Why I Built Ethos of Athena

People often ask me why I built Ethos of Athena. The answer is simpler than people expect, and more personal.

It started as a gift for my own kids

The first reason was my children.

I come from a broken home, and there were parts of parenting I honestly did not understand well — the rhythms, the rituals, the steady ground that other people seem to inherit naturally. But there was one thing I knew I could give my kids better than almost anyone I had met: character coaching through sport. That was my ground. That was the work I had given my life to.

And then the thought I did not like sitting with for too long crept in.

What if something happened to me? What if I was not there to give them the one thing I knew I could give them?

My greatest strength as a parent — gone, undelivered.

That worry became one of the strongest engines behind this whole project. If I could not always be there in person, then what I knew had to exist somewhere they could reach for it.

Then the club outgrew my time

Athena kept growing. And the more it grew, the less time I had to personally teach this material the way I once did, when I only coached one or two teams a season.

I could feel the dilution happening. New coaches, new athletes, more families — and only one of me. I needed a way to put my philosophy into a form that could be passed on without me having to be in every gym, every practice, every conversation.

And then the parents kept coming

This is the part I genuinely cannot say no to.

Parents kept reaching out. Former players came back with their own children. People asked if I could help their anxious kid, their lost kid, their kid with low self-esteem, their ambitious kid who could see the potential and wanted to go for it. Kids who were not part of our club. Kids I had no formal way of helping.

I could not, for the life of me, look at those families and say, sorry, you are not in our program. Not when I knew exactly what this work could do for them.

So I built it as a gift

That is what Ethos of Athena is. A gift. I have held nothing back.

I have seen what this coaching does over the long term, and it is the most incredible thing I can imagine. I have seen kids in genuinely bad environments — domestic violence, bullying, kids who had themselves been the bullies — learn to negotiate with themselves and turn those experiences into stepping stones rather than traumatic, debilitating wounds. I have seen complainers become tough. I have seen lost kids find direction.

I have seen my Raise the Bar girls stand on a podium at twelve and thirteen years old and protest against the Icelandic sports authorities with a spine of their own. That was not emotion. That was character under pressure, built quietly, year after year.

And I have watched former players grow up, have their own children, and drive long distances to bring those children to our club — because they wanted them to receive what they once received.

That is when you know something mattered.

That is why Ethos of Athena exists. For my kids. For the athletes and coaches in our growing club. For the families who came knocking and would not have been heard otherwise.

I want this for you. I want this for your family.

I held nothing back.