The Fearless Warrior Podcast

077: Inside the Omaha Stockmen’s Dynasty: How Mental Performance Fueled a 4-Peat

• Amanda Schaefer

Share episode

For this week's episode, I host the Mather brothers and discuss their journey with the Omaha Stockmen. We dissect how mental skills strategies lead to enhanced gameplay and improved team cohesion. We discussed how these strategies helped pave the way for a 4th championship title.

Episode Highlights:


• The importance of mental performance coaching in a team setting
• How they used mental strategies to help individual players
• Fostering a positive team culture through mental resilience 
• How the team's motto "Rise as One" helped unify the players 

Connect with Jason & Andrew:

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

Instagram: @omahastockmen


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.

Speaker 1:

I am so excited. Today I have with me the Mather brothers, who are co-owners and co-coaches of the Omaha Stockman, which is a semi-pro football team that I got to work with this past year, in 2024. And they're actually here, live with me, and I'm going to have them introduce themselves, because not only do they have a passion for football and sports, they also have an interest in mental performance. So this is going to be a great conversation. Jason, you want to kick us off? Who are you? Where are you at? What are you doing?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, my name is Jason Mather. I'm the co-owner of the Omaha Stockman, like Amanda said, and I also, for the past couple of years, have been the offensive coordinator for the Omaha Stockman. I was running backs coach for a little bit, DBs coach, special teams coordinator, so I've kind of done a ton of the roles on the Stockman coaching staff. I also me and Andrew are both co-founders of a nonprofit with Athletes Rise and outside of football and all that. I'm a mental health therapist that works in schools and helps students with their mental health so that their performance in the classroom goes up as well. So yeah, it's a little bit about about me, I'm Andrew.

Speaker 3:

Outside of football I am an elementary principal, and inside of football I've been with the Stockman now for 10 years. For the first I think it was six I was the head coach and then Jason and I went in on the team together. We took it over, took it over from the previous owner after he kind of moved on, and so we've been doing that now together for four years and really just we just have a passion for giving guys opportunities to keep playing the game they love. Whether that be guys coming out of high school that don't have an opportunity to go on, guys that have graduated from college, we just want to keep giving them opportunities. And then, on the mental performance side, we've just seen the impact that it has and that's been a huge passion and priority for us.

Speaker 1:

I love that and, andrew, you've been on the podcast previously with your daughter, who's gone through mental skills training. The question I have for you is you we laugh about this. As the summer went on, I learned from the fire hose more and more about football. I think it's different when you're watching football on TV versus actually being on the sidelines. When you hired me as a mental performance coach, take us to the conversation that happened before I stepped on the sidelines. What were those conversations like? What were you seeing? What were you desiring? You have a successful program and, just so you all know that you're listening, the Omaha Stockmen are expected to win their championship team. You guys have how many titles?

Speaker 3:

Five, four, like four league titles and one national.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, so it's a tenured program. You're physically successful.

Speaker 3:

What was that conversation where you decided to bring me in? Yeah, I think you know we're and Jay can speak to some of this too but I think where we started is when you win a lot some of this too but I think where we started is when you win a lot and I'm sure some other coaches can relate to this you start to notice maybe little cracks in the foundation, things that maybe concern you on. How are we going to keep up at the pace that we're on with certain things popping up? And so some of that was just simple. Things like our body language, our attitudes was just simple.

Speaker 3:

Things like our body language, our attitudes, some complacency setting in, noticing our guys, like you said, were expected to win, and so when we would notice our guys get really down on themselves and down on the team, when mistakes were made and we had a really hard time bouncing back from those mistakes, especially in practices, preseason camps, I would argue, even though at the end of the seasons we won, there was a couple games that we got blown out and our players really struggled to overcome that. And so when Jason and I started talking, it really was a direct impact of what we saw with my daughter, maddie, and what that mental performance, coaching, the impact that that can have, and Jason being a mental health therapist, I think we both had just kind of clicked for us of this is a piece that might be missing to our team and to our organization, and we were trying to search everything, every aspect of our organization, for what can we do better to maintain the path that we're on of winning?

Speaker 1:

There's a lot of pressure there.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it is. I don't know, Jay, anything thought you have there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean I, you know, being a mental health therapist like I, I do believe that mental performance and mental health are woven, I mean they're together, they're really.

