My personal story

When I was 10 years old, I broke camp records for the highest number of
non-stop sit-ups. I made it to 150. (Talk about good abs – too bad it was wasted on someone too young to care!)

At age 13 I hit the tennis ball over the net 210 times on one point en route to beating an 18-year-old in a four-hour match in 105-degree heat. You could say I grew up rather determined and highly competitive!

As a top junior athlete I developed priceless attributes – tenacity, courage, desire for mastery, and concentration, to name just a few. Certainly these qualities and lifetime skills have served me well.

I consistently ranked in the Top 10 nationally in the junior age divisions and captured eight national championships. As a result of winning five of those titles (three individual and two team), I was later inducted into the Women’s National Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame.

However, during my teen years at home, I had little social life and virtually no other interests. These parts of life were discouraged. I developed an overly critical inner voice and confusion about my identity. I often wondered, was I just a high performance machine? I became quite reluctant to try anything new if I thought I couldn’t be perfect from the get-go.

After graduating college, I became determined to overcome these limitations and expand my life. I committed myself to lifelong personal and spiritual growth. I fell in love and got married and explored new activities like drawing and photography. My commitment often challenged me to increase my awareness and consciously work on shifting the beliefs and patterns that did not bring me genuine happiness.

Teaching tennis for many years increased my respect for the learning process and honed my communication skills. Then I made a successful transition to a sales career. I enjoyed the challenges (most of the time) and rewards of commissioned sales.

Sales can often be as competitive as athletics. However, my spiritual practices led to my experimenting with more relaxed, yet effective ways of working and relating to people.

I chose to focus on the quality of my relationships with people and how to best meet their needs, rather than on results and numbers. This time I wasn’t going for Number One, yet it seemed to happen anyway! I became Mutual of Omaha’s Number One freshman sales producer in the United States. I was amazed I didn’t need to put on a “game face” to be a top performer.

While in my thirties, my four-year old daughter Cassie passed on, leaving me her rich legacy. From this heart-wrenching experience I learned deep in my bones that loving relationships are always more important than achievements.

Cassie had severe cerebral palsy, yet her spunkiness and charisma shone through her disability, and she taught me how to appreciate fully the simplest joys in life. She accomplished this by slowing me down and by showing me that laughing together on the living room floor was as good or better than playing for the championship tennis title or being enthralled by the limelight.

Cassie’s disabilities kept me from participating in bragging rights or “competitive parenting,” comparing one’s high-achieving child to another parent’s child. Instead it was all about Cassie’s personal best at any given moment, inch by fought-for inch.

Our measuring stick for success was calibrated so differently from the norm. It was based on how much longer she could hold her head up, or how many bites of food she could take orally rather than through a feeding tube.

The same year Cassie passed on, my 13-year-old stepson, Isaac, joined our family. After time for healing and adjusting to our new family, a restlessness and growing desire for more meaningful and challenging work led me to a budding profession – personal and professional coaching.

Since this profession was rooted in sports psychology and peak performance research, it was a natural fit for me and I jumped right into the training. After coaching hundreds of professionals and executives to make profound and lasting changes in their lives, I attained my Master Certified Coach designation through the International Coach Federation.

More recently I took some time to examine my relationship to sports and my life struggles during and after being a champion. I felt a growing desire to help parents meet the challenges of raising athletes in our highly competitive sports environment.

I decided to expand my focus to include educating and coaching parents on how to help their aspiring athletes experience greater sports and lifelong success. The PALS (sm) program, “Parenting Athletes for Lifelong Success,” was born out of this focus and passion.

My consulting, teaching, writing, and speaking are geared exclusively toward providing tools to make these goals possible.

Just The Facts

Parenting Athletes 

• Creator of PALS (sm) Program (“Parenting Athletes for Lifelong Success”)
• Workshop presenter on parenting athletes for youth sports organizations and clubs
• Columnist on sports parenting for “Tennis Times” and soccer publication, “Play On!” reaching 55,000 to 115,000 readers monthly

Tennis Accomplishments 

• Women’s National Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame
• Arizona State University Sports Hall of Fame
• Winner of 8 national tennis championships, including 5 national collegiate titles (3 individual and 2 team)
• Teaching tennis professional of children and adults for 9 years

Business & Personal Performance Coaching  

• Owner of The Champagne Group (TCG), professional coaching and consulting business, founded in 1994
• Master Certified Coach (MCC), highest designation granted by the International Coach Federation
• Developed and delivered extensive, two-year coaching program to seven Merrill Lynch offices. Other past and current corporate clients include Wells Fargo Home Mortgage and Chicago Title
• Registered Counselor (RC) in Washington State

Sales Accomplishments

• Number one (in U.S.A.) freshman sales producer award with Mutual of Omaha
• Yearly Chairman’s Council and President’s Club awards with Mutual of Omaha

Published Writing

• Current sports parenting columnist for “Tennis Times” and numerous soccer publications
• Former columnist for “Tennis Magazine
• “Seattle Times”
• “LA Parenting”

Education

• Summa cum laude graduate of Arizona State University, B.A. in psychology
• Graduate of Coaches Training Institute
• Business Coaching Workshop with Tim Gallwey (best-selling author of Inner Game of Tennis, Inner Game of Golf, Inner Game of Work)
• Psychology of Peak Performance Workshop with Steve Wells
• Numerous other continuing education courses for Master Coach Certification requirements

Current interests & leisure activities

Rollerblading, hiking, tennis, spending time with family and friends, yoga, reading, dancing, playing with kids, developing coaching programs, long sunset walks at the bay, eating dark chocolate.

What else would you like to know about me?  Send me a note or call me at 360-371-2551.