Transcription of Carrie McCusker for the show Youth Sports #215
Lisa: Today across the microphone from me, I have an individual that I’ve heard much about, in many different areas, and I’m really pleased that I have the chance to spend time with her. This is Carrie McCusker, who is an endurance coach based in Cape Elizabeth. She has been an athlete her entire life. Starting with youth soccer, Carrie spent time on just about every playing field surface. She competed at national events as a Nordic’s Gear during high school in Alaska, and then at Middlebury, in Vermont. After earning a Master’s degree in Education, she combined her love of teaching with her passion for athletics, and become a full-time professional coach. She lives in Cape Elizabeth with her two children and her husband Tom. Nice to have you hear.
Carrie: Thank you. I’m very happy to be here.
Lisa: I must tell you that your name has come up in multiple times. We had Linda Banks on the show, and she was mentioning that you coach her, and I know kids that you’ve coached in ultimate frisbee. I was like, “Who is this Carrie McCusker person? We have to bring in her in. She’s so amazing that everybody loves her.” Here you are.
Carrie: Thank you.
Lisa: I’m very glad that you’re doing what you do, because you must be doing a good enough job, that people are really inspired.
Carrie: That’s good to hear.
Lisa: Now that we’ve given you that, we’re going to humble you a little bit, and just go back to your beginnings. You’ve been playing since you were a kid.
Carrie: I have. Yes. One of my earliest memories was playing soccer, and I played soccer my whole youth. I remember being on the playing field … This is true, that I remember this, with the ball rolling down the field at the end of the game. I hadn’t touched it the whole game, and I kicked it. I just remember this feeling, literally, of being part of that team, and of course, that was the only thing I had done. I was just this tiny little girl, and at that time too, there were probably one or two girls and a lot of boys. Anyway, I’ve been hooked on sports ever since.
Lisa: Where did the ball go after that?
Carrie: I think the game was literally over.
Lisa: Just the fact that you touched it.
Carrie: I think it was rolling, and I got one touch, and then the game ended. To me, I remember that moment of kicking it. Yeah.
Lisa: That’s pretty great, that that is your memory, that that like, “Oh! I touched it. There’s the ball.” As opposed to, “Well, I remember when we won this game, or we won that game.”
Carrie: Right, right. I think I was pretty small, I knew you run around the field, and you kick the ball, but yeah. It’s stuck with me, so that’s something.
Lisa: Where did you grow up?
Carrie: I grew up in New Hampshire, until eighth grade, and then I was in Alaska.
Lisa: Tell me about that, because when I was growing up … I’m around your age, and when I was growing up in Maine, there wasn’t a lot of girls’ soccer.
Carrie: Yeah. That is interesting, and I only reflected on that later in life. What was it that I was exposed all the way through? I do have to give some credit, I think, to my parents, and my dad, who often was the coach. I got involved, obviously, really young, and I remember playing basketball briefly, probably third grade, and again, it was like two girls and all boys. I don’t remember ever thinking about that aspect of it. It just was what it was. There were soccer camps and teams, and everything. Yeah.
Lisa: That’s the opposite of my experience when I was young. I think I was in third grade, and I had this vivid memory of being one of two girls in the entire gymnasium at the Yarmouth Elementary School, playing basketball, and I was so overwhelmed by all these balls flying at me, and the fact that I was the only one of two girls. I just left and I never came back.
Carrie: Yeah.
Lisa: Maybe if my dad had been there, saying, “Hey, this is normal. It’s fine. Just pick up a basketball. It’s no big deal.”
Carrie: Right.
Lisa: Maybe it would have been a completely different experience.
Carrie: Right. That’s possible. Yeah. I know. It is interesting how those things, when you’re young, you’re not thinking about what influences are causing you to take a certain path.
Lisa: How did your family end up in Alaska?
Carrie: My dad was an environmental engineer consultant, and had an opportunity to open a branch of the office he was working for, in Anchorage, Alaska. He took it, and I could say that I was not very happy.
