Ep. 5. The Proving Ground: Where Kids Learn What They're Capable Of

Sports can fundamentally change what young athletes believe about themselves and what they can accomplish.  Brant Howell, a 2006 graduate and three-time state champion who later walked on at Notre Dame, discusses this often-overlooked aspect of youth sports.  

20 years after graduating, Brant heard about a coaching vacancy and moved across the country, from Maryland, to help coach Mercer Island because of how this community affected his life and instilled work ethic, discipline, values, and more. 

Howell contrasts how good youth programs focus on character and lifelong development over wins or accolades, in contrast with some current trends driven by money and college outcomes. 

Brant remembers a life-changing, hard moment during the 2006 season, when Mercer Island overcame a difficult early start and ultimately won for the first time ever on Bainbridge Island, and the lifelong lessons players learned about rigor, humility, and resilience. 

He explains why players should stick with the process, and why parents should support but not remove hardship.  We also discuss the club’s culture of loyalty, tradition, discipline, and “the journey is the reward” mindset.

00:00 Intro

01:22 Why Brant Came Back

02:35 Inside a Championship Culture

04:11  Values Beyond Wins

04:47 Walking On at Notre Dame

09:03 Hard Season Turning Point

12:55 Coaching Then vs Now

15:15 Advice for Struggling Players

16:09 Lightning Round

16:55 Parent Clarity

20:24 Culture—Loyalty, Tradition, Discipline

24:50 The Journey Is the Reward

27:10 Closing and Raise the Stick

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome to the Long Gate, a podcast about youth sports development and how programs like Mercer Island on the Cross build champions on and off the field. I'm your host, Matt Cooper.

SPEAKER_02 0:19

Today we're going to talk about how youth sports can make young athletes realize they're capable of much more than they think. But first, I want to tell you about something that happened recently. Something that says everything about how a meaningful youth sports program can change people. Brant Howell grew up on Mercer Island and graduated in 2006. He was an all-state lacrosse player, a three-time state champion, also lettered in football. And eventually he walked on to play lacrosse at Notre Dame, which has won the national championship in two of the last three years. Today, he's a successful executive living in Maryland. A few months ago, Brand heard that one of the Mercer Island high school coaches had just had a baby and was taking the season off. Brandt called Ian O'Hearn, arranged to work remotely for three months, picked up, and moved back to Mercer Island so he could help coach the team across the country voluntarily. Today we'll talk about how a youth sports program can be this impactful, how it can make someone want to do this 20 years later. Brandt, welcome to the show. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. Let's start there.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

What made you do this? You know, it would be hard to overstate the impact the Marsh Ryan Lacrosse program had on me. It really gave me an outlet for my energy and my ambition and instilled a tremendous amount of work ethic and discipline. And it was an opportunity for me to come back, especially on this year, because it marks 20 years since I graduated, to come back and give back to a program that gave me so much. And I think for so many of us, as we leave high school, we launch ourselves into the world, but the further you get out, the more you reflect on those initial experiences and realize just how impactful and positive they were in your life. Let's start at the beginning. How'd you first get into lacrosse? I joined the lacrosse team in seventh grade. I had picked up football that same year, and I loved the contact. I loved running the ball. And my father came to me and said, Well, rather than baseball, why don't you play a contact sport in the spring, a sort of cross-training for football? And it took me about a week to realize that football was now cross-training for lacrosse. I fell in love with it that quickly. Mostly it was the community and my friends. Lots of us were playing, and I just loved the people. Was Mark Larson one of your early coaches? Mark Larson was the coach of the program that time, and he was a big part of it.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Now you had an excellent high school career, you all state junior and senior year, three straight state championships. You guys were a nationally ranked team, I believe. You lettered in football. What was the program like to be inside of when it was at that level?

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Yeah, the word that comes to my mind is passion. There was a tremendous amount of passion. And the piece that was different from today was we were really coming of age at that point. We were not a team that had had success each and every year, but we knew we had the potential. We knew it was possible for us to be successful at this. And so it was a lot of passion, a lot of players and people in the community who were excited about the future.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

When you were playing here, did you fully understand what Ian and the other coaches were truly building, or did that understanding come later?

