The Fearless Warrior Podcast

074: What It Takes to Be a College Athlete with Bella Norton

• Amanda Schaefer

Share episode

We've got another archive Guest Speaker call we are sharing with you today! In 2020 Bella Norton a catcher for the University of Indiana came and shared her story with our warriors. Her story highlights the significance of mental resilience and teamwork in sports. Through her struggles and triumphs, Bella teaches that identity is rooted in character, not merely performance statistics. 

Episode Highlights:
• Bella's recruitment experience and challenges with exposure 
• The importance of academic performance and time management 
• Daily life of a collegiate athlete and the grind of training 
• Utilizing visualization for mental strength and confidence 

Connect with Bella:

Instagram: @catch42softball

Ready to learn the techniques that will actually increase your softball athlete's CONFIDENCE?


More ways to work with Fearless Fastpitch

Follow us on Social Media

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the fearless warrior podcast, a place for athletes, coaches and parents who know the value of a strong mindset. I'm your host, coach AB, a mental performance coach on a mission, former softball coach, wife and mom of three. Each episode, we will dive deep into all things mental performance, mindset tools and how to rewire the brain for success. So if your goal is to gain the mental edge and learn the secrets of mental performance, mindset tools and how to rewire the brain for success, so if your goal is to gain the mental edge and learn the secrets of mental performance, you're in the right place. Let's tune in to today's episode. I'm super excited for you guys to meet Bella, and Bella is currently in her senior season at Indiana and we've connected on Instagram and I've loved hearing your story and thought it would be a really good one to share with the girls Awesome.

Speaker 2:

What's up you guys? I hope everybody's doing well. So, like Amanda said, I am our current player here at Indiana University. I'm a senior catcher. Season starts in a week, so it's pretty. University I'm a senior catcher. Season starts in a week, so it's pretty crazy. I'm really excited. I'm originally from Northern Virginia. I'm like 15-20 minutes outside of Washington DC, and I am studying sports media with a minor in psychology, but I'm really wanting to go into coaching, so that's where I'm headed, so yeah, so if you want to tell us kind of your story and how you got to where you got, Awesome.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so I guess I'll start with recruiting and how I got recruited and all that. Like I said, I am from Virginia and in that area softball is big, but in terms of recruiting it's it's very hard to to get exposure in the specific area that I'm in. So I played for an organization called the Vienna Stars and I would fly to Colorado, california. It seems like I went on hundreds of plane rides throughout, I would say, three to four years, starting in seventh grade, because recruiting was a lot earlier back then and I would try to get as much exposure as I could and it was a big financial commitment and my parents were so great through all of that, and so I was lucky enough to be able to travel the way that I did. To get that exposure, I would practice every day. Extra work is key all the time. Practice isn't enough. Team practices are not enough. Your outside work is what gets you to where you are, and so I would say that really separated me from the rest is I was outside on the team before practice, after practice was always doing extra work, and that's really how I got to where I am today. And so, yeah, also I kind of want to touch on.

Speaker 2:

I have a little story about grades if that's cool, so a big thing that I tell all of the girls I talk to is that grades are so important, and when I was going through my recruiting process, I actually got a scholarship taken away from me because of grades.

Speaker 2:

And I had a. I was looking into Notre Dame and I remember being so excited. It was my freshman year of college and I only had my first semester to show for in high school. Little did I know that first semester was going to be really important in terms of my recruiting and my grades were not where they needed to be and I was very close to getting a scholarship to Notre Dame and because my grades weren't up to the standard, I did not fulfill that. And so grades are so important. Time management is so important, and if I didn't get my butt in gear in school then I wouldn't be at Indiana right now. And so getting good grades, focusing on school, is going to lead you to so many more opportunities, and I'm lucky enough that I am in a fantastic school and I'm so blessed and grateful that I'm here because it is a fantastic university and a great program, and so yeah.

Speaker 1:

Cool, so talk us through from the beginning. So you told us how you got recruited. Tell us more about so. When did you start playing softball? That would be a great question.

