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to succeed, you are also trying to make sure they are in the best place possible, both emotionally and physically. You’re managing yourself and you’re managing them.” An Olympian herself, Heads Slaughter said she enjoys coaching


athletes of all levels, but she especially relishes in working with brand- new athletes because they have the most growth ahead of them. “What really stands out is an athlete’s first meet,” she said. “Get-


MAKING THE


TRANSITION From elite athlete to emerging coach, Cara Heads Slaughter finds success in new career. By Kevin Loughery


Most Americans work from their early 20s to their mid-60s. The


average person changes careers five to seven times and for some people, it takes their entire career to accomplish their goals. So what happens when you reach your career and life’s goal at 22


years old? Cara Heads Slaughter competed at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney,


the first time female weightlifters could compete at an Olympics. She earned silver at the Pan American Games the year before. She was a seven-time national champion and at one point in her career, she was ranked top-seven in the world. Heads Slaughter had accomplished many of her goals before she


was old enough to rent a car. So, in 2009, she did what most people do half a dozen times in their lives: she changed careers. A year after her 2009 retirement, Heads Slaughter shifted her


sights to coaching, a career change that was 13 years in the making. “I got involved in coaching back in Savannah, Ga., with Team Sa-


vannah when I moved there in 1997 to train for Junior Worlds. I got a chance to start coaching some kids there,” she said. “While I en- joyed it, I still mostly wore the athlete hat; that’s how most people remember me. I started focusing full-time on a coaching career in 2010.” Though her experience translates nicely into her new role within


weightlifting, Heads Slaughter said moving into coaching is a bit of an adjustment. “I would say the biggest difference is that [you are] not only man-


aging your own competencies,” she said. “As an athlete, you focus on what you need to do to perform, but as a coach, you focus on what the athlete needs to do to perform and how to help the ath- lete. It has more of a depth to it; you’re trying to manage your own emotions because you’re involved with your athletes and want them


6 >> WEIGHTLIFTING.TEAMUSA.ORG


ting them introduced to the sport, training them, enjoying their im- provements and their personal records, that experience for them—I remember that.” Heads Slaughter is a Level 2 coach and has spent the last three


years developing as a coach herself. Just like her athletes, she is learning, growing and improving. “Weightlifting is a discipline. When you work at it, things are go-


ing to show up in your training. That’s the same with life, whether you are just on the platform training for weightlifting or going to a job. In this case it’s weightlifting, but it could be martial arts or playing the flute. Whatever we choose to make our discipline, it helps us to become better people. That’s important to me.” Like many coaches, when it comes to instruction, Heads Slaughter


has a clear advantage that makes her effective: her athletic back- ground. Technically, she is able to guide her students to become the best athletes they can be physically, but it is mentally that she feels she can really connect.


“At times, I realize that my ath-


letic experience is helping me coach, but I can’t always put my finger on exactly what it is,” she said. “In my experience, under- standing how to take care of an athlete’s confidence and how im-


portant that is, that is huge. It is a respect for certain experiences. Like when an athlete is going through something and they tell me it hurts or that it is hard—they’ve trained this much, are this tired or have to manage this job—I can look them in the eye and tell them that I understand and you can do it. It’s this sort of unspoken un- derstanding like, ‘You know what? She’s done this before.’ There is an unspoken respect for the position from which I’m speaking. I’ve been there and I know. I can tell athletes how to get through it.” And, she said, like any good coach, Heads Slaughter sets goals


for herself. When it is all said and done, she said, “I would like to have known


I nurtured athletes on their journeys. I think to be a good coach, you have to embrace teaching and care for people. It takes a certain amount of patience to meet people where they are (skill wise). When an athlete retires or when I retire, I hope that they feel I, in some way, nurtured them on their journey and was able to help them overcome something in their training.“


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