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What if youth sports weren’t just about wins and losses, but about building resilient, confident young people?

In this special episode, Mariel sits down with Bill Loewen of the Chilliwack Giants to talk about why March 5th is about far more than football.

The Chilliwack Giants have been developing youth athletes in the Fraser Valley for over 25 years, offering spring flag football for ages 5 and up, fall tackle programs, and a pathway that transitions athletes into high school programs. But for Bill, coaching is about much more than the game.

Bill shares openly about his own journey from being a talented but “lazy” high school player whose career was cut short by injury, to learning that talent only takes you so far. Work ethic, mindset, resilience, and controllables (effort, attitude, self-talk, preparation, focus) are what truly shape long-term success.

That’s exactly why the “Building Resilience On & Off the Field” event was created.

🗓 March 5th
📍 Chilliwack Cultural Centre
🎟 Free event (tickets required)

This powerful evening will feature:

• Short, impactful talks
• Fireside-style discussion
• Live Q&A with youth athletes
• A free copy of Angus Reid’s book Teenager: A Story About Finding Your Way for every attending athlete

Whether your athlete plays football, hockey, baseball, volleyball, or any other sport, the lessons are transferable.

If you’re in Chilliwack or the Fraser Valley, this is a night worth showing up for.

Reserve your free tickets here!

About Bill

Bill Loewen is passionate about football, mentorship, and building strong community connections. For the past three years, he’s dedicated countless hours to coaching both flag and tackle football with the Chilliwack Giants, where he now proudly serves as Second Vice President. Bill believes that sports are about more than just winning—they’re about teaching resilience, teamwork, and confidence that carry young athletes through every part of life.

Off the field, Bill works as a Project Manager, balancing his professional life with his favorite role: husband and dad. Together with his wife, Ashley, they are raising three incredibly active kids—Ella, a softball superstar, and two football-loving boys, Colby (11) and Josh (8), who share his passion for the game. Whether he’s drawing up plays or cheering from the sidelines, Bill’s greatest joy comes from watching kids grow—not just as athletes, but as people.

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“Being hard on yourself” is worn like a badge of honour in youth sports, but what if it’s actually hurting performance?

In this episode, Mariel Anderson and Jordan Owens unpack a powerful and often misunderstood topic for sports parents... especially hockey parents:

The difference between healthy self-reflection… and destructive self-talk.

Inspired by a conversation around Olympic coach Shawnee Harle’s “unpopular opinion,” they explore why many parents and coaches mistakenly praise athletes for being overly hard on themselves and how that can spiral into what they call the Doom Loop.

Inside this episode, you’ll learn:

• The difference between constructive self-evaluation and confidence-killing self-criticism
• What the “Doom Loop” is and how it impacts the body physiologically
• Why negative self-talk tightens muscles, speeds up the heart, and destroys clear decision-making
• How to help young athletes call a timeout on spiraling thoughts
• The powerful 5-step Neutralizer technique to reset the nervous system mid-game
• How deliberate breathing (and a simple tongue placement trick) restores control
• Why nervous and excited feel the same in the body and how to reframe it
• How parents can validate emotions without reinforcing mental spirals

If your athlete:
✔️ Gets stuck in their head
✔️ Beats themselves up after mistakes
✔️ Struggles with nerves before games
✔️ Loses joy because of pressure

This episode gives you practical tools you can teach immediately even before tonight’s tryout.

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What if the most important part of practice isn’t the drill…
but the first 10 minutes?

In this episode, Mariel sits down with Rett Larson, an elite international strength and conditioning coach and the creator of the No Zombies training philosophy.

Together, they challenge one of the most unquestioned traditions in youth and high-performance sport: the way athletes warm up.

Rett shares why traditional warm-ups often create boredom, disengagement, and burnout, and how replacing mindless repetition with creativity, competition, and problem-solving can dramatically improve both performance and joy.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why traditional warm-ups are a missed opportunity for athlete development
• How warm-ups can build speed, coordination, adaptability, and resilience
• Why fun and high performance are not opposites, they work together
• How exposing athletes to failure on purpose builds confidence and bounce-back ability
• The difference between necessary repetition and mindless repetition
• How gamification and unpredictability increase effort and buy-in
• Why practices that look “messy” often produce better long-term athletes
• How parents and coaches can protect an athlete’s love for the game

This episode is a must-listen for:
✔️ Coaches who want better energy, effort, and engagement
✔️ Parents concerned about burnout and loss of joy
✔️ Athletes who feel bored, over-coached, or mentally drained by training

Warm-ups aren’t just preparation for practice. They’re preparation for how athletes think, move, compete, and respond to adversity.

