The Long Game MI
A podcast about youth sports development and how programs like Mercer Island Lacrosse build champions, on and off the field.
The Long Game MI
Ep. 3. Competing the Right Way: Winning Through Development
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Parents today sometimes think they need to choose between youth sports programs that focus on long-term development of the entire athlete, and those that play to win.
Kiernan Coles shows that no choice is needed between these two and in fact they go hand-in-hand. The Mercer Island Lacrosse alum went on to play for reigning Division I champion Cornell before returning to coach at the Club.
We discuss how MILC focuses on discipline, accountability, mentorship, and deep investment in youth as the foundation of a lasting winning culture . Kiernan shares how Mercer Island prepared him for college through discipline and resilience, and he reflects on what he learned working through severe adversity, including multiple family losses and a season-ending injury.
Kiernan explains what separates top players (extra work and accountability), offers parent advice about letting kids own the journey, and explains why he returns to coach and mentor the next generation.
Note: opinions expressed are those of the host and guest and not necessarily those of MILC.
Welcome to the Long Gate, a podcast about youth sports development and how programs like Mercer Island Lacrosse build champions on and off the field. I'm your host, Matt Cooper.
SPEAKER_01Many sports parents feel a tension between wanting their kids to develop the right way and wanting to win. Today's guest resolves that tension cleanly and shows you don't have to choose between development and winning. Kiernan Coles grew up in our program, went on to play at Cornell, the reigning NC2A Division I national champion, and then came back here to coach. Kiernan, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Matt. Let me start right there. Do you think parents need to choose between programs that develop players the right way and those that compete to win?
SPEAKER_02You know, I think the two go hand in hand, right? I think in order to make a winning program, especially one that lasts, you have to be intentional about it. And part of that revolves around developing the player from a young age, and I think the development of a player goes beyond the sport. You're trying to develop them as a young man beyond just being a player, and I think that's what creates a great winning program is that holistic culture of I'm not just concerned about the sport, I'm concerned about you as a person. I think that's what makes a winning program. And I've got to see it firsthand. Obviously, at Mercer Island, I think we do an incredible job of that. There's not many programs around here that invest so much in our youth. And then at Cornell, too, again, getting to see how much they invest in the players. So that long-term investment, like that is what creates a winning culture.
SPEAKER_01All right, let's start at the beginning and getting to know you. How did you first get into lacrosse?
SPEAKER_02Actually, my best buddy Evan introduced me to lacrosse. Up until that point, I was a wrestler, I was a football player, and Evan at some point or another was just like, you're doing all these other things that are pretty similar to lacrosse, you might as well give it a try. And all my other buddies were playing lacrosse. When I saw these guys and how excited they were to go play lacrosse and what great camaraderie they had amongst them, it was a pretty easy decision to make and to test out.
SPEAKER_01And when you say Evan, that's Evan Condon, who was our guest in the last episode, episode two, and who you coached with last year on the the silver team.
SPEAKER_02Yes. Yeah, exactly. Evan and I have had a long love story between the two of us, but it started in sixth grade, and that was right when I started lacrosse. So shout out to Evan for that.
SPEAKER_01What's your earliest memory of the culture of the program at Mercer Island being special?
SPEAKER_02I kind of hit on my earliest memory, which is when my friends started talking to me about playing lacrosse, seeing how passionate they were about the sport. I don't think I had experienced that sense of passion before. And as a sixth grader, like I don't think you know much about passion in sixth grades. But one that also just sticks with me is I my second year, seventh grade, I got on black team. And at that time, we had Rob Shields as a coach. And for anybody who doesn't know Rob Shields, he is an incredibly nice Australian guy who was who had come to Mercer Island, had helped out with the program for years, was the head coach of the black team. And his style of coaching, again, the passion that he brought to coaching was something that I had not experienced. And it wasn't like he was the dad of a kid on the team. He was a lacrosse guy through and through, who was just there, who had shown up just to kind of work with these kids and make us better as players and as people. And so that was one that really stuck with me. Like Rob really got me addicted to the sport of lacrosse.
SPEAKER_01And and your coaching the spring season, the 7-8 Black team, which is the same team Rob coached you on. Yep. Is that ever wild to think about that you're in the same position to today's players as Rob was to you?
