We caught up with the brilliant and insightful MICHELE MITCHELL a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, MICHELE thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
R-I-S-K – it’s what my entire sports and professional life has encompassed. My youth was spent in the gymnastics gym and on the diving boards and platforms. From elite gymnastics to the 10-meter platform in the 1984 & 1988 Olympic Games, risk has been a part of my life since age 5. I would say the same of my professional career, which did not follow nearly the same straight line as my sports history.
In sports, risk is calculated and coached as part of the progression of improvement; in the professional world, risk is more of a crap shoot.
I naturally fell into the administrative and coaching sides of sport, after completing my Olympic career with two silver medals in platform diving, The risk came in moving from the cushy administrative side of sports, into a top college coaching position. It required moving my family across the country from Florida to Tucson, AZ to become one of only three female NCAA coaches in diving. One-of-only-three!
It was a risk. 99% of all coaches were men…Could I recruit like the guys? Would male athletes want to have a female coach? Would I be taken as seriously as my male counterparts? Would I be accepted in the very prominent “old boys club”?
Risk/Reward came next. It didn’t take long to gain peer respect. With some good recruiting (turns out males are fine with being coached by females); risk is mitigated with high level results.
In other words, RISK, RESPECT and RESULTS not only all start with “R”, but they are also interconnected in sport.
Respect comes from doing it as well, or better, than someone else. By my second season (of 17 seasons) the risk of diving into the male college coaching pool and having better results than most male coaches, was rewarded with their respect.
17 years later, with an NCAA Champion, numerous conference champions and All Americans, and 5 Olympians in the history books, I was tired. I headed back to the administrative side. 5 years later, I retired.
Then – that pesky risk/reward thing popped back into my life. With a phone call from an old teammate, I was asked to resurrect the Mission Viejo Nadadores Diving Team. Once a force at the world level of aquatics, the program had fallen off the pedestal. With the rebuilding of the facility, my teammate hoped to bring in someone to build it back to its glory days. There was a lot of risk. First, I’d have to blow my life up and move from economically friendly, Arizona, to the high-end prices of living in Southern California. I didn’t really know anyone in CA, though I’d been a Nadadores diver during my Olympic days. Yet, was the reward of creating something from nothing worth the risk I’d have to pay to find out?
I’m not going to lie; it took me a minute to decide to take the leap. 4 months later we were selling the house, packing our belongings and heading to the great unknown of Mission Viejo.
Fast forward through hard work, building a staff, working 7 days-a-week, lots of marketing, and building the right culture, four years later the team size had quadrupled, the budget had doubled, we had been able to find a way to stay open through Covid, and the team won its first National Championship in 18 years! Aww – ya gotta love the reward.
“So, what next?”, I asked myself. Keep it going on the upswing? Retire again? Or was there something more I could give?
Turns out, the Board of Directors had decided to create the first ever Executive Director position for the organization. This position would be in charge of the entire organization: a floundering swim school, a huge age group club swim program, the country’s biggest diving team and a strong masters swimming program. It was an opportunity, once again, to take a risk in the form of building a leadership position from the ground up, helping the organization go from “mom and pop” to a business model of a successful club sports team, and the development of a collaborative coaching culture.
Three interviews later, I was moving offices and heading back into administration, but this time in an administrative leadership role. That was a little over two years ago, and the rewards are beginning to surface. It a different set of risks and challenges, but I am happy to meet them every day.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
After a lifetime in both gymnastics and diving, I naturally fell into both coaching and administrative roles in sports. I was always a leader and a scholar. My three degrees, though not in same field add up to a well-rounded background in both coaching and administration: B.A. in Secondary Education, M.A. in Sports Administration and Ph.D. in Educational Psychology.
I put those to work every day for the Mission Viejo Nadadores Foundation. Our organization is one of the largest, oldest and most storied non-profit swimming and diving clubs in the country. 55 years of history and legacy, and 81 Olympians have emerged from our pools.
Our Swim School offers group and private water safety lessons for infants through adults. From there, we have layers of progressive programming for children to swim through high school and then return from college and even train as a professional swimmer or masters fitness athlete. Same on the dive side. We offer a “Bitty Bouncer” diving program for ages 5-7 and have programming through the college ranks and at the Olympic level.
We are also busy in our community with members participating in city sponsored events such as the Red Ribbon Walk Against Drugs and Oso Fit Run, as well as offering our own free community events with Splash into Summer Water Safety and Fright Night Halloween fun.
We run close to 50 competitive events per year which attracts thousands of athletes and spectators, and millions of dollars of economic impact to the community.
Aquatic sports are lifetime sports: our tagline is “Once a Nadador, Always a Nadador” because we have members that are now swimming/diving in our masters programs – who started with us in our Swim School!
Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?
It goes back to something I was taught, and taught to my kids….we call it the “3S rule”.
Suit up, Show up, Shut up (and just get things done).
The most helpful tool to gain success is to work at it and be on top of it. Return the phone calls and texts, send the email in a timely manner, and be on time and prepared for meetings. There is no excuse. When I read the first sentence of a text/email and it says something along the lines of “Apologies for the delay…” I want to scream. It makes me mad. What it really should say is, “I was too busy (or lazy) and prioritized you to the bottom of the list.” No one likes to feel put off.
To succeed you must respond (and be kind). And respond promptly, even if the response is, “I will get back to you by Friday.” I can’t tell you how many times I get a response to my response that begins, “Thanks so much for getting back to me so quickly!.”
THAT is the most important thing to move toward success! People remember being prioritized. Prioritizing is code for respect. And when you show respect for them, they are FAR more inclined to help you, to have your back and to be by your side.
If you could go back, would you choose the same profession, specialty, etc.?
If I could go back to my twenties, I would have finished Law School and then come into the sports world.
One month after winning the Silver Medal in the Los Angels Games (1984) I was sitting in Law School classes. With training, commuting, traveling to competitions, and studying, something had to give…it was too much.
My coach, 8-time Olympic Coach, Dr. Ron O’Brien, came to us and told us he had taken a new job in Florida at a new facility. He told us we could follow or stay in California. Upon considering this with the sage advice of my parents, I left school and followed. It was another 4 years to the 1988 Olympic Games and another Silver Medal, but I had lost my mojo to go back to Law School.
It wasn’t until I was in my late 30’s and early 40’s that I continued my graduate school education while working full time and raising two children. Not something I would recommend, but another place where the “3S” rule yielded the results I wanted.
Contact Info:
- Website: missionviejonadadores.org
- Instagram: mission_viejo_nadadores_, missionviejonadadoresdive, mvnswimschool, mvn_masters
- Facebook: mission viejo nadadores swim school, mission viejo nadadores diving team, mission viejo nadadores masters swimming
Image Credits
Karen Hamman for the photo of the facility and my professional Nadadores photo