In Her Wake: Ashley Bastron Builds Her Legacy Through Mentorship
2/13/2024 10:16:00 AM | Track and Field
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Although not all of our thoughts as a 16-year old turn out to be completely based in reality, sometimes they work out for the best nonetheless.
As Wake Forest Track & Field associate head coach worked her way through a high school economics class that had some political science elements included, she found herself working as a defense attorney in a mock murder trial. She wanted to be a lawyer and performed excellently in the exercise, presenting arguments so compelling that the accused was found not guilty.
Her teacher told her after that she'd only had three students achieve that because "he was obviously a murderer."
"I had this crisis of if I became a lawyer, I was going to let bad people back onto the street, which again, was not rational at the time, but I was probably 16 years old and didn't know what I didn't know," Bastron said. "So I had this crisis of I don't want to be a lawyer anymore, and if I don't want to be a lawyer, what do I want to do? And within a week I decided I wanted to coach at the collegiate level."
That decision has turned out pretty well for Bastron, who was just recognized as a 2023 Trailblazer Mentorship Recipient for her work the last six years in the USTFCCCA Female Coaching Mentorship Program.
Bastron started running in middle school and it didn't take long for her to realize she was good.
"I liked it right away and it was probably one of the first sports that I innately had some talent at and could just be better than other people," she said. "Not because I had trained really hard, but just because it kind of came more naturally to me and then stuck with it, obviously through middle school, high school.
"I think running was the only other really positive constant in my life, and I knew I always wanted my life to still continue to have running. And so I was like, that'd be cool to coach collegiately. And I hadn't even signed a scholarship or looked at running collegiately myself, but kind of knew that that's what I wanted to do. And so pursued that path ever since. And it's been a lot of fun."
While earning all-conference honors at Grand Valley State University, Bastron graduated with a B.S. in exercise science and a minor in psychology, before going on to claim a Master of Sport Administration degree from Belmont University (Nashville, TN). She held assistant coach positions at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis and Florida State before joining coach John Hayes at Wake Forest in 2019.
"One of my mentors in the sport, Rhonda Riley, is pretty close friends with Coach Hayes and when he was looking for a new coach, he had reached out to her to say, do you know of anyone?," Bastron explained. "She connected us and I honestly felt like from our first phone call together, it just kind of clicked in the sense of how our values are aligned, our morals aligned, and our vision for how to be a successful coach runs a successful program."
"After the first phone call with him, I was excited about the potential of coming to Wake Forest and then we talked a few more times and then I was able to come down on an interview."
After the initial call came the interview, and Bastron left Wake Forest not only impressed with the facilities, but more importantly, the people.
"Everyone I met with was just so welcoming and inviting and helpful, and I could tell they really loved being at Wake Forest and there had been people who had been at Wake for several years," she said. "In college athletics, people changed jobs a lot, so seeing people that had a longer tenure at the university made me feel like they obviously really liked it."
"When I left campus and got to the airport, I called my husband and told him that if I'm offered that job, I think we're moving to North Carolina. Fortunately I was offered the job, and it's been great ever since."
Thankfully, Bastron's experience at Wake Forest has lived up to the lofty expectations she had after leaving campus from that 2019 interview.
"I think what also stood out to me in my interview and has remained true since I've been here is the holistic approach that they take to each athlete," she said. "And I think the support staff that we have, we have the nutrition side covered, we have strength training covered, we've got great coaches, we've got sports psychology, we've got the academic advisors and the tutors and study coaches.
"Everything a student athlete could possibly need is provided. They have to show up and they have to work hard and they have to do the right things, but it's never a lack of resources or a lack of people to help them to be successful. The facilities are as good as anything in the ACC and better. While that's not necessarily the most important thing, obviously I think it's certainly helpful with recruiting. And to me, again, I think this support network that we provide through our support staff is far more important than facilities, but the facilities are great to have and we love having them too."
The synergy between her and Hayes helps drive the women's track & field program both on and off the field of competition.
"He is wonderful," Bastron said about Hayes. "I think our values align really well and I think both of us take the role of if we only wanted to make people run fast, we could coach professionally and that would be our sole job. But the character development and the culture development that comes along with coaching 18-22 year olds is something we both really enjoy. And so it's just great I guess to have a boss that really cares about developing the entire person and not just developing the athlete."
Currently in her fourth season at Wake Forest, Bastron is excited about the trajectory of the program.
"I'm most proud of the cultural shift within the program," she said. "The women that we have here now are just so dialed in. They want to be great both in the classroom and on the track, and they've slowly elevated the program to new heights and to a new level of focus and commitment. They do things the right way."
"I'm proud of the success they've had, but also through the path of doing things the right way and knowing that that's the only way that success can be sustainable."