SPEAKER_02It's it's nuts. I try and be cognitive of that and again take those moments to instill maybe life lessons and beyond the field of lacrosse. I feel incredibly lucky to be in this position and to get to fill the shoes that Rob put forth for me because they are big shoes to fill, but I'm one who's all about making an impact, and this is a pretty easy way to make a direct impact on the next generations.
SPEAKER_01When you got to Cornell, the highest echelons of the game, what did Mercer Island instill in you that you noticed immediately once you got to Cornell?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think obviously there's work ethic, like you can speak to that forever because of the amount of work that we do at Mercer Island, but I think the discipline was a big piece. In a lot of aspects, I was behind in lacrosse compared to those guys who come up on the East Coast. But from a discipline standpoint, I felt like that's kind of where I maybe not had a leg up, but it helped me get in and achieve or at least make a relative impact. And it's important too because like at that level, you need to be ultra disciplined in order to be a championship caliber team. And it again, it didn't just impact lacrosse, it impacted my career and life in general. And then I think just instead of hitting on the easy one, which is work ethic, I think a sense of how to respond to adversity. We get put in a lot of adverse conditions as a high school athlete. And looking back, you can appreciate that. Maybe you don't have a total sense of that in the moment, but being able to look adversity in the face, not shy away, and think clearly of okay, what decision or what move do I need to make next? That's a super important skill that I think we do develop here.
SPEAKER_01And now that you bring up adversity, you missed your junior year at Cornell due to injury, like your leg and your foot. What was that like working so hard to get there and then having to sit out, watch your teammates compete? Give us a little sense of what that adversity was like, and then I'm gonna ask you what the lessons you learned going through that, how that benefited you off the field after graduation.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I honestly I would want to paint an even broader stroke here of like the adverse conditions I was dealing with. At that point in my life, I had lost my father, I lost my brother, I lost my grandfather in the span of like two years, then come back, break my foot, my knees are messed up. The conditions were mightily adverse and heavily weighted against me. But I think part of what I did was I was able to lean on people around me, and that was a big thing I learned about was like, man, you can't just do this stuff alone. But I guess to your other point about like what was it like being injured? Cornell was eye-opening in a lot of ways, but to go somewhere and not get to be like the star athlete anymore, and then also be the guy who was never injured, and suddenly now you've got like chronic injuries, that's a debilitating kind of mindset to be in. But then you kind of get the perspective that I don't think I got a lot at Mercer Island, which is like, what does it mean to be a great teammate and a great bench guy? Because that's so important. Like those guys make the team what it is. You can have a great star athlete, but if they're not surrounded by really great teammates, you're never winning a championship, and you're certainly not going to be a winning program. And that was a huge lesson I learned, and something I took with me. I know you were maybe I'm jumping the gun here to the next question, but what did I take away from it? It was one, if I can make it through this stuff, like I can make it through anything. This it puts it all into perspective. But two, from a work standpoint, it pointed to how important it is to be a great teammate, no matter where you are. And Evan always says this to the kids, but it's incredibly true, which is like you can only control two things that's effort and attitude. And this was one of those moments where you you go through it and you're like, I could be miserable and I could just give up right now. And there were plenty of times where I thought about that of like I could just hang up the cleats, I could give up on going to school, or I could push through and prove it to myself, but also when you come out the other side, it's about solidifying in your brain, like I can achieve hard things. Uh, and I think that's incredibly important to continue through your life, take that head on. And again, going back to like what Mercer Allen has instilled in me, that was a big thing of put any physical thing in front of me. I was certain I could do that. And some of these other things that I've gone through, they established a similar mindset for my mentality of put something in front of me and I will do it.
