 Welcome to the sports playbook where we discuss solutions to issues that impact sports. I'm your host, Angela Hazelett. Today's guest is Katie Baker, the sporting director for USA Curling. We are here to discuss Curling in the Spotlight and Olympic and Paralympic sports. Welcome, Katie. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Katie, I know you have a really interesting work history and going from working almost 12 years for the national governing body or NGB of the sport of triathlon to 11 years in sport performance for the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee or USOPC. Now as of July of 2022, you're back to working with another national governing body for the sport of curling. So how has this career trajectory informed your approach in your current role as sporting director of USA Curling? Yeah, no, that's a great question. I would say I was fortunate at USA Triathlon to have some great mentors around me, both learning like best practices in terms of sport performance at the highest level without taking into consideration the sport specific information that needs to be applied. So fortunate that I again worked with some amazing people and learned a lot at that during that time. Then moving over to the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee first starting on the Olympic side and working with a portfolio of Olympic sports. I was the point of contact for five Olympic sports that all a couple of them manage Paralympic programs, but really being the point of contact for all things for the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, but more specifically in the performance realm and then moving over and focusing solely on the Paralympic programs that NGBs were managing. So it's been fantastic in terms of moving me along and educating me and me learning about a sport at the highest level, but also I really appreciate the time that I spent with Paralympics and learning about the Paralympic movement. And just understanding from an NGB perspective, the challenges that you deal with on a day to day basis at a national governing body, as well as stepping away that bigger global look from the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee. And so now coming back to the NGB, being able to A, see what we did at Triathlon and trying to put some of that apply some of those learnings with USA curling, but also working at the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, understanding resources that are available to us as national governing bodies and really being able to probably a lot of my former colleagues are tired of hearing from me because I ping them quite honestly in terms of, hey, we need some help with this or we need some support in this area. So it's really set me up first, I hope for success. I mean, proof will be in the pudding down the road. It's only three months into the job. But just having a real, I feel a clear understanding of, OK, what do we really need to focus in on hone in on what do the priorities need to be in terms of really writing the ship here, you know, at USA curling in terms of high performance. And you have a good solid network, as you mentioned, to lean into and kind of learn some best practices. So I'm sure your time there and previous positions were very valuable to contribute for that. Do you. So you've had a history of working with both Olympic and Paralympic athletes. Are you working with both Olympic and Paralympic athletes now? Or do you work for kind of one group? Yeah, I mean, I oversee my my role overseas all sport. So that's Olympic, Paralympic, you know, coaching, education will fall under me. Now, I haven't even scraped the surface there yet, as well as athlete development, which is another area that needs a lot of attention in our sport. So right now, the focus has really been on the Olympic and Paralympic program. So, yeah, I mean, I ideally in an ideal world, we'll get to a point where the athletes, whether it's ideal or not, they're only coming to me with like major issues, but they are working with we've got the foundation bill. We've got all of the policies, procedures in place that there's no questions about how athletes qualify for teams, how they're getting funded to X, Y or Z, how they access certain resources in the science area, like nutrition, sports, psychology, strength and conditioning. There's no questions about that. They understand how that happens. And these aren't arbitrary decisions that are being made, but it's based on performance on the field of play. So we've got that built out, which is what I'm working on right now. But then they're only coming to me with issues, which hopefully they won't have a lot of. So really directing them to the directors of the respective programs, and then those things getting filtered to me or them coming directly to me if they need to. So, you know, in a weird way, it's like, yes, I deal, I'll deal with the athletes. And well, I want to hear from them in terms of an understanding that's what I've spent a lot of time the first three months, really listening to athletes, listening to coaches, you know, what's working, what's not working, what needs to be improved here, where are the opportunities, where do we just need to get better and really kind of being able then to apply what I'm what I'm hearing from both the coaches and the athletes. So even though you have over 20 years working in Olympics and Paralympic and industry, there's still a learning curve