Tribe of Mentors (II)

Photo: Gabriel Holguin

Tribe of mentors is an interview format designed for hockey players at all levels to be inspired by the best in our sport. It is designed to encourage learning from elite players, coaches and federation members all around the world about their approach, their philosophy and their experiences. In the style of the actual book Tribe of Mentors from Tim Ferris, I reached out the early mentors of my personal game with a pre designed set of questions about hockey. This post features Tyera Eulberg, the captain of the US Women Elite Team, Paul van den Brakel, who has been around the sport as volunteer, elite athlete and international coach for longer than I’ve lived as well as Marta Pons de Molina, secretary of the CMAS UWH World Commission. Check out the  last post to read more about the format and discover the replies from my early mentors Marie from Canada, Paola from Colombia and Ben from the USA!

Tyera Eulberg

Tyera is the captain and powerhouse of the USA Women Elite Team. She played at Worlds in 2006 (Sheffield), 2013 (Eger), 2016 (Stellenbosch), and 2018 (Quebec City), and at the Americas Cup in 2010 (Medellin) and 2012 (Milwaukee). She started playing in Colorado in 2002 where her home club has been ever since (except of short periods out-of-state). With Colorado, Tyera has gotten Silvers and Bronzes at US Nationals, and she won the Gold both times she has attended the Aguamala 3v3 International Cup in Medellin, Colombia. As of Aussie Nationals last January, Tyera has played a hockey tournament on every continent that has a swimming pool.

What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made in terms of hockey? (Could be an investment of money, time, travel, energy, etc.)

I bet you expect me to answer this one with “strength training” and I am indeed tempted… It has been a great investment (though I still have far to go). Strong legs are fast legs and strong arms are fast hands! But in truth, the best hockey investment I have made so far was helping with our 2015 sport court build and install. Playing on a fast bottom twice a week has made a huge difference to my personal fitness and puck skills, and also significantly upped the level of our club which I also benefit from. It was worth every hour!

What is the book (or books) you’ve recommend most to your team mates and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life as an athlete?

I love this question so much! I have a deep love for books, and am constantly reading… mostly things unrelated to sport, training, or competition. But a few that have been influential to me as an athlete are:

The Art of Learning, by Josh Waitzkin. Josh was a world champion chess player, and later became a world champion martial artist. In this book, he explores the lessons he learned *about learning* in becoming a master at two very disparate-seeming things. I recommend this book to everyone. There are a lot of take-aways from this book, but to mention one: Waitzkin describes “learning the rules to forget the rules.” The idea here is that you practice the tiny moves, the basic plays, whatever the fundamentals of your activity are, repeatedly and carefully — making sure you get the analysis right every time. If you do this well, you reach a point where you know these fundamentals so well that it becomes something like intuition. You have a “feel” for the game, or you just “know” what’s going to happen. Waitzkin describes chess masters being able to take one glance at a board and describe the feel of the game and predict the outcome. This is also the point when you can demonstrate real artistry. I think about this a lot with regard to underwater hockey. What are the concrete individual skills that I should hone? And what are the team tactics we should learn as “rules” together in order to be able to “forget the rules”?

The Sports Gene, by David Epstein. This is a captivating exploration of what genetic factors predispose different kinds of people for different kinds of athletic activities. There is a lot of great sports narrative in this book, which just got me excited about training and competition and getting science nerdy about both. But there is also a big practical takeaway. It’s not that your genes predestine you for certain activities or a certain level of success, but that understanding your genotype can help you target your training and make those training hours more efficient! (The discussion of fast- to slow-twitch muscle ratio and low- and high-response to training load were particularly interesting to me.)

Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall. Maybe not a lot of practical application to my day-to-day hockey training, but this book helped me fall in love with running. And my running shoes!

In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your game?

I have actually experienced several paradigm shifts in my hockey game over the past few years. I actually think its the *realization* that there are still paradigm shifts and giant leaps to be made that has led to the most improvement in my game, because I am actively looking for those opportunities. Also, having a really brilliant buddy to provide external analysis and nudge me in the right direction is invaluable.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused in a game, or have made a big mistake while playing, what do you do?

