Ayla Guzzardo, the head coach of women’s basketball at Southeastern Louisiana University, sits down with us in this episode of the 35,000 feet podcast and gives us insight into her journey as a basketball coach. She shares her experiences as a player which led her to become a coach, the highs and lows of the past season, why she loves traveling with her team, and more!

In this episode, we discuss:

• How this past season went for Southeastern Louisiana University Women’s Basketball team (0:20)

• How Coach Guzzardo got into coaching (2:24)

• Ayla’s advice to athletes wanting to play in college (3:59)

• One thing that no one knows about Ayla (5:37)

• Ayla’s favorite travel experience (8:09)

• Ayla’s next adventure (10:58)

The Highs and Lows of Southeastern Louisiana University Women’s Basketball Team’s Past Season

Shianne: I'm excited to dive in and learn more about you and your season. Just to kick it off can you tell us about the highs and the lows of your season you just had?

Coach Ayla: Oh, I feel like my highs and lows were in the same week of our season. It seems that about almost a week and a half ago, we hit our high. We made our Conference Tournament for the first time in over eight years, something huge for us. That's something since I got there three years ago as a head coach and four years ago as an assistant, this program has been in the dumps. It's been rough. It's been hard. It's losing seasons and that's just what the expectation was, but changing the culture takes time. So it took us a good three years to really get the ball moving with it.

So our high, we made the tournament. We got in. They take the top eight [inaudible 00:01:29] of the conference and we got in by God's grace and excited, ready to go, play in our rival school 45 minutes away in Texas, and our low was probably hit that same time. They canceled the tournament. On the court, getting ready, starting lineups were already done. They announced the coaches better to tip the ball off and due to the coronavirus, completely understandable, but I watched some very important people, with the players, with my staff, the fans just be devastated all in one announcement.

Shianne: Yeah. Oh my gosh.

Coach Ayla: So that was tough. That was tough. So it was a great experience. Great high. I wish you would have seen how the season would have ended for us, but it ended abruptly. You never know when your last game is going to be so we take that literal now.

Shianne: Yeah, for sure. That just breaks my heart, thinking about all of those athletes where it just ended so suddenly. You never even knew that was your last game. And especially with your team, how you said you had a couple years in the dumps, and this is the first year you were in that tournament and you were actually warming up on the court and they just stopped it. Oh, I'm sorry. That's hard.

Coach Ayla: Yeah. It was tough. It was tough.

How Ayla Guzzardo Started Coaching Basketball

Shianne: Yeah. Man. So how did you get into coaching basketball?

Coach Ayla: I played. Playing, you have to have a passion for it. You have to love it, especially playing college athletics. You have to a passion for the sport you're in because it's so demanding. You're training year round. You're playing in a season. Our season is pretty long. We really hit all holidays, Christmas, Thanksgiving. We even go into Easter, so you have to really love it. And I just loved it so much that I didn't want it to end. So I had to make the decision, do I want to go try to play overseas or do I want to get into coaching?

I had a great experience at the University Of Akron, where I played my last two years of college. And I had an opportunity to be a graduate assistant and learn from who's now my mentor, my head coach at the time. She taught me a lot. She's super particular. She's by the book. She follows all the rules. She does things the right way. And she showed me that you do it the right way, you're going to be successful. So I learned a lot from her. And then while doing that, while being the graduate assistant, she promoted me to an assistant. Coached there for four years and then came back home to Louisiana and continued my coaching career down here.

Shianne: That's awesome. I love that you understand that you have to have the passion to be the coach. And I think that really shows a lot when you are a coach. You can tell when you are passionate about it and I think that's just super important. So I'm glad that you understand that.

Coach Ayla: Oh yeah.

Coach Ayla’s Advice To Future Collegiate Athletes

Shianne: What's your advice for someone that wants to play in college. Like college basketball or volleyball, whatever the sport may be? What would your advice be to them?

Coach Ayla: Like I said, you have to love it. You have to know that this is ... They're student-athletes, but this is a full-time job for these student-athletes. It's a full-time job. How you produce is how you play. Your work ethic helps you produce so you have to have great work ethic. You have to have great grades, and I have a lot of players who think they can just play basketball. I'm like, "No, you got to be eligible to play." So it's so many different characteristics, and our, I guess our motto is excellence in the classroom, the community and competition so you have to be able to do all three for us. You have to be a good people person. You have to be a good person to step foot on our campus and be a part of our women's basketball program.

We do a lot of stuff in the community. They're leaders to young girls who are wanting to play college basketball, so you have to be a good role model. There's so many different intangibles than just playing the sport, whether it's the school aspect, whether it's the person that you are, your background, your work ethic, your drive; you have to have everything. There's not many people who can say, "I played division one basketball. I played division one volleyball, football." There's a select few. A lot of people want to do it, but not everybody has that opportunity. So if you've got the ability, if you got the drive, you go all for it.

A Lesser-Known Fact About Coach Ayla

Shianne: Yeah. That's great advice, and I really liked the points you made where you can just be good at the sport you're doing, but you have to be a good person. You have to be good in school. Everything, it all has to fit together to be whole. You can't just have one part of the puzzle. What is one thing that no one knows about you that you could share with us?

Coach Ayla: Fun fact, I'm a foster parent. I am single. I have a seven-year-old little girl that I've had for almost two years. It'll be two years in July. And it was, didn't feel like my life was too hectic enough, being a division one basketball coach, I put on that hat. And I took the classes. I was registered. I'm a certified foster parent in Louisiana. Our state has a lot of kids who are in need of homes and just a safe place to be. She was my first placement and she's been with me since. Unfortunately, she's not able to go back to her family. So we are in the process. I've made the decision to adopt her. So once her rights are terminated from her mother, hopefully I'll be into the adoption point of it with her.