SPEAKER_00 3:23

That understanding certainly came later around how intentional they were being around the culture and what they were trying to instill in us as players. I knew the program was giving me a lot of challenge. I knew it was instilling in me work ethic and discipline. But as far as really understanding what they were building, that came later.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

Was there a moment when you were playing here where you thought this program's a bit different? I'm changing because of it.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

I always knew that I was growing through the program, and I loved it for that reason. Growing alongside my friends was a huge part of it. We were all growing. But realizing how different this program came much later when I was out of college and coaching in other states. And I coached at a number of places in a number of different states, and that's when I first began to realize how unique this program really is here on the island.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

Summarize that difference because a lot of our guests have been affiliated from a coaching standpoint, primarily and sometimes only with Mercer Island Lacrosse. So you go coach elsewhere, talk a little bit more about how special that made you realize Mercer Island is and why.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

What I love about the Mercer Island program is it's really looking to instill values and character in a young person throughout their life. It's less about the wins or individual accolades and more about what are we building within these young people that will last them the rest of their lives.

SPEAKER_02 4:46

So after Mercer, you graduated, you went to Colorado College and played lacrosse there. Then you decided to transfer to Notre Dame, and you were going to walk on to their lacrosse program with no guarantee that you'd even make the team. Take us back to that decision. Where did that idea come from?

SPEAKER_00 5:04

The decision to walk on was really about two things. It was about a pursuit of my own potential, trying to see how good I could be as an individual, but also about a desire to bring knowledge back to this community about lacrosse. I had had an experience in high school of a friend passing away, and then my grandfather passed away very quickly. And so when I arrived at Colorado College, there was a very visceral sense that you get one life, one shot to go after it. And so I really had a desire to see how good I could be. I began a process of networking with Coach Corgan and Coach Byrne, who were there at Notre Dame, and I I faced some really honest feedback that I probably wasn't gonna make the team on. Ian would have told me this as well. I'm sure he did. I was not gonna make the team on my lacrosse talent alone. So when I had heard the feedback that maybe I was only gonna make that team based on work ethic, character, and discipline. And so I devised a program of working out training towards their run test, towards their strength test, as well as I became very serious about bodyweight exercises. I had read about an NFL player who did exclusively body weight. And so I set about doing 500 push-ups a day, 500 body squats a day. It's almost ridiculous looking back, and 150 pull-ups a day. I was very fond of sneaking into the weight room at Colorado College on Friday and Saturday nights when it was closed. It was just the emergency lights, and I would lift weights, knowing those were the only times when I could get ahead of the competition moving forward. A friend of mine at Colorado College had a sibling who was at Stanford, and I somehow I got the Stanford water polo nutrition program and started applying that. The point was that I was trying to take control of everything I could take control of, knowing that there were some elements I wouldn't be able to take control of. And I remember driving across the country after I'd gotten into Notre Dame and I was on the phone with my mother, and she was expressing motherly concern about the fact that you may not make this team or you may make this team and may never be a player on it. And I remember even at that young age, expressing to her that beyond pushing myself to s see what my potential was in this sport was also the desire to bring knowledge back to this community. I said to her something along the lines of even if I never play on the field, I will be learning from some of the greatest coaches in the business, and I can take that back to the West Coast and back to Mercer Island specifically and give it back to the next generation. So I was very proud to be a walk-on. I was proud to be a work ethic guy and a disciplined guy.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

In hindsight, Brent, do you think you would have attempted what you just described, walking on at Notre Dame without what you learned here at Mercer Island Lacrosse?

SPEAKER_00 7:48

You know, it's hard to even think about who I would be or what I would have attempted had I not joined the Mercer on Lacrosse program or been introduced to the sport of lacrosse in seventh grade. But what I will tell you is that I think the short answer is no. One of the things I will say about the Mercer Island program is that when I got to Notre Dame, there's discipline in the weight room, there's discipline in nutrition, there's discipline in speed training, and there's discipline in everything that you do. And I was not shocked. It was a step up, to be sure, but the foundation laid here with the discipline this program has made stepping into that role, even at a historic and storied athletic university like the University of Notre Dame. It was a step up, but it wasn't shocking in its volume or intensity.

SPEAKER_02 8:35

Aaron Powell You've described our program as demanding a lot from the young men who play. What specifically did it demand from you, and why did that turn out to matter?

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Yeah, it it demands rigor, discipline, coachability, humility, which goes directly with coachability. I I think it demands that you become more than you are. You know, it demands that you become more of what you could be than you are today.

SPEAKER_02 9:04

Was there a moment in our program for you that was genuinely hard where you weren't sure that you had what it took? What did that feel like?