When I feel overwhelmed in a game, I pick one teammate to focus on. I think about her greatest strengths in the game, and try to figure out how I can set her up to make use of them. When my team is struggling, it’s always tempting to throw myself into huge heroic *individual* efforts. But usually playing better *as a team* makes the most difference to both our score and my emotional state. Focusing on one teammate feels manageable, and helps me make sure that my efforts (even if I do go a little beast-mode) are in line with the team. It’s also incredibly rewarding when I see that teammate shine.

Paul van den Brakel

Paul has been playing hockey for longer than I have been born. He volunteered at Worlds in 1988. At Europeans, he took silver with the Dutch Men Elite in 1997 and gold in 1999. He also took silver at Worlds with the Dutch Master in 2008 and gold in 2011. He has been coaching the Dutch B-Selection, the Spanish Elite Men (2008-2009), the Dutch Elite Women (2015) as well as the German Elite Women (2016-2018).

What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made in terms of hockey? (Could be an investment of money, time, travel, energy, etc.)

All the travels I’ve made, first going to all tournaments in Holland, then in Europe, and my travels to Interclubs in South Africa. Also, training at other hockey clubs, playing as often as possible with other players and playing a tournament with the Barbarians in 2001. This tournament was a huge eyeopener for me. At the time, I was trained to work in a tight training and strategy regime in the Elite team. Playing Barbarians was 180 degrees different, we partied every night and got drunk every night! We didn’t talk a lot about strategy, it was all a matter of go out and play because every player had the skills to solve his own problems. So….. if the mindset is there, the individual skills are good, there is joy around, a team can bring more into the game than just working in a military based doctrine.

What is the book (or books) you’ve recommend most to your team mates and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life as an athlete?

Aj, there is one book from Greg Bear, and one line really caught me: You are what you dare to be. That sentence is still my tantra when I feel to scared to do something.

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success as a hockey player?

Not being selected for a few tournaments really made me a stronger player. It was a battle between the disappointments and the will to succeed. My will won! For example, I was not selected for the 1996 Durban team. At the time, a few former top players came back to play, and the coach selected them. Doing the right things, it still takes time to get selected. You have to be much better than the players who have been selected earlier, before you are being selected. A coach wants predictability in a player, so a new player really needs to stand out before you’re in!

And… another big game changer for me was Worlds 2000 in Hobart where we more or less went with 10 +2 players and I was #11 or #12. We had one of our top ten players out and in the hospital for a night. But he came back and played the next day nevertheless. As substitute, it really made me feel useless and not good enough. In the end, I did get to play some games but I played shit. I had lost all my confidence. When I became coach of the Spanish team for the 2008 season, we worked out a rotation system in which players didn’t get a feeling of being #11 or #12. And you could see the team grow and becoming so strong that even in cross final games, it didn’t influence who was in and who was out. The team was so much stronger with 12 players feeling equally strong (despite their different levels of play).

In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your game?

I’ve changed my thinking how a team can be successful, and now believe in skills first. If you have the right skills you improve the chance for success more than with tactics, mentality and fitness. With better skills you can make more time for yourself to make the right decision. By gaining just an additional second, you can get the puck exactly right to your teammate and she will have an additional second to make the right decision, too. This will get the puck further into the game. By the time the puck gets to teammate #3, she should have three seconds before an opponent is onto her.

What advice would you give to a motivated talented hockey player about to enter the sport at elite level? What advice should they ignore?

Play often and everywhere! And while doing so, write down your experiences in a playerbook. Write down what worked and what didn’t, write down which strategy your opponent used and also your feelings, thoughts, and emotions. Then, keep re-reading it before practices and tournaments. It will help you change things that don’t work for you, and allow you to focus on the things you do best. With respect to bad advice: I think, there is no bad advice. But it’s good to carefully think about whose advice you want to take.