SPEAKER_01Does it change, Kiernan, how you approach coaching, having gone from the star to being a little bit more of a role player and seeing the importance of that? Is that front of mind for you when you coach? Because you deal with players of all abilities.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, I I think that made me not just who I am as a coach, but who I am as a person today. I was a much different, not in a bad way, but a just a much different person prior to all of the adversity that I went through. And coming out the other side, I think it gave me important perspective of like how to treat any human, regardless of what conditions they're dealing with. And then for me, I think the biggest thing that I learned was like I experienced a lot of really strong mentorship through the lacrosse program, through family friends, through parents of friends. And I want to be an outlet for these kids. I want to be able to be that guy who they can lean on in hard times or who can give them important life advice. And so with every kid, I try and make an impact on every kid on the team because I know from top to bottom, you cannot, you're not gonna get through this alone. So you have to bring everyone with you. Uh and that means spending that extra minute if someone's struggling on a drill, spending that extra minute and not being like, ah, well, this kid, you know, he can't do ladders, so we're just gonna give up because all these kids can. Like, I'm gonna spend the extra 10 minutes to make sure this guy can do the ladders because you want all of them to be doing it together. You want them to all build up. So I think, like I said, this has made me who I am today.
SPEAKER_01At Cornell, what separated the players who thrived from those who struggled to contribute?
SPEAKER_02Well, there's so many things, but I would say the biggest thing is just an insane sense of discipline and a ceaseless sense of like a need to get better. This work ethic where these are guys who are out there hitting the wall. Our star players, Jeff Teat, he's right now top player in the world. That dude was hitting the wall every single day for an hour or two a day, like putting in the extra work even if nobody's watching. This is a guy who he could probably not hit the wall every day, and he could still be the star player, but he's out there doing it, and he's doing it not because he wants you to see, but he's just doing it because he knows that that's gonna get him better, and I think that applies to if any of the guys or the kids are listening, like that applies to you guys. It's easy when you're at the top to just sit back and say, Well, whatever, I'm already at the top. But that's an you have so much opportunity in front of you to get better, and I think the big thing that I noticed with we have it at Mercer Island and at Cornell, it's crazy on a completely different level, is their sense of accountability. If you mess up a drill, we we would do ladders, and if anybody messed up any part of the ladder, the whole team would go back and have to reset that set of ladders again, and you would keep doing that and doing that until you get it right. Holding each other accountable means like if your teammate messes up and your coach doesn't catch it, you don't just say, like, ah, well, you know, coach didn't catch it. You're holding them accountable because you know like the impact that this has on the entirety of the team. And when everybody's holding each other accountable, again, talking about like focusing on all the kids instead of just the star ones, it brings everybody up a level. Everybody's holding each other accountability. The star players are holding everyone else accountable, and everybody else is holding the star players accountable, and everybody's trying to get better. So I know your question was about like what did the star players do that was different? And there's certainly a ton of things, but I just think when they are doing things better, everybody else will follow. And then naturally, it just everybody slowly keeps ratcheting up and up and up because they're always trying to outdo each other.
SPEAKER_01Well, and you also answered a another question I have. I think you answered it perfectly, and it was what did discipline look like at that level? And I think you summarized it in the players who may not have seemed like it needed to be working hard, spending hours out there just working on their craft, pursuing the standard, pursuing excellence.
SPEAKER_02Discipline is everything. And I think that as a player and now as a coach, but from a player's mindset, like you can look at it and say, Oh man, this is so annoying how coach keeps making us like put our foot behind the line. Why does the foot behind the line matter? You're right, that specific instance probably doesn't matter, but it's about ingraining into your head, I'm going to get every single little piece of this because if you have perfection on the minutiae and everything's perfect across the board on the small things, chances are on the greater level things are at or close to perfect.
SPEAKER_01Similar to the military, where there's a fixation on attention to detail, shining your shoes. If you can get the little things right, then you can get the big things right. Last question in this segment. What does winning feel like when you know the process was done right? And is that different than winning another way?
