beneficial if you want to maximize their performance. It's not beneficial if you are looking at it from like a mental health perspective, especially when you're looking at elite athletes that are professional athletes, that that's what they do for their job. Imagine like going into work,
every morning from eight to five and saying, okay, I'm not allowed to think about anything outside of my work this entire time. I'm not allowed to think about any of my outside struggles. I'm not allowed to think about any relationships outside of work that I feel like I'm having issues with or I should be worrying about. Like, I have to suppress all of that for like a full eight hour day. That's what elite athletes are essentially being asked to do.
because they wake up super early, they have morning practice, they have team breakfast, they go to physical therapy in the afternoon. ⁓ And this will look different for every sport. They have a second's practice in the afternoon and then a lot of times they don't get back until late. And if they have a competition that's an even more lengthened period of time. So it's just as the level of athlete increases, the amount of time that you're asking them to essentially block out everything else that's going on in their lives is increasing as well.
And so I think that as the level of athlete increases, the tendency for their mental health to decline as a result increases as well. I'm not sure how familiar you guys are with ⁓ professional basketball in the US, but Kevin Love, kind of. Do you know who Kevin Love is? No, that's okay. It's okay. He's he's a professional, he's a NBA player for us.
Silvan (29:29)
enough.
lizzy (29:34)
and he had a ⁓ panic attack that was televised at the beginning of the game. Like a full on panic attack. And it was this huge thing. And he, since then, has gotten mental health help. And he talks about how he had, if he was thinking about what caused it, he couldn't really pinpoint it. But if he like dove deeper into what was going on external to basketball,
there were a lot of like little things that were adding up that he was not addressing. And so he's actually gone on to be a really great mental health advocate for athletes in general, but male athletes, because it's like very stigmatized that like men shouldn't care about their mental health or they shouldn't have mental health struggles. ⁓ But he had a very visible televised panic attack for like hundreds of thousands of people. And he's sought help since then and has become a really good
advocate for mental health help for male athletes. it's just, it's stuff like that. You don't think it's, it's easy to forget that it exists until it happens on like prime time television. And then people are like, ⁓ okay. And sometimes it takes, and people respect him because he's a great basketball player. And so it's one of those things where like, you take it more seriously and you, you address it as the genuine problem that it is because you're like, okay, this person
seemingly has done everything right and he's still struggling with this. So like what do do to combat that? ⁓ And so yeah, sorry I've just been rambling.
Silvan (31:11)
No, that's
been fascinating. And I've literally been writing questions as you've been talking, because I have so many follow ups. Can I ask if Kevin Love of this was the WNBA and a female athlete was seen to be having a panic attack at whatever stage of the game that it was in, would it have had the same reception? you think?
lizzy (31:17)
Okay, okay. Yeah.
Well, that opens a whole nother can of worms, which is that women's games are not televised nearly ⁓ on as wide a scale as men's games. And also they just don't have as big of an audience. ⁓ And that's its own thing. But working under the assumption that it's a televised game and the same amount of people are watching it, I think a lot of people brush it off as, you know, women.
They're just so crazy. It's probably her time. Dude, there was, I guarantee you there would have been an announcer that would have been like, it must be her time of the month. It must be. And so I think that that's somewhat expected for women, which is shitty. But it's also like, it's expected for women, but it's something that should be expected of all, like,
of all people, like all people can crash out because they're under a lot of stress. And there's nothing wrong with that and we shouldn't stigmatize it because you stigmatize it and then it makes people deal with things in an even more unhealthy way. Instead of having the moment and being like, okay, I need to go get help. If you have the moment and there's a bad reception to it, it's like this can never happen again. I have to make sure that I, whatever part of me that's struggling with this, I have to push it down and push it away.
that can never happen again because it's gonna ruin my career. So I think the reception would have been different if it was a woman. I don't think it would have been good either way. I think people probably responded better to Kevin because I think we as a whole, I think we as a country respect male athletes more just in general. Like we think that they have a greater capacity for athletic performance, which is again, it's its own issue.
Declan (33:16)
Yeah, it's like his value has been reduced down to how good of a player he is rather than who he is at the core of his person. That's you. It's really like like someone said that brought up a lot of questions for me, like what you were talking about. I think it perfectly sort of. It's shown perfectly in heated rivalry through both Ilya and Shane, I think what is appropriate for male athletes to express.
lizzy (33:23)
Yeah, and we did, yeah. Yeah.
