Why are mentors so important?

Throughout your childhood, middle school, high school, and even college you need individuals in your life that you trust and lean on for advice. No one person knows everything and you’re gonna face challenges in life where those mentors come into play. 

In order to share your thoughts, feelings, and experiences, you have to be able to trust your mentor. In return, that person will give you advice that will help you become the best person you can be. You need to trust that your mentors will help you and tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Sometimes the truth might hurt your feelings, but their ability to tell you the harsh truth means they care and want the best for you. You’ll come to realize that what they’ve shared is something you needed to hear. You need tough love.

You should know you can call your mentor seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. No matter what, they’ll be there when you call. Over time you’ll know their personality and they’ll know yours. They will be able to tell when something’s wrong and will offer to meet and talk. You can also rely on your mentor to keep things confidential. Know they’re going to keep information tight and won’t share it with others—they won’t repeat.  

Finally, be aware of life experiences. Often people think mentors have to be older than you, that’s not the case. The most important thing you receive from your mentor is growth and knowledge, no matter their age. And be sure to pay attention to the three E’s: environment, education, and experience. Observe whether their environment is positive or negative. Analyze whether they value knowledge and appreciate the importance of learning. And from those two components, recognize their life experiences. Most likely, you’ll go through things they’ve already experienced. Pull from their knowledge, because they know what you need.

Appreciate your mentor and truly value their presence in your life. If you find a good mentor, you better cherish that individual because they’re hard to find. 

Week 3 - How can athletes use adversity to their advantage?

Not too long ago, one of our current alumni jumpers faced some of the toughest adversity. During the 2018 North Carolina Rope Skipping Workshop Spectacular, this jumper tweaked her knee in a freak incident. At first, everyone thought she had injured her ankle and would be out for a few weeks, but unfortunately it was much worse; she had torn her ACL. This injury is specifically tough to be diagnosed with because it requires a 9 month recovery time. This jumper was in one of the top female groups in the U.S. at her time, but that was the least of our worries when we found out about the severity of her injury. Our top priority immediately became her mental well-being and road to recovery. The reason I chose this story is because this jumper was an amazing team member, leader, and athlete who was, and is today, respected by everyone around her. 

Circling back to the time of her injury, I wanted to see how she would respond, especially because of the length of her recovery. In my self-conscious mind, I knew she wouldn't let the team down. She continued coming to practice, she didn't whine about her circumstances, and she kept supporting her teammates and group. At the time, she was bringing more value to the program through her adversity than most people realized. To this day, I am grateful to this person because she taught the program how to face our challenges head-on by displaying grace and never giving up and becoming selfish. 

Let this be a wake-up call for those of you who are going through difficult times. You will be introduced to yourself through your fights against adversity and you will get knocked down. What matters is how you respond to the pressures the world lays on. Will you thank the pressures for making you stronger, or will you allow them to dictate your life for you? 

Week 2 - How do you channel change, small or large, into something positive? 

When the pandemic hit in 2020, the world turned upside down. As a program, we had to embrace many changes. One of the largest shifts we made was with our practice schedule. We had been used to practicing with the whole team altogether, but based on information given by the leadership team at the time, we knew we had to gather in smaller numbers. Now, our jumpers are able to practice with their grade divisions at every practice and still receive the instruction of their older kids. Changing our routine schedule after 32 years was not easy, but it was necessary, and I am thankful to the leadership team who helped come up with this new plan. As we move further from Covid-19, we have decided to keep this schedule because it has allowed our jumpers to spend more time with their age group and consequently build better relationships with those their age. 

A major schedule shift is just one way our program adjusted and grew from an abrupt change, but we also adopted a virtual program during the pandemic that turned out to be a huge success. As many people know, I don’t get along with social media, but I can’t deny the benefits of our virtual program. When the pandemic first hit, I had a parent call me and tell me that I had to take advantage of the virtual platform, Zoom. My response was that I wanted to “Zoom away from all things virtual” and that there was no way under the sun I would get into any part of the technology world. Now, I have great respect for Zoom because it allowed students who were unable to come in person to have the opportunity to jump and participate in the program. It also gave those leading the virtual program the chance to develop a unique skill set that will benefit them later in life as our world becomes more technologically advanced. 

