Mackenzie Wartenberger’s Journey From Cal Athlete to Wisconsin Women’s XC Coach

We talk to The University of Wisconsin Women’s XC coach Mackenzie Wartenberger about her time as a talented prep athlete (2:04 800m) coming into Cal Berkley with Alysia, how her track career was highly affected by pressure and race anxiety, how she has carried these lessons into her 11 year coaching career so far, what it’s like to coach through a pandemic and how she keeps the women engaged and motivated as well as her thoughts on navigating any plans for motherhood and climbing the ranks of her career.

“In sport, if you have torn hamstring you rehab the hamstring and you don’t hide the fact that you have a torn hamstring. Thats something that you work on. If you struggle mentally with anxiety or expectation or depression or any of those things, that’s really internalized still . That’s not something thats spoken about or shared. I think there is still a lot of shame applied to that struggle, instead of treating it like a muscle-when you strain a muscle you’ve got  to rehab the muscle and then you’ve got to strengthen the muscle and then sometimes that muscle still hurts and you’ve got to back off. From a mental perspective I think a similar approach can be really helpful – to treat it like a normal process, it isn’t linear it’s not flipping a light switch that’€™s a perspective that I try to bring to coaching as much as possible

for in depth show notes head to our site Keeping-Track.com

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