From the podcast: Doug Worthen of Middlesex on mental game

Middlesex School coach Doug Worthen with senior defender George Fulton, a University of Virginia commit. (Don Cameron illustration)

Like many great players who went on to coach, Doug Worthen’s transition from playing to coaching didn’t follow a straight line.

The head coach since 2017 at Middlesex School, where he was a lacrosse and football standout, Worthen (North Andover, Mass.) played on an NCAA champion team at the University of Virginia under coach Dom Starsia.

He has also developed a passion for mindfulness and meditation, and is active in the movement to bring these practices into the American school system. At Middlesex he serves as the director of the mindfulness program.

He joined hosts Jack Piatelli and Mike Zhe on “New England Lacrosse Journal’s Chasing The Goal” podcast to talk about influences, surviving cancer and the mental side of lacrosse.

The full podcast can be accessed below.

Jack Piatelli: What made you want to coach and what made you the coach you are today?

Doug Worthen: I see (coaching) as just an incredible laboratory to learn life lessons. The ups and downs of life, how to cope with those, how to work together, how to communicate and give feedback, how to lead — it’s incredible.

Mike Zhe: You talk about the ups and downs. You’re a national champion at UVA and then years later you have a down, health-wise.

DW: In 2007 I came down with stage 4 lymphoma. The doctor was like, “This isn’t a good kid of lymphoma,” which wasn’t great to hear. Chemo and radiation didn’t kill it, so what they did was a bone-marrow transplant where they killed my immune system and put in two other immune systems; they kind of fight it out to see which one wins. One wins and this new immune system grows within me and, hopefully, kills the cancer. And it did.

One of the things I got into at Virginia that was so helpful was mindfulness. Basically, what was happening was I’d be in a game, my attention would be in the game but then my attention would go to worry thoughts. I’d be distracted and it would create tension in me. For any athlete out there, distraction and tension are not a recipe for performing your best.

My uncle gave me a mindfulness book and it made so much sense, and that became a big part of my life starting at Virginia. Like any skill, you have to keep doing it and doing it daily, but it cultivates concentration, it cultivates a healthy relationship to thoughts and emotions, and you can really incline the mind toward qualities that you want, like gratitude or kindness. That was a big part of my life going into that cancer experience. It helped me cope with that in such an incredible and powerful way that I just don’t know if I would have made it without it.

I came out of that very clear that I wanted to share that with youth and school communities. What’s so great, too, is that as a coach, it makes so much sense to bring it into a team and a team culture. How many times do you hear people talking about the mental game in sports? But nobody tells us how.

JP: As a coach, how do you apply that to your players?

DW: The start of practice, we’ll come together and just do a minute of stabilizing attention. The feet on the ground, the breath. The attention wanders, you bring it back. That’s just one example of how it might come into our team. And as a coach, it’s how you relate to teenagers about things that are coming up for them, emotions and thoughts. As coaches, it’s so important for us to first look at our own stuff if we’re going to be helping young people cope with all the stresses and emotions and thoughts that come up in sports.

MZ: The coach you succeeded (and played for) at Middlesex, Ned Herter, what are some of the things you took away from him?

DW: Playing for him, coaching with him, he’s really the greatest mentor of my life, no doubt. The way he carried himself with such kindness, and the way he made everyone he talked to feel seen, was incredible. He loved to compete, too. He was ferociously competitive but in such a respectful way. When you walked in the room, whatever he was doing, he would drop whatever he was doing and give you his attention. And he did that for all the players.

JP: Did you see a lot of similarities with Ned and Dom with their styles?

DW: Dom is similar in many ways. When you’re leading a Division 1 program, that must be the hardest job. He’s got to give his attention to recruits, parents, the media, and there’s twice as many players. The impact he had on me … one, I was so blessed to be part of the program and two, the players he brought into the program. Those became some of my mentors.

There’s a lot of coaches who might be more my-way-or-the-highway, but Dom had a really nice balance. Yes, he was the leader, but he really looked to the players and the upperclassmen really led the team.

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