Find us on your favorite podcast platform including: Spotify | YouTube | Apple | Amazon

1% Better Podcast Patrick Mader – Quick Links

Connect with Patrick “Packy” Mader on LinkedIn
Visit Patrick’s site – minnesotaathletes.com
Check out all 6 of Patrick’s books on his website
Connect with Craig Thielen on LinkedIn
Check out host Craig Thielen’s full bio page

Key Takeaways

• You can live like an Olympian in any role: Excellence isn’t limited to sports – anyone can apply Olympic-level discipline, effort, and mindset in their own life
• Perseverance is a defining trait: Olympians consistently overcome setbacks, injuries, and obstacles to reach the highest level
• Humility and giving back are common patterns: Many Olympians remain grounded and actively give back to their communities and sports
• Work ethic often starts early: Farm life, small-town environments, and early responsibility frequently shape discipline and resilience
• Love of the game matters more than early specialization: Many Olympians played multiple sports and emphasized enjoyment over pressure in early development

1% Better Podcast Patrick Mader – Transcript

Craig Thielen (00:14)
I’m Craig Thielen. This is the 1% Better podcast and with me today is Patrick “Packy” Mader who is a retired elementary school teacher, author, lifelong student of human excellence. And just a little bit about your background, Packy, to kind of help get people acquainted with you. You’re raised in Minnesota on a dairy farm. So we have that in common in terms of the background of where we grew up. You’re one of seven children and you just learned a lot of early lessons about responsibility, discipline, value of education, which you ended up going into as a teacher and a lifelong teacher. And then retiring from teaching, you decided to take up some other passions of yours, history, geography and sports. And since then you’ve been doing a lot of work interviewing people. You’re the founder of the minnesotaathletes.com site, as well as the author of six books, including two very beautiful books I’m gonna show here, Minnesota Gold and More Minnesota Gold, which are just great books about Minnesota Olympians. So we’re gonna dig into all of that. But, Packy, I’m excited to talk to you because I think you have a saying or a mantra that I believe to be true that you don’t have to be an Olympian in sports to live like one. So with that, welcome to the show.

Patrick Mader (01:28)
Thank you for the invitation.

Craig Thielen (01:30)
Well, let’s just start with the current events here. We just are very hot off of the 2026 Olympics. And I know you know, have talked and met and know personally many, Olympians that were there. And so just want to get your impressions of the recent Olympics here.

Patrick Mader (01:48)
Well, I enjoyed them as a fan of sport and proud Minnesotan because we had probably 25 athletes who hailed from the state originally. 32 or 33 had connections with Minnesota because they attended college here or else they moved here from other states like a couple of the curlers did. But it’s just fun to follow particularly the Winter Olympics simply because Minnesota has a very strong connection It had the second most athletes of any state after Colorado And that makes sense because the training centers in Colorado Olympic training center.

Craig Thielen
It’s interesting, I was just in the country of Grenada, which is a Caribbean island, and I drove by almost every day the Grenada Olympic Training Center, and it’s quite modest. And I saw some of the Olympic athletes training on the beach. They were volleyball players. And so it’s just very interesting to see how that all works. I think the US takes the Olympics, we spend a lot of money, we have amazing facilities, but not all the countries that compete against us have those kinds of luxuries. you know, the dominant story, of course, was the hockey teams, the men’s and the women’s historic gold medal performances, first time ever, first time men since 1980, Miracle on Ice, and first time that men and women (and Paralympics) have won it in the same year. So that was just an amazing moment. So I wonder if you have any thoughts on that. And then beyond that, that’s the headlines. That’s what everyone’s talking about and we’ll talk about probably for years and years. But what were the other storylines maybe that didn’t get the headlines? Because there’s so many very niche sports in the Winter Olympics that people aren’t familiar with.

Patrick Mader (03:32)
Well, I think for Minnesota fans, another big story is the mixed double curlers won the silver medal. And that was a first. Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin are both from Duluth. They came back to Duluth for Heroes Welcome. they are people who are giving back to the sport. They really intend to help boost the sport, particularly in Duluth. So that was a big story for Minnesota fans. For me personally outside that and the hockey gold medals was the fact that this one woman, and I do not remember her name (Mikaela Shiffrin), who just came back from a catastrophic injury, didn’t even get on skis again until about, I think it was 10 or 11 months ago, and she won the gold medal in the slalom. That to me is the Olympic character that people long to see.

Craig Thielen (04:21)
Wow, yeah, what a story that is. I hadn’t heard that story, but I guess you would know better than anyone the mindset, and we’ll get into this more, but just what it takes, the grit, the perseverance, the against all odds mindset. And so when you have a massive setback, a lot of people would say, well, it’s just not my time, but that Olympic mindset doesn’t give up easily, huh?