because it's a new sport, a new organization is what I'm hearing you say. And is there any challenges in kind of switching hats as far as communication or perception of working? There's a lot of governing agencies that you have to report to or requirements that you have through the USOPC, through international bodies. Is there anything in regards to the governance structure that makes your job particularly challenging? I mean, I will say, I mean, you bring up a good point in terms of when I was at USA Trafflon, there was no safe sport, there was no center for safe sport. And so I think that that plays into everything in this day and age and being aware of that center and why it exists and the policies in place that ensure that we are keeping athletes safe. So that wasn't in, you know, that didn't exist back, you know, in the early 2000s. And so I think whether it's a, you know, I don't want to say a hindrance because it's necessary, but there are additional things that need to happen around safe sport. And that's I wouldn't say that that's coming from a I mean, it's that's being dictated basically by Congress, you know, Congress down to the USOPC, which then gets directed down to the national governing bodies. And then I guess in addition to that, some of the fall out, unfortunately, of, you know, things that have happened the last four years, six years with with sport and what happened at gymnastics is a lot of compliance requirements that, again, you the Congress has mandated the USOPC has oversight over these sport organizations that they just have a little bit more of an understanding of the day to day business of NGBs. So they put a lot of and they being USOPC has put a lot of compliance requirements in place to ensure that, OK, all of not just in the safe sport realm, but in other areas of business and just general practice governance that they're adhering to what the USOPC is is really requiring them to do. Now, that's fairly new, the audit and compliance piece of things. So we'll go through that process next year of a USOPC compliance audit. And just again, going through, are we meeting all of their requirements to be a certified national governing body? And that's also something new that I did not experience or was fairly I would have been removed from probably a triathlon, but with a smaller national governing body like curling, like it's going to hit everyone's plates in terms of everyone, you know, everyone coming together to ensure that we're meeting all of those requirements. Yeah, and the US Center for Safe Sport is an organization that provides training and resources with the endeavor to end abuse in sports. So that's what you're kind of referencing there. And it has to be mentioned. I know USA curling is going through some challenges right now with the CEO, Jeff Plush, who's come under scrutiny for allegations of failing to act when confronted with allegations of abuse and misconduct that occurred under his watch as commissioner of the National Women's Soccer League. Your board of directors has released a statement of support for the CEO's continued leadership with USA curling, but there's some conflict with the USA curling diversity task force who's called for removal of his leadership. So what I'd like to ask you is, what do you see as your role in eliminating abuse in sport in your work with high performing athletes? Yeah, I mean, I guess there as as we've spoken about, I mean, there needs to be a relationship with the athletes in terms of building trust with them that they feel comfortable and they know that you are available to listen to their concerns. And that has as we spoke about earlier, something that I'm currently doing is meeting with all of our national team athletes and discussing where we're at in terms of what's working with the program, what's not, but that's more, you know, in the space of performance. Like, what are we doing? Well, what do we need? What's where do we where can we get better? Where's their room for improvement so that you guys can succeed at the highest level? So I guess in terms of making myself available, like I'm going to take every call, every email, any any type of outreach from an athlete who just wants to have my ear for whatever it may be to hear that if they do have concerns. So I think everyone has a part in a lot of it's listening. I mean, we do have the duty to report to the center if, you know, allegations are brought forward, whether they're based on, you know, you've experienced it firsthand and witnessed it, or if it's just someone passing it on to you, like I have an obligation to report these things to the center, which definitely would do moving forward. Fortunately, I've never been in that situation and hopefully never have to be in that situation. But I think it comes back to, you know, trust like athletes trusting that that I will do the right thing at the end of the day. Absolutely. And I know a lot of states have legislation that require mandatory reports for people who work with youth. But this is an interesting obligation that requires mandatory reporting for any of the athletes who are part of the membership of USA Curling and other national governing bodies. Let's talk about mental health and athlete mental health, because that's another issue that's been spotlighted recently and of concern. I know the USOPC provides high performing athletes access to sports psychologist. But what other measures does USA Curling take or encourage