SPEAKER_00 9:11

And what did you take from that? Yeah, as we entered the 2006 season, we had tremendous expectations for ourselves. We lost at Issaquah, our first game in OT. Then we played an ugly, terrible game on Bainbridge Island, and we lost them. We quickly lose to Vash on following that. And so we had accumulated more losses in a couple of weeks than I had ever had in my career at Mercer Island before that. We reached that turning point I was discussing where we decided, hey, we need to instill some new new discipline, new habits, or we're we're gonna come up short, potentially not even make the final game. For context, in the early 2000s, Bainbridge was the dominant force. They had been the dynasty. Mercer Island, we were talented, but we were really chasing at their heels, and we had won a couple of games, but we were not yet the team to beat. And so as we came towards playoffs, we beat Bainbridge by home at one goal, I think, in overtime, but we knew we were going to end up being number three in the playoffs, which means we were gonna have to probably face Bainbridge on Baybridge Island. And at this point, Mercer Island had never beaten Bainbridge on Bainbridge Island. It was like there was something mystical about that island. They had a crazy fan base that would always come out. They were hooting and hollering the whole game, they would distract us. They even had a kid who would play the bongos on the edge of the field. I mean, he would sit at the corner of the field and play on the bongos just to distract the offense, the defense, or whoever he was trying to distract. And so we knew that facing them in the semifinals, we had gotten revenge on Vashon that had showed us how much we had turned our season around. But the moment for me came we're facing Bainbridge on Bainbridge Island. If we lose this game, we'll be the first Mercer Island team to not make it to the state championship game since before we could remember, since before any of us were playing the game. We knew that the crowd was going to be a huge factor in who won the game. And so the captains and the seniors, we spent more than a week marketing the game to the students. We would go to classes, we would pitch the game. My mother, bless her heart, sat in the commons for almost a week collecting funds to go in the game. We had two full buses, so that was like 54 students coming on the buses. We had more students who drove, obviously, in their own cars, and then we had the parents and everyone. We put about 200 people into that stadium. And there was a moment when we're there on Bainbridge Island, we're out on the separate field, we are watching the Bainbridge women teams dominate over the lakeside women's team, and we are uncertain if we're going to win this game. And just at that moment, the buses start to unload. And as the students enter the stadium, we can hear them chanting, Mercer Island. And they are so rowdy, 45 minutes before the game even starts, that we look at each other and we're like, we can do this. We go on to beat them by one goal, first time ever on their island in a comeback season. And because it went so late, we missed the ferry home. And we sat on the ferry dock on Bainbridge Island with 200 fans and the entire Marshross community and just enjoyed the moment. And it was beautiful. We went on to beat Issaqua in the state championship, and Kevin Mahoney had that incredible goal at the end of it. But for me, the real moment was beating Bainbridge on Bayridge for the first time in front of what was essentially a home crowd in Bainbridge Stadium.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

That's a great story, Brent. You're back coaching now. Name one thing that's different about the culture of the team today from when you played here 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

You know, it's a it's a lot more structured, which is strange to say because we felt it was very structured and very disciplined at the time. But looking back, we were in a development phase 20 years ago. And now kids come into the program a lot younger. They're getting a lot better coaching, a lot younger, and there's just more of a disciplined formula that develops children along the path.

SPEAKER_02 13:29

Name one thing that hasn't changed from when you were here 20 years ago to this season, uh, culture-wise, with the club.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

Passion. It's expanded. There are so many people who are passionate about this game, passionate about this club, and passionate about what this club does for young people as they're growing up. And that has not only stayed the same but grown tremendously since.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

Is it wild to be back coaching given how formative this program was for you, the way you looked up to the coaches? Now you are that coach, and you're coaching alongside Ian. Mark Larson is still a coach in the club at a lower level. Is that just a wild feeling?

SPEAKER_00 14:10

It is strange to see coaches like Coach O'Hearn and Coach Larson as peers rather than as coaches, although I certainly still see them as mentors. But no, it doesn't feel wild at all. For some reason, it feels very natural. I would never have expected that. But there is something really meaningful about returning to coach the next generation of young people who come from my hometown. Are you going to be back coaching again at another season? This program will be with me forever. And something tells me I will never be able to pull myself away fully. As I joke with Coach Bauker, he plugged me back into the Matrix a couple of years ago by calling me when I was living on the East Coast and saying randomly I need someone to help drive a van on a spring break trip in Jersey. It doesn't matter that I live 250 miles from Jersey. And ever since then I've been sucked in like a gravitational force, so I expect I will be around in one form or another for a long time.