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Declan (33:43)
Like the range of emotion is basically, or range of emotion is basically either stoicism or anger. There is no other appropriate emotion for a man to sort of, ⁓ you know, respond with or come out with in any sort of like, setting where they're actually being looked at. So I think like a very common example of what I hear like sometimes in counseling is that men will like
lizzy (33:51)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Declan (34:12)
try to express grief through moments of anger and just being sort of despondent or not feeling anything at all or lashing out and doing all these different things because they're not taught how to express any other emotion and that these are the only appropriate emotions to express or not express and it's just sort of fed into through sport as well and I like the way that you get both ranges from Shane and from Ilya.
lizzy (34:18)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Declan (34:42)
It's just such a curious thing that these people don't see that this is going to build up and explode. Like it's obvious that if you continue to suppress something, the issue is that you've not done away with it. You've basically just lost control of how it's going to come out. So you have, and they may just pray that it doesn't come out in the middle of a match, which unlike the guy you mentioned, he lost that choice. Like he, he lost the lottery and his repressed
lizzy (34:49)
Mm-mm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Declan (35:11)
emotion came out in the worst possible place that it could for him. And so I suppose there's a deeper conversation needs to be had about not just sort of mental health in terms of sports and the expectation behind that, but also in men in general and their just sort of reluctance to express emotion in a sort of healthy way that doesn't rely just solely on anger and doesn't rely on
lizzy (35:17)
Mm-hmm.
Declan (35:40)
just not feeling it at all. But yeah, that was very, very interesting sort of analysis of the whole thing. was.
Silvan (35:51)
And following from that and to what Declan was saying, you talked about, Lizzie, the suppression of emotion and how these athletes are expected to suppress what's going on in their personal lives for however many hours of a day, for example. And I couldn't think but how unattainable that is and unrealistic. But also I couldn't help but think about, because Declan and I both have backgrounds in psychology and delivering therapy and with some...
lizzy (36:01)
Mm-hmm.
Silvan (36:20)
therapeutic modalities like, for example, the psychodynamic or psychoanalytic psychotherapy, you are expected to be this blank slate as a therapist. You are expected to not have any needs during the session. And there's a whole reason why that is, and it's rooted in theory and in practice, but essentially you are there to be for the client or the patient, for them to project onto the therapist. And so when I'm delivering therapy in this modality,
lizzy (36:43)
Mm-hmm.
Silvan (36:49)
it's really hard. I can't even take a sip of water. That's how frowned up frowned upon that is, for example. And for my personal life, not to impede how I'm delivering therapy, for example, it's not realistic. And I can't imagine if an athlete has, you a family member that's sick or financial issues or whatever else may be the case, they broke up with
lizzy (37:04)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-mm.
Silvan (37:17)
their significant other, for example, how that's not going to interfere in the way that they play or the way that they train.
lizzy (37:18)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And I think the important thing, and I talk to my boys about this all the time, is that what happens, what's going on outside of practice is always going to impact how your performance looks. You don't have to let it steamroll what you're doing, though. Like hard times will almost always have a negative impact on your performance. And that's OK. Like there's ups and downs to everything. But I think the big thing is that, which I have learned,
from coaching boys who have only ever had men as coaches is that a lot of times they just don't have a good role model to show them how to address it properly. ⁓ And I think you see that probably with Shane and Ilya, definitely with Shane, Ilya and Scott, like all the hockey players in there is they are, they don't know how to process those emotions because they've never had a good role model for that. And I think
But they want one is the crazy thing. And you see it because Ilya, totally changes his stance on what he's going to do with Shane when he sees Scott and Kip. Like he wants a role model to show him it doesn't have to be like this. And so I think a lot of male athletes all over the world deal with this is they think that my coach is like this, this is who I'm supposed to be modeling myself after.
If he's hard and gruff and aggressive, then that's how I should be. And that's the way for me to be successful in this sport. If he's very stoic and, and, you know, very methodological and all of that, like that's how I should be. And I've had coaches on both ends of that spectrum. ⁓ And I think that there are merits to pieces of it, but at the same time, like you are yourself and you should pull in pieces that serve you and disregard the pieces that don't.