Patrick Mader (04:44)
No, and that’s one of the primary traits of an Olympian is their perseverance and ability to overcome obstacles. If they don’t have that, chances are they’re not going to be on the podium.

Craig Thielen (04:55)
Right? Or even make the team or the cut to even get there, right? Well, before we deep dive on Olympics, I just thought it’d be fun to talk about that. We will go much deeper on that. So you grew up in a small town in Minnesota on Dairy Farm. So just talk about that a little bit, your memories of that, and what did that teach you about work and responsibility and shape you as an adult?

Patrick Mader (04:59)
That’s correct. I think most people would agree that if you grew up on a farm, you learn responsibility at an early age. You you do the chores. In our case, we had to be available to milk the cows morning and evening. My situation, I think, is a little unique. We did not have an indoor bathroom until I entered fourth grade. And the reason was because my parents grew up in the Depression and they just had witnessed too many people losing their farms. So they kept investing in the farm before they really invested in the house. And as a result, you know, I just remember I couldn’t have friends over because my parents just said they just won’t understand. And yet my parents never for one moment do I think they did not have my best interests at heart. We ate well. My mother made lots of clothing.

Craig Thielen (05:50)
Wow.

Patrick Mader (06:07)
We had a comfortable life except for not having an indoor bathroom and not having a furnace. But it still taught me, it actually I think teach you to live with a little bit of hardship too. So when things do go wrong, they didn’t fluster me like some people might have been. My family just worked hard. We didn’t really have a knack for farming ourselves, the sons and daughters of my parents, but we did still do our fair share. And I think it just helps you no matter what track you take in life, no matter what your profession, if you just have those duties and responsibilities as you grew up, it just carries on throughout life.

Craig Thielen (06:45)
I guess what I would say is just the people that I grew up in a small town, 130 people roughly, but it was all farm families that work was never really work. It was just what you did and people didn’t complain about it. And everyone worked hard. They got up early, they worked late, but they also played hard. There was, you know, always sports involved. was softball teams and there was a little bit of hockey on the ice ponds and there was also, as I said, softball, but just people got together, horseshoes, just you name it. And there was always church gatherings, family gatherings and sporting events that sort of glued these small towns together. So I’m just curious when you, I’m going to kind of weave in, again, you’ve interviewed well over 400 Olympians or, or interviews, maybe some of them multiple times. Is there any connection with the work ethic that what it takes for an Olympian? And then a lot of them being raised on farm and that kind of, environment where like working hard is not really something exceptional or it’s not really something out of the ordinary, but it’s just something I grew up with. Is there anything you ever think about that?

Patrick Mader (07:59)
Yes, and they allude to it all the time. But it’s done kind of matter-of-factly because just hearing about your own background, pretty much everybody around him was in the same situation. So it wasn’t unique. And yes, they worked hard. They bonded. It also builds up really tight friendships, in my case with my brothers. They’re my best friends as well as being brothers. And then it just again carries over. They learn what it takes to do the job well and so it carries over into the sporting world too. And you create games. One of the fun things about my childhood anyway was my older brother in particular would make the chores into a bit of a competition or a game.

Craig Thielen (08:40)
Yeah, everything was a competition.

Patrick Mader (08:43)
So it did seem like drudgery and we still laugh about it to this day and we still kind of carry that over. So really you can make it what can seem mundane, you can make it into fun.

Craig Thielen (08:54)
Right, absolutely. Let’s shift into your teaching career, which you did for many, years. How, you know, kids are interesting and in what ages did you teach generally?

Patrick Mader (09:04)
I taught primarily grades four through six. For four years I did teach at a small Catholic school and I taught the middle school years, grades seven and eight.

Craig Thielen (09:14)
Okay, yeah, so those are, I mean, formative years where kids are just trying to figure out who they are. There’s lots of social dynamics and they’re kind of at that adolescent stage and there’s lots of, lots of things going on there. So I’m just curious how you’re looking back at that and the, thousands of kids you probably saw, you see, you get to see trends and whatnot. How do you think kids grow and improve? I mean, in some ways, every kid has obstacles. Every kid has things at home that are good and some are not good. And every one of us has obstacles. But how did you try to navigate that? And how do you think that’s different than adults sometimes, work through life and obstacles?

Patrick Mader (09:54)
You’re right. A lot of it depends on their environment. they receive a lot of encouragement or if they’re neglected, what their parents’ interests are. So all of that plays into it. The kids I personally always appreciated the most were not the most gifted, but the ones who tried the hardest. And to me, they’re the easiest kids to teach. And probably as an athlete, they’re the easiest ones to coach too, because they want to do so well, they want to improve. They’re very coachable. I think being a kid these days is a lot more complicated than when we were young. And even though they have all kinds of other advantages, I think it’s much more of a struggle, especially since the COVID pandemic, there just seemed to be so many mental health issues and it’s sad and I think that would really be a challenge to navigate and with resources being tight, it’s all the more problematic now.