SPEAKER_02 15:15

Last question in this segment. His improvement has plateaued, other kids have passed him up, he's struggling with this coach or something else. Talk directly to that kid and give him your best advice. Stick with it.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Stick with it. Ask people you trust who are supportive for coaching points, and then just keep believing in yourself. The number of people I have seen who have put in the work and have become tremendous players one, two, three years later and overtaken many of their peers who we can't even count. If you love the game and if you love what it's doing for you as a person, just stick with it.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

Okay, now we're gonna move on to our lightning round. Key here is quick answers. One word that best describes Mercer Island on the Cross. Passion. What do you listen to on long drives? Audiobooks. Nonstop. What's one habit you built through your experiences in youth sports that still shows up in your life today? Break your goals into daily habits and execute them. What's something young players worry about that matters less than they think? Wins and losses, highlight reels, individual accolades. What's something young athletes don't worry about enough? Who they're becoming as a person? What's the best piece of advice a coach ever gave you? Keep going. Okay, we'll move on to our final segment, the parent clarity segment, where we're talking directly to youth sports parents. The program teaches kids what they're actually capable of by putting them in hard situations and letting them find their way through. What happens when parents try to remove these hard situations or try to help their kids too much?

SPEAKER_00 17:17

The blunt answer is you're doing a disservice to the kid. I wouldn't want to go so far as to say, but it might be true. You're making the kid weaker. We all remember that the ways we grew the most was when we had to struggle to grow on our own. And if we're removing those obstacles, we are inhibiting that growth in the young person.

SPEAKER_02 17:43

What's the most common thing parents do that actually gets in the way of their kid's development, even when the parents mean well?

SPEAKER_00 17:50

So Carl Jung had this great quote where he said, The greatest burden a child ever bears is the unlived life of the parent. And I think that's it, is when parents are setting goals for the kid when it's really the parents' initiative and drive that is driving the agenda. A young person, even in middle school and high school, especially in college, needs to find their own initiative, their own authentic, genuine goals they want to pursue. And if you're setting them for your kid, that's short-circuiting that process.

SPEAKER_02 18:24

As a current youth sports coach, and you've coached before, what does great parent behavior look like from where you sit inside the program? And how is it different from what most parents think that they should be doing?

SPEAKER_00 18:38

I would say as a parent, be super supportive, provide them a sounding board as an adult how to locate and deploy resources in a way that the kid does not be able to help them as they're thinking through solving problems, but wait for them to ask. Let them struggle with the issue and come to you with a need rather than you beginning to try to provide that before it's even asked.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

What's your one piece of advice if you only had one to give to a parent whose kid is just entering our program?

SPEAKER_00 19:14

Make it fun. If your kid falls in love with this sport or the community or the friends and the people, they will go so far. Make it fun.

SPEAKER_02 19:23

Brant, we've spoken today about how youth sports teaches deeply important lessons that go well beyond the field. Do you see any trends today in the youth sports culture that make you worried we might be losing a bit of this?

SPEAKER_00 19:37

I think what we think about so often at Mercer Island is the development of character, of values. There's a lot of money moving into youth sports. There are lots of trends from different programs that are really focused on winning or focused on getting people into college. And I think they're missing the bigger picture. There's something really important going on here in the development of a young person that is available to every young person, whether they're the star on the team or the 24th guy on the team. And that's the bigger picture. And I think there are a lot of trends that are pulling youth sports away from the purpose it's really served over time. And I think that needs to be protected against.

SPEAKER_02 20:26

What did youth sports and our lacrosse club show you that you were truly capable of?

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Aaron Powell The Mercer and Lacrosse program showed me that with discipline and hard work and application of my efforts, I could pursue my ambitions. And that is something I really hope to help every kid who comes to the program to realize. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 20:50

Brant, our club values are loyalty, tradition, and discipline. Elaborate a little bit on what that culture and what those values mean to you.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