Top goals for the program include elevating the number of athletes getting to the national meet and the regional meet, as well as getting the women's team back to the national meet in cross country.
"In order to reach any outcome or goal, we have to take care of the process and the day-to-day," Bastron said. "And I think this group is really locked in and dialed in on that and they know what the process needs to look like to be great. We definitely talk about those big outcome goals, but we try to stress the process and focus on that to get there.
"Our staff is incredible to work with and obviously in college athletics it's a lot of hours. It's nice to have a staff that feels like family. I think the women here too— Wake Forest recruits such a unique athlete in the sense of people that are really focused academically, really focused athletically. They don't want to sacrifice one for the other. They want to be great in all areas. It's just that level of drive and commitment is hard to come by. I feel like I have 19 women on my team and I have 19 women that have that kind of drive and commitment."
In addition to serving as the mentor and associate head coach, Bastron is also pursuing a master's degree in clinical mental health counseling at Wake Forest.
"That has been, I'd say transformative as well, just because especially having gone through Covid with our student athletes, that was a really challenging time for a lot of people from a mental health perspective and just isolation, the unknowns and the uncertainty that came along with it," Bastron said. "So now that I've finished two years of that and I am entering my third year of that degree, and I've learned so much as far as how to be more empathetic as a human being, how to be more self-aware and how to meet the unique needs of our student-athletes and how to plug them into the right resources."
It's important for Bastron that no Wake Forest student-athlete has fear about addressing their mental health needs.
"Whereas I think some student athletes might be fearful of their coach knowing that they're going to see a sports psychologist because they don't want to be perceived as needing help or being mentally weak," she said. "I've never viewed sports psychology that way. I worked with one when I was in college. And so I think, like I said, it encourages my team to use those resources and really plug into that and be really open and honest about it, which has been pretty transformative as well."
Baston is one of just five coaches nationally who has served as a mentor since the inception of the USTFCCCA Female Coaching Mentorship Program.
"My mentor, Rhonda Riley, helped to get me this job and started this group of other female coaches in the track and field world," Bastron explained. "And each year a senior level coach gets paired up with one to two coaches within their first one to three years of coaching. And that's been a really fun experience for me as well."
"I think anytime you are entering into a mentoring relationship, the mentor learns a lot and the mentee learns a lot. That's been something I guess that's really important to me. Advancing and getting more women into the coaching profession. Wake Forest actually has a lot of female coaches compared to a lot of universities, but track and field especially is a very male-dominated profession and it is nice to help young females get into it and stay in it and feel like they have someone that they can go to and talk to."
As Wake Forest Track & Field associate head coach worked her way through a high school economics class that had some political science elements included, she found herself working as a defense attorney in a mock murder trial. She wanted to be a lawyer and performed excellently in the exercise, presenting arguments so compelling that the accused was found not guilty.
Her teacher told her after that she'd only had three students achieve that because "he was obviously a murderer."
"I had this crisis of if I became a lawyer, I was going to let bad people back onto the street, which again, was not rational at the time, but I was probably 16 years old and didn't know what I didn't know," Bastron said. "So I had this crisis of I don't want to be a lawyer anymore, and if I don't want to be a lawyer, what do I want to do? And within a week I decided I wanted to coach at the collegiate level."
That decision has turned out pretty well for Bastron, who was just recognized as a 2023 Trailblazer Mentorship Recipient for her work the last six years in the USTFCCCA Female Coaching Mentorship Program.
Bastron started running in middle school and it didn't take long for her to realize she was good.
"I liked it right away and it was probably one of the first sports that I innately had some talent at and could just be better than other people," she said. "Not because I had trained really hard, but just because it kind of came more naturally to me and then stuck with it, obviously through middle school, high school.
"I think running was the only other really positive constant in my life, and I knew I always wanted my life to still continue to have running. And so I was like, that'd be cool to coach collegiately. And I hadn't even signed a scholarship or looked at running collegiately myself, but kind of knew that that's what I wanted to do. And so pursued that path ever since. And it's been a lot of fun."
While earning all-conference honors at Grand Valley State University, Bastron graduated with a B.S. in exercise science and a minor in psychology, before going on to claim a Master of Sport Administration degree from Belmont University (Nashville, TN). She held assistant coach positions at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis and Florida State before joining coach John Hayes at Wake Forest in 2019.
"One of my mentors in the sport, Rhonda Riley, is pretty close friends with Coach Hayes and when he was looking for a new coach, he had reached out to her to say, do you know of anyone?," Bastron explained. "She connected us and I honestly felt like from our first phone call together, it just kind of clicked in the sense of how our values are aligned, our morals aligned, and our vision for how to be a successful coach runs a successful program."
"After the first phone call with him, I was excited about the potential of coming to Wake Forest and then we talked a few more times and then I was able to come down on an interview."