Craig Thielen (10:47)
Yeah, things have definitely changed and technology is amazing. Of course, we never had technology, but to some degree that can hold you back in many, many, many ways. Like we had to as kids, just like every small town in the 60s and 70s, the only thing to do, even TV was like nobody watched TV. There was really nothing to watch. So you just went out and found stuff to do. And sometimes it was work, that you had chores. And then sometimes it was like just a pickup game of basketball or I remember I used to love to play baseball, but when I didn’t have enough friends or buddies to get together for a game, which we would, by the way, make our own bats and make our own balls. Cause we didn’t have nice wiffle balls or nice baseballs all the time. So we just would make them. I would take a stick, a broomstick and hit rocks and see if I could hit the elevator, which is about a hundred yards away or something like this. can you imagine a kid doing that today? but I just did it cause A, I was bored and B, I liked baseball and I figured if I can hit a little rock with a little broomstick, I can probably hit a baseball or a softball. it’s just, those are the kinds of things that you, you do when you grow up in a small town, you make stuff up, you make games up, you’re always doing something and again, you’re always with, you know, trying to find other kids and you don’t really have a choice but to get along because that’s all you have is each other. So I think a lot of that is lost because sports is so organized and there’s so much technology. You can just get lost in, in technology. And of course, some of that online social stuff can be very brutal and you see everyone and all the stuff they have in these. And so then it’s kind of a competition that way and there are a lot of challenges, but I don’t know any thoughts that you have on that just kind of bringing back kind of the old days of how we used to entertain ourselves?

Patrick Mader (12:33)
Well, we could have been brothers, Craig, because my brothers and I did the very same thing. in our case, we took pitchfork handles and we would hit the rocks. And our goal was to hit it onto the top of our barn roof, which was a hip shape one. So we did the very same thing. I do think we spent a lot more time outdoors than children today. And I think we were a lot more creative simply because of the fact, as you mentioned, that if they’re involved in sports now, it’s all organized from youth on up. And that has its strengths, of course. They get coached earlier. They’re coached better. But sometimes I think they do lose the sense of play. I still remember interviewing an Olympian, four-time Olympian in women’s hockey named Jenny Schmidgall-Potter and she just stressed, kids should start playing, not in organized sports, but they should just play the game, have fun. And she called it playing at the park and it worked for her. Now she was an exceptional athlete and some parents and kids don’t think they can do it without that. But most athletes I talk about, they still encourage kids when they come back to schools and talk to groups to be in as many sports as possible because particularly, they worry about repetitive injuries and burn out.

Craig Thielen (13:48)
Yeah, and it’s interesting because when I’ve talked with very, very good athletes, and I would say even coaches that have been around, you know, for decades and decades, and they all will say the exact same thing. Play as many sports as you can. Don’t get locked in early. get as much sort of free play not just always the structured going to camps and going through all the different exercises and techniques. Now they even have specialized clubs that focus on hockey skills. They all say the same thing, but when you go into the real world, into the world of youth athletics, all of these programs and all of the coaches are like, we want you to be on the A team in order to do it, you have to be in the camp. And then you essentially almost pick when you’re eight, nine, 10 years old, what sport you’re going to pick because it’s a year round sport. Now sports are year round when you consider all the training and camps and, and off season that they have. And it puts a lot of pressure on kids, so there’s a huge dynamic there that happens that parents sort of fall into because they want the best for their kids. A lot of them are living through their kids. They want their kids to make the best team. And maybe some of them dream that their kids are going to be professional athletes or perhaps Olympian, but it’s a really tough dynamic. I lived it. I coached for youth sports, probably close to, I don’t know, almost a hundred teams and many, many kids. And I just saw that dynamic. And what I also saw is lot of kids lose the joy that they just really were able to just play the sport for pure fun and hanging out with buddies rather than all of the competitive part of it at such a young age. So I don’t know if you’ve gotten into that or how that even comes into play as you see the different generations. Obviously the early generations of the Olympians, that wasn’t even available, but some of the later ones, they grew up in this world that they had to fight through all of this competitive youth sports in order to make it. I don’t know what your thoughts are there.

Patrick Mader (15:49)
Yes, I think that’s true. The advantage you and I had and many Olympians is if you grew up in a small town, you didn’t have that pressure. In fact, the pressure was to be in as many as you could be just because they needed to fill out the rosters. so they’re very appreciative of that later on in life because I think they seem too often, the athletes who grew up in the urban or suburban areas who did focus on one sport too early. And then it can lead to some negative feelings later on in life because they just are burned out or they feel like they were pushed or driven too hard. Fortunately, most Olympians that I talked with, they’ve always pretty much said, and they’re very appreciative and thankful that their parents never pushed them. They just said, it’s something I want.

