What I’ve Learned From Katrin

And, our "family reunions" with the Laich's and Sagers.

We’ve only been coming to Coeur d’Alene for a couple of years now, but it’s slowly becoming something. Not a place heavy with decades of memory yet, but a place that’s beginning to hold chapters. Kat and Brooks’ house doesn’t carry a long history for us, but it’s becoming a gathering spot for the people we’ve evolved alongside.

We met Kat when she was 21. She moved in with us not long after that. She’s now a mom. Engaged. Building a life that looks nothing like the one she had when she first walked into our gym. We met Cole when he was married but had no kids. Now he and Genasee have two boys, and they’ve walked through things most people will never fully see from the outside. They live close to Kat and come over whenever we’re in town, not because it’s convenient, but because the roots run deep. They both work for COMPTRAIN full-time. They aren’t just friends we visit once a year; they’re woven into our everyday lives.

So when we all pile into this house—kids entertaining each other, Emberly passed from arm to arm, dinners that roll into games of Shoulders and Mafia until kids are melting and everyone disappears to their respective rooms in a matter of minutes—it feels like a reunion. Not because the house has been ours forever, but because we’ve been each other’s for a long time.

Recently, Jonah and I had one of those rare car rides back to UMass where the questions come easily and the distractions fall away. He made up a game: answer quickly, and you can’t use someone in your immediate family. Because Kat isn’t technically a blood relative, I was able to use her for a few of them. Who would you want to drive cross-country with? Kat. Who has moved away but stayed close? Kat.

Then he asked, “Who have you learned the most from?”

There weren’t a lot of contenders for me. It wasn’t a long internal debate. I paused just to be sure I wasn’t overlooking someone, but I wasn’t.

It was her.

Over the seven-ish years she lived with us, I watched a 21-year-old girl turn into a woman in real time. The world saw confident, fierce, composed Kat. We saw all of it. The un-sporty side. The kitchen-fire-setting side. The princess-level high-maintenance side. And she never pretended those pieces didn’t exist.

There’s a unique dynamic in loving someone the way I love her. She is closer in age to Maya than she is to me, and yet she is one of the best friends I’ve ever had. I think of her with the same endearment I feel toward my own children—protective, proud, fiercely in her corner—and at the same time, she is someone I confide in, laugh with, learn from, and respect deeply as a peer. That overlap is rare.

Maya and Kat have that undeniable sister energy. Not identical, not competitive—just bonded. There’s a respect there. A shared history. The kind of closeness that doesn’t require explanation. Watching that relationship grow alongside mine with Kat has been its own quiet gift.

One of the first lessons I absorbed from her was simple but surprisingly powerful: you’re allowed to do the things that make you feel good. If wearing makeup to the gym makes you feel confident, wear it. If doing your hair helps you stand taller, do it. Strength and femininity are not in conflict. Discipline and softness are not opposites. You don’t have to mute one part of yourself to legitimize another.

She was laser-focused on her goals in a way most people can’t fully comprehend. The kind of training pressure that would distort most personalities. And yet, she was always there for the people she loved. No matter how far away they were. No matter how unrelated their problems were to what she had going on in her own world. If a friend was hurting, she didn’t offer advice from a distance. She got in the hole with them. She listens in a way that makes you feel like your story is the only one in the room—not because she’s fixing it, but because she’s willing to sit inside it with you.

She is extraordinary at staying in touch. She remembers details. She checks in. She follows up. She feels things with you. That kind of emotional consistency is rare, especially in high performers whose lives are already full. It would be easy to let relationships thin out under the weight of ambition. She never did.

I’ve always noticed the way she relates to and cares for her grandparents, her parents, and her siblings. There’s reverence there. A clear understanding that none of her success exists in isolation. That she stands on something built before her. And then she turns around and gives that same level of attention to the little kids in her orbit. She talks to them like she talks to everyone. She looks them in the eye so they know she’s locked in. She makes time for them, no matter what she’s doing. Children are always watching. They’re absorbing how you treat people, how you handle loss, how you respond to inconvenience. Whether you think they’re paying attention or not, you are someone’s example.

And maybe the lesson that has stayed with me the most is her ability to live inside her own bubble when she needs to. Not in a detached way. Not arrogantly. But when a room starts tilting negative, when complaining becomes the shared language, she doesn’t participate. She doesn’t correct anyone or shame the tone; she simply refuses to let it pull her in. She protects her happiness and her steadiness like they’re worth guarding.

That takes discipline. It’s easy to be positive when everything is going well. It’s harder to maintain that posture when the noise around you is trending in another direction. Watching her do that year after year—through wins, losses, injuries, criticism, and life transitions—shaped me more than I realized at the time.

There’s something humbling about being influenced by someone younger than you. About realizing that leadership doesn’t only flow downward. Sometimes it moves sideways. Sometimes it moves up. Sometimes the person who walks into your life because of sport becomes the one who quietly models what emotional maturity looks like.

I told Kat about the question. I told her she was my answer. And, with her face as wide-eyed and fierce as ever, she said, “Wait, Heath! I have learned so much from YOU!”

That might have meant more to me than the original question.

Because that’s the dynamic, isn’t it? Influence isn’t one-directional. It’s layered. It’s reciprocal. It’s built over years of proximity and honesty and shared life. You don’t always know in real time that you’re shaping each other. You just show up. You live well. You pay attention.

This house in Coeur d’Alene may not have decades of history for us yet. But it’s becoming a place where we see, in real time, how we’ve all grown. We met Kat at 21. She’s now a mother. We met Cole before kids; now his boys are attaching to our kids like they’re cousins. We’ve all added chapters. More responsibility. More perspective. More softness in some places, more strength in others.

And somewhere along the way, in the middle of her becoming who she is, Kat helped shape who I am too.

That kind of influence doesn’t announce itself.

It just quietly elevates you to a new baseline understanding of what the ‘best version of your self’ is now.