Beverly Priestman

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Our Great Coach on this episode is soccer coach Beverly Priestman.

Bev grew up in England where she completed a bachelor's degree in science and football from Liverpool University.

In her early 20’s she moved to New Zealand as head of development for the national football federation.

She then moved to Canada as an Assistant to the National Womens team coach, as well coaching the Canadian Womens team at the FIFA U-17 World Cups. From there she returned to the UK to work as an Assistant for Phil Neville who was coaching the National Womens team and helped guide them to fourth place at the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup in France.

Then in 2020 she was appointed Head Coach of the Canadian Womens team and famously led them to a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics.

Bev is a coach, who at only 35 years old, already has almost 20 years experience across 3 countries. This perspective, coupled with her energy gives her a depth of wisdom that is motivating and inspiring.

She is strongly values led, and she talks a lot about the role that bravery has played in her life and how it helped shape the focus of her team, so that they could fulfill their mission of changing the colour of the medal, at the Tokyo Olympics.

She is also confident, and yet still humble enough to talk about her to talk about her emotional and intellectual development as a coach.

Some of the other highlights of the interview for me were:

How in high-pressure situations she sees her job as lightening the mood so that people can perform at their optimal level, and the story she shares around how she did this in the Olympic village the day before the gold medal match.

How getting herself out of her comfort zone, and diversifying her experiences allowed her to grow in confidence and belief.

How she used the pandemic lock down to self-develop by focusing on who she was a person, her values and the team culture she wanted to develop.

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at paul@thegreatcoachespodcast.com or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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