Lisa: That’s tough. As an eighth grader?
Carrie: It was awful. Yeah, so I was going into eighth grade. It was horrible. Now I can look back and say that it was an experience that changed who I am for the better, but at the time, yeah. Eighth grade. It was horrible.
Lisa: I have a child who is going into high school, and if we had talked about moving her during middle school, or even now, she would not have felt very positive about that.
Carrie: No.
Lisa: How did that become an experience that changed you?
Carrie: First, it was literal culture shock. I moved from a tiny town in New Hampshire to Anchorage, Alaska, which is actually a city. Even though it is Alaska, there are 7 high schools in this city. It’s big. It’s a school with city issues. That was a bit of a shock. It really took me one year to find friends, and find my way around, and then it was completely fine. I think when you’re different in some way, you adapt … I don’t know. You’re sort of an outsider for a little while, so I think that probably changed me a little bit, and how … You know what I mean? I didn’t have the same friends, I started all over, so I wouldn’t say that I reinvented myself, but it caused me to change as a person. Geographically, I was in Alaska then. That’s where I started skiing. The other thing about high school in Alaska. They’re very well-funded, because of the oil money, so I took Japanese, and German. They had tons of courses. The sports are well-funded. The facilities are beautiful, so it’s a really great place to be in that regard.
Lisa: That’s actually fascinating. I had never thought about that at all.
Carrie: Right.
Lisa: I know that over here, and you’ve been a Nordic coach, Nordic skiing is very well-loved here in Maine. We now have the Maine Winter Sports Center, so it’s gotten a lot more attention than it ever did. I wouldn’t consider it overly well-funded.
Carrie: No. It just lost funding, right? Didn’t they have to find new funding?
Lisa: They did, actually. Yeah.
Carrie: No. No, definitely not. Look what’s happening in schools. What’s getting cut, or attempted to be cut are sports, and extras, right? Art. That never happened there. For ski practice, we would literally go out of the building, and ski. There were lighted trails, because it was dark. The sun set at 2:00. We would go ski right out the door, so it was amazing.
Lisa: Nordic skiing is an interesting sport, because we all think of it as a highly individual sport, which it is.
Carrie: Right.
Lisa: There’s also a very strong sense of team.
Carrie: Definitely.
Lisa: It’s dark, it’s cold, you finish, it’s late. If it’s an afternoon practice, because I’ve done this. I know. I’ve been there.
Carrie: You’ve been there, yes.
Lisa: Yeah. You get on the ski bus. It sounds like you didn’t have to get on a ski bus, but-
Carrie: We did, to go to races and things, so I appreciate the bus. Yeah.
Lisa: You actually have to find some comradery with these other people, who have just basically stripped down to their skivvies to go out and ski on the course.
Carrie: Completely. Right. I think early on, when I started skiing there, I liked the team. I don’t think I did it because … I like to ski, but it was really about being with my peers, and being on the team, because it was a great team. I think, eventually, as you get into the sport, you start to be more passionate about the sport itself, but yeah. High school sports. It’s a lot about being on the team, and being with your friends.
Lisa: Did that help you, as you were coming in as an eighth-grader? Did that help you to have this love of sports, to have been a soccer, to be a-
Carrie: Absolutely. Without a doubt. I got on the soccer team. I actually was a gymnast when I moved there. They had a gymnastics team. I got on that team. I ran, and yes. Yeah. I was a three season athlete. Definitely, you find your friends. I really do think that’s a big part of sports for youth, being part of a team, and you’ve had that experience too. It’s a good thing.
Lisa: I do love that part of things. I think that when all of my kids, my two that are now in college and the one that’s starting high school, it is very important who their teammates are. They’ve made fast friends with people that they’ve been with over the years. I know that there are people who have switched from one sport to another, because their friend went to a different sport. That’s completely outside of the control of parents, which is interesting, because youth sports has very much become about parenting, in some ways.
