Liz McConaghy was the longest serving female crewman on the Royal Air Force Chinook Fleet spanning a 17-year career flying on the aircraft.

Originally from a small town in Co. Down Northern Ireland she attended RAF Cranwell on her 19th birthday to begin her exciting career thereafter on Chinook Helicopters. She was the youngest aircrew to deploy to Iraq aged just 21 and also the only female crewman on the Chinook wing for 4 years, so her story is completely unique. Her career saw her amass 2 deployments to Iraq and 10 deployments to Helmand Afghanistan in support of Operation Herrick which gave her an insightful and very personal perspective on war.

Upon leaving the RAF in 2019 Liz slowly became unravelled after a series of traumatic events that compounded her PTSD. This led to her trying to end her life in Aug 2020. She survived and went into the Veterans Mental Health care system to help her deal with her demons and finally lay the images she had seen on the battlefield to rest. During this time she began writing poetry and subsequently an autobiography to help her get her thoughts out of her head.

Chinook Crew Chick was released in Sept 2022 and went to an Amazon Bestseller within 3 weeks. It is an honest and humorous account of her ‘best of times and worst of times’ and how her experiences flying on the Chinook have changed and moulded her into the woman she has become. From dodging bullets to saving soldiers and witnessing the brutality and loss of war, she writes how she found herself bringing the battlefield home, despite her fighting days being over. Liz’s story offers hope to those who have also found themselves in the darkest of places, who are looking for the tools within themselves to begin to rebuild a pathway to a new life. She is now an ambassador for mental health and specifically PTSD with Veterans. Liz stands as an example that PTSD does not have to be your identity, it can simply be a chapter of your life that can be learned from and most importantly moved on from.

Twitter / X: https://twitter.com/chinnychick

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chinookcrewchick

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chinookcrewchick

Website: www.chinookcrewchick.co.uk

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We all as children have dreams. Many a backyard or neighborhood field will play out a game-winning hit or goal to win World Cup glory. But few go on on to live this moment for real.

Mitchell Daly is a professional baseball player, and a recent graduate from the University of Kentucky where he was a starting member of their College World Series baseball team. In Kentucky's first ever appearance in this tournament, Mitchell hit glory, with a 2-out walk-off home run in extra innings to seal victory. Incredible scenes in front of over 20,000 fans played out in Omaha, NE.

We sit down with Mitchell and dive into not only the mindset required to perform in such a high pressure environment, but also to explore his journey from backyard games with his brother, to the SEC and onto professional sport. Mitchell shares his thoughts on how best to integrate into a new team, how leaders get the most out of their players, handling set backs and loss of form, the importance of staying true to who you are, and what he felt as he stepped up to the plate on College baseball's biggest stage.

Walk off moment, CWS 2024: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MoGxZBYK8Y

Photos for this episode supplied by Mitchell Daly.

UK Sports Network radio audio clip used with permission.

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Dr Aman Hussain is a Performance Consultant, and Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Applied Health at the University of Winnipeg. He travelled with a team of Sports Psychologists to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and has a rich knowledge and experience with performance coaching in sports and the performing arts. He is know researching how performance coaches can help those in medicine, and other high-risk, high consequence professions. He received his PhD from the University of Queensland where his research focused the learning and performance of emergency physicians.

In Episode 13, we discuss his journey into performance coaching, explore his current research, and seek to uncover what it might take to bring performance coaches into many other professions to help us all reach "extraordinary".

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