SPEAKER_02Yes. Yeah, 100%. Like our state championship, I'm not gonna say we did everything right, but for years we as a group of dudes had been working together as hard as we can with this goal in mind, a shared goal of I'm gonna win a state championship. It was said with like real meaning and commitment to doing that. And so from honestly, from like sixth grade on, seventh grade on, when I first started, all the guys were talking about it. Hey, we're gonna win a state championship. And you're watching guys older than you win a state championship, and after all those years and all the hard work and all the grinding to win that thing, and in the fashion we did was the most rewarding feeling in the world, and to get to share it with my teammates and like hugging everybody, and your parents are coming down, and they're so proud of you because they know how hard you worked, like that means everything. And then on the flip side, which is what does winning feel like when you don't have to try or when you didn't do everything right? You know, it's not it's not about putting up as many points as you can on the opponent, it's about like playing the best possible version of the sport you can. And I think for us in that state championship game, you only get the best possible version of the sport when you're really having to work for it, and we came from behind and like three minutes left, and all the that was a hard opponent. And when you put up a fight against a hard opponent and you come out the other side and you're victorious, but you're tired, and all this like you know you earn that one. So I'd say that's the differentiator is at the end of a game, like ask yourself if you really had to work for that. And if you really had to work for that, I can guarantee that you're feeling a lot better than if you just you know went through and aced the test without studying.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So now we're gonna go to the lightning round. Key here is uh quick answers, first thing that comes to mind. The one word that best describes Mercer Island lacrosse.
SPEAKER_02Oh man, that's a good one.
SPEAKER_01Tenacious. What's the hardest thing about playing Division I lacrosse that nobody tells you?
SPEAKER_02The time commitment.
SPEAKER_01What's one habit that a middle schooler can build right now that'll pay off later?
SPEAKER_02Making your bed.
SPEAKER_01What do you know now that you wish you'd known at 14?
SPEAKER_02The importance of the people around you.
SPEAKER_01Hardest opponent you've ever faced on the lacrosse field. Let's do a player and a team.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Player, I think obvious, Jeff Teat. Team. This is gonna be a really big throwback, and it's probably only for the guys I played with at the time, but we played in a summer tournament, this team from Long Island called like Laffy Taffy or something like that. And I think it was our first time just getting absolutely demolished by another team to the point that like I don't know if I'd committed yet, but like the attackman was like, dude, are you kidding me? Like, you're all you're all they got. And I couldn't even, you just kind of nodded and walked off the field. What was the score? Like 19, 20 to 0. We might have squeezed out one goal, maybe.
SPEAKER_01What's something young players worry about that matters less than they think?
SPEAKER_02Looking good on the lacrosse field.
SPEAKER_01What's the most helpful thing you've ever seen a youth sports parent do to support their kids' long-term development?
SPEAKER_02Let their kids play youth sports.
SPEAKER_01Last lightning iron question. What's the the aspect of our club's culture that's most helped you succeed in life after lacrosse?
SPEAKER_02Their their their lifelong commitment to the players. I mean, like I said to my in my own situation, I have had coaches and all these guys continue to be a part of my life for the last 20 plus years. Kevin Mencio and I and Evan, we get together on a consistent basis. I see O'Hearn weekly pretty much. I'm in a group text with a bunch of the guys. I see them consistently. They're probably one of my most seen groups of people. And not beyond just their friendship, I think they've provided me a ton of mentorship and guidance over the years. And throughout the program, I've just got to meet incredible people. I mean, of course, yourself and the tens and tens of or hundreds of other people I've met along the way who've just stepped in and been kind or given me advice or been willing to help or just offered to help. I mean, it is crazy. I think it's hard to appreciate how far reaching this program is.
SPEAKER_01A lot of college lacrosse programs, I'm sure Cornell is like that, are really well renowned for deep networks that last long after graduation. Would you say the Mercer Island program rivals those?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think so. If you just stay in touch and continue to talk and continue to even find opportunities to coach here and there, uh it will pay dividends down the line. If for nothing else, if it's not some professional advantage or like a career-seeking thing, like you just meet some really awesome people. And I think this has given me a great opportunity to do that.
SPEAKER_01Elaborate a little bit more before we leave the lightning round on what you meant when you said the best thing a parent can do is let their kids play youth sports.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think it's hard to remember this, but like it is youth sports. These are, you know, if we're talking middle school, these are 13-year-olds. This isn't make or break. We're not talking national championships or the Olympics. The goal here is to get them to fall in love with the sport. And to do that, you kind of have to allow them to play the sport they feel fit and let them take it. This is their adventure. Let them do that thing. My parents, like, my dad was Welsh. He didn't know what lacrosse was, he didn't know what football was. My mom was a ballet dancer, she didn't know what lacrosse was. And so when I started this journey, there wasn't like hand holding. Like, if your kid doesn't want to hit the wall, you have to let him make that decision or her make that decision. It needs to be their decision because if it isn't, it's not going to be their passion. And you'll just run them into the ground. So my consistent advice would just be let them be kids, let them play these sports. Obviously, there's times to step in, but I think in large, like this whole thing that is life is supposed to be their individual journey. So at least allow them to do this part of it on their own. This is a good building block for what's to come.