Speaker 2:

I started playing softball when'd be a great question. Um, I started playing softball I was four years old, um, yeah, and then I started playing travel ball when I was 10, so yeah cool in high school in DC.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well it was right outside DC, so Virginia. Um yeah, I went to my high school called McLean high school and I played all four years there. I loved high school ball. It was truly up until college. My favorite time playing softball was on my high school team, which not everybody can say, but I thought it was just so much fun for me. I loved it, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Cool. Okay, so you've kind of told us where you come from and how you got to Indiana, so you talked a little bit about recruiting. But what I wanted to see is so now you're here, right, you're at Indiana, you're super excited, you're a week away from season, you're in your senior year. What is the day in the life like for Bella Norton?

Speaker 2:

Oh, so college athletics is no joke, it is. It is a grind, but I absolutely love every minute of it. So my days start, um at seven o'clock in the morning. Um, it used to be 6 am, so it's get a little bit more sleep than I used to get. But, um, I wake up at seven o'clock every morning.

Speaker 2:

We have weights at 830. We have to get to the field about an hour early to do our arm care, our stretching, everything like that, and then we end up leaving the clubhouse at about 815 and we run over to the weight room. So we always have, I would say, like a half mile jog over to the weight room. Um, and then our equipment is in our indoor facility, so we don't have to get that.

Speaker 2:

We go and we do our weights workout, um, and then immediately afterwards, at 10 o'clock, we have practice, and our practice goes from 10 to one o'clock every day. After practice then it's treatment time. You go, you get your ice bath in, you get whatever you need to get in to make your body feel good, and right after treatment you shower and then you go straight to class. And so I have class from 4 o'clock to 6.45 every Monday and Wednesday, and then you have study all hours, and then you have dinner, and then you go to bed and then you wake up and you do it all over again and we do have one off day.

Speaker 2:

Now we're in 20 hours, which means that you have 20 hours in the week to get in your practices and your weights and stuff. So we do only have one off day. But during that off day that doesn't mean that we take off from treatment or take off from um from softball at all. We always go in and we're doing extra work. We're doing. You always see the student athletes um getting extra work in somewhere during that day. So it's definitely a jam packed day but it is awesome. It's like my favorite thing in the world. I wouldn't trade it for anything. So yeah.

Speaker 1:

So talk about the extra work I mean you have. You're at a division one school. You've got hitting coaches. You've got pitching coaches. Do you have a catching coach? Talk about that and how much you have at your fingertips.

Speaker 2:

So my favorite thing over the past two years in terms of extra work has been even though they can't so graduate assistants can't specifically coach but being picking their brains you can do. And we have a girl named Gwen Svetkis and she was the Oregon softball catcher All-American two years ago and we have her. And we have a girl named Michaela who played for LSU last year and she. Both of them are catchers and I had never had a catching instructor instructor growing up. I think catching is a very under top position, um, and and generally speaking, and having them at my fingertips have has been incredible knowing or picking their brain about philosophies and all that sort of stuff. They're always there to throw BP, they're always there to do extra work with you. There's truly like no excuse for you not to, like you know, get in and do something because these girls have so much knowledge.

Speaker 2:

And what I love about our program is that all of our entire staff, except with the exception of our strength coach, is all females, and they are strong women like I've never met a group of women so strong in my life and so being around their presence and it makes you want to work harder.

Speaker 2:

That extra work. For me first. It just means like a little bit more because you, you are, you know, you're getting better them, you're becoming the strong, independent woman that goes in and they get their stuff done. And these women are so knowledgeable in our sport and so I've been so blessed to be able to pick their brains. My coach, my head coach, shauna Stanton she was at Marshall University in West Virginia for 20 years and she had so much success there and being able to just because I do want to go into coaching be able to pick her brain about you know, certain drills and certain you know strategies she would do for small ball or whatever, has been just awesome. And so they're always willing to do the extra work when we can in terms of NCAA rules and stuff, but it's just, it's awesome.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, To have all that at your fingertips Very cool. So you've talked about yourself. You've talked about your workouts. You've talked about coaches. Talk about your teammates. What's it like playing college athletics with your teammates? Where are they from what?

