Basketball player, coach and Olympic medalist Juliene Brazinski Simpson has been a true trailblazer.

Simpson spoke to Lehighton field hockey team players and their parents at a recent banquet at the American Legion 314 about how sports changed her life.Simpson was a silver medalist as co-captain in the first women's basketball team at the Summer Olympic Games of 1976 in Montreal, a gold medalist in the 1975 Pan Am Games in Mexico City, and a silver medalist in the World University games of 1973 in Moscow. She was the first female coach of a boys basketball team in New Mexico, four-time AAU All American, MVP AAU National Championship Tournament, and member of the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame. She has played on 11 international teams.Born and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to factory worker parents, she was the youngest of three siblings.The 5-foot, 6-inch Simpson said sports changed her life, even though there was no future in women's basketball at the time, as the WNBA was not in existence yet.Her role on the Olympic team was point guard. The team only had four weeks to train for the Olympic Games after they were picked. The first score recorded in the 1976 Olympics was achieved because she passed the ball. Her picture is not shown in the record book, but she knows she was a big part of it.What she takes away from winning the gold and silver medals is that she is on a path to give back and share with others.Simpson, who coached for 35 years, has been the Director of Athletics at the College of St. Elizabeth in Morristown, New Jersey, for the past 5 years and lives in Stroudsburg.At the banquet she shared her "four ingredients to success": Dream, plan, work, believe.You have to dream, and dream big. She dreamed to get an A on her least favorite subject in school, and to play in the NBA even though there was no professional basketball for women. A thought becomes a dream when you work on it.We can plan what we're going to wear the next day, and we need to plan what we want to become.Work is what separates the successful from the unsuccessful. There's a fine line between the people who make it and the ones who don't. Some people are really good at what they do, but they don't discipline themselves to get better."I learned through my parents and mentors that we have a choice to be good," Simpson said. "Playing a sport makes you be who you are. You know what it is like to work hard, you know what it is like to be loyal, and you know what it is like to fail and have to get back up again."You have to have faith, it's something that you can't see, but you visualize your dream. "Believe in who you are, no matter what people say you can or can't do. Nobody can guarantee you success, but you have to know and believe on what you can do."Simpson could have been in Arizona State College that weekend at the ceremony to retire number 76 from one of her successful student-athletes, but she was committed to the small-town gathering with the field hockey team in Carbon County. People commented about how it must be a "big-time" event for her to miss that ceremony, but she said, "'Big time' is where you are right now."She also encouraged the young attendees to be mindful of the technology-driven times."These are very dangerous times in social media, especially for young people. You being on a team makes you different. It's almost like you are in a glass ball. You are leaders of our country. Every single member of my Olympic team had a responsibility. If you play sports you have a responsibility. If you just post anything about how you feel just because you don't see the people who would read it, be careful, and use media to your advantage not to your disadvantage."Many young people have their dreams truncated by indiscretions found on Facebook."Go home and write your top 10 goals of what you're looking to do, and what you want to do in life."