SPEAKER_01It was good advice as a current parent. That's a good reminder to hear and a good bridge to what we're calling our parent clarity segment. And, you know, I always ask for advice that you'd give parents. Tying to the theme of this episode, a lot of parents today, more so than ever, perhaps, feel that they have to choose between youth sports programs that focus on the long-term development of the whole person and programs that are exclusively focused on winning in the short term. And we're not going to talk about specific examples of those on this podcast, but I think you know what those clubs are. What would you say to those parents?
SPEAKER_02I think that there is an intersection of those two things, and that is merch around lacrosse, where you have winning and you have long-term development. I think to go back to the beginning, like you cannot win consistently and in the way that we do without personal long-term development. This is a program that's built around a community. As Mark Larson said, we live in a place. We play for a place. I think that's a really important thing. You had asked about what is it, what does a really good win feel like, or what does it take to have a really good win? If you are joining a club team that's just known for winning, that would be the example of going and playing a team and winning 19 to 0. If you come from a place like Mercer Island and you work your whole life to do this thing, that is the culmination of hard work. That's teaching your kid to commit to something, to have long-term vision. There are a lot of things that come out of that that I think are additive for a kid's development.
SPEAKER_01What is building on that? What's a direct piece of advice you'd give to the parent of a middle schooler, say sixth grader or an eighth grader who thinks that their kid may play college lacrosse someday?
SPEAKER_02I think that is a great thing to aim for, but I think a lot of things will change in the next four to five years.
SPEAKER_01So don't be too enthusiastic on wanting that goal for them.
SPEAKER_02I think it's a good thing to set as a goal, but I don't think it's something that you should just put blinders on and just strive for just that thing. I think there's a lot of other things you can strive for, and a byproduct might be getting recruited to play at a D1 program. If you play great lacrosse and you win a high school state. Championship and you go to maybe a recruitment camp or a prospect camp like something like that, and a coach will see you and they'll recruit you. So there's opportunity there, but maybe focus on enjoying the moment you're in, which is playing high school lacrosse. Because a thing I try and drive home to these kids, one thing I try and drive home is like you guys only get to do this thing one time. You only get to play Mercer Island youth sports one time. You only get to play varsity lacrosse one time. Maybe you're, let's say you make it as a freshman. You only actually have four tries to win a state championship. And those four tries start with that first game, that first practice, that first hitting the wall session. Like really just focus on the moment you're in. If you can perfect or do really, really well in the moment you're in, chances are the next moment is gonna be pretty good too. So focus on just this intermittent success, and it'll culminate in that overarching success. But I don't mean to say don't aim to play in college because if you want to play, that's a great thing to aim for. But there's a lot of other things you can do right now that you should focus on instead.
SPEAKER_01Well said. You talked about the adversity that you went through at a particular time in your life, and you said how important that was in building the person who you are. Give advice to parents about how they should think about things when they see their kid struggling, which is tough for a parent.
SPEAKER_02Yes, I can only imagine how tough it is to see your child struggle. I know it's hard even for me as a coach to see kids on the team struggle. I think the most important thing is like continue to be a voice of encouragement. And encouragement often means like encouraging them to lean into the storm a little bit. And just like my examples, going through that storm when they come out the other side, likely chances are they will have learned something from weathering that storm. So I'd say encourage always be a voice of encouragement, right? I know it's difficult to see them struggle, but if you can get through that struggle and come out the other side with even some version of the win. I know in my adversity, I certainly didn't come out the other side a winner in that situation, but I was able to grasp a silver lining that for me has just paid off in a huge fashion in terms of how much I have changed because of it.
SPEAKER_01Excellent. We'll wrap up by saying when you look at what you did at Cornell and everything that program demands, how much of what prepared you for that level was built right here at Mercer Island?