And I tell them that all the time, like all my boys. I'm like, I'm a different person than you guys are. You don't need to act like me. You asked me about my experience as an athlete. I tell you, you don't need to be modeling yourself after what I did. I'm not a perfect person. I didn't do it 100 % correctly. Probably not even close. I did it the way that works for me. You need to figure out how it works for you. I'm happy to be here and be a sounding board for you to bounce ideas off of.
If you're struggling with keeping up with your academics, I'm happy to be a resource to help you manage that. If you're struggling with family, I'm happy to be a listening ear for you. And it's just insane because you can see as you're talking to them about this stuff that like nobody has offered them that before. And they're like, well, we don't want you to be our therapist. I'm like, I'm not your therapist. I'm seeking to like know you and understand you as an athlete to better help you as a coach.
And I want to be your friend on some level as well. Like I want to help you and to like help you, I have to know you. And like I have to understand what you're going through. And I don't have to be a therapist and we don't have to treat it like a therapy session for me, for you to share your ideas with me and for me to talk about my experiences with you. Like there's a lot of power in talking about our different experiences. And so I think that's been really helpful for them. I've seen them
grow in ways that, you know, the person that they were at the beginning of the season is totally different from the person they are now. And it's just a changed perspective is really all it took is being like, okay, I don't necessarily, I've always been told I shouldn't like this part about myself. It's not like cohesive with being a really good athlete, but like that's who you are and that's okay. And there's no rule saying that you can't be this way and be a good athlete. You can be both. Anybody can.
⁓ And so I think, again, like the importance of coaches and like how to be a good coach. I think that there are a lot of great coaches in the world. I think that there are a lot of coaches that learn from their coach. It's just like, it's a vicious cycle because like the coaches that we have now, they learn from their coaches and those coaches aren't, and it's just, you're passing down a lot of really outdated, really traditional methodology.
⁓ for coaching and a lot of that revolves around being really aggressive and being really punitive ⁓ and motivating the athletes extrinsically through like reward systems and, ⁓ you know, avoiding punishments and stuff like that instead of focusing on motivating them intrinsically or like motivating them through their love of what they're doing, which I think is the goal and should be the goal. So I think that
biggest thing is they just don't have a role model is is what i was trying to say through that whole thing.
Declan (42:24)
Yeah, the whole idea of these guys, like that story of whenever, you know, you were having a discussion with them, you know, making it more central to who they are, and showing them that, you know, you don't have a certain expectation of how they're supposed to behave in terms of them as people. And their initial instinct was be like, I don't need you to be my therapist. Like, what a curious response. It's like, you know, it's
lizzy (42:36)
Mm-hmm.
Declan (42:55)
You know, what I, what, who taught you that, that you sort of look in and looking in on yourself and, know, valuing you as a person and who you actually are, ⁓ in response to your sport and how that presents in your sport should be seen as some sort of weakness or some sort of thing that needs to be pushed down and, and not looked at. That's like, like you said, there is definitely something happening in the background there in regards to their role models, their peers.
lizzy (43:07)
Mm-hmm.
Declan (43:24)
what they're sort of growing up with and what values they're being instilled with. And I think the fact that you are able to step out and go, guys, it doesn't necessarily need to be this way. That matters. that is, that's sort of like the stones that start the avalanche of sort of change. Like that will have a big impact in the long run, especially for them as men, because I think
lizzy (43:31)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Declan (43:53)
particularly
in the modern world, there's so many negative exposing forces that are targeting young men in particular at the minute that are leading them down really dark paths of really intense misogyny and sort of the revival of really horrible bad ideas that have seen this huge rise in conflicts and abuse and particularly abuse towards women. I know where I'm from at the minute in Northern Ireland, it's really bad abuse towards women.
lizzy (44:17)
Mm-hmm.
Declan (44:23)
And so much of it can be traced back to these really deeply negatively instilled values that they're getting from just peers that don't have their best interests, but also online especially. And I think you as a woman in a position of authority as well and sort of experience in sport, like you can speak to them on a level that a lot of other people can't get to.
lizzy (44:37)
Mm-hmm.
