Mendes came to Durham after spending the past three seasons in a similar role at the University of New Hampshire, where she worked primarily with men's and women's jumps, multi events and sprints. She coached numerous student-athletes that set school records in events such as the long jump, triple jump and pentathlon. During her undergraduate career with the Wildcats, Mendes was a four-year letter winner and team captain, and her 3,485-point performance in the pentathlon broke a school record in 2011 that still stands to this day.
At Duke, Mendes will coach a group of jumpers that includes sophomore Beau Allen, who set the fourth-highest jump in program history during the 2019-20 indoor campaign, as well as Ezra Mellinger, whose long jump distance of 7.18 meters (23-6.75 feet) last indoor season also ranks fourth all-time for the Blue Devils. Additionally, she is set to work with graduate-transfers such as Elena Brown-Soler and Cha'Mia Rothwell, who each earned multiple All-Ivy League honors over the past four years.
As fall training gets underway, Mendes sat down with the Duke communications staff to discuss her goals for the season, the adjustment to the new coaching staff and how she would describe her coaching style.
What are you most excited about going into your first season on the Duke coaching staff?
"For me, I'm excited to take everything I've learned from my coaching career so far and all the experiences I have at working at every other NCAA level to the top, and seeing how that goes. I've had some success in the past with the event groups that I've coached, so I'm interested to see how that pans out at the very top level now. I'm really excited to get going."
How has it been working with Interim Head Coach Shawn Wilbourn and the rest of the coaching staff?
"It's probably been the easiest thing ever. I don't know why, but I feel like I fit here. Everybody is really easy to get along with. I feel like we kind of fell into being a really cohesive staff. Shawn has been really great in always being available to answer questions and kind of help me along. I think the really big thing is the mentorship piece where he and Mark [Mueller] have taken a lot of time to get me on the same page that they're on and that they want to operate on. They're making sure that I understand where everything is coming from, how they do things at Duke and also letting me kind of start to work with my own groups and start to do things in the way that Duke would do them, but having brought me along to be able to do those things. They're really great people overall, so I'm learning a lot, which has been really fun. Overall, they're just great people to work with. We've spent time together as a staff, which has been really important right now, since who else am I going to hang out with? They've been really great about that and we've been working together really well. Shawn is very organized in what he wants and having a plan for what he wants everybody on staff to do. I love organization and I love that things are structured, so it's really easy for me to fit in and kind of get used to everything here."
How would describe your personal coaching style?
"I would say the most important things for me are the fundamentals. Wherever I'm coaching, we need to make sure that the basics are really sound before we move anywhere beyond that. The next most important thing to me is to get to know the athlete as a person, because for me, I believe that the only way an athlete is going to be successful is if they trust their coach and have a good relationship with their coach. So, it's really important for me to build that trust and build that respect between coach and athlete so that when we get into the go-time of the meet or the go-time of a championship or a season, there's a lot of trust there, so that any instructions that I give, they know it's coming from a good place, they know that I believe in them and they know that they're capable of doing what I'm asking them to do. Also, just knowing that I know who they are as a person and I've adapted things to suit their personality. The way that I work with them and the way that I coach them is kind of based on who they are as a person as well."
Do you think it helps to have experience as a student-athlete yourself?
"Yeah, I honestly think it's everything, especially for me having been a pentathlete and a heptathlete in college, and there's so many of them on the team right now. I feel like have of our staff did the multi in college, which is also very unusual. I don't know anywhere else in the country where pretty much every coach can coach every event. That's pretty unique, but it means for the student-athletes that someone understands what they're going through and how difficult it really is, and that someone is able to watch what they're doing at practice and know exactly what's going on no matter what the event is and be able to weigh in and to help. It's really that understanding of their experience and what they're going through that kind of creates that bond where it's a lot easier for athletes to do something challenging if they know the person that's telling them that has been through that before, and that they wouldn't put them through something they know they couldn't do. I think that's huge for student-athletes and it's huge for coaches as well, is to have that experience and just kind of know what they're going through and know what it feels like to be in their shoes."
What makes Duke track & field unique?
"What makes Duke unique is where they're positioned academically and athletically. When Shawn started talking to me about this job, when he first was like, 'Shawn Wilbourn from Duke,' and I was just like, 'Yeah, Duke, they're literally not interested in me.' For me, it's just the best of the best. At every level you could possibly be at for track & field in the country, this is the top. It is the place to go if you want to have a great career after you do college sports, you want to have a great job opportunity waiting for you after you graduate, the best educational experience – this is the place. Then, on top of that, if you want to be at the absolute pinnacle of college sports. If you have the opportunity to go to Duke, you'd be crazy not to go to Duke. That's how I kind of took it when I got offered the job – I'd be crazy not to go, because this is the top of the top. This is the best of the best. It really doesn't get any better than being here and it can be a little bit intimidating, but you've got to give it a shot. It's awesome."
Who from the jumping events are you excited to work with and to watch?
"The first group that I started working with on my own is the high jump group, and I really think Beau Allen is going to do some really great things this year. He has an insane amount of potential and an insane amount of athletic ability, so just harnessing all of that into some sound technical work, he's going to be an amazing high jumper and he's going to do some great things for this program. We have so many long and triple jumpers. I started working more with the long jumpers this week. Ezra Mellinger on the men's side for the long jump – just seeing him start to get going, it's scary what he's going to be capable of. He's so athletic, he's so fast and he's so elastic that honestly it's just getting that under control and making him a really good jumper. For me, it's crazy to work with people who have so much talent and it's really making sure that everything kind of lines up where it needs to, when it needs to. I would say on the women's side, Carly King is starting to triple jump. She is one of the strongest athletes I've worked with. His upside, I have no idea how good it's going to be, but it's going to be great. I'm expecting school records and top-five marks all-time to be broken for sure, and she's going to be a part of that in the triple jump. I think Elena Brown-Soler and Cha'Mia Rothwell, they're going to be some really strong jumpers. It's funny – Cha'Mia, I've seen pretty much her whole career from afar because we were both in New Hampshire before this, so I wasn't coaching her but I'd see her at meets. For me, it's going to be really fun to get to work with her. I think they have incredible power, they're really intense athletes and they're already doing some great things, so I'm expecting some really big jumps from them. Then, you've got the multis. Again, it's a huge group, but the multis are putting up some big things in the jumps as well. Isabel Wakefield – she had a really good practice the other day and I'm really excited to see what she puts out there in the long jump too. It's a pretty exciting place to be. There's so many jumpers to work with and I'm really excited for that. I'm really excited to see them get going."
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