SPEAKER_02I mean, everything. Like I wouldn't have been at Cornell if it wasn't for Mercer Island Lacrosse. I wouldn't have been playing lacrosse if it wasn't for people within the Mercer Island Lacrosse community. I don't think I would have had the sense of discipline or the all the other life skills that I now have without Mercer Island as a base. And I think when you have a coach like Ian, like college coaches are gonna be a walk in the park. Not to say Ian's like exceedingly tough, but Ian knows what he's doing. He knows how to coach a really strong lacrosse team, he knows how to run a really hard practice, he knows how to take you to the wall with conditioning, like he knows how to push your limits and stuff and in the right way. And so when I got to Cornell, I guess the work was still hard. I mean, the lacrosse component was hours and hours and hours more, and that's why I said like the timing of D1 lacrosse, that's something that I don't think a lot of people think about is the time commitment. But from like a general coaching and lacrosse standpoint, like you've you've already experienced some really incredible coaching, but you've already experienced the the top of the top. So I think there's a ton of things I took away from it. I obviously just listed off a few, but I think the biggest one is for lacrosse directly. Like I had an incredible coaching staff when I was in high school. And luckily I got that in college as well. But if I hadn't, like my baseline was still so, so high just from what I had here.
SPEAKER_01Kiernan, I'll finish with a final question. We've talked a lot today about the culture of a program that focuses on long-term development. You've said that that is one that done right ultimately ends up to being one that wins. And this culture clearly did impact you. And I think the main piece of evidence that I see is how much of your professional life today that you're giving up to come back and coach. And you have sacrificed an awful lot for this club, and that's been happening for years, I think, ever since you left. Any last words on why it is so important for you to come back and give back the way you have to the club?
SPEAKER_02I know the impact that was made on me by coaches. So my goal is to somehow m match that. Hopefully somehow exceed it. But I had some incredible coaches growing up, and my focus isn't even lacrosse. I want these kids to come out of the season and not just feel like, oh, Coach Coles cares about me. Like I he's there for me if I need him to be, but to also come away from it and at least have maybe a slightly more worldly perspective of what does this actually mean? Why should I be disciplined in the grander scheme of life? Why should I care about accountability in the grander scheme of life instead of just because coach told me to? I really want to help ingrain those things. And I think on the long term, like you and I have talked a ton about how much mentorship matters. And I just want to be able to be a mentor. I want to have been a positive impact so that they feel when they think back to Coach Coles, like, man, he really wanted the best for me. And I want these kids to succeed, I want them to be able to look back with as much fondness as I do on their time in the program. And more than anything, and I'll say this directly to the kids, I want you guys to think about how I can come back and continue to build this program. Because you really can make a huge impact on future generations by leaning in and just asking, hey, could I even stop by the field for 10 minutes? Because I know when I stop by the field for 10 minutes, some of the kids just want to come over and say, hey, and if I can do that and it makes them happy, like I will gladly do that 10 out of 10 times. So that's what I would leave everybody with is like, and that is every single coach in this program feels that way. These guys across the program are just so passionate about helping your kids become the best versions of their self beyond lacrosse. And when we talk about the difference between like a random club team and Mercer Island, that is the difference. Is you could go join a random club team like the Laffy Taffy New York team we played, who beat us 18 to zero, and you could play with them for a few games and never see those guys again, or you could consistently show up to this program and build something that's bigger than yourself and realize what that means. And I think that is such a crazy opportunity for kids to have. I've been around a lot of lacrosse, and I just don't think anybody's nailed it the way Mercer Island has, at least not where I'm from.
SPEAKER_01Well, Kieran and thanks for everything that you've done for Mercer Island La Crosse and and for our kids. Your proof that development and winning don't have to be a choice. You helped this team win a state championship, played at one of the best programs in the country, and then as you say, came back here to give back. That's the long game working exactly the way it's supposed to. So thanks again.
SPEAKER_02Thank you.
SPEAKER_01And folks, thanks for listening to the long game. Next time we sit down with Ian O'Hearn, the man who built this program, to talk about how he built it, why he chose to play the long game, even when it wasn't easy. We'll see you then.