for its athletes' mental well-being? Yeah, I mean, the USOPC has really done a great job of building out their mental health resources to athletes. And I don't know exactly when, but maybe four years ago, they created an athlete services department really to support athletes directly. And through that department, there are many resources built out in the mental health space. And in addition to that, there are providers that can, are available, in terms of mental health crises or not even crises, if they need to reach out to someone and have a conversation. And so the USOPC has done a great job of building out that group of individuals to support athletes in more of the mental health space. And again, doing a lot, just trying to understand if it's in sport, if it's like at retirement, like what can we do to better support these athletes so that they're not in a place where, they're not feeling supported and floundering quite honestly, in terms of like, what are the next steps in my life and like, I've identified as an athlete my whole life and now I'm retiring and who am I? And there's, we see a lot of that. And so there's been great, great support in that space at the USOPC. Another thing that they've done is they've added, I think in Tokyo, a little over a year ago, and then most recently Beijing at the Olympic and Paralympic Games, they had actual mental health officers in each village. So those individuals were available if athletes needed support in that space, aside from sports psychology. And I know the village that I worked in in Beijing, we had an awesome volunteer out of Cleveland who worked with the athletes and was again, just available. It's nothing that's pushed on them, but they're made aware that that resource is available. And if they had a bad race and they aren't feeling great, like again, it's sometimes a fine line of what sports psychology and what's more of that psychological support that they need. But this individual was available for them, just like every other village, they had someone supporting them in that space. Yeah, and by sports psychology, you mean kind of motivating athletes to perform at their peak versus psychological counseling and support for their mental health and wellbeing. Exactly. And so you have a lot of athletes who have different needs, they're spread out throughout the country, some of them maybe live in different areas or remote locations. So there's the lack of community for some of these athletes. Do you feel like that contributes to challenges with mental health? Do you mean on the broader, like Olympic, Paralympic scale? Or... Yeah. You know what, I think that it was very new when it was introduced, this idea of like, okay, it's not just sports psychology, but it's also like providing support to an athlete holistically and recognizing, okay, yes, there's the athlete, but there's also the human being. And so I think it was a little bit slow in terms of athletes like engaging in that. And I don't wanna say accepting it, but acknowledging, okay, there is a need here, but I think that athletes have really taken to it. And to your point, I mean, knowing athletes are spread out and it's, everything's very, we're a large country geographically and people are all over the place. But I think that if the athlete reaches out, the support's gonna be there one way or another. And it is definitely, I know it's, I mean, not that I've had a personal conversation, but I know I've heard on smaller calls with CEO Sarah Herschel and that that's definitely a priority for her is to support athletes holistically. Recognizing, yes, we wanna support performance on the field of play. And we do have a mission, or the USOPC has a mission of sustained competitive excellence, but also supporting athletes holistically. So it's kind of expanded a little bit beyond just the performance on the field of play. We'll know if that answers your question very well. I think it's a broad answer on that you're leveraging opportunities to connect people to the resources that they need. And there's not as much of a geographic barrier, perhaps as there has been historically. So I think that's encouraging. Let's talk a little bit about the growth of the sport. So nearly 63% of your members are between the ages of 36 to 49 years old. 21% are between 50 to 64 years of age. So it's always crucial to get a younger age groups to ensure that a sport will be sustained for future generations. So how are you looking to drive growth for that younger generation? And this is curling specific. Curling specific. That is something that is on the list of things that we need to dig into. Curling, curling is an interesting, has been an interesting sport for me to like really like dig into and understand. And my first, second week, I guess the second and third week on the job, like scheduling calls with each of our skips. And if you don't know the sport of curling, skips are essentially like, almost like your captain slash coach on the ice. They're the people that are really driving the strategy in the game and determining what shots are taken and this and that. And so they're kind of like your leader on each of the teams. And our teams are four to five individuals brought together to be on this team. So having conversations with each of the skips on all of the teams that compose the national team. So that's from like our adult seniors down to like under 25s to our juniors. Having an understanding from them of, okay, how did