Declan (44:52)
So you can't. And I really liked that idea that you are there to sort of offer, you know, a new perspective that they might not have gotten if it was just the stereotypical coach that they would have got. This guy that's this hardliner who is used to screaming at people to try and get results. And that's what he was taught. And that's what Ed Sparer taught him and so on and so forth. So, yeah, I can see the importance of that role and how you could, you know, help.
lizzy (44:54)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Declan (45:21)
change these guys a little bit and open them up to the possibility of finding themselves more.
lizzy (45:24)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. And I don't want to say I'm not special in how I coach. I'm not. I learned from my coach, right? And I had, I had, I've only, well, I had some female coaches, but the two coaches that I pulled the most from how I am, they're both men, but they're both phenomenal coaches. Just, they had such high expectations for how they wanted us to.
B, at practice, so like we were on time, we're gonna bust our ass, we're gonna have good attitudes, we're gonna support each other. And he was very, like they were strict in that sense, but also they had such a high level of support in return for that obeisance, essentially. It's like, we're gonna show up to practice, we're gonna act right, but we're gonna do, in return for that, we're gonna do everything in our power to help you succeed as an athlete. And so they were like what's, and you know, they had to learn that from somebody as well.
So they taught me and I was like, okay, this is great. You guys are a little bit more traditional than I would like to be. And so I'm gonna take the parts that I really enjoyed that it really resonated with me and I'm gonna pass those down to my kids. And they, a couple of them are already interested in going into coaching and I hope that they do the same thing. They take some pieces of how I coach and work it into how they wanna coach and they continue that. And they continue to be.
a positive role model for athletes and get, I hope we continue to get further and further away from this athletes shouldn't have feelings when they're in sports. Athletes shouldn't have emotions. They should just be these performing machines. And I think for a long time that has been the standard. I think, and you see it, I think it becomes, it gets put on display for the entire world during the Olympics.
when you see the differences, the US has always been really strong in gymnastics, our women's side especially, but you see the Russian gymnasts in comparison, they are so stoic. They're sitting, they're looking straight ahead, they're not interacting with a lot of people. Even the relationships that they have with their coaches are very, they both have serious faces. And then if you see the US's side, which I feel like,
with the emergence of Simone and all of these really big, phenomenal female sports figures that emphasize the importance of mental health, you see them joking and you see them laughing and you see them voluntarily hugging their coaches and like you just feel more at ease watching their relationship. And so I think in some areas we are starting in some specific sports that are led by strong people who are advocating for it. We're getting further and further away from that.
but we still have a long way to go in terms of specific sports are very still much in that traditional way. And then, know, parts of the world have not gotten away from that yet. And the U.S. is absolutely a part of that. But I think it's just like the biggest, you can see the biggest difference when it's broadcast on for the world to see the difference between these. And it's not the U.S. versus Russia. It's the coaches. It's the mentality that they're developing and their athletes.
And it's the expectation of how they should be, how these athletes should be performing and interacting when they're not performing. ⁓ And so it makes me upset thinking about it, thinking about these poor girls, poor boys that are growing up that are having to get rid of parts of themselves in order to be a good athlete. And they're being told, you have to
get rid, you have to cut this part piece of yourself that doesn't adhere to the cookie cutter, you have to get rid of it. You have to get rid of it or you're not going to be successful doing this. And I hate that mentality. I think anybody can do anything if they try hard enough. Deadass. That is my mentality.
Silvan (49:29)
I agree. I mean, if I can play competitive volleyball and break three fingers, know, anyone can do anything really. But as you were talking, you know, a couple of things are coming at me. when you were talking about sort of your, your approach, I was very much struck by how you empower the athletes that you're coaching. And in a way I got, sorry, I've just looked and I can see a spider on the wall behind me. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna mask my anxiety right now. ⁓ but.
lizzy (49:48)
Mm-hmm.
terrifying.
Silvan (49:59)
I was really struck by not just the empowerment, but why does it have to take a female coach to be able to have that kind of conversation with some of the male athletes for them to consider going deeper or thinking about other things rather than let's just hammer it. And that kind of, it irks me because there is so much more to be done and it shouldn't bear the responsibility of a female.
lizzy (50:19)
Mm-hmm.
