Nurturing an Athlete

How having parent-coaches gave these athletes a head start

Story by Zen Hill

Aspen Garrison, Mason Oberg, and Carmen Dolfo celebrate winning the 2024 GNAC Championship. // Photo courtesy of Jacob Thompson

The final point scored, the last ending buzzer sounded, the last out caught – these moments and many more have marked the end of many an amateur athletic career. After graduation, the great majority of high school athletes will never continue to play sports competitively. However, things are often different for the children of athletes. 

Expectations can be high for descendants of legendary athletes and coaches, with these kids often receiving a unique combination of pressure and support from their parents. For many parents, youth sports are simply a way for their kids to get some energy out. But to some, they represent the essential environment in which their children will learn to nurture their innate love for sports.

Aspen Garrison is the starting forward for Western Washington University’s women’s basketball team. She is also the daughter of Carmen Dolfo, the team’s head coach. As an undergraduate student, Dolfo played basketball at Biola University and also at Western, where she earned All-American honors. After her playing years were up, she became the assistant coach under Lynda Goodrich at Western in 1986, and by 1991, Dolfo was the head coach.

Dolfo wanted her kids to be in sports because, in her words, “it teaches you so much about yourself and others.” Both Dolfo and her husband, John Garrison, who played basketball for Eastern Washington University, “had a great experience from [sports] … it helped formulate who we are.”

Diane Flick-Williams, head coach of Western’s women’s volleyball team, played volleyball at the University of Washington as an undergraduate student. Next year, her daughter Chayse will be joining her team at Western. Up to this point, Chayse has excelled in volleyball, softball and track as a student-athlete at Bellingham High School. 

Being a coach's kid did have advantages for both Aspen and Chayse, whose parents played major roles in developing their children’s early love for sports.

“You want your parent to be your biggest fan,” said Dr. CJ Swanlund of Edge Psychology. “Ideally, someone has intrinsic self-motivation, but we know children and adolescents really weigh heavily what parents and what peers think.”

On the flip side, some kids who are pushed to play sports find that their natural inclination doesn't align with their parents' desires. They might feel like they are playing sports “because [their] parents have spent so much time or money invested in [them] doing this thing. And so that can create some conflict,” Dr. Swanlund said.

Both Chayse and Aspen knew they were going to be athletes from a young age, and the environments they grew up in helped to foster that sense of certainty. 

“I grew up in the gym up here with my mom and her team. It was just the atmosphere that drove me to [sports],” Aspen said. 

Chayse also “started from day one. [She] loved being in an athletic environment and being around people who liked sports and being a competitor.”

Dolfo took a background role in Aspen's development as a player. “We’d shoot once in a while. She’d come to our [summer] camps, but I wanted it to be her thing,” Dolfo said. 

With her mom in the stands instead of on the bench, Aspen was able to develop her own love for basketball with her mom’s support as a mother and not as a coach.

Despite being a sports family, Chayse’s parents encouraged her to try a variety of extracurriculars. She tried gymnastics, soccer, basketball and even acting, but none of them stuck. Chayse had her eye on volleyball.

Unlike Dolfo and Aspen, Chayse’s mother Diane took a hands-on approach to developing Chayse as an athlete. Diane has coached Chayse since her U12 club seasons – this past season was the first of Chayse’s not coached by her mother. By maintaining a strict separation between her coaching and parental relationships with Chayse, Diane feels she’s been able to allow Chayse to develop as an athlete without damaging their mother-daughter relationship. 

College sports are just one step away from the professional level. As a result, expectations are higher for the athletes who are expected to excel or lose their scholarships.

You don’t just perform physically as an athlete. We’ve all heard the phrase “the game is 50% mental.” Having to maintain a constant focus on winning and performing takes a toll on the mind. This can lead to stressful situations for players, who oftentimes have to rely on their coaches to guide them. 

“There's things I can normally do with other players in the mentoring process that I can’t do with her because I’m her mom,” Diane said.

For this reason, Chayse has had to establish a relationship with a sports psychologist on campus who can guide her in the mentoring process. 

This is the case for Aspen as well; she has a close relationship with assistant coach Stacy Turrell who serves as the go-to coach for Aspen regarding her development.

For athletes being coached by their parents, it can be difficult to avoid speculating that teammates might see them as benefiting from favoritism. According to Dr. Swanlund, “getting really clear on your strengths, what you bring to the team, what you bring to the sport," can help to build the necessary self-confidence for a young athlete to not succumb to these negative thoughts.

Chayse never expected to play for her mother at the collegiate level – she “never thought Western was going to be on the table.” The opportunity to play volleyball at Western was certainly not a given. Under Diane’s guidance, the team has earned 11 Conference titles and 15 NCAA Tournament appearances, making earning a spot fairly competitive. 

Initially, Diane struggled with her decision to recruit her daughter. She wondered how the team would react: “Are [they] going to limit what they say because she’s my kid?” 

She wanted Chayse to be on the same level as her teammates, despite being the coach’s daughter.

All Diane wants is for Chayse “to have the same opportunity as any other student-athlete. … I just hope she has the experience she's supposed to have.”

For Chayse and Aspen, when they heard their final buzzers or scored their last points in high school, it was not to be the end. Playing collegiately was a goal Aspen reached and one that Chayse is about to fulfill, and both had the support of their mothers to guide them. Growing up with athletic parents taught both Chayse and Aspen to always strive for success in sports. They learned from example and what it takes to keep going as an athlete.

As Chayse put it, “If a player has their own mind on the right path, no one can stop them.”