Putting Yourself In Their Shoes

The gold medal Mark Johnson won as the leading scorer on the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team is sitting somewhere in the computer room of his home in Madison, Wis. "I couldn't tell you exactly where," he said, smiling.

Now 30 years after the Miracle on Ice, Mark Johnson returns to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver playing a different role. This time as coach of the U.S. women's hockey team.

"Coaching is a lot more challenging than being a player, so the experience this time around compared to what I went through 30 years ago is much different and certainly a bigger responsibility on my part." Johnson said.

In LA Times article, Coach Johnson talks about how his prior experiences as a player help him as the coach of this Olympic squad:

"The big thing is I played a long time. I played in a lot of different areas, whether it was the captain of a team, the fourth line of a team, playing for a championship, not making the playoffs. The one thing I think I utilize quite a bit is putting myself in my players' shoes. So where we're at, what type of experience we're going through, I can reflect back on similar situations and say, hey, what's the best thing to do today at practice? Is it to push them? Is it to challenge them? Is it to back off? Is it to make it fun? Is it to enjoy it? That's what you try to do, and hopefully at the end of the day I've become my own coach."