Craig Thielen (16:37)
That’s really interesting.

Patrick Mader (16:39)
It’s something that I wanted to do and they did do generally multiple sports until about their junior year in high school or maybe college even. that is, I think the saving grace in a lot of them because if you don’t have the love for the sport, you’re not going to excel as much as a person who does.

Craig Thielen (16:59)
Yeah, it’s so much work and time. And if you don’t love it, really love it… everyone loves to play the game and loves to get the goal and the score or whatever you’re trying to do. But to put in, 40, 50, 60 hours a week to do all the hard work, it’s not easy. And as you said, if it’s not your choice and you don’t love it at some point, you’re just, your heart’s not in it. You’re not gonna, you’re not gonna be the best you can be. So that’s really interesting. Well, let’s kind of shift here a little bit and jump into that. First of all, before we jump into the books, what led you, you retired from teaching, but what led you into this idea that you’re gonna write about it and you’re gonna interview people and write a book. That’s a pretty daunting thing. So tell us about that.

Patrick Mader (17:42)
Sure, it was really fun. I had written four children’s picture books. I started writing when I was 50 years old. And what happened was I was on a long canoe trip in the Boundary Waters for people who are familiar with it. It’s called the Border Route. You start in Lake Superior and you go to Voyageurs National Park. And it’s about a 250 mile trip with about 45 to 50 portages. As I was canoeing it with my partner, we talked about sports quite a bit and the Olympics. And I just asked, you know, I wonder if there’s ever somebody from Minnesota who made the Olympics in canoeing. In canoeing, they have three, at least three types of canoeing. They have solo –

Craig Thielen (18:23)
I didn’t even know it was an Olympic sport.

Patrick Mader (18:25)
Yeah, they have solo, they have doubles, and then they have whitewater. And when I got home, I looked for hours and I finally found one. His name was Angus Morrison from Wayzata who made the Olympics three times, once in each of the disciplines. Once as a single, once in doubles, and once in whitewater. And I was thinking of writing an article for Canoeing Magazine because I had done some writing in the past as a guest author or columnist for some newspapers. And I finally found out where Angus lived. He was the outdoors director for an adventure group in North Carolina. And I called the facility and the person who answered said, well, Angus is not here, but I could take a message. And I explained my project, I said, my name’s Patrick Mader. I’m thinking of writing about an Olympian in canoeing, and I’d just like to have a conversation with him. There was quite a long pause, and then this employee said Angus was never an Olympian. In other words, he had not even told his coworkers he was an Olympian. And as soon as I heard that, I thought, this is the most modest guy I’ve ever heard of. I want to meet him. And he did return my call when he got back from his trip. And he was coming to Minnesota for a wedding in three weeks. So I met him at a restaurant near the airport. And we had about a two hour conversation. He had gone to Williams College in Massachusetts, which I learned is a very prestigious school. It’s kind of the Carlton of that area. And anyway, he had gone there for the academics, but he was actually a great hockey player in high school and he was a state discus champion. So this guy’s an athlete and he had gone on so many trips to the boundary waters, but that was his passion. Canoeing was his passion. So he went into canoeing. he quit the hockey team and he didn’t do track and field any longer. And when I interviewed him, he was the most articulate, modest, funny guy. And I remember when I got home, I told my wife, I am not going to submit this as an article. I’m going to start a book. And the next person I interviewed was a speed skater named Randy Bartz. He was the same way, intelligent. was a civil engineer or mechanical engineer. And he was also articulate, smart, funny, and it just kept rolling. By the time I had 57 athletes, I had my book. It took about three years between conducting the interviews, getting photographs, writing, rewriting, revising, going through the very lengthy editing process. It became a book.

Craig Thielen (21:01)
Well, it’s a beautiful book and both of them are, they’re, coffee table, heavy duty, and I love that. And I also love that it’s not just superficial, one page or, one paragraph that just summarizes their accomplishments. You really get into their life story and what is unique about them. And I love that. I guess one question I have for you, would you say that the Olympians in general, there’s always going to be lots of exceptions, but I guess where I’m getting to is when you watch something like the Olympics on TV, you get a certain impression and they do stories on certain kinds of people. A lot of times it’s the very, audacious, the people that are big personalities and they do stories on them. I guess my question is, generally speaking, the athletes that you talk to, are a lot of them very modest, soft-spoken people, or is it just all over the map, just like any other demographic of people?