you find the sport of curling? And I would say, well, definitely every single one of them, oh, my parents played, my grandparents played. So curling is definitely this like generational sport that gets like, you know, passed down from generation to generation. And so trying to dig into a little bit more of like, how do we pull in first timers that aren't introduced to the sport? That's gonna definitely be a challenge for me just to grow because we don't have a large athlete pool. And so, I mean, we need to expose more people to the sport and we need to just build up our pool. I think that the way that we're gonna do that is through the club system, clubs all over the country, just doing a better job of communicating with the clubs and providing like, well, I think it's up to the clubs to determine what type of programming they're offering to their members, but also just trying to prove that there's value in some of the programs that we can showcase to them so that they can pass that on. So I think that's one thing, is just again, better communication with our clubs and our regions quite frankly to drive some of that. And just again, providing more programming to athletes and also again, recruiting these first timers into the sport. The other thing that has been fascinating to me is coaching or lack thereof. There really is not a strong coaching network and I've had many conversations, people have reached out to me within the curling community that aren't necessarily on our national team and having discussions with them around, okay, where you're from, your area of the country, what does the coaching look like? And that piece is very, it's not very strong or built out and what can we do there to, okay, let's give our coaches or potential coaches the skill set to do more coaching. And I think if some of that existed, you're gonna be able to pull people in as well. Historically, it's been like, oh, it's like beer league, like we go and we curl and then we sit around and we drink beer and there's always gonna be those people and there's nothing wrong with that, but then also how can we provide some support to these people who wanna take it to the next level? So still working out what that's exactly going to look like in terms of building membership. I mean, I will say one thing that has helped is, well, I'm a team Schuster winning the gold medal in 2018 in Pyeongchang. I think that from what I've heard from a lot of people, like, oh yeah, curling, like I saw a team Schuster, they won the gold and that was awesome and people identified with them because they're a fun group of athletes, fun group of guys and so people identified with that but that's every four years. And again, hearing people like, oh yeah, curling, I watch it during the Olympics and then what happens the rest of the, that's once every four years. So what are we doing? And I know that definitely an area that Jeff wants to focus on is bringing more broadcasts and just more attention to and just highlighting the sport of curling and getting it on TV and building out maybe more of like a series in the United States. The Canadians have this grand slam series that people tune in and people like sell out like coliseum type of venues and can we get to that place? So I think there's a lot of things that will, lots of things that will hopefully contribute to just building membership, pulling more people into the sport. Yeah, well, you mentioned Canada, they have a pretty good infrastructure in place already. So it's a matter of building that infrastructure which I imagine would also include facilities having access to the right space for people to train and learn the sport to train and to compete. So is there any chance that you'll look at building out a facility or a center for athletes to use and to gather? Is there something in the works right now? Yeah, I mean nothing there, conversations are athletes, I would say about 40 to 50% of our national team athletes train in the Twin Cities and some of them have moved there to be a part of the national team program, not that that's a requirement. Right now the challenge there is we do have a relationship with the Vikings training facility, which is just outside of Minneapolis, not too far from the airport, but we've got a strength and conditioning coach that works out of their dietitian and then our sports psychologist isn't too far away. So they've got those support, those support services in place in that area. So athletes have been, for the most part relocating there during college and going to the U and working with those science service providers. We have two, there's two facilities in that area that our athletes kind of go between to dedicated ice arenas that is solely for the purpose of curling, which is very important in the sport, which I learned early on. You can't just curl on like hockey ice or anything like that. It's important to have devoted dedicated curling ice. So there's two facilities that exist up in that area. Ideally we would be building a facility that's attached to where the Vikings have their training facility. I'm not my place of expertise in terms of the brokering those deals or anything like that, but there are conversations that are happening and that would be a huge, huge win for us if that happened, if that facility got built because then everything is right there on campus at the Vikings training facility for our athletes. They can live close by, they can go and train on the ice and