Finally, the third unique adjustment the program made during the Covid-19 Pandemic was the “Learning From the Bulldogs” announcements. During a time of isolation, I wanted to find a way to continue communication amongst everyone who was a part of the program. With the help of many alumni, “Learning From the Bulldogs” became our way of reaching out to families and keeping our mission alive even when we couldn’t be in the gym. This system consisted of regular posts sent out to our members that had blogs about what our core values and mission meant to our alumni when they were on the team and throughout their life after graduating. Parents and jumpers learned a lot about the program through the alumni and they were able to hear personal experiences and other inside stories about the program that they likely didn’t know before. Overall, these posts allowed us to reinforce the mission statement, share the powerful and meaningful stories of our alumni, and bring the Bulldog closer during a difficult time. 
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So, how do you channel change into something positive? Well, you just “Embrace Change” and “Rise Above” the difficult times because they will make you and your program stronger in the end! 

What does a new year or new season entail for an athletic program?

The number one thing you should look for going into a new season is leadership. Over the past 35 years, the Bouncing Bulldogs program has had excellent leaders, and it all starts in the summer. During what many call the off-season–June through September for the Bulldogs–you should focus on the athletes who show up on a high level. You do this to discover who the high school leaders will be during the new season. Then, for the next 30 days, I search for captains; captains should be two strong, senior leaders who consistently reflect the program’s mission statement and 10 core values. Once your leadership and captains are in place, you should focus on team chemistry for around 90 days. Ultimately, your team’s chemistry is dependent on the strength of your leadership. During this process, I also like to plan at least one show per week. Doing this gives us time to get away from the gym and truly see the growth of individual athletes. Traveling any distance gives you time to see how your team members interact with each other during bus rides, sharing meals, and performing. All of these situations allow you to observe people’s personalities as well as the growth of your team’s chemistry. 
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Many coaches are challenged at the start of a new season because their athletes change drastically over the off-season. After watching teenagers change over numerous summers, I have learned to keep the mission statement and core values of the program close during the beginning of the season. I continually remind the jumpers that the program is designed to improve their physical, emotional, social, and academic well-being…not just their jump rope skills. Then again, I have to reinforce the core values early on to get the whole team on the same page. For me, everything starts with discipline. I learned the importance of discipline from many of my mentors, but I love how the great Dean Smith said, “Your freedom in life comes from discipline.” Once you’ve weaved in your core principles and made sure those in leadership roles hold the same standards as you, then you will have a solid foundation to make a great year. Finally, as integral as those first months of your season are, it’s important to use the winter break to evaluate your team’s progress in all of the above aspects as you head into January. 

We ended the 2017-2018 season with 150 team members, most of whom will be returning as we begin a new season. Each year, the Bouncing Bulldogs have a theme reinforced at every practice and class session.

Our previous theme was community outreach, and a big focus will continue to be on community outreach moving forward. The Bulldogs have been competing for a long time, but we also want to make more direct efforts to spread the sport of jump rope in communities with boys and girls who are interested in learning but may not have the resources.
               
Based on my experience as a PE teacher, it was instilled in me to teach boys and girls the value of skill development and movement education. My focus was on making sure that boys and girls were learning as many skills as they could learn throughout the early years of the program’s history. Now, my focus has shifted. My goal is to empower each jumper to gain the ability to take the skills they are learning and understand how to teach those skills to others. Weaving into skills with the rope, now our focus is to understand all the values you can learn from participating in a physical activity like jump rope.

A jump roper can teach skills all day, but it is also important to recognize and express the benefits of jump rope regarding physical literacy. I see a shift in our program where the thought process is becoming more about serving others with the knowledge we have, and we are open to the knowledge others will share with us. A person who picks up a jump rope and starts learning is going to enhance their physical fitness. But they are also going to enhance their character development over time when it comes to discipline, relationships and communication.