Speaker 2:

are they like? They are from absolutely everywhere. Let me tell you, I come from a city type of area. I'm right outside of DC and it was culture shock when I got here. I've never met people from Indiana. I've, you know, never met people from Chicago, illinois, like. There's people from absolutely everywhere. My roommates are from Chicago and Las Vegas. My pitchers are from Indiana to Alabama to Nebraska. Everybody is from completely different places and I think my favorite thing about that is that everybody has a different perspective of everything, whether it's softball, whether it's life, it's. I love getting to hear their stories, their backgrounds, how they grew up. It's so. It's honestly been.

Speaker 2:

Probably the thing that has grown me the most is getting to know my teammates. And these aren't girls that you just like see twice a week at practice, right, like you did in travel. These are girls that you live with, that you see every single day. And it's a hundred percent true when they say that when you get older you're not going to remember who played, who you know did this or who whatever. You're going to remember your teammates and I can honestly say these girls are my lifelong friends. I it will be the thing that I miss the most when I leave, it is like 22 girls being your cheerleaders all the time, like, oh, it's like.

Speaker 2:

One thing that I think about a lot is, um, we have max weeks for our workouts, right? Um, where we get to put up as much weight as we can. Um, this past year, I hit the highest squat max I've ever hit and I was really nervous about it, and I there's a video of me getting that max and when I watch it, I don't, I can't even like watch myself, I just watch everybody around me. I have an entire strap, entire staff, 22 girls just cheering for me. When are you ever going to have that again, you know? And so the, my teammates are absolutely my favorite thing that I've um been able to, you know, gain an experience through this um, through this experience, so yeah, yeah, Very cool.

Speaker 1:

So that actually leads into a question that I would be curious to hear your answer on. I say this a lot as a coach, but hearing from you, what does it mean when someone says be a good teammate? What does that look like?

Speaker 2:

To me it means so many things. It really does. But when I think of a good teammate, I think of somebody who it doesn't matter if you're a bench player, if you're a starter, it doesn't matter if you're a bench player, if you're a starter, it doesn't matter if you have played in three games or 60, right. A good teammate is somebody who absolutely no matter what, when you're at your lowest of low, that they're going to be the ones to be right beside you, but they're also going to be the ones to hold you accountable.

Speaker 2:

We talk a lot about trust in our culture here at Indiana, and not the kind of trust it's like, oh, I'm going to tell you secret, like don't tell anybody. For us, trust means, hey, I trust you enough to call me out when I need something, when I need to do something better. So if somebody is you know doing something you know halfway, like in a workout, if somebody's you know stopping on an exercise or something, you be that person that holds them accountable but also picks them up, and so that is something that we really just talk about all the time here is having that accountability. But also when you need somebody and when you are low, that's going to be the person to come pick you up, and it could be absolutely anybody on the team, and everybody has the ability to be a great teammate, so yeah, sounds like a lot of the stuff that we talk about.

Speaker 1:

the girls are going to be smiling and giggling, but strategy number one right out the gate. We talk about foundation and your support system. So that's awesome, okay. So here's the question that I'll kind of leave you with before we dive into Q and a what does it mean when I say mental skills to you? What? What has that done for your game and how are you guys using it at Indiana? So this.

Speaker 2:

That question kind of leads me to a little bit of a story, and this is I saw that you guys talk about visualization and that has been like your topic or whatever, and that, truly single-handedly, has completely changed my game a hundred percent. And it leads me to a story about my sophomore year. So this is about two years ago and for the first time in my entire life, I lost my starting position never not been a starter in my life and for three weeks straight I did not see the field. And when I mean I didn't see the field, I mean I was in the bullpen all game and I remember being so like ashamed and embarrassed and just I was at a very low point in terms of my mental, my mental game. And so we were about to go to Maryland for our series, and Maryland is right near me, it's 30 minutes away from my house, and so I knew my entire family was going to be there, and I remember freaking out. I was like, oh my gosh, like everyone's going to be there, everyone's going to see me, not play. That was exactly how I was feeling and to give you kind of a little bit of a backstory on, and this will I'll. It'll come full circle once I finish the story and talk to you about full circle once I finish the story and talk to you about.