Silvan (50:27)
in order to facilitate that kind of conversation.
lizzy (50:28)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I think there's just, I mean, there's stereotypical gender roles, right? I'm a girl, they think that I'm immediately more in touch with my emotions and I feel like I am, but I don't think it's because I'm a woman. I think it's just because I give a lot of, I respect my emotions and feelings and I, like, I've had really good role models in my life that have taught me and I've also gone to therapy. I've also gone to therapy. I've had a lot of good people in my life to teach me how to, how to,
honor my emotions and also process them in a way that feels healthy. ⁓ But yeah, I think it's boys and, you know, I'm from the Midwest area and some of them are from ⁓ less progressive, like they travel for school and stuff so some of them are not from my area, some of them are from less progressive areas and so where those gender roles are like more deeply entrenched.
And so they're just automatically like, she's a girl, she knows how to talk about feelings. I don't really wanna talk about them, but I guess if I have to, like, she's probably the best one to talk to about it. And that's just, again, they did not grow up with anybody, any men in their life that would talk to them about that stuff. Anytime that they struggled with something internally, they talked to their mom, they talked to their sister, they talked to their grandma, they talked to like another woman in their life. And so I think...
But again, I hope that in talking to them about this stuff, they feel comfortable and when they're coaches, to be a man talking to another man about this and being like, this is like, let me be a role model for you. And so again, I think it's just like trickle, it's trickling down. Like you just have to teach them what you can and hope that they get enough out of it to feel like it warrants being passed down to people that they're teaching.
But yeah, it's just because I'm a girl, they just think that I'm just better equipped to handle it for whatever reason. And I don't think I'm a super emotionally in touch person. As far as people go on the spectrum, I am an INTJ on the Myers-Briggs test. And so I am very logical.
Like, I do suppress my emotions in a lot of ways, but like not to the level that they do, and I don't think I could. I think I would implode. But it's just because I'm the one, they just think I'm automatically more equipped to deal with it. And that's fine. I mean, it's just, is it my responsibility to teach them these things? No, but like, is it, am I happy to do it? Yes. Like somebody has, it's like the other alternative is that nobody teaches them this, or they have to learn it when they're much older and they've suffered.
Declan (53:03)
Mm-hmm.
lizzy (53:21)
through the consequences of not knowing how to do this. Like they've, they're in a relationship and they really upset their partner because they're not able to work through some of this stuff. Like I just, it's, I think as a coach, I think specifically more traditional coaches, they deal with coaching as it relates to the sport specifically. But I think a good way to view it now is that we're teachers, just like we're teachers, but we're teaching a sport.
Declan (53:32)
Yeah.
lizzy (53:51)
But that doesn't mean we can't be aware and help guide them through other stuff as well. Like we're a teacher just like an academic teacher is, we're just teaching in a different discipline. And so I think in some ways it is our responsibility. I don't think it should be as heavy of a responsibility, but I think it has to start somewhere. And that somewhere is me and other female coaches and other male coaches who get it, who inherently get it and who've had good role models that have
have understood them and seen them as a person and not just like a commodity and that have like seen the value in that and want to pass it down. it just, it starts with one person.
Declan (54:33)
So guys, we're going to stop it there for now. This is part one of the part two. So make sure you tune in for the next one where Lizzie is going to be joining us again. We're to go into some more similar topics to what we discussed in this one. So keep an eye out for that. But in the meantime, like, subscribe, share it if you enjoyed the conversation. ⁓ Don't be afraid to ask us some questions and let us know your thoughts as well. Also,
me and Sylvan also have our book club too and we also have Lizzie's social as well that we're going to include in the description of the video. Lizzie do you want to plug any of those or?
lizzy (55:14)
⁓ Yeah, the podcast on Instagram is at Shelfwear Podcast and then my personal is at Lizzy B. Reads with an underscore. Yeah, follow me. We post on Instagram pretty frequently. We haven't been great about it recently. Life has gotten in the way. We're getting back into posting more regularly. And then the podcast is the Shelfwear Podcast and you can find out wherever you get your podcasts.
Thank you guys for having me. I'm excited to talk more with you guys next week.
Declan (55:45)
nice. Thank you very much for joining us, Lizzie. We'll see you all next week.