“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle

“Be a thumb person first and finger person second.”

Rachel Hanson, Head Coach at Stanford University joins the Smart Softball Podcast. Rachel is full of passion and clarity of purpose. What do you do when your team is underperforming? As a coach, it’s so easy to take your team’s performance, wins, and losses personally. What do you do when issues go unaddressed? How do you put a system of excellence in place? Rachel shares some of her tips and strategies on how to create a peer-driven culture.

“You’ll know you’re culture is in the right place when your players open their mouths and you start to hear your words coming out.”

Bio: Rachel Hanson enters her first year as the head coach in 2014-15 after four seasons as the Dartmouth head coach where she elevated the program to new levels of success and claimed the winningest seasons in the school’s past decade.

Hanson is coming off a successful 2014 season in which she led the Big Green to its first Ivy League Championship with an 18-2 conference record.  She guided her team to a 31-19 overall mark and a trip to the NCAA Tempe Regional. The 18 conference victories are the most in Dartmouth history and the 31 wins overall ranks second all-time.

Under Hanson’s leadership, Dartmouth student-athletes garnered a variety of individual honors including the 2014 Ivy League Player of the Year, 2013 Rookie of the Year, the 2013 and 2014 Ivy League Pitcher of the Year, NFCA All-Region honors, Ivy League first- and second-team selections and Ivy League All-Academic recognition.

Prior to leading the Big Green, Hanson coached the University of Dallas softball team for five seasons and set a program record of 80 wins. In 2009, she led the Crusaders to a program-best 20 victories and top-20 rankings in team scoring, doubles and triples.

A 2005 graduate of Trinity with a degree in political science, Hanson was a three-time all-conference selection and captained her team to a conference championship in her senior year. She was a force in the classroom as well, earning academic all-conference honors and receiving recognition on the Dean’s List.

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