Speaker 2:

You know what helped me through this? But my dad, growing up is was extremely hard on me with softball Borderline like very verbally, just very mean guy when it came to ball. And so growing up I either thought of myself as the best player ever, the best person ever, or nothing, right. And so I remember I called him a week before the Maryland series and I said hey, dad, are you going to come to the Maryland game? And he goes, I don't think you're going to play, so no. And I said, okay, sounds good. I. So I had in my head that he wasn't going to come, um, and that really put me down to like again, the lowest of my low.

Speaker 2:

So we get to the Maryland series and I get off the bus and I see my entire family and I'm like, okay, here we go, All girls. I used to coach my, my, when I mean my. I had come from a very big family. I have five siblings, so my entire family, um, family, friends, everybody was there. Um, the second I got off the bus and I knew that sudden change. I needed to. I needed something, got. It had to change at that moment.

Speaker 2:

And I remember we do an exercise at Indiana it's called our. We have a mental workout and this has truly like refined my mental game and essentially, essentially, what we do is we take five seconds to take a big deep breath, we hold it for two seconds and then we'll release for five, and then we literally spend one minute visualizing. That's it, just visualizing, closing our eyes and not only thinking about, or you know, visualizing like what we're gonna do at the plate, but visualizing where we're gonna look during a certain time, or how the, the grip feels in your hands, or, um, the smell, everything, using all your senses to visualize and hone in on what you're gonna do. And so I told myself that that was the only thing I was going to think about and I was not going to let my the lies. I was telling myself that I couldn't do this, couldn't do that. It was out the window and all I was going to do was visualize me doing great.

Speaker 2:

Well, that day I had my opportunity. Pinch hit. I remember being in the on-deck circle. I haven't swung a bat in a real game in three weeks and I sit there and I visualize everything. I visualize a hit up the middle. I get up to the plate, pinch, hit, hit up the middle. The next game I play, I play the entire game first in three weeks and I hit a home run, threw a runner out, had a diving catch the game of my entire life, with my entire family there and I rounded third base and I didn't see my dad. My dad wasn't there and I go. That was all me, my mentality and the way that I thought about myself and my game and that's what got me there and what it was that unlocked everything was visualizing success. That is truly still to this day.

Speaker 2:

When I go to sleep before games, I close my eyes and I think about what I'm going to do the next day. We call it a highlight reel here and we just and we actually do a physical highlight reel where we take videos and take photos from our past success and we put them in a clip and we watch it before every single game and that's exactly what I think about and I'll close my eyes and I'll play that highlight reel over and over and over again. And after that highlight reel, we have something called an identity statement and it's basically like an I am statement. And so you say that during your really nervous times and mine last year was I am the x. And so you say that during your really nervous times and mine last year was I am the X factor.

Speaker 2:

With my hard work and preparation, my game has no limits. So combining that with the visualization unlocked everything. And after that game, where I really focused on that mental part of my game, I started for the rest of the season, and so that truly was like a breakthrough moment for me, where I was like it's all about your mentality, that's it. If you, you could have the worst swing ever, but if you have the best mentality on the field, you're going to play. You know. It's like that's. That's really. What sets people apart is the mental game.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, that is awesome, and I didn't even know this about you. We haven't even had that conversation, so the girls literally just learned visualization on Sunday. So with that, I think it would be really cool. After hearing Bella's story, after hearing about how she uses mental skills I know that you guys have comments or questions, whatever it is that you want to ask Bella, like everything is on the table. So with that, does anyone have anything that they want to say or ask of Bella? All right, we're gonna go with reagan um, awesome.