Patrick Mader (21:59)
I found him to be very modest, more modest than I think I would be. I’ll give you an example of one that I interviewed from this year’s Olympics. And you might recognize the person that as I speak about him, he was on the men’s curling team. He wore a red bandana. His name is Aidan Oldenburg. He’s from a little town near Mankato. Pemberton, Minnesota is actually the town he’s closest to, although he lists Mapleton as his mailing address. And Pemberton is four or 500 people, I’m guessing. But he was homeschooled. He grew up on a river. He did all kinds of hunting and fishing as a kid. he participated in sports and he was really good. He placed in the state pole vault. He was on the trap shooting team. He went to state in bowling and he was always, ever since he was about 10 years old, he went to Mankato and Mapleton, which also has a curling rink, and did curling. And eventually got so good that he made one of the top teams in the junior ranks. And then this year, the team he was on, that was skipped by, now I’m losing his name but he’s got quite a story himself – Shuster? Shuster was in the 2018 gold medal team. anyway, he just has a very unique sense of humor. He’s 24 years old. He’s got interesting hobbies, but he and his teammates all have full-time jobs. So they gotta be kind of modest and approachable because they’re working with people every day ordinary people every day. But I asked at the end of the interview, is there anything else that you would really like the readership to know that we haven’t discussed or maybe you’ve never been asked this question and you just want to stress it. And he said, yeah. He said, I would like people to know that I have a pet. It’s a blue tongue skink and its name is Dr. Pepper.

Craig Thielen (23:57)
What? What is a skink exactly?

Patrick Mader (24:03)
It’s a lizard. It looks a bit like an iguana. And he was just so fun and he was so sincere. And I just knew this guy, I was really hoping the team would medal because I thought this guy is going to take the cake for personality in the Olympics. And he did. He also juggles and he, before a curling match, he juggles or he does yo-yo tricks. And it’s just the kind of thing that captures people’s imagination. And now he’s back at work. He’s an environmental scientist. He does permitting for companies that are trying to do buildings.

Craig Thielen (24:39)
You know, maybe that’s there’s a big difference between Olympic athletes and I’ll call mainstream athletes. Olympic sports, many of them, not all of them. There’s some crossover, but many of them are very eclectic, very niche. In fact, many of them, people have never observed. They’ve never seen the sport in real life. And I think a lot of the mainstream sports, football, basketball, baseball, you see on TV, hockey.

These people are put on a pedestal and many of them are put on a pedestal since the time that they’re 10 years old. they were told they are the one and they’re the best player in their school and they’re best player in generations. And then they, they already get recruited, on some, some people even move to go to certain, you know, in hockey, the family’s up, they move and some gymnastics, they move to be close to the Colorado training center and at a very early age, they are literally put on a pedestal and it’s hard, any human that gets that sort of attention and people just fawn all over you how amazing you are at whatever sport to get a certain ego or persona. And of course we know when they get to pro sports, you can’t even separate. mean, you think of people, Andre Agassi and you think of, know, Brett Farves and you think of people, Randy Mosses, they all have this big personality where Olympics is very different. I’m just going to read. Of course, there’s some of the big sports. There’s hockey, boxing, but there’s a lot of sports, again, that a lot of people and even I haven’t seen in person a lot of sports. Shot put, luge, speed skating. I’m just reading from your book here in the kind of the appendix here. Diving. Team handball. Curling, of course. mean, in Minnesota, everyone, I think, is pretty familiar with curling, but outside of the Great North, a lot of people have never even heard of it, much less seen it. Canoeing. So there’s, it’s, like you said, it’s a regular person sport. They all have full-time jobs. It’s a hobby. It’s not a career. And I just wonder if that’s a big part of just, it’s more of a blue collar, regular person, some of their neighbors and friends don’t even know what they’re doing. And that’s just so different than what we see on TV every day and week where these multimillion dollar athletes are put on a pedestal from an early age.

Patrick Mader (26:54)
I agree with that sentiment. I do think that because they are not lucrative financially, the sports that most of the Olympians I’ve interviewed are in, that they don’t have the egos because they know they’re going back to work. And that’s also what makes them more approachable. I did not have very many interviews with professional athletes a few hockey players, but the bulk of them were in what is unfortunately called the minor sports. Like there’s this woman, when you mention who people don’t even know they’re Olympians, this is an exact example. There was an Olympian from Melrose, Minnesota named Amanda Smock. She was a triple jumper, which is kind of a niche sport in track and field. And anyway, she tried for years. She was very dedicated. She was a national champion multiple times, but she never quite made it. The top three usually go to the Olympics, but you also have to meet standards, the Olympic standards. So even if you win the national title, there’s no guarantee you’re going to the Olympics simply because you also have to get the Olympic standard. And she finally did in 2000 and she went to London and I actually ran into somebody who lived on her street after the Olympics and after I’d interviewed her and they lived like two houses away and I said, do you know Greg and Amanda Smock? They live on the same street as you. And they said, yeah. And I said, well, how do you like having an Olympian for a neighbor? One of them was an Olympian? They were just puzzled by this. And again, it made me like Amanda all the more because of her modesty. She had a great personality, almost like Jessie Diggins. And she is a very kind, thoughtful, smart person. She’s got a doctorate. And again, it’s a sport where she didn’t get a lot of recognition. She didn’t get a lot of financial reward.