Carrie: Unfortunately, yeah. Yes.
Lisa: You have a couple of kids. How old are your kids?
Carrie: 20 and 16.
Lisa: What’s your experience with youth sports been?
Carrie: Both of my kids ended up playing ultimate, so they’re both playing high-level ultimate now, which is a sport that has grown a lot. My daughter played soccer all the way through, and lacrosse, and my son, he swam. Competitively, they both swam. I think they dappled a little more in different sports, and I feel like there was a lot of pressure. When you’re cutting kids from a soccer team at age 11, I think it’s ridiculous, personally. I also remember, I let my kids, I let them choose somewhat what they wanted to do, and I think that they need to have some free time. I guess I’m not a big advocate of the year-round soccer going through the winter thing, unless they’re really, really passionate about it, and that’s all they want to do. I feel like there is a parental push to get your kids into these things, and I don’t know. Time goes by really fast, and then you look back at it and think, “Okay. Where are we now? Was that a really good thing, through your entire childhood, or wasn’t it? Did we have time to do other things?” I don’t know.
I also see in the sports science that it’s not a good thing to specialize when you’re really young. How many of those kids are going to go on and be Olympic soccer players? Not very many. You have to be doing it for the love, and the passion of it. Again, it goes back to, like we both say, we enjoyed being on a team, and what did that really give us? What did you take away from that? That’s what I want my kids to walk away with. You want them to be healthy, and fit, and to care about living well, but do you really care if they won, in the end? I guess I look back at it and I think, parent should back off a little, and then let the kids … Get them all involved.
What I’m seeing in ultimate frisbee is happening is, there are no cuts. You can play. You can come out and play if you’ve never thrown. You will be welcomed onto the field. I was coaching the Cape Elizabeth girls this year, and the first game this season, one of the girls came out and said, “Wait. What are the rules?” I said, “Okay. Here’s the basic. You score down there. The disc will turn over.” I gave her the 30 second, because she wanted to go, and she said, “All right.” I go, “They’ll help you. You’ll figure it out.” She did. She went on now, and played in the Youth Club Championships in Minnesota that just happened last weekend. That doesn’t mean she’s a super high level player now, but she got drawn in. Again, you watch that sport, and it’s vigorous, and demanding, and yet, they love it. It’s a self-reffed game, too, so it is an interesting game when you compare it to the way we’ve manipulated soccer and hockey.
Lisa: Tell me what you mean about the manipulation of sports.
Carrie: If you juxtapose ultimate and take soccer, for example. Ultimate, we’re accepting everyone. Soccer, we’re cutting people, we’re making A and B teams. That’s parent-driven. Those choices are parent-driven, there’s refs on the field. I feel like the kids want to play. They just want to get out there and play, and they love it, and all of the good things that come out of playing a sport. I guess I feel like we’re sort of stomping on that, by controlling the game so much.
Lisa: It is interesting, this whole idea of self-reffing, because there is something that goes on when it’s back-lot baseball, and the kids have to decide, “Was that an out? Was it fowl? What was that?” As opposed to some other bigger authority coming in and saying, “That was this, and this is this.” It is a very interesting contrast.
Carrie: Right, and ultimate frisbee is based on spirit of the game, which actually is a defined concept, and it doesn’t just mean being like, “Yay! We’re happy.” It means honoring the other players on the field, so if I call a fowl, and you disagree with me, you can state that, you can test the fowl, and it will go back. Occasionally, it becomes a little more sparring, but in general, the game itself relies on that. It changes so much about the way players treat each other. I’ve seen a little bit in soccer, where you play a kind of nasty team, say, and I’m like, “Where does that come from?” When you know that that team is mean. In 12-year-olds, 11-year-olds, where it’s like, “How does that happen? Is that trickling down? Is that an attitude?” You don’t see that in ultimate, because it’s the whole concept of the game.
Lisa: What you’re describing sounds like musicians jamming, where you bring together a group of musicians, and they jam on the field. Ultimate frisbee players are playing as a musical team.