Speaker 2:

How did you get inspired by playing softball? How did I get inspired? I would say the first burst of inspiration that I've I had in ball was I was nine years old and I sat and I watched the college world series. For the first time I watched a girl named Charlotte Morgan. She's a player from a while ago. She was a first baseman pitcher. She hit the ball like I've never seen someone hit a ball in my life. I remember sitting there and being like oh my gosh, the way that these girls play the game, the grittiness, the passion all of that. I wanted to be that. I play the game with a lot of I'm very intense but I'm very animated, and so I wanted. I was watching the Alabama team in the World Series and I said I want to be that, and so it was really watching my role models growing up. That's really what gave me that core inspiration.

Speaker 1:

So great question, reagan. All right, cody, what you got for us girl, um like, did you ever have the fear of messing up or trying to?

Speaker 2:

be perfect. Oh, I still have that. Trust me. Trust me, yeah, absolutely, and that I don't want to say that never goes away, but it sometimes, it just doesn't. There are certain things that we do get scared.

Speaker 2:

I've been playing softball for as long as I can remember. I'm 21 years old. I started at the age of four and I still get scared sometimes, right, um, absolutely everybody does. The biggest example that I can give is my throw downs. I absolutely adore catching. It is my favorite thing in the entire world. But I got one weakness in my catching game and that is my throws and that fear.

Speaker 2:

What you have to understand is that the fear that you're telling yourself is a lie, because your brain is going to lie to yourself over and over and over again, and it's going to. You're going to hear that weak voice all the time Say hey, bella, hey, you can't throw the ball down. You know that you don't have the strongest arm on the team, that you know that girl's really fast. You know you're not going to get her out.

Speaker 2:

Either I could give in and listen to the lies that my mind is telling myself, or I could say no, no, no, I'm going to take a step back. I've done this over and over and over again, and something that I do often is thrive on my past success and think about my past success in order to give me that confidence. And so, when I am getting scared, when I am a little bit scared to fail, um, I do, I think about that past success and, um, if you are thinking that you're going to fail, then I promise you you're going to. And so that's something that I also tell myself is, if I'm sitting here saying I can't do something, I'm not going to. Um, again, it's all. It's all about mentality. Your mind controls your body, for sure.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, awesome question. All right, what else do you guys have? What you got for us, reagan, who was your biggest?

Speaker 2:

supporter, and why was it your biggest supporter? So, like I said previously, my dad and I had a very complicated relationship growing up, saying that he did provide a lot of sacrifices for me to be able to. You know, I had this dream of playing college ball, and it was something that it just burned inside me. It was such a fire I had in my soul just to get to where I am right now. And my mom and dad I mean the amount of trips, the amount of money, the amount of sacrifices, the times, the missed family parties, the missed you know birthdays.

Speaker 2:

I have five other siblings and my parents took the time to make my dream happen, and so, whether that those relationships are complicated or not, my mom and dad really were, were my rock through through all of it. Um, and so don't ever forget to thank your parents, always. Um, sometimes again, like I said, my relationship with my dad is really complicated, but I will always thank him for doing those things for me, and my mom has been my rocks since day one. So always remember to thank your parents, because they do a lot of sacrificing for you to even be doing this right now, you know so words of wisdom.

Speaker 1:

Drop the mic. That was good. We talk about. We've touched on a lot of different things. We talk about your foundation in strategy one. We talk about your identity. You talked about visualization. Um, yeah, this is all really good stuff and um, okay, so I have a question when did you do visualization for the first time? Do you remember that moment and what that was like?

Speaker 2:

You know, I think that subconsciously, I've always done visualization and I I also. I want to make a point that there's there's such thing as a good and bad visualization. I think that that is something that I have. I've kind of had to figure out the, the visualization piece in my, you know, not only four years, but in my, in my career as a softball player, and once I figured out how to focus on it and the biggest piece for me was the focus aspect. I was in, I would say, my junior year of high school. Everything unlocked for me Although I was a very like sought after recruit, everything unlocked my junior year.