After the initial call came the interview, and Bastron left Wake Forest not only impressed with the facilities, but more importantly, the people.
"Everyone I met with was just so welcoming and inviting and helpful, and I could tell they really loved being at Wake Forest and there had been people who had been at Wake for several years," she said. "In college athletics, people changed jobs a lot, so seeing people that had a longer tenure at the university made me feel like they obviously really liked it."
"When I left campus and got to the airport, I called my husband and told him that if I'm offered that job, I think we're moving to North Carolina. Fortunately I was offered the job, and it's been great ever since."
Thankfully, Bastron's experience at Wake Forest has lived up to the lofty expectations she had after leaving campus from that 2019 interview.
"I think what also stood out to me in my interview and has remained true since I've been here is the holistic approach that they take to each athlete," she said. "And I think the support staff that we have, we have the nutrition side covered, we have strength training covered, we've got great coaches, we've got sports psychology, we've got the academic advisors and the tutors and study coaches.
"Everything a student athlete could possibly need is provided. They have to show up and they have to work hard and they have to do the right things, but it's never a lack of resources or a lack of people to help them to be successful. The facilities are as good as anything in the ACC and better. While that's not necessarily the most important thing, obviously I think it's certainly helpful with recruiting. And to me, again, I think this support network that we provide through our support staff is far more important than facilities, but the facilities are great to have and we love having them too."
The synergy between her and Hayes helps drive the women's track & field program both on and off the field of competition.
"He is wonderful," Bastron said about Hayes. "I think our values align really well and I think both of us take the role of if we only wanted to make people run fast, we could coach professionally and that would be our sole job. But the character development and the culture development that comes along with coaching 18-22 year olds is something we both really enjoy. And so it's just great I guess to have a boss that really cares about developing the entire person and not just developing the athlete."
Currently in her fourth season at Wake Forest, Bastron is excited about the trajectory of the program.
"I'm most proud of the cultural shift within the program," she said. "The women that we have here now are just so dialed in. They want to be great both in the classroom and on the track, and they've slowly elevated the program to new heights and to a new level of focus and commitment. They do things the right way."
"I'm proud of the success they've had, but also through the path of doing things the right way and knowing that that's the only way that success can be sustainable."
Top goals for the program include elevating the number of athletes getting to the national meet and the regional meet, as well as getting the women's team back to the national meet in cross country.
"In order to reach any outcome or goal, we have to take care of the process and the day-to-day," Bastron said. "And I think this group is really locked in and dialed in on that and they know what the process needs to look like to be great. We definitely talk about those big outcome goals, but we try to stress the process and focus on that to get there.
"Our staff is incredible to work with and obviously in college athletics it's a lot of hours. It's nice to have a staff that feels like family. I think the women here too— Wake Forest recruits such a unique athlete in the sense of people that are really focused academically, really focused athletically. They don't want to sacrifice one for the other. They want to be great in all areas. It's just that level of drive and commitment is hard to come by. I feel like I have 19 women on my team and I have 19 women that have that kind of drive and commitment."
In addition to serving as the mentor and associate head coach, Bastron is also pursuing a master's degree in clinical mental health counseling at Wake Forest.
"That has been, I'd say transformative as well, just because especially having gone through Covid with our student athletes, that was a really challenging time for a lot of people from a mental health perspective and just isolation, the unknowns and the uncertainty that came along with it," Bastron said. "So now that I've finished two years of that and I am entering my third year of that degree, and I've learned so much as far as how to be more empathetic as a human being, how to be more self-aware and how to meet the unique needs of our student-athletes and how to plug them into the right resources."
It's important for Bastron that no Wake Forest student-athlete has fear about addressing their mental health needs.
"Whereas I think some student athletes might be fearful of their coach knowing that they're going to see a sports psychologist because they don't want to be perceived as needing help or being mentally weak," she said. "I've never viewed sports psychology that way. I worked with one when I was in college. And so I think, like I said, it encourages my team to use those resources and really plug into that and be really open and honest about it, which has been pretty transformative as well."
Baston is one of just five coaches nationally who has served as a mentor since the inception of the USTFCCCA Female Coaching Mentorship Program.
"My mentor, Rhonda Riley, helped to get me this job and started this group of other female coaches in the track and field world," Bastron explained. "And each year a senior level coach gets paired up with one to two coaches within their first one to three years of coaching. And that's been a really fun experience for me as well."
"I think anytime you are entering into a mentoring relationship, the mentor learns a lot and the mentee learns a lot. That's been something I guess that's really important to me. Advancing and getting more women into the coaching profession. Wake Forest actually has a lot of female coaches compared to a lot of universities, but track and field especially is a very male-dominated profession and it is nice to help young females get into it and stay in it and feel like they have someone that they can go to and talk to."
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