Taylor Stahly Reed, B.S. Exercise and Health Promotion 2019
Growing up, sports were a huge part of my life. Basketball was my main sport, but I played everything from flag football, to softball, to track and field. I always knew that I wanted to be a coach to stay close to sports and everything that they teach you in life. I came to Louisiana Tech in the fall of 2017 and graduated two years later with a Bachelor’s degree in Kinesiology with an emphasis in Exercise and Health Promotion. During my time at Tech, I was a member of the women’s basketball team, which only enhanced my desire to become a collegiate basketball coach. Getting my degree in Kinesiology was the best choice I could have made to help me take my first steps into the coaching field.
Upon graduating in 2019, I moved to Houston where I became a Graduate Assistant for the women’s basketball team at Houston Christian University, a small Division 1 school competing in the Southland Conference. I have been with the program for 5 years now, where I have held titles as an Assistant Coach, Recruiting Coordinator, and now Associate Head Coach. In 2021-2022, our team won the Southland Conference, the first women’s basketball team to do so in school history. Throughout my time in coaching, there are many moments that I look back on my time at Tech and am thankful for the degree path that I chose. Kinesiology is a broad field with so many directions that you can go in it. I have found that a lot of people choose Kinesiology to get into coaching because it normally involves conversations about sport and its movement at some point in your curriculum. However, I have found that my degree is applied almost every day that I come to work.
Basketball is a game of almost constant movement and change of direction. Understanding physiology and energy systems within the body is crucial in getting the most out of your players during the different phases of a season. Players will typically play anywhere from 25-30 games in a 4-month time span, so being on the same page with your other staff members is critical. Athletic trainers are one of the most important positions in college athletics. Inevitably, players will get hurt or sick throughout a season. I have found that because of my degree in Kinesiology, I am able to have knowledgeable conversations with our athletic training staff about player injuries and recovery times, which allows me to have an overall idea of how our team is recovering to their various training sessions throughout the season and how the wear and tear of the season effects their overall performance.
Another area of importance to college athletics is Strength and Conditioning. In 2020, I became a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS). Although I am not the S&C coach for our team, I work closely with him during the pre-season to strategize how many days a week our team will lift, for how long, and how we will test their progress and performance along the way. We also come up with various conditioning tests for our players and implement them during the preseason. There are also times that I will step in and supervise our players during their training sessions if our S&C coach is out sick or tied up with another team. Without a degree in Kinesiology, I never would have had a knowledge base to pass the CSCS exam and would most likely not be able to have training and programming conversations with our teams S&C coach.
To me, coaching was an obvious profession from the start. Unlike other professions, coaching doesn’t require a certain degree for you to get into the field. In my opinion, however, Kinesiology is the best option for anyone considering getting into the field of coaching. Although sports are typically viewed as strategy and skill based on the particular game you play, coaching becomes much more holistic when you look at it from a science-based standpoint in the areas of physiology, anatomy, and strength and conditioning. The knowledge I gained from my professors at Louisiana Tech was second to none and I cannot speak highly enough of the department and all that it did for me during my 2 years there. For anyone who is considering a career in coaching, understand that the game you choose to coach and the players you influence every day are the most important thing. I encourage you to arm yourselves with as much knowledge as you can to prepare and motivate the next generation of athletes!
A special thank you to all the professors who helped me get where I am today: Jessica Szymanski, David Szymanski, Rhonda Boyd, Lacey Deal, Jordan Blazo, Ben Gleason, and Smiley Reeves. You all changed my life and encouraged me to be my best every day. I can’t thank you enough for the impact you made on my life.
Note: Taylor was a member of the Lady Techster’s Basketball team and graduated Summa Cum Laude with a 4.0 GPA.
The Exponential Factor 