Leading from the Stands

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — If you need help with lacrosse X’s and O’s, retired U.S. Army brigadier general and Vanderbilt Bass Military Scholars Program director Scott Brower is the first to acknowledge he’s not your man. If you need someone whose leadership expertise will help a team grow in ways beyond power play tactics, well, take another look at those job titles.

Vanderbilt lacrosse head coach Beth Hewitt takes care of the X’s and O’s. Brower pitches in as her leadership “XO,” to borrow the military parlance for an executive officer, and was recently honored by the lacrosse program with the 2025 Robert Nesi Super Fan Award.

This is the second year Brower has provided leadership mentoring for lacrosse student-athletes. He meets regularly with a leadership council of about a dozen members of the lacrosse team to engage the Commodores in dialogue about principles of leadership, calling on his nearly 30 years of experience leading men and women in the Army, which culminated in his time as the acting senior commander for the 101st Airborne Division and Fort Campbell.

Brower helps student-athletes understand how concepts of “culture” and “chemistry” are used by effective organizations as more than catchphrases. Discussions run the gamut from big-picture philosophy about how to communicate and have difficult conversations with peers and superiors to the week-to-week specifics of these 41 student-athletes interacting on and off the field.

Experience made him an ideal mentor. The student-athletes made him a Vanderbilt lacrosse fan. He rarely misses home games and has even been known to hit the road to support the Commodores on their travels. The team awarded Gen. Brower with the Robert Nesi Super Fan Award not only for his lessons in leadership but also for the example he sets by caring about what happens when the leadership lesson ends.

“As a coach, I want to surround myself, my staff and my players with people who are focused on a shared goal and want to do things the right way, and that is exactly who he is and how he approaches everything in his life,” Hewitt said. “I can’t think of a better role model for our program.”

We are excited to announce our 2025 Robert Nesi Super Fan Award to General Scott Brower, Bass Military Scholars Program Director!

The award is in memory of the late Robert Nesi, father of former Vanderbilt lacrosse standout Gabby Nesi, whose unconditional love for his daughter… pic.twitter.com/Pfea5UGelB

— Vanderbilt Lacrosse (@VandyLacrosse) March 14, 2025

A General and a Softball Dad

Women’s lacrosse might have been new territory for Brower, but athletics shaped him even before the military took its turn. He was the quintessential athlete for all seasons as a kid, playing football, baseball and basketball. He played baseball at West Point—he’s in the program record book as the joint leader in stolen bases during his sophomore season.

“That love of being part of teams is what shaped where I ended up in the Army for most of my adult life,” said Brower, who served as commander of the 5th Special Forces Group and chief of staff of Special Operations Command. “The Special Forces community is small, tight, close-knit organizations. Where did I learn to appreciate that? On the sports fields.”

Nor was he a stranger to women’s sports before becoming part of the Vanderbilt lacrosse family. Two daughters followed in his athletic footsteps as kids, and Courtney Brower played collegiate softball at Austin Peay. Still on active duty, he was nonetheless there when she hit her first home run in the closing weeks of her senior season.

From Football to Lacrosse

Brower came to Vanderbilt in 2021 to lead the Bass Military Scholars Program, which provides scholarships to honorably discharged military service members seeking advanced degrees in law, nursing, medicine, business and education. Soon after taking on his new duties, he also accepted Clark Lea’s invitation to mentor football student-athletes.

Seeing the positive effect on Lea’s team, former associate athletic director and lacrosse sport administrator Martin Salamone asked Brower to meet Coach Hewitt and explore opportunities to mentor her lacrosse team.

With one of the largest rosters among Vanderbilt’s 17 varsity sports, totaling 41 student-athletes for the 2025 spring season, lacrosse shares many of the same organizational challenges and opportunities as football. Student-athletes from a range of backgrounds and at different stages of their athletic and academic development must figure out how to challenge and support each other before they can start thinking about beating opponents.

Creating that culture of collaboration and responsibility is a core part of a coach’s duties, of course, but as Hewitt likes to say, she only has three timeouts each game. Leadership can’t be strictly a top-down exercise. It has to come from within the ranks of the team.

Not so very far removed from her own standout playing career at North Carolina, Hewitt has seen increasing hesitance or unfamiliarity with peer-to-peer accountability. When Gen. Brower asked student-athletes whether they would prefer to hear critical feedback from a coach or a teammate, Hewitt was surprised at the near unanimity preferring the former.

“In an environment where everyone’s comparing themselves, whether it’s social media or all the other ways the world has changed, it sometimes makes it hard for people to want to step out and do something that’s a little different and maybe unpopular,” Hewitt said. “If someone’s not on the same wavelength and not rowing in the same direction, it’s a leader’s job to get them back on board. And I think it’s really hard to do today because everybody wants to fit into the same mold and not be this outlier.”

Learning to Lead

During the academic year, Brower meets with student-athletes on the leadership council for an hour every other week. During the fall, lacrosse’s offseason, lesson plans are geared toward larger topics like communication strategies or organizational culture.

