Our guest on the Holding the Ladder in Sport and Leadership podcast is Samba Johnson, the Associate Head Coach for the women’s basketball program at National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, CA. Since joining the staff in 2022, he has played a key role in revitalizing the team, tripling their win total in his first season and guiding them to a 17-14 record and Women's National Invitational Tournament (WNIT) berth in his...
Jun 16, 2025•55 min•Season 3Ep. 11
Our guest is Professor Adam Nicholls, a leading expert in sport psychology whose research focuses on doping behaviors in youth athletes, coping and emotions in sport, and whistleblowing in the face of wrongdoing. He is based at the University of Hull in Hull, UK. With over £1.5 million in research funding, more than 85 published articles, and three books- including Psychology for Coaches , translated into Arabic and Hungarian- Nicholls also leads the Sport Psychology and Coaching group, shaping ...
Jun 03, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Season 3Ep. 10
Dave Niland is our guest for this episode. He is the head men's basketball coach at National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III Penn State Behrend in Erie, PA. He just completed his 30th season guiding the Behrend Lions program. He comes from a family of legendary Buffalo (NY) sports leaders. Niland has produced 29 winning seasons in the last 30 years to rank 20th among NCAA Division III programs for winningest teams of the decade. The Lions also have earned an NCAA or Eastern C...
May 12, 2025•55 min•Season 3Ep. 9
Todd James is our guest for this episode. He has been a sports missionary in Ireland for over 40 years. He is a Southern California native who coached and taught in that area for 10 years before leaving for the mission field. He and his wife Celesta have planted churches and helped to develop sports ministry as a tool for churches to do evangelism throughout the country. Discipleship and evangelism are the main emphases of their ministry. James is now retired but continues to impact others throu...
Apr 28, 2025•1 hr 17 min
Ken Crenshaw is our guest for this episode. He is entering his eighth season as the Director of Sports Medicine and Performance after serving 12 years as the Head Athletic Trainer for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Crenshaw was the head athletic trainer for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays from 2003 to 2005 and served as the assistant athletic trainer for the Rays from 1998-2002. While with the Rays, Crenshaw shared “Major League Baseball Athletic Training Staff of the Year” honors in 2005 and the “Dick Mart...
Apr 14, 2025•52 min
Our guest for this episode of the Holding the Ladder in Sport and Leadership podcast is Rendell Jackson, Ed. S., CMAA. He is the Program Manager for Middle School Athletics for Atlanta (GA) Public Schools (APS). Jackson is part of a team that organizes athletic programing for 15 APS middle schools 11 high schools, and 2 charter schools. It is his specialization in community development that led to his partnership with L.E.A.D. and the development of his family’s non-profit, The Books for Miles F...
Mar 24, 2025•56 min•Season 3Ep. 6
Our guest for this episode of the Holding the Ladder in Sport and Leadership podcast is Bubba Schweigert. He began his coaching career at his alma mater, Jamestown College (now University of Jamestown), in 1988. After 15 seasons as an assistant at the University of North Dakota (UND), he became defensive coordinator in 1997, helping lead UND to its first National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division II National Championship in 2001. Schweigert was named the AFCA Division II Assistant ...
Mar 10, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Season 3Ep. 5
Dr. Mallard (Mal) Owen is our guest for this episode of the Holding the Ladder in Sport and Leadership podcast. Owen has over 30 years of senior leadership experience having launched new businesses, nurtured startups, guided non-profits, and transformed struggling organizations. Central to his success has been building strong teams, creating winning strategic alliances, providing an outstanding work environment, maximizing existing resources, and leveraging new technologies and information syste...
Feb 24, 2025•1 hr 23 min•Season 3Ep. 4
Our guest for this episode of the Holding the Ladder in Sport and Leadership podcast is Brad Vaught. He is in his fifth season as the head coach of the NIACC women's basketball team, having built a NIACC career record of 68-45. In the 2023-24 season, Vaught's Trojans achieved their highest win total under his leadership, finishing with a 23-8 record and advancing to the NJCAA Region 11-B title game, where they were defeated by Iowa Western. Four players earned ICCAC all-region honors, with Madis...
Feb 10, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Season 3Ep. 3
Brian Mistro is our guest for this episode. Mistro just completed his sixth season as the head football coach at National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division II member University of Jamestown in Jamestown, North Dakota. The Gilbert, Arizona native came to Jamestown as a football student-athlete in 2005 and played his first three seasons for Coach Tom Dosch and his senior season for Coach Bud Etzold. During his four years as a Jimmie student-athlete, Jamestown posted a combined record...
