Until rugby player and senior Aissatou Diatta was a junior, she played under Carmel Rugby coach Kelly Romano. However, halfway through her junior season, the team came under temporary new coaching staff, and now, in her senior season, they have a new, permanent coach. Many teams go through cycles with different coaches, including Indiana’s women’s basketball team, Indy Fever, which announced in November that they would be adopting a new coach, Stephanie White. In light of the recent resignation of Head football Coach John Hebert, Diatta said transitions between coaches can be difficult for players to adapt to, but ultimately the experience helps her grow.

“I think that transition helped me as a player, but also just helped the team in general grow because we had to learn to take accountability for ourselves,” Diatta said. “We didn’t have that outside voice, you know, pushing us to do certain things so we had to push each other to do it, to be dedicated to it, show up to practice and put the effort in to work to be better players and a better team.”

Diatta said part of the reason the transition between coaches impacted the team was because switching between coaching styles caused team dynamics to change.

“We definitely experienced different coaching styles because each coach came from a different background, a different experience with the sport,” Diatta said. “They all had different preferences when it came to drills and formatting, how they wanted us to run plays, their idea of how a practice should run, whether it came down to a small thing such as warm-ups, all of those things differ from coach to coach.”

Jillian Johnson, color guard member and senior, said that when color guard got a new coach in May, she believed the transition helped her and the team grow together.

“I would say overall, I think it helped us bond as a team just having that new leadership because now that we’re seniors, we take on our own leadership responsibilities,” Johnson said. “So, we had to make sure that we were bonded as a class, as well as with leadership.”

Ellie Smith, cross county runner and junior, said she felt one of the biggest positive changes that came along with a new coach was the change in team goals.

“I’m so grateful for how Coach Williams has completely transformed the team. He focuses a lot more on the mental side of running, running is very mental,” Smith said, “so the ability to push through fatigue and pain, and honestly, just stay focused during long and challenging races and workouts just requires a lot of mental discipline. He puts a lot of emphasis on visualization and race strategy.”

Scott Williams, who became the Head Coach of cross country at Carmel this year, said that from the coaches perspective, “I tried to make coming to practice fun. I am speaking in relative terms but what I mean is that I wanted practice and meets to be a place our runners looked forward to being at after a day at school.”

Williams also said that, due to the attitude of the runners on the team, the transition between coaching staffs was easier to handle.

“Both our team and coaches adjusted to one another quite well. The girls wanted to be successful. They were flexible and open to change or workouts they had not done in the past,” Williams said. “Everyone adjusting resulted in a team State Championship. I do not know how it could have gone any better. This group of student athletes is different in all the best ways.”

Diatta also said that team dynamics shifted under a new coach. “I think in the beginning the transition was definitely hard because we weren’t really expecting it and we didn’t know what to expect moving forward, what the team dynamic was going to be like, and what our coaches were going to be like. It was definitely hard in the beginning but it did get easier as our team learned to adapt to be flexible and to go with the flow, just to adjust to any changes we were going to have.”

Smith said that changes in the team dynamics due to changes in coaching staff are what she believes to be the reason the women’s cross country team won State this year.

“(The new coaches) have transformed the team culture and made a much more supportive environment, driving us to push harder and become faster together,” Smith said. “Coach Williams focuses much more on the team, and he’s put so much time into getting to know every single girl. Before this season, I was often disappointed in the unity between JV and Varsity, but Williams, his dedication and commitment to building the positive environment has made such a difference, and I really think that’s what helped us win State, that shift in culture. There’s a lot less pressure, but yet at the same time we all strove for more.”