Sometimes Athletes Do Make The Best Coaches: My Conversation With Tasia Percevecz

Let’s get one thing straight. I’m a coach. I love coaching.  I like to watch great coaches coach.  My best friends are coaches. I can’t say the word “coach” enough, obviously.  This is one of the reasons why on a recent visit to Crossfit Mayhem in Tennessee, I was thrilled to sit down with Super Coach Tasia Percevecz and talk with her about her transition from a full-time athlete, to coaching her former teammate Haley Adams at the 2020 Crossfit Games Finals.  

There is an old athletic trope that world-class athletes don’t always make great coaches.  In fact, I’d say that these skills are often mutually exclusive.  Most of the time we find that some of the best coaches in the world were in fact just good athletes (maybe even former national level competitors like yours truly) but not great(est) athletes.  This is one of the reasons that I was so compelled to ask Tasia, who happens to be a GREAT athlete, how she found herself coaching a former teammate at the world championships of their sport.

Lastly, there has classically been a dearth of women coaches coaching at the pinnacle of any team sports really.  When it comes to women coaching other individual competitors the reality is even more austere.  A woman coaching another woman at the pinnacle of a sport? Unicorn level.  A former elite athlete coaching another woman at a world championship? Unicorn Level 3000.

I caught up with Tasia at the end of a long teaching weekend she was co-leading, and although our talk was all too brief, we did manage to cover some ground.  =

• The transition from being an athlete since 5 years old to a coaching role
• Any advantages of having experienced high-level competition and transitioning to coaching?
• Women coaches in strength and conditioning
• Tasia becoming Haley’s coach 
• Experience at the Games
• New Acting Director of Mayhem Missions
• Stepping into a new leadership role

Enjoy our interview!

-Kelly