I fought plenty of battles during my years as a college soccer coach, but one of the most epic fights involved the marching band.
Yes, the marching band. Cue the fight scene from Anchorman! Just kidding.
Three days a week, while our soccer team practiced, the marching band used the end of our soccer field as its practice space. I'm not talking about a few musicians playing in the distance. I mean the entire marching band playing at full volume 40 feet from us while their conductor counted "1, 2, 3, 4" through a bullhorn.
Imagine trying to run a college soccer practice while that was happening.
As a musician, I respected the band. But I also believed my players deserved to train at a high level, and we shouldn't have been expected to compromise our preparation. The university hadn't provided adequate space for both groups, and that was a solvable problem.
For years, I fought to have the band moved to another location. What seemed like a reasonable request to me became a costly battle. My athletic director labeled me as difficult; he shared with another school’s athletic director that I was “a cancer,” and I knew that continuing to push for change could put my job at risk. But every time I considered letting it go, I thought about the players who were counting on me to advocate for them.
The football team had a game field and three practice fields. We shared one field with the marching band.
After years of fighting battles like this, our team had its first winning season in nearly a decade, and I was named Conference Coach of the Year.
I was grateful for the recognition from my peers. I have no doubt they saw our record, the wins on the field, and the progress we had made as a program. And while those things mattered to me, I knew other wins were happening behind the scenes that would never appear in a box score. I knew about the difficult conversations, the battles over resources, and the personal cost of advocating for my players.
Eventually, we got the band moved. And we secured other important resources along the way. I continued advocating for my players because I believed in the people I had the privilege of leading.
A few weeks ago, while watching Game 7 of the WNBA Finals, I found myself thinking about those battles.
I'd been following the Golden State Valkyries all season. In only their second year as a franchise, they’d built a team that found ways to win without a roster filled with the league's biggest stars.
Much of the media conversation about the Valkyries focused on what they didn't have. They didn't have a roster filled with the league's biggest stars, and some commentators even dismissed them as a team of "nobodies."
That wasn't a fair description. These were talented professionals who had earned their place in the league. But I loved watching a group of players who weren't necessarily the biggest names in basketball find ways to win together.
A week ago, they won the championship.
During the celebration, Finals MVP Gabby Williams was asked how a team so new to the league had managed to accomplish something so significant.
Her answer captured my heart: "All it took was good people." I love that answer. After everything they had accomplished, she pointed to the people who had made it possible.
But another comment that night stayed with me, too. Veteran Tiffany Hayes reflected on the championship by saying, "This is what happens when you invest in women's sports."
Good people and a willingness to invest in them. That's a pretty solid recipe for success.
And I couldn't help but think about those young women I coached years ago.
We had intentionally recruited good people. We believed in them, saw their potential, and asked them to work incredibly hard to build something that hadn't existed in our program for a long time.
But believing in people and investing in them aren't the same thing.
It's one thing to tell people you believe in them. It's another to make decisions that demonstrate that belief, especially when those decisions are inconvenient, unpopular, or costly.
I often say that in human-centered leadership, results matter, and so do people. And I've come to believe we have to be careful not to make the second part of that statement dependent on the first.
My players deserved a space to practice without a marching band playing 40 feet away, regardless of whether we ever won a single game.
As I watched the Valkyries celebrate, I was reminded of the battles I fought as a coach, the costly conversations, and the moments when it would have been easier to stop pushing. But mostly, I thought about the young women who showed up every day, worked hard, and trusted me to lead them.
I wanted them to experience the joy of winning, and I'm grateful that we eventually did. But I would have fought those same battles even if we hadn't.
I didn't believe in those players because they were winners. I believed in them because I knew they were good people.
The players I coached didn't become worthy of my investment when they started winning. They were worthy of it all along.
And the people you lead are worthy of yours, too.
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