then have a sports psych session or go have their strength and conditioning session and then get on the ice. The dietitian can come to the ice to provide that support. So I mean, that is hopefully going to happen. We'll see fingers crossed on that one because that would be huge. In terms of it really being a true centralized training program and even opportunity to pull athletes in because the other thing that I've learned which I wasn't even aware of, ice isn't available. The devoted, dedicated, curling ice is not available year round. And so I truly, one of our national team athletes was on the 2018 Olympic team that won the gold medal talking to him, he's a little frazzled right now because he was on his way for the first time this season to get on ice because the ice that he normally has access to it doesn't normally open till October but they've been having some issues with the system that produces the ice and obviously all of the infrastructure just that some of the things that the arena that need to be in place. They're just having some problems there. So on the phone with him as he's traveling to get on ice for the first time and you can sense the stress in his voice of like I haven't been on ice since March. This is, you know, my curling career this is the longest I have gone without, you know being on ice. And so that's something I've heard from other athletes that aren't in an area where they have access to ice year round that that's something that, you know I don't, it tends to be in the summer months that the ice isn't in place. But like what can we do? And so if we did have our own facility that would help with that even if they don't live in the Twin Cities being able to come to the Twin Cities, you know if they're up in Duluth or wherever they may be and just access the ice even if it was just once a week. So, yeah. Well part of the challenge I imagine is getting the language and understanding of what the sport of curling is. So in one sentence if you were explaining to someone you didn't know what curling what the sport of curling entails how would you describe to someone that's unfamiliar with the sport of curling? Chest on ice. Chest on ice. You might have to define that a little bit. Yeah, I mean you've got a rock and you know depending there's two different there's the four person game which is more traditional and then which was introduced in terms of added to the Olympic program in 20 or sorry, 1998. And then you have the mixed doubles which was just added in 2018 to the program. So from what I understand not being a curler myself is the games are different. Very different obviously for the four person you have four to five people but four people competing. You always have eight rocks that someone is delivering the rock and placing it and it becomes essentially how close can you get to a certain spot on the sheet of ice that you want to get it placed. So it's a lot of precision. It's a lot of angles and knowing how to hit the rocks at the right angle, tons of strategy. And then on top of that you have your teammates who are sweeping using brooms to sweep the ice to help the rock curl at an angle so it can come in and hit maybe your opponents rock out of the way or whatever you know whatever you're trying to in that shot whatever you're trying to accomplish. And again that's what the skip is dictating is like okay they're having a discussion okay what makes sense are we gonna clear out this rock or are we gonna try to place our rock over here? So there's a ton of strategy behind it and I still, like this last week winning yes there's a lot to learn and I'm quite honest I was like okay the sports specific stuff I know I have that handled in terms of some of the people that work with me that have been doing this for a long time that truly sitting with them this past weekend at a competition a mixed doubles competition my you know I consider him our national team director you know him saying like oh yeah this is what they're gonna do without hearing cause you're behind the glass like you're just watching this but without even hearing what they're talking about him being able to say yep this is what they're gonna do and then that's exactly what happens so you know the people who have been playing the sport for a long time and have been around it like definitely know the strategy like I'm not I'll leave that to you because I know you have that under you know very well covered so I'm trying to focus on some of the higher level things around again some of just these basic policies and procedures but yes we'll hopefully learn in hopefully in a year well I don't know if that's even realistic but in two years I'll have a lot better grasp of the very sport specific I mean again it's a lot of strategy that plays out on the ice so yeah it's been fascinating I've learned a ton already but I have a lot to learn. Strategy on the ice and strategy for USA curling at large but thank you so much Katie for your insight into curling and the spotlight and this Olympic and Paralympic sport it's been very fascinating I look forward to see what you will do two years from now and how the growth of the sports hopefully that will continue along the way well thank you to our viewers for joining us today on the sports playbook in two weeks our guest is Jason Oggy who will discuss his work from the Tampa Bay Sports Commission we will see you then. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktecawaii.com. Mahalo.