What are bad recommendations you hear in hockey?

Don’t follow the strategy blindly. Keep thinking for yourself, especially when you are still young. Experiment as much as possible during training. However, during competition, it’s time to follow the strategy, but also to add your skills.

What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

Before a big tournament I will be practicing jinxs [dummies] 24/7! I can’t even walk down the road without doing a jinx. I’ve jinxed cars, lanterns, walls, people… A bit embarrassing it is, but oh well. It’s for a good cause… Also simply imagining jinx in your brain helps to do the move, too.

Additionally, I have practiced my flicks millions of times. Both in the pool and in visualization. Till I could flick exactly how I wanted to in every situation. And one of my teammates helped me greatly by teaching me to make small flicks. Not the long ones that are easily caught, but small movement flicks into every direction — high or low, hard or soft. Just what is required at that moment to get the puck to your teammate, or into the goal!

Marta Pons de Molina

Marta is the secretary of the Underwater Hockey World Commission of CMAS, the world underwater federation. She is also active for the Spanish Federation of Underwater Activities (FEDAS), her national federation. In both roles, she contributes tremendously to organizing and running the sport, for example, from organizing Junior Worlds in Spain in 2015 to hosting Europeans in 2019.

What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made in terms of hockey? (Could be an investment of money, love, time, travel, energy, etc.)

It was in 2009, when I decided to offer myself to become a member of a commission to try to bring the world of UWH back together after the sad split in 2006. We continued to make it grow all around the world through all these years. And I think we worked quite well! The hugest short term investment… was everything involved in organizing the Age Groups World Championship in Castellon in 2015.

What is the book (or books) you’ve recommend most to anyone playing hockey and why?

Books, which I recommend to everyone, not only athletes, are those which, I think, can show how to face life itself with courage, love and responsibility. Because I think that the way we face life is the way we face sport, work or anything else. There’s a book (far better than the film) that is called “Viven”. It’s a lesson on how to face an incredible terrible situation as a team.

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success in your work within a hockey federation?

Every failure teaches a lesson in life that one has to learn. Always.

If you could have a gigantic billboard at any pool in this world with anything on it — metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to thousands of athletes and federation members — what would it say and why?

Live as you play. Play as you live. Play in the spirit of sportsmanlike. In both of them, be honest and be fair. Practice the temperance. Treat others as you want to be treated.

In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your relationship to the sport or your work within CMAS or FEDAS?

I tend to think that someday we will be recognized and loved by the people. And that if I don’t keep pushing here in Spain, the hockey will fade year by year…

What advice would you give to a motivated talented hockey player about to enter the sport at elite level? What advice should they ignore?

Don´t let anybody discourage you and keep learning from those awesome players in the world. And enjoy playing. If you want to play well, you must enjoy and love the game.
Ignore advices on what “tricks” can make you win a game without deserving it — like playing dark and dirty hockey.

What are bad recommendations you hear in hockey?

That you need to win at any costs. Or that you should do the necessary to get any player mad and dismissed. Both of them are really bad recommendations.

When you feel overwhelmed, for example, by work for the federation, what do you do?

First I need to think: “I am going to quit. I can’t go on. I will quit.” But then, I think that I still can help to make that beautiful sport grow. I recall all the good and beautiful people that I have met through it. I close my eyes and think….Bah! It’s not that bad! And I can go ahead until the next championship! (And so on… it has been going like this for already 10 years!)

When I think I have made a big mistake, the worst part is forgiving myself. I always think it’s bigger or worse than what the rest of the world thinks.

What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

I can’t watch a game when Spain is playing. Nor even hear the noise at the pool! I don´t love it. But I can’t help it!

What is the number 1 reason with which you explain to someone who does not know the game why you support it so much?

Because is a great, hard sport with plenty of great people where the atmosphere is different from other sports that have already lost all the sportsmanlike spirit.

 

Photo Credit: Gabriel Holguin — Muchas Gracias, Gabriel!

Tribe of Mentors: Part I