Champions 101 for Coaches: EMBRACE THE PROCESS When you’re outcome-driven, there’s only one thing that matters: “Did we win or did we lose?” But when you’re process-driven, there’s another question you can’t help but ask: “Did we learn?” Elevate your performance in the Coaches Academy: bit.ly/4tv0Mpi

Champions 101 for Coaches: Would your players agree or disagree? “Coach is capable of separating ‘how we played’ from ‘whether or not we won.’” Clarify your purpose in the Coaches Academy: bit.ly/4tv0Mpi

Champions 101 for Coaches: Would your players agree or disagree? “Coach is not a blamer, a complainer, or an excuse maker.” Clarify your purpose in the Coaches Academy: bit.ly/4tv0Mpi

Champions 101 for Coaches: “Herb Brooks believed he could build a team that could beat the Soviets, but he knew it would require more than talent alone.” Read “How to Build a Winning Team,” here: bit.ly/4kS47vB

NEW! Champions 101 Coaches Academy Building and developing a better team full of better players starts with building and developing a better you. 🎯 Clarify your purpose. 👀 Sharpen your perspective. 📈 Elevate your performance. Learn more here: bit.ly/4tv0Mpi

Let’s go O!! Junior Owen Daugherty with a solo 2nd finish today at the Bob Spacey Invite.

If you’ve never cried after giving everything you had to something that mattered, you’ve probably never given everything you had to something that mattered. The UCONN women’s basketball team was undefeated, 38-0 for the season. But with a little over a minute left in their final four matchup against South Carolina, Kayleigh Heckel went up for a lay-up to cut the score to 9 and keep alive a tiny bit of hope. She missed. The camera zooms in on Heckel as she drops her head and tears began to flow. It was a harsh moment of realizing that the dream was over. In 2024, Keisei Tominaga was captured crying on the sidelines with a minute left when his Nebraska team lost to Texas A&M in the tournament. Back in 2006, Adam Morrison had a similar reaction with a few seconds left, after Gonzaga had blown a 17 point lead in the sweet sixteen. Will all due respect to Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own, there is crying in sport. A lot of it. And contrary to some of the talk on social media, it’s the opposite of weakness. It’s a clear signal of a genuine competitor. We cry because we care. Tears are proof of our investment. Psychologist Ad Vingerhoets at Tilburg University has spend decades studying crying. He found that humans are the only species that cries emotionally. And the primary reason we do it is it acts s a kind of communicative device. Tears signal to others that something matters deeply to us and we need support. It’s as if the tears are saying, “this thing matters to me more than I can say.” As a coach, I’ve seen the toughest of competitors, athletes who are among the best in the country or even the world, break down from time to time. It’s one of the beautiful things about sport. For many reasons, it’s one of the few areas where we let the guard down, show what we really feel, and express genuine emotion. Sometimes, that means tears of joy, other times a crushing bitter disappointment that we can’t quite process. This is especially true for men, who often try to be stoic, thanks to a combination of culture and biology. Yet, in the days before memes Morrison might as well have become one, as he “got murdered for it” and was “kind of shocked by how much negative feedback” he received. Heckel’s been met with a mixture of support and the sadly expected condemnation. Those people are clueless. From the sidelines, it may look like a weakness because you’ve never been in those moments. You’ve never given your all to something, risked greatness, and saw that dream get ripped away. When you step into the arena, you put it all on the line. And in sport, music, and performance arts, one of the few places that are the last bastions of reality. You can’t fake it, it’s all there to see, and there’s a clearly defined success or failure. You have to care deeply to even be in that spot in the first place. No one made it anywhere close to fulfilling their potential, let alone the pinnacle of their endeavor by not caring. That kind of nonchalance is reserved for the sideline. It’s the cool kid in high school who tries to convince others not trying is the cool thing to do. All so they can protect their ego and say, “I would have gotten an A, made the team, won the tournament, if I had tried…” Caring is cool. It’s also the only way you see how good you can be. Our brain has a kind of internal safety mechanism that prevents us from ever truly pushing to our limit. And for good reason. If a marathoner really ran out of glycogen or let their core body temperature keep rising, then serious illness or death awaits. Instead, we run a kind of inner calculation that says: is the juice worth the squeeze? Caring deeply is what allows us to push just a bit harder. It tells that safety mechanism, “Ya, we’re in a lot of discomfort right now, but this means a lot, so give us a little bit longer of a leash.” So if I ever saw someone crying after a tough race, I knew that was an athlete I wanted on my team. It meant they cared. It meant the moment meant so much to them, that they could no longer put on a face, or hold things back. It meant more to them than they could verbally communicate. We need more people with passion, who are willing to risk it all, to be have the emotions of the moment overwhelm them. It’s only by stepping into the arena and taking that risk that we find out how good we can be, and more importantly, who we are. The potential for tears is the price of admission. Morrison got murdered for crying in 2006. Tominaga said it should be celebrated in 2024. He was right. -Steve

If we have a genuine interest in helping our kids reach their potential, then we have to accept the reality of what it takes. Read "Champions Aren't Born. They're Built" here: buff.ly/3JvJEJD ~ from @Champions_101