Speaker 2:

And after I committed, after my mental game started to get a little bit stronger, that is when everything unlocked and I would I think it was oh gosh, there, who were we playing? We were playing one of our rival teams. It wasn't really our rival team, but for me it was our rival team and I remember I was like I was hitting against a girl that I played in travel ball. All the time. I caught her on travel ball and that was the first time I felt like I really focused on the good visualization, you know, and once I focused on that good part of it and believed that good part of it. Then, like I said, everything unlocked.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, that is awesome. So when your coaches said, hey, welcome to Indiana, we're going to do a visualization, you were ready.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think that I don't think I how do I say this? My freshman year of college we didn't have the same coaches that I do now. So our coaches definitely switched from my freshman to sophomore year and we didn't do a lot of mental work my freshman year at all. Saying that I knew that I had to. I knew I did have to visualize. We actually have sports psychologists here that are incredible, that everybody sees and I used to go to. I went to one my freshman year and we did talk about visualization. So, in terms of college, how we speak of visualization, I've been very familiar to it Before that nobody really talked about it, but I kind of figured it out, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, totally Cool, regan, what you got for us. Did any of your other siblings play softball or baseball?

Speaker 2:

Yes, so actually all of them. So every, actually I take it back Everybody except for my. I have an older half sister and she didn't play softball. But my younger sister, gabby, she's 18. She played ball, but she only played in high school. And then my middle two brothers, nick and Michael A. They both play baseball, and my little sister, gigi, is just getting into softball now. So yeah all of us do yeah.

Speaker 1:

Any other questions? I see Ryan, all of us do, yeah, any other questions? I see Ryan. Nope. And what was like your biggest change from like when you went?

Speaker 2:

to college.

Speaker 2:

Well, let's see, there's a lot of big changes that happen in that transition and you don't think that it's going to be too different. But in terms of softball and the game itself, the speed of the game, um was very different. Um, and the, the competitive, the competitiveness. Honestly, when you um, when you're in travel ball, I think that sometimes these travel ball organizations, when you get older, it's like okay, how do I get recruited? How do I get recruited? How do I get recruited? How do I get recruited?

Speaker 2:

And they don't, um, not everybody, but some organizations don't really talk through situations and talk through strategy of softball, and so I think the way that the game has been taught is a little different than it was back in the day, right, and so I think that the biggest change is that when you get to college ball, it's about winning, right, it's about winning, it's about getting your game to the best of your ability. It doesn't matter Like you as an individual don't matter anymore. The team is what matters, right? You're not worried about getting recruited, you're not worried about any of that stuff. You're worried about making your team better, and so it's just a different culture, because you're here to win and you're here to make a program better, and so definitely that. I mean, sometimes travel can be a little bit lackadaisical, and that is not how college ball is. You get here and you work your butt off and you do whatever you can um for your team.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, that was an awesome question. What else you guys got? So I just want to say thank you for joining us tonight. I will ask you one last question. If you could give one piece of advice to younger Bella, much like everyone else on the call, what would your one piece of advice be?

Speaker 2:

Oh, this is my favorite question I tell girls this all the time is that softball is not your identity? I think that we put a lot of emphasis on having softball be who we are. Right? I grew up thinking that soft I was a softball girl, right? Of course, all of you guys are probably the softball girl at school, right? Which is awesome. But you have to know is that softball is not who you are. Your character is who you are. Where you come from is who you are.

Speaker 2:

But if we put our identity and we talk about how this sport is a sport of failure, if you fail six out of ten times, that is an all-american status, right? So if we put that pressure on ourselves to say my performance and how I do in ball is my identity, then we're going to fail because there's no, there is no reason why we should be putting who we are into a sport of failure. You guys? I mean, it took me forever to get over this one. It took me so long, I think, really up until last year, I put my identity in in softball, whether it came from my dad, whether it came from my internal um competitiveness or my um internal struggles.

Speaker 2:

I really just was like you know what? I didn't have a good season. I'm in a slump. I'm an awful person. That is not it. It's how you treat people. It's your character. It's how you do well in school. It's how you talk to your friends and family. Um, so yeah, and then um. Lastly, I would say that um never believe the lies that your brain is telling you. When there's when your brain is saying you can't, you can. It's all about your brain and it's all about that voice inside your head. So yeah.

Speaker 1:

Awesome. I love it.

People on this episode

Contributor

Amanda Schaefer

Host