Jan 28, 2025•58 min•Season 3Ep. 2
In this first episode back after a 2 year hiatus, podcast host Dr. Tim Rice provides an overview of the Holding the Ladder concept that he and his late wife Dr. Candy Rice envisioned and use to this day to impact others.
Jan 08, 2025•33 min
The host of the Holding the Ladder in Sport and leadership podcast, Dr. Tim Rice is the Lead Faculty for the Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) program, as well as a Lead Faculty Member in the Sport and Performance Psychology specialization in PsyD program at University of Arizona Global Campus. He came to the University of Arizona Global Campus after serving in a similar role at University of the Rockies. Dr. Rice grew up on the Alabama Gulf Coast in a small town about 25 miles from the Gulf of Mexico...
Dec 28, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Season 2Ep. 77
Dr. Marty Durden has nearly five decades of athletic leadership experience. He is currently the athletic director at Calvary Christian School in Columbus, Georgia. Durden earned his Doctor of Education degree in sports management from the U.S. Sports Academy in 2016 and has written extensively about the “servant-leader” model of coaching, including in a 2019 Sport Digest piece titled "The Call for a Higher Standard Than Winning" and authoring "More Than Winning: The Servant-Leader Coach in Conte...
Dec 15, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Season 2Ep. 76
Eabha Rutledge is a successful county and club Gaelic footballer with Kilmacud Crokes and her county team Dublin. She has been part of Dublin's All-Ireland four-in-a-row panels and a recent Division 1 league final win against Cork. She is a Fund Accounting Supervisor at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and is also a sport entrepreneur as she set up a dry weather GAA gloves company, Great Grip Gloves. This idea goes back to her participation in an exchange visitor program in the United States on a J1 vis...
Nov 30, 2022•43 min•Season 2Ep. 75
Dr. David Tenney is the High Performance Director for Austin FC in Major League Soccer (MLS). He has a wealth of major league sport experience, including several successful seasons in MLS, and a long history in soccer in the U.S. and internationally. He joined Austin FC after three years as the first High Performance Director for the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s Orlando Magic (2017-2020) following 11 seasons in MLS. During Tenney’s stewardship of the Magic’s high performance departmen...
Nov 14, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Season 2Ep. 74
Hannah Thornton has always been passionate about sport. She played basketball for Ireland at the age of 14 and at the age of 17 obtained a sports scholarship with the University of Northern Colorado, playing in NCAA Division I's Big Sky Conference. She also devoted a little time to study, obtaining her Bachelor Degree in Sports and Exercise Science and a separate degree in Nutrition. After graduation, Hannah began work at an elite sports-specific training facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado ...
Oct 24, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Season 2Ep. 73
Dr. Maryrose Blank is a Sport and Performance Psychology Consultant with over 15 years of experience incorporating mental skills training with various populations to include the military, athletes, coaches, and other high performing corporate organizations. Dr. Blank began her career in college athletics, working at several colleges and universities before transitioning to working with the military. For over a decade, most of her efforts have involved supporting the Department of Defense in Huma...
Oct 11, 2022•45 min•Season 2Ep. 72
Don Griffin is the founder of 1821 Skills Camp in Baton Rouge, LA. It is a program directed at young football athletes. He specifically works with quarterbacks and receivers inside the chalk, with the goal to make their better their best. His desire is to impact the athletes in the time spent inside the white lines, so that the life they choose to live outside the lines of the field will bless their Creator, their family, their community, and themselves. Don was a High School All-American quarte...
Sep 14, 2022•51 min•Season 2Ep. 71
Scott Hunter is a former NFL quarterback who played for eight seasons for the Green Bay Packers, Buffalo Bills, Atlanta Falcons, and Detroit Lions, retiring in 1980. Before his NFL career, he was the starting quarterback for the Paul "Bear" Bryant-led Alabama Crimson Tide. Hunter is one of five Alabama quarterbacks (Blake Sims, Tua Tagovailoa, Mac Jones, and Bryce Young) to throw for 400 yards in a game. After his NFL career concluded, Hunter returned to Alabama and worked as a sportscaster in M...
Aug 31, 2022•42 min•Season 2Ep. 70
Ari Kafka is a former professional athlete and current Mental Performance Coach for athletes. He likes to help athletes flourish under pressure and overcome mental blocks to excel at their game. Additionally, he helps transitioning athletes who are ending their sport playing careers dig deep to find their unique character strengths and how they can utilize them on a daily basis. He guides them on their journey to find their next passion in their lives. In between High School and College, he was ...