Patrick Mader (28:54)
And yet, I think it made her a better person.

Craig Thielen (28:57)
Right. It keeps reminding me just how this is the way that sport used to be. it was just, people of all walks of life could, could compete. mean, for ages, right. And now we’re in sort of sports are big business and it’s a lot of marketing. It’s a lot of media. and like I said, it’s, it’s almost hard to disconnect the persona with the athlete, because they’re so connected and I didn’t get a chance to really watch much of the Olympic coverage, but do they do a lot of stories on just your average Olympian that’s playing, a triple jump or that’s canoeing or whatever the sport is that most people wouldn’t be familiar with and just do stories about their life and how they got there? Is there any of that or is it always about the big, Lindsay Vonn stories, the downhill ski and the big kind of mainstream stories.

Patrick Mader (29:47)
It’s a little daring for them to do the more minor ones, I think. I don’t doubt though that they do them. And then if the athlete surprises and wins a medal, for example, then they play it. So my guess is that there are a lot of interviews conducted, but not that many of them get publicized because they didn’t make a big splash for some reason. And it’s unfortunate, it’s, you I know the generally the people watching the Olympics, they’re casual sports fans. So this is the one time when they do watch the Olympic, when they do watch sports, they don’t follow the professional sports as much.

Craig Thielen (30:25)
Yeah, I just think it’s such a missed opportunity because that’s what makes the Olympics and Olympians so unique. It’s that it’s their regular person and their day in the life and how did they get there? And every single one of them has gone through dozens of obstacles and some of them just incredible obstacles. Lindsey Vonn is actually one example of that. But I just think that’s a missed opportunity because we get we get the big names and we get the big stories and probably half of the press was about the men’s and women’s hockey team alone. And that’s what they get ratings on. But I just think it’s an opportunity for people to see what the Olympics is really about.

Patrick Mader (30:59)
I don’t know if this one got much publicity or not because you’d think she would because she was on the women’s hockey team that won the gold medal. Her name is Rory Guilday and she is a very interesting story. she was in seventh grade, she started playing organized hockey, but she missed a year because she had some very serious

optical health issue and she actually went blind. I think that they estimate she lost 85% of her vision and she missed a year of high school hockey because of it. So she was just dealing with her health there for a while but she is an athlete and she again overcame this issue and you know now she’s got a gold medal.

Craig Thielen (31:26)
Wow.

Patrick Mader (31:44)
And I did not hear that story get played up nearly as much as I assumed it would.

Craig Thielen (31:49)
Yeah, there’s so many stories and you know this because you’ve done so many interviews, hundreds of them, hundreds of athletes. So I’m just curious, anytime you get into those kinds of numbers, you tend to see patterns. So what kind of patterns emerge for you as you just interview, all these different Olympians?

Patrick Mader (32:05)
As far as their qualities, you mean?

Craig Thielen (32:07)
Anything that comes to mind could be could be anything. We touched on a few of them already, but I’m just curious what stands out when you talk with them.

Patrick Mader (32:14)
Well, one thing that I like is most of them returned to Minnesota. And one thing that I also believe in, and you mentioned it the start of the program, is things in common. One of the things that I found, I think every single Olympian, they give back. They give back to their sport, usually coaching for free or maybe coaching as their profession later on.

They give back to their community, they give back to their school. And it makes sense when you think about it because the community and the school and their support system in the sport, their coaches, are what allowed them and helped them get to the Olympics. I still remember he did not make the Olympics. I think he is probably the only person in the United States, in fact, who was a three-time alternate.

His name was Mike Houck. He was a wrestler from Robbinsdale. And he was, you know, in wrestling, only the best one in each weight class gets to go well. He was runner up three times for the Olympics. But he did go to the world championships, which arguably bring out more talent than the Olympics because they’re never boycotted. Like the Olympics, they’re boycotted for political reasons.

Craig Thielen (33:12)
Wow.

Patrick Mader (33:24)
Well, he won a world championship gold medal, the first American to ever do it in Greco-Roman wrestling, a certain style of wrestling. And he graciously came with me to a presentation one time in Chanhassen, and he brought his gold medal from the world championship. And he said, if I could, I would break this medal into a thousand pieces and give it to a thousand people who helped me. And so I do think that they’re one of the qualities or traits I’ve noticed in Olympians is they give back. Another thing is, again, these only make sense is they have to have time management skills. They have to be very self-directed, disciplined. They have to have the perseverance to overcome all these injuries. They have to prepare well. They just have to have lot of qualities and one thing that some people overlook is how intelligent they are.

