Marie is maximising the power of the mind

In the Millenium year, Mayo lost the All-Ireland Under-14 ladies football final to Cork. Marie Sweeney blamed herself for the defeat. Mayo lost by 23 points. Maybe Marie was a little harsh on herself.

The shout from the stand in Nenagh still rings in her ear though. “Jesus Marie, will you just take your own f****** point.” 

Nor was there much comfort offered at full-time. “The person said the exact same thing to me,” she recalls.

“That was so cutting. That was so harsh for a 14-year-old girl to take on; this person judging me and saying these things about me.

“It was all on me. I lost the All-Ireland for Mayo. That was me done. I was never going to play county again.” And she didn’t.

“I never allowed myself to believe I was good enough.” 

If only Marie Sweeney had known then what she knows now.

She wasn’t the only Mayo attacker to not score that day. One Fiona McHale lined out at corner-forward – and she didn’t turn out half bad.

But Marie has grown to hear through different ears. The words spoken in McDonagh Park, Co Tipperary that day 24 years ago now carry a whole different meaning.

“I know now the message that came from that person. It was ‘Believe in yourself. Why didn’t you take the shot, you can do it. I believe in you.’ And that is what I hear now – but I didn’t as a 14-year-old girl. I heard something completely different; that I had lost the game for the team. At that age, if I had somebody to talk this through with, what could I have done? Instead I left with regrets.” 

Firm in her belief that what’s for you won’t pass you, it seems almost fate then that Marie Sweeney is now carving for herself a career empowering sportspeople to avoid the sort of infliction and affliction that stunted her own playing days.

“It’s amazing what people believe if they allow themselves to believe. That’s why I’m here now. I’d be frustrated if I saw someone giving up on the back of a comment or an idea or a belief that they weren’t good enough.” 

If only that young and impressionable 14-year-old wing-forward from Kiltane could see herself now.

The founder of MSK Coaching, Marie Sweeney Khalifa has been on quite the journey – physically and metaphorically. From leaving school determined not to do the ‘done thing’ and become a teacher, she became a teacher. From travelling to the United Arab Emirates for a little adventure, she didn’t return to Mayo until eight years later – married but jobless. And the onset of Covid-19 cruelly stalled her new business, The Educoach, when it had barely left the traps in 2020. Oh, then there was that day she woke up and decided to run 13.3 miles – a half marathon – doing laps around her native Bangor Erris without ever a day’s training.

“It was the most monotonous thing ever, but that was my test – how much mindset plays in your performance. It was a crap thing to do, my body was recovering for a week after, but I could do it. And I wanted people to see this as well – to know you can do what you want to do if you remove the barriers that you set for yourself.” 

No point becoming a mindset and performance coach I suppose, if you can’t practice what you preach.

“So many times people will set age as a barrier or where they come from as a barrier. Many people put coming from a small town as a barrier.

“I know my business is classed as small but I would never say that my business is small because I see people coming in here and I see how they leave. They’ll come in all hunched, they’re small, a shell of themselves and it’s like they break the shell and walk tall out the door. I might be a one-person show, a solopreneur or whatever they want to call me, but I know that it’s big, that what’s happening is big.

“I think so many people can add these barriers. They’re excuses that they put up for themselves. I’m full of excuses as well – but now I can identify them.” 

The turning point for Marie Sweeney was a wrong turn into the right room while attending university in Dubai. Studying for a Masters in Education with a focus on leadership and management, she instead walked into the coaching and mentoring lecture. The hook was instant.

“I was like, ‘This is for me, I’m here and I’m not leaving!’ I never even looked for the leadership and management room after that.

“I always felt I was more of a life skills teacher than an academic teacher. I always felt I was giving the students more by working on their confidence, working on their self-esteem, rather than teaching the curriculum. I could see the way that those kids would shine when they had that confidence in themselves. When they didn’t have that confidence they didn’t enjoy school so they weren’t engaged in school.

“And funnily enough, in Dubai we had a school inspection and my class and the girls I was teaching were the best in their year. I wasn’t focused on the curriculum but they were really understanding it. I wasn’t throwing stuff at them, I was allowing them to understand it. The extra time it took was saved when it came to revising for tests or assignments – they already understood what they were doing. That’s where I was strongest, working with students.” 

The Educoach, a mindset and education coaching business, which Marie established upon her return from the UAE in 2019, was supposed to allow her spread that philosophy with block visits to schools across Mayo and beyond, but the pandemic closures scuppered that. And so she diversified; as founder of MSK Coaching, Marie now offers one-to-one mindset and performance coaching and also an eight-week mental fitness programme for athletes, designed around the core characteristics of professional athletes. She has also established the Maximise Sports Seminars where well-known, high-achieving sportspeople have been sharing their backstories and some secrets to their success.

“I want to empower, inspire and educate people to see that you can get to where you want to but that the road isn’t straight, that there’s hills and mountains to climb, but if you believe in yourself, just keep going,” says Marie, who aside from her educational qualifications also holds a bachelors in health promotion and public health, a diploma in personal and business coaching, and an advanced diploma in coaching.

“When I go to matches, of course I look at the score but I’d really be observing what would go on, on the pitch, like guys pulling out of a tackle that was completely fifty-fifty. Or fellas running after a player and giving up the chase. These are all a mindset thing.

“I absolutely love to see a free-taker miss the first one because my challenge to them is, how are you going to bounce back? What are the resilience levels like here? There is absolutely nothing you can do about what’s in the past, it’s about what I do next, the next shot. Are they going through the absolute process that they have practiced on the next free to get that ball over the bar?” 

Above all, Marie Sweeney, whose brother is well-known Kiltane and former Mayo footballer Mikie Sweeney, emphasises the power of daring to believe.

“Don’t bullshit and be real about where you’re getting to – but challenge yourself. Too many teams will just aim to avoid relegation. What are you even going out there for if that’s all you’re doing? How boring is that? Why not push on? How boring is it just to get by? Stay at home. What’s this mentality of it just being okay to float? It drives me insane. It frustrates me to see people just floating when you know that that person can be something amazing.

“Everybody has the potential to do what they actually want to do, but it’s about allowing yourself to take those chances. A lot of people don’t believe that they deserve something. For a long time I was the same.” 

The girl has come a long way from Tipperary.