It's been a long road. It's been stressful. It's been traumatic, it's been ups and downs, but the positives definitely outweigh the negatives and that's something I'm an advocate for. I just feel like there's so many kids out there that need homes and need just to be loved. That's her biggest thing. Everybody's like, "Oh, you got to do all these things," where I'm like, "You just got to love her. That's all that she needs." So it's been eventful. Having a five-year-old with a lot of attitudes has been a challenge, but she's made me better. She's made me really look at life and see what's important. And basketball, eventually, the ball is going to stop bouncing, similar to right now. I'm spending a lot of time with her home. I'm teaching her first-grade math, which I think her teacher needs to be paid more for that, but it's been eventful, but it's been rewarding.

Shianne: Aww. Thank you so much for sharing that. That's so awesome. I feel like I've just gotten a little glimpse into your heart and I just love that. I love the passion you have for that, and I think that's so awesome.

Coach Ayla: Yeah. She's got a lot of role models. She's an African American kid and I'm obviously Caucasian and people ask, "How are you going to raise her?" I'm like, "She's got African-American role models everywhere around her." My team is primarily African American, so she's at a hair salon right now, getting her hair done. I'm learning, she's learning, but we're all adapting and she's happy and she's safe so that's all that matters.

Coach Ayla’s Most Memorable Travel Experience

Shianne: Yeah. That's awesome. I love it. Thank you so much for sharing that once again. So we are a travel company so I always like to ask, what are maybe some of your favorite travel experiences, whether it's with your team, your personal life? Can you tell us about some of those?

Coach Ayla: I guess I'll start with my team. We went to Costa Rica one of my years when I was at Akron. I was an assistant coach there. And just the cultural experience that we got to experience was phenomenal. It was first class with the travel company, but a lot of our players hadn't even been out of the state. I get a lot of players that only go for AU trips, club basketball during the summer. So they get to go to a few states here and there, but they don't get really vacation. So we got to go whitewater rafting, we got to ride horses on the mountains of Costa Rica, and we really got to just see each other out of our basketball elements. Anytime we take a road trip or recruiting trip, it's fun to see because you see these girls in the morning and you see them in the evening and you see what ... We're going to go to dinner one night, you see what they're going to wear. So it's fun just to see people out of their element.

I like traveling with our family members who we see on holidays, special occasions, birthday parties, and see how they are when they really just let their hair down, and they're not stressing about a party or stressing about a function or a wedding and doing any type of vacations. As a coach, you don't get to go on more personal vacations as much, but you get to travel a lot and it's been fun. Unfortunately, we're quarantined right now, so my travel is just really to the grocery store and back, but it's eventful. I love it. I love to travel, and it's definitely something that I'm excited to let my team get to experience next year also.

Shianne: Yeah. You guys going on any foreign tours or anything like that?

Coach Ayla: Our foreign tour will probably be the following year, either going to the Dominican Republic I think, somewhere like that. I'm just trying to nail it down to a few different places, but it all depends what's going on right now.

Shianne: Yeah, for sure. I get that, and I really love your insight that you shared where you said you really get to see who people are when you're traveling with them because you do get to see them in the morning or at night. What are they going to wear because that's really where their personality comes through.

Coach Ayla: Yes. I went with my cousin then we flew one time and I'll never do that again. Love her, love her to death, but she was a train wreck on an airplane. Never going to do that again. So I learned a lot about her. It's fun, but you really learn people.

Shianne: Yeah, you totally do. It's totally different than just seeing them, whether it's, like you're telling me, functions or on the court, it's the complete opposite. You get to see them who they really are. Just to wrap it all up, what's your next adventure? What are you most excited about for the upcoming season? I know you just finished your season, but as you're getting ready to prepare for your next season.

Coach Ayla: We ended on a ... I hate to say it, we ended on a high note. We went to the Conference Tournament and we didn't lose, but our girls are mad. Our girls are angry. Our girls are hurt and my entire staff is ... They're working from home right now, but they're angry. They want more. They're hungry so I'm excited to see how they put in the work in the offseason. I'm excited for the season, but I want to see what they do in the offseason, because that's where it'll show if they really want it. You take something away from someone who really wants it, they want it more, and it's like they work harder for it. So I'm nervous to see what our team's going to do this year because we're probably going to wind up being pretty good, just because we're going to have that drive, just because we're going to have that passion.

Coach Ayla: I had five seniors that graduated last year. They didn't get to experience it so I've got eight returners who are going to do it for them. So we're excited to see what we're going to do, the kind of noise we're going to make next year. I'm excited to see the recruits I'm going to bring in, hopefully in the next few months, to help us get that done, but it's going to be fun. It's going to be a wild ride, and then maybe, hopefully, December I'll be a full time adopted mother. So we'll see. It'll be an eventful season.

Shianne: That's awesome, and I really like what you said about your girls who are just hungry for next year already. Even in the offseason, they're like, "Hey, let's go," because they got that tournament taken away from them. All the athletes did. So I really like that your team's going to be approaching it with that mindset of Like, "Hey, we got gypped a little bit, so let's go back and get what we deserve."

Coach Ayla: Exactly.

Shianne: Well Coach Ayla, thank you so much for joining us today. It was great talking to you and learning about you and your team. And I wish you the best of luck with everything and adopting your little girl.

Coach Ayla: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. You have a great day and thank you so much.

Mount Southeastern Louisiana University Women’s Basketball

• Southeastern Louisiana University Women’s Basketball Team Twitter

• Coach Ayla Guzzardo Twitter

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