Carrie: Right, and I like that analogy, because those musicians coming in have amazing strengths, that you get to highlight in their performance, and it’s the same with ultimate. You see amazing athletes out there on the field, and you highlight each other’s strengths, definitely.
Lisa: A member of our household this year, he was a senior, and he had played lacrosse all the way up through. Went to Cape Elizabeth, graduated. He loved ultimate. He ended up just walk on. “Last year of my high school career. I’m gonna play ultimate frisbee.” He felt like such a part of it, and for him, it was always about the team. It was always about his friends. His dad would tell me, “If he would get tired, he’d just say to the coach, ‘I want to come out.'” When it wasn’t funny, they didn’t want to do it anymore. When he started ultimate frisbee, it was so fun for him. He didn’t want to miss game. He was willing to play game after game after game.
Carrie: That’s so great. Right.
Lisa: Isn’t that what we really want? Is kids to-
Carrie: Yes. That’s exactly what we want. Look how many kids are playing. The team in Cape Elizabeth, anyway. What did we have? We were able to have like 4 teams. It’s a tiny town, so there a lot of kids going out for it, and you do have to say, “Why? What is it?” It’s still very athletic, so anyone who hasn’t seen the game should watch it. It’s an extremely athletic, amazing sport to watch. Yes. Just that little difference in the way that it’s approached.
Lisa: It’s fascinating too, to me, because you have been an athlete at every level. You are a coach now. I know that you coach Linda Banks. You coach triathletes. You work with people all over the world. You’re describing this very conscious decision to play almost the anti-sport, I want to call it. It’s a sport, it’s a high level sport, but it’s so opposite of what most high level athletes go into it.
Carrie: Interesting. Yeah. I think that when a lot of high level athletes are passionate about their sport, and I guess that’s all I’m saying with youth sport, that you want that passion and that fun. I might be very hardcore when I got train or race in a triathlon, but I love it. I love it. I think people I work with, a lot of them are busy people with families, and maybe they were high level athletes, and now they have full-time careers, or they never were. They incorporate that into their lives, and they love it. It’s on their own terms, really. That’s what I feel like about ultimate. So much with youth, we’re trying to tell them, “This is what you should do. This is how you do it.” They’re capable of making decisions. I guess it’s sort of the same thing. It’s just being passionate, and enjoying what you’re doing.
Lisa: I know your husband Tom. He’s a surgeon. He actually did a very mainstream educational thing. He’s doing a very mainstream, high-energy job, and yet you met on the ultimate frisbee field.
Carrie: We did.
Lisa: Here’s another one that … He could’ve gone in a direction, but he went in the same direction you went, and you met up on the field.
Carrie: Completely. Yes. Right. Ultimate is very popular in colleges and universities, and in Portland, now there were, I think, 34 summer league teams this year. It definitely is attracting a lot of people. I’m sure Tom could talk for a long time about his love of ultimate. He just played out in the Grand Masters Nationals. There’s just so many things in the sport that are great.
Lisa: Here’s another interview where I feel like I could just keep talking forever, because there’s so many things we could discuss.
Carrie: I know.
Lisa: How can people find out about the work that you’re doing, Carrie, and the coaching that you do?
Carrie: Yeah, so I coach through a company here in this area, called PBM Coaching, and we have a website.
Lisa: The website is?
Carrie: It’s pbmcoaching.com.
Lisa: I like your approach. I think with anything, it’s about finding things that we feel passionate about, that we want to get up every day and do, whether it’s a child or an adult, it doesn’t really matter. We have to want to do something, and then fitting it into one’s life. That’s so important. I encourage people to reach out to you, Carrie McCusker, to find out about the coaching that you’re doing. We’ve been speaking with Carrie McCusker, who is an endurance coach based in Cape Elizabeth. I really appreciate your coming in and talking with us today.
Carrie: Thank you. That was a lot of fun.