About Rett:

Rett Larson is in his 5th year as the strength coach for the German Women’s Volleyball Team. Before his time in Germany, he spent seven years in China, first as Project Manager for EXOS-China, working with several Chinese Olympic teams in their preparation for the 2012 London Games, and later with the Chinese National Women’s Volleyball Team, which won both the 2015 World Cup and Gold at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.

Following the Olympic gold medal, Rett worked for two years as the strength coach for the Netherlands Women’s Volleyball Team before joining Team Germany. Prior to his international work, Rett spent 10 years with Velocity Sports Performance, where he became the Director of Coaching at their headquarters in California.

Rett is the creator of the No Zombies training philosophy, which strives to make training more stimulating, engaging, and developmentally beneficial for athletes.

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Check out Rett's NoZombies Warm-up Video Library

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What if the biggest thing holding young athletes back isn’t effort, talent, or motivation, but where their attention lives?

In this episode, Mariel sits down with Nathan Last, founder of Mental Grit, to unpack the mental skills that create better athletes and stronger humans.

Nate shares how discovering sports psychology completely changed the trajectory of his life, and why presence is the foundation of mental toughness.

In this conversation, you’ll learn:

• Why most goal-setting creates stress, anxiety, and burnout in youth athletes
• How being stuck in the future or the past pulls athletes out of performance
• Why the body can’t tell the difference between imagination and reality, and how this backfires when athletes only dream instead of execute
• The difference between what athletes need to focus on vs. what spectators and coaches focus on
• How coaches can measure values and behaviours, not just stats and outcomes
• How parents unintentionally steal confidence by “protecting” their kids
• Why struggle, failure, and hard conversations are essential for building self-belief

Mental toughness isn’t something you achieve one day, it’s something you practice in the moment, every day.

Nate is the CEO of a premier mental performance training firm, dedicated to helping individuals, teams, and organizations unlock their highest potential. With over a decade of experience in performance psychology, leadership development, and organizational transformation, he now specializes in creating customized strategies that drive measurable results for teen athletes and their families. As a contributing author of the Amazon Best Seller, Deliberate Discomfort, and a former Chief Engagement Officer at Mission 6 Zero, I’ve seen firsthand how a focus on mindset, culture, and people operations can revolutionize outcomes whether on the athletic field, battlefield, school house or in the boardroom.

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Visualization is one of the most misunderstood and underused tools in youth sports.

In this episode, Jordan Owens and Mariel Anderson break down what visualization actually is, why vision boards are just the starting point, and how elite athletes use mental reps to build confidence, consistency, and game-day readiness.

You’ll learn:

• Why your brain can’t tell the difference between imagination and reality
• The 3 S’s of Visualization: Skills, Senses, and Struggles
• How detailed visualization builds muscle memory and performance, even when you’re not physically training
• How to prepare for pressure, mistakes, and adversity before they happen
• Simple tools athletes can use to calm nerves, channel excitement, and focus (including the “psychological sigh”)
• How parents and coaches can model calm, confident energy during tryouts and competition

Whether you’re a youth athlete looking to perform with confidence, or a parent or coach wanting to support mental development the right way, this episode gives you practical, repeatable tools you can start using today.

Train your mind. Build your grit. Forge your legacy.

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In this episode, we sit down with former professional tennis player James McGee for a conversation about life inside elite sport and what comes after it.

James shares his journey from growing up in Dublin as Ireland’s top junior player, to competing for over a decade on the ATP Tour and appearing in 14 Grand Slam events. Beyond the milestones, he speaks honestly about the less visible realities of professional tennis: long stretches away from home, financial pressure, injury, and the psychological weight of chasing a dream in a sport where success is narrowly defined.

The conversation explores how injury forced James to confront identity beyond performance, how studying psychology shaped his understanding of himself and others, and what it means to transition out of professional sport when competition has been central to your sense of self for most of your life.

We also discuss James’s current work mentoring underserved youth through the Inspiring Children Foundation, and how the lessons learned through elite sport now inform his approach to leadership, mental health, and long-term development.