Aug 17, 2022•44 min•Season 2Ep. 69
Tatiana Gallová is Slovakian FIBA licensed coach and lecturer, who finished FECC and ICAB program; and has a Ph.D. in basketball coaching. Her latest achievements are finishing best of the class 2013-2015 at the FIBA FECC program and winning the Austrian Cup and Championship 2015/2016 with Flying Foxes SVS Post. Since 2016/2017, she works for men's team Kapfenberg Bulls as an assistant coach and scout, and helped the team to win Austrian Cup (2017, 2018), Supercup (2018) and Championship (2017, ...
Jul 20, 2022•55 min•Season 2Ep. 68
After 24 years of combined experience as a special operations veteran in both the Canadian and US militaries, Phil Kornachuk uses proven leadership principles to foster exceptional performance for individuals, leaders and teams from a variety of fields. He currently works for the Fargo, North Dakota-based Allegro Group as the Managing Director of Leadership Development. Solid leaders held the ladder for Phil (and sometimes pushed him up it) as he evolved from being a 17-year-old high school drop...
Jul 07, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Season 2Ep. 67
Joanne Murphy of Tri Talking Sport is an accomplished international sports announcer, professional event MC and presenter based in Galway, Ireland. With a keen interest in sport, her versatile professional approach to her work coupled with a dynamic engaging style of presenting has seen her work as an announcer across a wide range of events in the sports industry and beyond over the past 10 years. From triathlon to running, cycling to gymnastics Joanne is embedded in sport and in particular in e...
Jun 22, 2022•58 min•Season 2Ep. 66
Chanda Rigby is entering her 11th season at Troy University in 2022-23. She has built the Trojans into the premier program in the Sun Belt Conference, winning five championships in seven years. Since taking over the program in 2012, Rigby has made Troy a perennial championship, and National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Tournament, contender. Rigby’s impressive resume includes seven 20+ win seasons, three Sun Belt Tournament Championships, two Sun Belt Regular Season Titles, three trips...
May 30, 2022•42 min•Season 2Ep. 65
Greg Prudhomme just completed his 15th season as the Grand Canyon women’s tennis head coach and 14th season as its men’s tennis head coach in 2021-22. Since joining the Division I ranks, Prudhomme has had nothing but success for his programs. The women's team were crowned WAC regular-season champions in 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2021. The men's team were crowned WAC champs in 2016, 2019, and 2021. This past season Dr. Prudhomme guided both of his teams to the Regular Season Conference Titles, the Co...
May 16, 2022•56 min•Season 2Ep. 64
Jacqui Hurley is one of Ireland’s leading sports broadcasters. In 2009, she became the first ever female anchor of Sunday Sport on RTE Radio One (https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/sunday-sport/). She presents the daily sports bulletins on RTE news and has extensive experience covering soccer and rugby. She is a former Irish basketball international and also played camogie for Cork. She is also an author, writing two books, "Girls Play Too: Inspiring Stories of Irish Sportswomen" and "Girls Play To...
May 02, 2022•59 min•Season 2Ep. 63
Dubbed "The Jewish Jordan" by Sports Illustrated in 1999, Tamir Goodman is a former professional basketball player and current successful entrepreneur, coach, educator and motivational speaker. He was ranked the 25th best high school player in the country. He gained national attention after averaging over 35 points per game his junior year, all while remaining faithful to his Orthodox Jewish upbringing. He was named MVP of the prestigious “Capital Classic All-Star Game,” an award won by Shaquill...
Apr 18, 2022•38 min•Season 2Ep. 62
Betsy Mitchell is a former American competition swimmer who was a world record-holder, world champion, and Olympic gold and silver medalist. She also was a member of the United States' 1994 Rowing World Championship team. Mitchell represented the United States at two consecutive Olympic Games. At the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, she won a silver medal for her second-place performance in the women's 100-meter backstroke, finishing with a time of 1:02.63. She also earned a gold medal by sw...
Apr 04, 2022•46 min•Season 2Ep. 61
Harry Sheehy is a retired athletic administrator and former coach who led Williams College (MA) to 17 Division III national team championships during his 10 years as the college’s Chair and Director of Athletics, Physical Education and Recreation. He also served as Dartmouth College’s Director of Athletics and Recreation for nearly 11 years. During each year of Sheehy’s decade guiding the Williams athletics department, the Ephs won the NCAA Division III Directors’ Cup, given to the athletics pro...
Mar 21, 2022•1 hr 26 min•Season 2Ep. 60
Jen Croneberger is a former high school and college softball coach, sport entrepreneur and now a widely sought-after 4-time TEDx speaker and thought leader. She speaks and consults in the areas of compassionate leadership and culture change for corporations, schools, organizations and teams all over the country and is the Founder and Chief Inspiration Officer of JLynne Consulting Group, LLC. Most of her last 15 years have been spent instilling confidence and building deeper connections and aware...
Mar 07, 2022•51 min•Season 2Ep. 59
