Leila Tunnell: cultivating gardens and a love of the game

Leila Tunnell is 36 years old and works as the garden educator for the Amherst Public Schools. But she is also the co-head coach of the Bx Varsity Ultimate team at Amherst High School. Leila is a legend within the Ultimate community with impressive credentials such as playing at World Championships, winning Club Nationals, along with coaching too many teams to count. Tunnell started off her post-secondary education at Connecticut College before moving to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for the rest of her undergraduate degree and graduate school. 

IC: How did you get into Ultimate?

LT: I started in elementary school. Paideia, like Amherst, has a pretty robust Ultimate program, and my older brother also played competitively. I started playing in fifth grade mostly with Dylan, my brother, and then was able to play through middle school and high school. 

IC: How was it playing with your brother?

LT: So fun! Dylan has always been a big role model for me in the sport and we spent many, many, many hours throwing together in our front yard. And I contribute a lot of whatever success that I’ve had in the sport to that time.

IC: Why did you choose to play Ultimate?

LT: I really connected with the sport. I played a lot of other sports in middle school and high school like soccer and basketball and really loved the community of Ultimate that I found. I also really loved the environment. Playing varsity basketball in high school always felt really stressful to me and playing in a different setting like Ultimate felt a lot more spacious. And I was able to enjoy being competitive without it being scary.

IC: Did you have any other activities in high school?

LT: A lot of music and musical theatre. I was a vocal performance and education major in college so I did a lot of music and art in high school and growing up.

IC: What made you come to Amherst?

LT: Well, a lot of different things. First off, I already had a community here through Ultimate. Every year in high school I came here for the Amherst Invitational and also went to the National Ultimate Training Camp as a high schooler. Then I worked here for over a decade at the National Ultimate Training Camp. I had a lot of friends and people that I already felt close to. I was teaching in NYC and knew that I wanted to leave the city and start farming. When I realized that that was what I wanted to do, Amherst seemed like a natural choice because of the agricultural setting and also because of the Ultimate. 

IC: What teams have you played on or coached for?

LT: A lot. In terms of club teams, I have played on Ozone in Atlanta, Phoenix in North Carolina, and Brute Squad in Boston. I played on the U20 National Team twice, and the US Women’s National Team. I’ve coached so many different high school teams; Jordan High School in North Carolina, Stuyvesant High School in NYC, and Amherst High School here, and then various YCC teams both in North Carolina and in the Valley. 

IC: What are some memorable moments of your career?

LT: Honestly, one of the things that I remember most sweetly from my career is coming to the Amherst Invitational as a high schooler. That tournament was so impactful for me and so fun because it felt like the first time that I really was developing relationships with some people outside of just my school and local Ultimate community. Some of my best friends are still people that I played against at the Amherst Invitational, like Dory Ziperstein who helped birth both of my children, an Amherst High School Alum. There are the outcome highlights like winning Nationals for the first time which was hugely exciting, and college nationals for the first time. But I had the fondest memories from playing in high school and college, and just making friends and being so immersed, my entire world was those people.

IC: What made you want to start coaching?

LT: I have always loved teaching, that has always been the work I have felt most drawn to. The sport has been so important in my life and my own personal development and getting to share that, having it be another way for me to deepen my relationship with the sport has always felt really important and I love it. I get so much joy out of coaching. I think it has made me a much better teacher and also maybe a much better athlete. Getting to see the sport from a different perspective, develop a lot of mental resilience tools in a new way, and really see the big picture of how to create and sustain team culture which is definitely the part that I enjoy the most. 

IC: How do you prepare yourself for intense games such as Worlds, both mentally and physically?

LT: A lot of athletes that I have played with luckily know a lot about sports science and how to train for things so I have mostly just followed whatever training routines that have been created by people who knew a lot more about how to get in shape than I do. So a lot of throwing, a lot of track workouts, a lot of touches, but I have found that the mental preparation has been more of a focus for me. I have been doing a lot of visualization, and a lot of breathing, types of meditation that I have never actually called meditation but only just mindfulness practice. A lot of confidence building has been huge for me and just trying to be present and enjoy.

IC: Do you have any goals in the Ultimate world that you want to accomplish?

LT: I feel like I have been really, really lucky to have achieved all of the big outcome goals that I had in this sport. I think moving forward now I am really looking to find a balance of how to keep Ultimate a big part of my life while also balancing my family and career. It has become harder and harder for me to be engaged in the way that I want to be and the way that I have been historically and it is still really important to me to find a way to keep coaching and maybe one day play again. It’s been a few years since I got to play, and that also feels balanced with the things that feel important to me. 

IC: What do you do when you are not doing Ultimate-related things now?

LT: I teach. I am the garden educator at the elementary schools so I am with kids all the time, either working with K-6 kids, coaching high school kids, or being with my own kids who are 3 and 1. My whole world is about kids right now. And sometimes, I get to go on runs by myself, and that’s awesome. 

IC: What are some challenges as a female coach on a Bx team?

LT: Well, it felt really important to me when I started coaching with Joe [Costello] twelve years ago now to continue this legacy of there being a female-identifying coach for that team. It was started by Tiina Booth who for many many years ran that program and made it one of the strongest high school programs in the entire country, in the world. I loved that legacy of this really high-achieving mostly male sports teams being coached by women. I wanted to continue that tradition of providing a female role model and mentor for all of these young men who were going on to be leaders in the sport at whatever college or club teams they went to play on next. It has also been hard, I have found that my own insecurities have impacted me deeply. Being a woman in our culture, I am well equipped with a wide array of insecurities around my own value and self-worth. So remaining confident and self-assured and remembering that I have a lot of value to contribute is hard sometimes and luckily I have an amazing co-coach who is so supportive and such an incredible friend. It has been a really big growth edge for me and I think it has given me a lot of tools to bolster me in my life outside of Ultimate as well. 

IC: What has made you interested in coaching at the high school level rather than college?

LT: I really don’t ever want to coach adults. Adults are hard. Kids are awesome. I think that high school Ultimate was so important to me that I also really see how formative this moment is in these athletes. I want to be a part of creating a positive experience for them, and a positive experience in this sport that can carry them through and impact how they experience the world and this sport looking forward. 

IC: Do you have any advice for kids playing sports?
LT: One consideration that I would offer is just trying to find balance. It took me a really long time to find a healthy balance between this sport and everything else. For so long Ultimate was my whole world, everything I did was about Ultimate, which was awesome and also it meant that I didn’t create space for a lot of other things that I wish that I had created more space for earlier on. It made it really hard for me to separate my own identity from this sport and this community. So, I really encourage any athlete who is playing to also try other sports, to also have other activities that they are engaged in, to make sure they are making space for self-care, and friends, and family, and other relationships with people. Find balance and also enjoy the process! Winning feels great, sometimes, and we can also all sometimes get way too hung up on a zero-sum game. Play for joy and not just for the outcome of winning. Celebrate your opponents and their successes and look for the meaning and value in losing. It’s a game!