68th Article at the Independent

Work Hard Play Harder podcast episode three: Marshall Tigers girls hockey head coach and Director of Visit Marshall Cassi Weiss

CHRIS DRUMMOND cdrummond@marshallindependent.com

Last week, I had the second episode of my podcast “Work Hard, Play Harder” with Southwest Minnesota State University men’s head basketball coach Brad Bigler. This week’s episode features Marshall High School girls hockey coach Cassi Weiss, who is also the Director of Visit Marshall.

The podcast is called “Work Hard, Play Harder” because that’s how I like to live my life. It is about finding out your why and getting to know you beyond the occupation. The podcast is informative about what you do but also asks fun questions as well. Building connections and being able to be relatable is an important aspect of my podcast as well. Last month, I had the debut episode with Marshall 12U girls hockey coach Mike Foley.

In this podcast episode, Weiss, a Marshall native, talked about her why into wanting to be a coach and mentor towards young girls in the community. We also talked about her job as Director of Visit Marshall and what exciting events are coming up this summer in town. When it comes to coaching, Weiss is very passionate but does take the adequate timeout needed for her family.

“First and foremost, I always try to leave Sundays just for me and my family,” Weiss added. “Same with Wednesdays as we have church, so we always schedule an early practice. So Wednesdays and Sundays are our days to be together as a family.”

Weiss and I touched up on a lot of topics throughout the conversation. There are lots of laughs in this episode amongst the fun questions that I asked coach Weiss. We also talked about mental health and how her team was affected by it, ways of dealing with that and being better from it.

With the girls, we noticed that their mental health has gotten significantly worse since COVID-19, so we really just try to talk to them as much as we can,” Weiss said. “We try to be pretty intentional on talking to them about non-hockey related things, because when their mental health is being affected, their hockey game is being affected and really hockey is the least of our worries some days.”

This episode will show the personality of coach Weiss and why girls should come out to play/learn hockey. Weiss added some advice for individuals who want to get into coaching which was continue to work hard and although you will make enemies in this industry, continue to make the team better and be confident in the work that you’re doing because it is good.

https://vimeo.com/703793810