Craig Thielen (34:17)
Yeah, I think that’s something that lot of people don’t realize that, especially in today’s sports, and it really doesn’t matter which sport it is, just how technical and how advanced it is. then when you get into, I mean, in some cases, it’s just hundreds of hours of study into the science of what you’re doing.

And then when you get into team sports or you’re competing against somebody, well, then you’re studying strategy and you’re studying, counteracting what, what the other team is doing. So there’s an incredible intelligence that goes into almost every sport. versus just, again, casual observer goes, they’re just so talented. Well, talent comes with a hard work, but it also comes with knowledge know the right technique but there’s a lot of science involved and even some of the equipment they have is incredibly technical and and high tech as well so I’m curious. one of the you mentioned giving back and I got to imagine a lot of them are just grateful because it’s what an honor. It’s it’s not just like you’re competing in a sport. You’re you’re also representing your country and you know that however you got there, you’re very fortunate to be there just because of the process because of the timing. Some people I mean, it’s every four years. So the timing, you could have been the best athlete, but you just were off two years, right? And so there’s so many factors that go into it that I assume a lot of them are very grateful. But one of the people that does give back is a guy by the name of John Benton, who you know, and we had on the podcast on the Sunday, the last day of the Olympics when the man won the Olympic gold medal in hockey. So I’m just curious if you had a chance to listen to John and just talk about him, because he just does so much in terms of giving back to his sport and even the Olympic process and just all levels of seeing people use curling like he benefited from curling and he’s doing a lot of work there.

Patrick Mader (36:19)
Yes, I know when I listen to it, it seemed like one of his primary goals was to grow the sport. And they’ve been wildly successful, especially because in 2018, the men’s team won the gold medal and they were kind of the story of the Olympics, at least as far as the American perspective. And he and other people are just doing a tremendous job in promoting the sport and giving free lessons and just conversing with people or communicating to others and that is so generous of them. They don’t have to do this. They don’t get paid for it. So it’s just a wonderful contribution that he and others are doing. I’m not sure but did he at one time, was he a curling rink manager? Do you remember?

Craig Thielen (37:03)
I not that I recall it’s it’s it’s possible. I know he is part of the Saint Paul curling club for many years, but and I know he’s just so involved with I’m sure all aspects of it, but I’m not sure about if he managed a rink or not.

Patrick Mader (37:09)
Okay. Well, and then you need the support also of your employer. And he pointed that out in his interview, like Aiden Oldenburg, the curler I was referring to before, he said, you have to have an understanding employer because I’m gone. You know, he was going to be gone for about three or four weeks because of the training pre Olympics. And then, with all the preparation and the interviews and the processing just takes a long time. and then when he gets back, he’s going to have a desk full of duties to do.

Craig Thielen (37:48)
Right? Yeah, the amount of time that they put in is actually incredible. mean, your employer has to support you. Your family has to support you. Your friends, like you said, gentleman said, thousand people involved. I think they all could point to that and say all the people that helped them, even allowed them to have the opportunity. I’m just curious, with all the people that you’ve talked with, any stand out? know they’re all unique, all have great stories, but which ones stand out to you in terms of their story, their personality, their perseverance?

Patrick Mader (38:18)
Well, Amanda Smock, the woman I referred to earlier, a little background on her is, again, she’s from Melrose and she was an all-state gymnast when she was in high school. And that makes sense because in triple jump, you have to have such body control and spatial awareness, just like you do in gymnastics. And she barely missed the Olympics in 2008 and she didn’t know whether she was married and she was interested in starting a family. She just didn’t know whether she really wanted to put in the time and the effort of training for four more years for something that’s not guaranteed. And she was looking for kind of a support or an answer and her dad took, I think he just took his thumb and had her credentials and he erased the year 2008 that they had been, and he put 2012 on it. In other words, he was signaling to her, you have my support, whether it’s financial or academic or, you know, any way we can help you, I’ll be here. Well, sadly, he got cancer and he died before the next Olympics. So he did not get to see her being Olympic. I just thought it was such a heart rendering story. Another one is a hockey player from Virginia named Steve Sertich and he just said how the community of Virginia Minnesota where he is from rallied together no matter the nationality, he said we had Croatians, we had Serbians, we had Polish people, we had Germans, we had Irish people in our town. They didn’t even speak the same language, but they came together and built a hockey rink. I also thought that was a very touching story. A ski jumper named Jerry Martin, he had a job before the Olympic trials to do brickwork and masonry. And he was pounding a nail into a wall to help support some scaffolding. And it went off. His hammer hit it sideways, evidently, and it went off and hit his eye. The nail went rebounded and hit his eye. He went blind three months before the Olympics. And he still, he was determined, he was still gonna go to the Olympic trials and he won ski jumping with one eye. And so he still went and he won the trials and then he went to the Olympics and he finished kind of in the middle of the pack. But I have a picture of him and it’s in the book that you held up earlier where he has a patch over his eye because even though he couldn’t see the sun bothered him. you know stories like that and what’s remarkable about him is about 20 years after the Olympics, the University of Minnesota contacted him because they were starting kind of experimental cornea and lens implants. And they asked him if he was willing to take the risk and be considered as a candidate. And he did, and it worked. So 20 years later, his sight was restored.