When I think about it, a number of things come up for me. Under loyalty, the first thing that comes up is community, right? Mercer Island is really it's a true hometown program. It's run by parents, alumni, parents of alumni who are still involved in the program, former players who've come back or moved back. These are people who keep showing up because the program gave them so much. This community raised us. And when you have community like that, what you get is the instilling in players of values. Winning can be important. The pursuit of excellence is more important, but values are what matter. It's not about a highlight reel, it's about character. Every once in a while it pops up about the all character team. We talk about the all American team, we talk about the all state team. We think a lot about the all character team. Who are the guys who left and you just think that kid has impeccable character? And I hope that when families see it or begin to get involved in the program, they Say the values being taught here are really what I want my kid around. You know, when I think about tradition, we do things a certain way. And we have done them this way for a long time. It's not that we don't update them, we do, of course, but there are a lot of traditions that date back to when I was there 20 years ago. Certain songs that we sing, certain songs that we play as we step onto the field, the way we come onto the field, some of the haircuts that some of the guys choose to get early in the season. And these traditions connect us to our heritage, to those who have come before us. But tradition is also about a standard, you know, a high standard that has been set and met by a lot of generations of players that have come before you. And you get to participate in some of the joys of the rituals, traditions, hopefully some hard-fought victories. But you're going to be asked to meet the standard consistently and daily, not just once. And in that way, in my mind, a lot of the traditions become sort of a rite of passage to help initiate a lot of young people into adulthood by putting them through a big trial, you know, a struggle, some sort of an immense challenge. And I think those things are really important to helping young people realize that they have strengths within them that can be called upon when needed and when they face a challenge. I think those experiences can be called upon time and time again throughout life. And then on discipline, we talked about holding young men to a standard. You know, discipline is about how you meet that standard. No excuses. Being forced into a situation where you have to apply your effort in a disciplined manner in order to stretch your potential. And I think that shows a lot of young people that they learn they can do more than what they believed. Young men need those tests. They need to struggle, they need adversity. And one of the beauties of the Mercer Ralli program is it's an environment where there are no shortcuts. You know, you can't politic your way to making a team. You can't buy your way onto the field. There's no shortcut, there's no back doors. You have to earn it through commitment and discipline. And I think that discipline builds resilience and character and maturity. It's a path to discovering who you could potentially become. And as Mark Larson talked about, a lot of players are frustrated by that in the moment, but they look back on it five, 10 years later and say that was a very valuable experience for me as a young man.

SPEAKER_02 24:39

Perfect answer for what this episode is talking about and how sports can change young people and teach them that they are capable of more than they may first realize. Brant, one thing that uh you and I talked about as we got ready for this podcast is that there was a memory you had after we recorded episode one with Mark Larson. I think the listeners would appreciate hearing that story.

SPEAKER_00 25:02

Yeah, it was a strange time in middle school. As I said, we had a big class, so we had two full teams, and we had this beautiful experience where I think we rented a bus to go to Vashon Island to play. And just as we were, I think, waiting at the ferry dock, Mark Larson reached into his pocket of the boathouse jackets that we all used to wear and pulled out some sort of a tag or something, a piece of marketing material for Boathouse that read The Journey as the Reward. And Mark delivered, as he does, this incredible impromptu speech about the journey as the reward and the beauty of being there with your friends, playing a sport you love, just embracing the moment. And so as the episode with Mark came out, I was on my way to go see a friend of mine who lives in Seattle, played on the high school team with me, whose father coached us in middle school. I went to dinner and I said, I gave him the podcast with Mark Larson and I said, Do you remember Mark's speech about the journey as the reward? And he took this long pause, and I didn't know if he was gonna if he took a long pause because he was reflecting and trying to remember what I was talking about. And then he said, Not only do I remember that speech, I think I probably reflect on that speech and that concept almost weekly. I'm not lying here. He's I said that might be one of the most important things that was said to me ever during that time. And he said, which is insane to think about because of just how much that has helped shape my current philosophy. He talked about how his philosophy, as he's achieved quite a bit of success in his career, has been not chasing a destination, but really focusing on the process, enjoying the suffering of the moment, and as he's run triathlons and all these things. And it was one of those moments where it was 25 years later with a good friend who I've had all those years, where we're still reflecting on the impact that those years at that team and at this club have had on us ever since. And it was one of those beautiful moments.

SPEAKER_02 27:10

Well, what a story. And hopefully all of our coaches in lacrosse and otherwise who are listening to this podcast reflect on that. What you're doing, whether your athletes realize it or not, at the time is making a profound difference in the lives, especially those coaches who do this the right way and who play the long game. So thanks for sharing that story. Brent, what comes through in everything you've said today is that good youth sports programs like Mercer Island Lacrosse teach more than sports. They teach young athletes things about themselves, that they're capable of more than they think, that the hard things are the point. You lived that. You proved it at Notre Dame, and you moved back across the country here to give it to the next generation. That's the real long game. Thanks very much. Thanks so much for having me. And listeners, we will be back with a new episode in two weeks. And in the meantime, we are having our annual Raise the Stick fundraiser. Hopefully, through this podcast, you've seen the difference that programs like ours make in the lives of young athletes. And think about that as you decide how much you're going to help out with on Raise the Stick. Thanks. We'll see you next time.