How I Lead as BYU Women’s Soccer Coach | An Interview with Jennifer Rockwood

Leading Saints Podcast

Leading Saints

Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.9 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jennifer Rockwood is the first and only head coach for the Brigham Young University women's soccer team, a position she has held since 1989 after graduating from BYU. Her teams have over 450 wins and made the NCAA tournament 25 times in 31 years. She talks about her career path and the leadership principles she has relied upon in leading young adult women athletes. This podcast was recorded with a live audience on the 2025 BYU Cruise.

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Highlights
Coach Rockwood shares her journey into coaching, her philosophy on leadership, team culture, and her experiences coaching at BYU for decades. She emphasizes the importance of leading within one's own personality, fostering a supportive team environment built on love and respect, and navigating the challenges of coaching young athletes. The conversation also touches on recruiting, dealing with parents, the impact of NIL, the transition to the Big 12 conference, and how her faith has influenced her coaching career.

[05:03] Jennifer's Background and Journey into Coaching
[05:49] Early Competitive Spirit
[06:39] Playing Experience at BYU
[08:52] Transition to Coaching at BYU
[11:53] Influence of High School Coach
[16:14] Engaging Young Single Adults (YSA)
[17:31] The Importance of Involvement and Overcoming Failure
[21:43] Navigating Intense Youth Sports and Church Activities
[23:39] Parental Involvement and Pressure in Youth Sports
[25:55] The Parent-Coach Relationship
[28:17] Establishing and Maintaining Team Culture
[29:27] Recruiting and Building Culture from the Start
[31:18] Key Elements of Team Culture: Love and Respect
[33:07] Leading Within Your Own Personality
[35:47] Helping Struggling Players
[37:22] One-on-One Interactions with Players
[38:37] Dealing with Team Infighting and Maintaining Unity
[40:34] Impact of NIL (Name, Image, Likeness)
[42:20] Transition to the Big 12 Conference
[44:51] Coaching Staff Roles and Coordination
[46:53] Encouraging Support for BYU Women's Soccer
[48:13] How Coaching Has Influenced Faith

The award-winning Leading Saints Podcast is one of the top independent Latter-day Saints podcasts as part of nonprofit Leading Saints' mission to help Latter-day Saints be better prepared to lead. Learn more and listen to any of the past episodes for free at LeadingSaints.org.
Past guests include Emily Belle Freeman, David Butler, Hank Smith, John Bytheway, Reyna and Elena Aburto, Liz Wiseman,

Transcript

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0:00.0	Does a youth leader ever feel like they haven't figured out? This hasn't been my experience.
0:06.8	However, I couldn't be an effective youth leader today without Dan Duckworth's presentation about
0:12.2	going from youth worker to youth mentor. Mentorship is a key concept to understand when leading
0:17.2	youth. In his presentation, Dan talks about ways to really turn the traditional
0:22.0	approach to leading youth on its head. How can you better know your purpose? How can you find out
0:27.0	their life goals? How can you build a relationship that is transformational rather than simply
0:32.0	filling time during the weekly youth activity? You can watch Dan's presentation in the Young
0:37.3	Saints virtual library by going to leadingsaints.org slash 14. You can watch Dan's presentation in the Young Saints virtual library by going to
0:39.2	leadingsaints.org slash 14. You'll get free access for 14 days and that will give you plenty of time
0:44.8	to watch Dan's presentation a few times. Let's give youth the leadership they deserve.
0:59.5	Before we jump into the content of this episode, I kind of feel it's important that I introduce myself.
1:01.8	Now, many of you've been around a long time.
1:06.8	You're well familiar with my voice and with Leading Saints as an organization.
1:11.8	But if you're not, well, my name is Kurt Frankum, and I am the executive director of Leading director of leading saints and the podcast host now leading saints is a non-profit organization dedicated helping latter day
1:17.5	saints be better prepared to lead and we do that through well content creation like this podcast
1:22.3	and many other resources at leading saints.org and we don't act like we have all the answers or know exactly what
1:29.8	a leader should do or not do, but we like to explore the concepts of leadership, the science of
1:34.9	leadership, what people are researching about leadership, and see how we can apply them to a
1:39.6	Latter-day Saint world. So here we go. As many of you know, I had the opportunity to attend the
1:48.3	2025 BYU cruise. This was a fully chartered cruise ship with 3,500 BYU fans. I was there and it was
1:59.2	remarkable. We did several leading saints experiences on board,
2:03.4	did some presentations, workshops, and then did two live recordings of the podcast. And I'm here
	...

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