Providing Insights on Leadership and Success. Coach Bechler is a John Maxwell Leadership Team Member.
I was in high school band but I didn’t enjoy being in the class because I was an athlete and thought band was not cool. My attitude was bad and my actions reflected that.
My friend and I decided to make up a game to alleviate some of our boredom.
Chris Oliver is the founder of Basketballimmersion.com and is one of the most respected basketball coaches and clinicians in North America. He regularly speaks at top coaching conferences and clinics, including CoachingU in Las Vegas. Chris is also currently the head men’s basketball coach at the University of Windsor, a position he has held since 2005. He is a 3x recipient of the Ontario University Athletic Conference’s Coach of the Year award. Chris graduated with a Bachelor of Kinesiology from McMaster University, a Bachelor of Education degree from Brock University, and a Master’s in Physical Education and Coaching Studies from the University of Victoria. Oliver is also an NCCP Level Four coach.
Dear Freshman,
You should be proud. You are in select company. Not everyone can be a student-athlete. Not everyone will finish their four years as a student-athlete. It’s hard. It’s hard to find the balance between your studies and your sports. It’s hard to commit so much time to your sport, meet new people, make new friends, and take care of all of your responsibilities. It’s hard to challenge yourself every day and not take a second for granted. Here are a few pieces of simple, yet very important advice to help you out as you start out on this wonderful journey.
Josh McDowell has spoken to approximately 35 million people, in 140 countries. Josh has written or co-authored more than 150 books in over 100 languages including More Than a Carpenter with over 27 million copies distributed and Evidence That Demands a Verdict, named one of the twentieth century’s top 40 books and one of the thirteen most influential books of the last 50 years on Christian thought by World Magazine. Evidence That Demands a Verdict also just won the 2018 Evangelical Christian Publishers Association award in the Bible reference book category.
In 1991, Josh founded Operation Carelift to meet the physical and spiritual needs he discovered in orphanages, hospitals, schools, and prisons in the countries of the former Soviet Union. Josh has received two significant honors from the Russian people because of these efforts. He is the only non-Russian to receive an honorary doctor of pediatrics degree from the Russian Academy of Medicine — in recognition of his work among the children of Russia. Also, Josh is the only foreigner to become a member of the prestigious Russian Club of Scientists. Operation Carelift, which has grown into in one of the largest humanitarian aid organizations based in the United States, is now a part of Global Aid Network (GAiN USA). In addition to many other awards, Josh has been nominated 36 times for the Gold Medallion Award and has received that award on four occasions.
Tracie Hitz is a personal and professional branding strategist with more than 20 years of branding, marketing and sales experience in the sports industry. She launched Hitz & Branding, LLC in June 2018 after twenty years in the sports industry. In this new endeavor she helps people set goals, tell a story, land a date, land a job, or land anything they want.
Immediately before founding Hitz & Branding, LLC., Tracie was the Director of Championships & Alliances at the NCAA. In her first year, she oversaw the 2014 Women’s Final Four sales efforts that led to a sold-out arena in a first-time host city, and the following year she led the charge to record the largest attendance at a Women’s Final Four since 2010. Tracie came to the national office after working in the C-Suite as the Chief Marketing Officer at Old Hat Creative for 3.5 years where she doubled its annual revenue each year working with over 80 professional and collegiate sports organizations.
She was named to the C-Suite for the NACMA Board of Directors in 2008 and was the Board advisor from 2010-2013. She has been a member of the UNC Center for Research in Intercollegiate Athletics Board of Advisors and the IUPUI Tourism, Conventions and Event Management Advisory Board since 2015. She received her bachelorʼs degree in Communication (Journalism) from Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri in 1997 and her masterʼs degree in Integrated Marketing Communications from Northwestern University in 2003.