Brower accumulated many stories and examples during his military career, but one of his favorite tools is bringing in Bass Scholars. With their prior military service, the Bass Scholars often are a decade older than the student-athletes in the room, but they are far closer to being peers than a 58-year-old retired brigadier general.

“The conversation is different when it’s not an authority figure,” Brower said. “Whether it’s organizational culture, peer-to-peer accountability, how you communicate, how you deliver a tough message, how you show compassion and care for your teammates—all of those things that we do in the military, there’s a direct translation to college athletics.”

This past fall, Brower helped Hewitt and her staff organize a trip to Fort Campbell, where student-athletes participated in the team-building training employed at the U.S. Army Air Assault School. On the eve of the visit, six female officers from the 101st Airborne visited campus to speak with the team about their leadership experiences.

Once the season arrives, Brower views their hour together as the leadership equivalent of the film room. The focus narrows to the issues that the team deals with day to day. They often start with a “two-and-one” review session, where Brower asks for two things that are going well organizationally and one area that needs improvement. They talk through challenges that arise in the moment, perhaps someone who didn’t bring the right energy in a practice or game or an instance when one of the leaders lost her temper.

Last year, which was his first year mentoring the team, the meetings were just Brower and the student-athlete leadership group. This year—with all but a handful of last year’s leadership group returning—Hewitt has been present for about half of the meetings. Far from having a chilling effect on the conversations, Brower observed student-athletes using many of the lessons from the previous year to speak openly and honestly with their coach.

“It’s not like they never spoke to Coach Hewitt before—we’re just arming them with more tools in their kit bag,” Brower said. “Maybe they can have a difficult conversation, removing the emotion from it and walking in the door with a little bit of confidence. Sometimes you can be a little bit nervous going to your boss for the first time. Now they have that.”

You would think a retired brigadier general with a Special Forces resume would be hard to miss, but more than once, coach and student-athletes have looked almost surprised to find him in the room after they get caught up in a discussion for 10 or 15 minutes.

“I love watching the conversations take place between the players and coach,” Brower said. “It just opens up and strengthens their trust and communication, which are two critical aspects of leadership.

“I talk about it all the time, having a truth teller in your life. Regardless of position inside an organization, family, team, they are somebody who is going to speak truth to power and be the one that’s willing to deliver that message that maybe is a little uncomfortable or the boss doesn’t want to hear.”

The lessons are no less practical when it comes to peer-to-peer communication. For graduate student and transfer Brooke Baker, learning to speak up with her truth helped shorten her transition from newcomer to team leader.

Baker started her collegiate career at North Carolina, where she was part of a national championship team but struggled to climb a crowded depth chart. Seeking an opportunity to play more, she graduated early and transferred to Vanderbilt with two seasons of eligibility remaining. She arrived with valuable experience to offer, but no “sweat equity” with her new teammates.

While doing her part to earn capital through her work ethic in fall practices, she leaned on Brower’s lessons to find the most effective way to begin sharing all she had to offer.

“General Brower has been unbelievable. I could call him right now and he’d answer,” Baker said. “Our decisions, while they’re obviously not life and death, they can be tough. Being a leader is tough in a group of 41 girls. Working with General Brower really brings out the best in us. He has helped me learn more about being a leader in a situation where I wasn’t sure if I could be one coming in. Him putting things into perspective has really helped me and shaped me into the leader I am on this team.”

Two-Way Growth

When Brower started working with Hewitt’s team two years ago, he reiterated that he wasn’t there to coach lacrosse. He was there for leadership, not draws and defenses.

But if he’s still not looking for a new career as a lacrosse coach, he’s very much settling into the routines of being a lacrosse fan. Part of that is the thoroughness of mission you might expect of someone with his background. He needs to see the student-athletes in their element, in competition on the field, to understand how best to mentor them.

But he could have accomplished that recon without taking time to go to road games at Cincinnati or Mercer. He could miss more than the occasional home game.

Brower’s words resonate not because of all that he’s accomplished and all the wisdom he can share, but because they come from someone genuinely interested in helping 41 lacrosse student-athletes grow.

“There’s not a day I walk out of that classroom not having learned something,” Brower said. “What I recognize and appreciate from them is the level of care that they have for each other—and their desire to succeed and win. These girls bust their backsides. They’re at an elite academic institution. They have phenomenal academic records. Their commitment is amazing. Watching that drive and desire to grow is inspiring. That’s why I do it, is just to see them develop like that.”

And if during a game they want a reminder of how a leader acts, they don’t have to wait for the next class. They just have to look over to the stands.

About the Award

The Robert Nesi Award was established in 2020 to celebrate people who significantly contribute to the Vanderbilt lacrosse program and support student-athletes on and off the field. The award is named in memory of the late Robert Nesi, father of former Vanderbilt lacrosse standout Gabby Nesi, whose unconditional love for his daughter and the Vanderbilt lacrosse family inspired and uplifted everyone he came in contact with.