Craig Thielen (41:14)
Wow. That’s a great, that’s another great story, great comeback. Well, you did the first book and then you did another one, More Minnesota Gold. Is it just that you had so many other people to talk to or was there a different approach or different take you wanted to have or is it more of the, more great stories?

Patrick Mader (41:33)
I just thought there were too many great ones out there. And if I had the time and financial resources, I’d do a third one, but I’m not going to. Yep.

Craig Thielen (41:36)
Yeah. Alright, so two is that, but you do a site. So maybe just tell us a little bit about the site and the site’s called minnesotaathletes.com

Patrick Mader (41:51)
Right. And what that is kind of what is replacing any future book writing I was going to do. And I expanded it quite a bit. I do all kinds of athletes. I do athletes, if you’re familiar with Division III, Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, MIAC. I do athletes… I don’t do current athletes because they get enough press from their college or their high school but I do them a few years later. And I do athletes of multiple sports. I’ve done pickleball, I’ve done hockey, I’ve done football, baseball, basketball, curling, cross-country skiing, ski jumpers. I’ve probably done about 25 different sports. And I just take Minnesota athletes who are willing to share their story and just the other day I did one on this woman named Ashley Tinglestad from the small town in northern Minnesota. And she was a great basketball player in high school, but she actually went to college for track and she became a great sprinter. She almost made the Olympic trials and to make the Olympic trials in track and field, you usually have to be among the 24 best in the nation to be invited to the Olympic trials. and I did a basketball player, a woman named Nicole Smart from Ada, Minnesota, right on the border of North Dakota. Fun interview, lively personality, great, just a great athlete in multiple sports. They’re just a joy to do. So I just continued doing it, men and women, generally from ages 25 to 85.

Craig Thielen (43:27)
Fun. So many great stories. Well, Patrick, what do mean when you say that we can all be Olympians in life?

Patrick Mader (43:33)
Well, thank you for the question. Being a former teacher, I do a lot of presentations at schools and I tell the kids how rare it is that somebody can become an Olympic athlete in the actual Olympics. For example, this last week I was at Rosemount, Minnesota. Rosemount, Minnesota is a suburb with about 25,000 people and they’ve had one Olympic athlete, which is more than usual.

You know, I said, chances are most of us here are never going to be Olympic athletes, but you can be an Olympian in another way in life. You can be an Olympian reader. You can be an Olympic math student. You can be an Olympic mechanic. You can be an Olympic nurse. You can be an Olympic lawyer. You can be an Olympic truck driver. But the one thing everybody can do is be an Olympic friend or an Olympic citizen. Just help others. Be somebody that you can be counted on. Be somebody who does good deeds. Everybody can do that. So everybody can be an Olympian, in my opinion.

Craig Thielen (44:34)
Yeah, be their best version of themselves. Well, it’s been great talking to you. We could go through the books for hours upon hours, but highly recommend that people get them and read the great stories. We wrap up every podcast with a question, which is stepping back from the book, stepping back from your teaching career and growing up just life lessons. What would you share 1% better life lessons that you wish you knew when you were a kid or you’d want to pass on to the next generation.

Patrick Mader (45:02)
Well, I probably sensed it as a kid, but I didn’t know how to express it. I just think persevering and preparing well for things just helps you in life. And simply being kind, it’s amazing what a simple act, what kind of goodwill it will create and help you with later in life.

Craig Thielen (45:20)
Yeah, well, that’s great advice and I’m gonna thank you. You talked a lot about what you found when you talked with hundreds of athletes that perform at the highest level. You talked about their hard work, their perseverance, their humility, their gratitude, giving back. And I see a lot of those same traits in you. And what you’re doing is you’re giving back those stories, you’re passing them on and I think it’s great thing, because that’s how we learn. We learn from each other and we learn from these stories. So I want to thank you for everything that you’ve done. And I’m sure you’ve created a lot of Olympians in a lot of different forms just by the work that you do. So thank you, Packy.

Patrick Mader (45:58)
Well, that’s very kind of you to say, Craig. Thank you for the invitation. It’s been a joy to have a conversation with you.

Check out other podcast episodes