When choosing a theme, I have to ask myself as a coach, what is the personality trait of this year’s team? You have to be very aware of the values you are bringing into an environment, so how can we take all of the unique personalities within the program and bring them together with a theme?
With these considerations in mind, our theme for the 2018-2019 season is: bring your value.

​Every jumper possesses a unique value and possesses a responsibility to work to better recognize their own value and share it with the world. Jumpers don’t just come to practice to be present. Jumpers come to practice to discover their value, and they can go home and share with their families why they go to practice every day as well as what they learned. They can answer the question: what did you learn that will enhance your values and make you a better person?

The past twenty-nine years have been an unbelievable journey!  When we started as a jump rope demonstration team at Hope Valley Elementary School in Durham we only had sixteen jumpers and we held tryouts at the beginning of each school year.  Now, we have 157 jumpers on our competition team and another 200 jumpers on our club team. 

My wife Patricia and I are grateful for the thousands of jumpers and hundreds of families who have participated in the various programs we have conducted throughout the years.  The growth of the Bouncing Bulldogs Program has continued because of the high level of community support, especially from dedicated parents and grandparents.  The Bouncing Bulldogs has jumpers participating in our programs from thirty different schools in multiple counties of North Carolina.  Additionally, these jumpers come from nineteen different countries throughout the world.  In some cases, families have driven forty-five miles one-way to practice, or flown hundreds of miles to participate in one of our camps.  This level of commitment is what makes our program so special to many people around the world.

The Bouncing Bulldogs Community Outreach Initiative is changing many lives locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally.  We are working with current jumpers in our program to think of more ways to engage children, youth, and adolescents in fun, physical activities, incorporating the use of ropes.  In order to accomplish this, we want all our jumpers to become excellent teachers and ambassadors for the sport of jump rope.  To teach is to learn twice, according to Chines poet and philosopher Lao Tzu.  We in the Bouncing Bulldogs program agree with this philosophy. 

The Bouncing Bulldogs Community Center will be the first jump rope gym in the world erected from the ground up, born from a vision to create a space where young minds could continue to grow and train their bodies using the art and science of jump rope.  Our new Bouncing Bulldogs home will be a place where people from around the world can share in our vision to use the rope to connect people from different walks of life, helping them to grown physically, socially, emotionally, and intellectually.  We are thankful to all the people worldwide who have helped us to fulfill this dream.  Thank you for helping us to make the world a better place. 
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JUMP FORWARD! 

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​The Bouncing Bulldogs have so much to look forward to as we head into the 2016-2017 season, and as always, I'm very excited about the new year. I’m most excited about our new senior leadership because the 2016-2017 team will only be as good as our senior leaders.

Looking back over the past three decades, we’ve always had great leadership, and I think this year’s team could be the best ever. The personality traits the seniors possess are such that they don't make much noise verbally, but their actions have always spoken for them. As a coach, I have great respect for people who lead by their actions.

As we jump forward into a new season, the most exciting news for the Bulldogs has been breaking ground to initiate the construction of the Bouncing Bulldogs Community Center, which will allow us to expand and help more kids in our community. The building is slated to be completed by March of 2017 and will be the first ever jump rope gym built from scratch! We are grateful for the fact that over 480 individuals from all over the US have donated to helping us build our new gym. However, the program is still in need of funds. If a person would like to contribute, they may contact us.

From late August to December is a time when we develop our team chemistry. This team chemistry phase is the first of four phases throughout the year and is key because a successful year depends on a whether a program’s foundation is built with strong team chemistry. Throughout the fall and winter months, from our annual workshop in November until the beginning of February, our program engages in numerous performances all over the US. This phase of the season is a time to focus on community outreach as the Bouncing Bulldogs share our passion for jump rope with others and inspire people using the jump rope as a vehicle. We start focusing on putting groups together for competition from February to early May, and we train at the highest level during the season’s fourth and final phase.
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To all of our friends and supporters around the world who think I may be slowing down after three decades of leading the Bouncing Bulldogs program: I am more energized than ever heading into the new year, so watch out! I would also like to thank my wife, Mrs. Fredrick, for supporting me in this role as a coach. Without her, none of this would be possible!