This episode is a thoughtful look at ambition, resilience, and what it means to build a meaningful life beyond results.

James McGee is a former professional tennis player from Castleknock, Dublin 15, Ireland. He began playing tennis at the age of seven at Castleknock Lawn Tennis Club, where he developed a lifelong passion for the sport and spent his formative years training daily.
As a junior, McGee rose to become the No. 1 ranked player in Ireland and captured the national Under-16 title at Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club. While attending Belvedere College, he won the school championships multiple years in a row, before relocating to Barcelona to pursue his professional tennis career.

An early injury setback sidelined him for nearly two years. He later moved to the United States to compete at the collegiate level, playing two seasons for North Carolina State University while majoring in psychology, leading the team to its first-ever NCAA Elite Eight appearance. McGee spent over a decade competing on the ITF, ATP Challenger, and ATP World Tour circuits, reaching a career-high ATP singles ranking of world No. 146 in 2015 and serving as Ireland’s top-ranked player for six years.

He represented Ireland 15 times in Davis Cup competition and competed in 14 Grand Slam events, qualifying for the main draw of the 2014 US Open. His tour-level wins include victories over Frances Tiafoe, Tommy Paul, and Denis Shapovalov. Following injuries that ultimately led to his retirement, James transitioned into youth mentorship and now serves as Director of the TEAM BRYAN program and the NO QUIT Tennis Academy at the Inspiring Children Foundation in Las Vegas, supporting underserved youth through a holistic approach to development.

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What does it really mean to support athletes as whole humans?

In this episode, we’re joined by Will Lee, Registered Clinical Counsellor and Mental Performance Consultant, for a deep and grounded conversation about mental health, identity, culture, and performance. Together, we explore what often goes unseen in sport: the emotional load athletes carry, the pressure to perform, and the long-term impact of how mental health is addressed (or ignored).

Will brings a rare blend of clinical experience and performance work, drawing from his decade of work in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, his role in high-performance sport environments, and his lived experience as a first-generation Taiwanese-Canadian. We talk about the difference between mental toughness and emotional suppression, why identity and culture matter in performance spaces, and how parents, coaches, and organizations can create environments that are both high-performing and human. This episode is a powerful reminder that sustainable performance doesn’t come from pushing harder, it comes from understanding deeper.

About Will: "I am Registered Clinical Counsellor, Mental Performance Consultant and founder of Strive Counselling. At Strive, I serve as clinical supervisor and director to a wonderful intimate team of registered counsellors, where we help diverse clients address an equally diverse range of challenges - relationships, identity, mental health, trauma, addiction, to name a few. My clinical roots began over the span of a decade in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, where I learned to foster my sense of empathy and compassion for marginalized groups and humanity. As a proud first generation Taiwanese-Canadian, I am also passionate about fostering cultural humility in my practice, and to learn about the story of your culture and its connections with identity and wellness.

Currently, I am a member of the Mental Health Network under the Canadian Centre for Mental Health and Sport; a nationally-led organization comprised of highly-skilled mental health professionals from across Canada. My current notable organizations that I am privileged to be a part of in my role as a mental performance consultant includes The Richmond Olympic Oval (High Performance Program) and FightStory; a non-profit organization advocating for combat sport athletes' mental health and wellness.

When I’m not seeing clients, I enjoy an active lifestyle predominantly occupied by practicing martial arts, including Muay Thai, and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I also enjoy creative expression through playing the violin with my music group, and I seek tranquility in tending to my freshwater aquariums. I am a proud father of 3 enthusiastic girls, and husband to an unconditionally supportive wife."

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What do you do when your athlete feels set up to fail?

In this episode, Jordan and Mariel unpack a real post from a hockey mom whose 9-year-old son is stuck on a struggling team and use it as a powerful entry point into one of the most important mindset tools in sport: controllables.

Together, they break down the five controllables every athlete (and parent) can focus on when outcomes, coaches, team dynamics, or politics feel out of reach: effort, attitude, self-talk, preparation, and focus.

This conversation is equal parts honest, practical, and reassuring with real stories from youth sports, elite athletics, and parenting. If you’ve ever felt frustrated watching your child struggle in a situation they can’t control, this episode will help you shift from helplessness to empowerment, and from pressure to perspective.

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