Speaker 2:

I think that these guys' mental health impacts their mental performance and I think that mental performance was a good way to start to open that door and have somebody else besides the people they've seen for the past five years say some of the things that we've tried saying to them. And naturally, I think, when you look at it, men in general are going to be less likely to seek help and to want to talk about the things that are bothering them. And I think that us bringing the service to them opened up the door that, like you can ask for help, you you can get the help that you need and your mental health perfects, it, impacts your performance, it does, and your anxiety, your depression, your whatever thoughts that you're going through, is going to impact how you perform on the field. And we truly felt like, if we are going to keep competing and winning a lot, we have to take that next step that a lot of teams don't and help our guys perform mentally as well as on the field.

Speaker 1:

Well and you touch on a great topic that 90% of your players football really isn't their only thing. I mean, you probably have a few guys that, yes, they're playing for you because they want to make this their career. They're using it as a stepping stone to, you know, get back into college or level up to another pro team. But the rest of them have jobs, full-time jobs, commitments, their fathers, family, like we're not talking about a group of high schoolers or even a group of college age. I mean, what's the age range of your team?

Speaker 3:

We have all the way from 18 to I don't know, know our oldest right now might be mid 30s.

Speaker 1:

We've had, we've had a couple in their high 30s before well, and so you look at that alone and it's like every wednesday you get them for a couple hours and then you play. It's like you're asking them to commit to a lot, so trying to find those know 1% things that are going to make a bigger difference. Do you guys remember the very first session we talked about the four stages of buy-in? I was so nervous for a lot of reasons and I'm very transparent. I remember telling the guys I do not know football. I think I may know football, but what I do know is mental performance.

Speaker 1:

And there are a lot of you in this room that are probably going to think that this is all just fluff, a crock of crap. If you've never been taught this before, all I ask is that you keep an open mind. And the vibe of that room really tested me because it was palpable. You could really feel that they were looking to their teammates, they were looking to coaches even some of your coaches who are new to this. They're like, okay, what is this really? And I get it Like there's a lot of the times, especially with men, it's like well, you're just going to tell me to to breathe. You guys remember uh dantre at the end we got, we get through all of this training.

Speaker 1:

And I said, what's your biggest takeaway? And dantre shouts out box breathing. We didn't even talk about box breathing. It challenged me a lot. Can you guys talk? I mean, how did you guys start incorporating the conversations that we were having, you know, in the classroom, to the field?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, you want to go, andrew, you want. You looked like you had a thought, so I didn't want to interrupt.

Speaker 3:

No, you're good, I think. I think we just tried to take little things that stuck with us and tried to incorporate it in our conversation as we were talking um, whether it be you know, win the drive, uh, win the play, um the any you know breathing, uh, a zero or one, like the things that that's what stuck the most.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think that's the thing that probably was the biggest impact on them. But I would think and Jay can speak for himself here, but I think not even always the same thing Like something might have really stuck more with Jay and he'd incorporate that a little bit into, you know, when he's talking to the guys and something might stick more with me, something might stick more with Shaka, our quarterback, that he would. So I I don't know if there was intentional sit down with the whole team conversations outside of our meetings about what the mental performance piece looked like, but it was just starting to incorporate some of that language into it.

Speaker 1:

Well, and you guys started putting it in the group text too. Just little blips here and there, so you bring up shock. I do want to mention this. I wasn't planning on talking about this today, but shaka also came to me as the quarterback with the same concerns that I had of my teammates aren't taking this seriously. It really took a couple of sessions for them to hey, I just need you guys to try this. And the another myth, and Jason, you can speak to this. We just talked about this before we hit record. Not every mental skill is going to work for every kid same in the mental health world, and so if we're just putting a bandaid and telling all of your guys to just breathe, just think positive, just whatever all these toxic myths that they've been told, of course they're going to be skeptical.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and, and I think that's what I took away from it. I mean, I'm a mental health professional and I've never even heard the tale of the two wolves and I mean, you saw my play calling sheet like that, it stuck with me. Like that, that story stuck with me and I've told that to teenagers now elementary kids like I use that all throughout mine. But what I took that and put that on my play call sheet was to, if I'm feeding the wrong wolf as a coach, these guys aren't gonna listen. Right, like and I'm passionate about football, I am I know that my negative side can come out when things aren't going right. I mean, it's, it's your offense. Right, like you don't want to see your offense struggle, but that can come out in the wrong way.

Speaker 2:

So I knew I had to ground myself as well and that's, you know, that starts there being the role model for them. But you're right, like some guys coming over like you're being a zero right now, they're going to be like dude, get away from me, like I don't even want to talk to you now. Right, like, you do have to, like you have to learn how the guys are going to respond to those different things in their way, though. Take what you're teaching them and then say it in the way that they're going to hear the things that you're trying to teach them, and I think that was my biggest takeaway is I know that these guys are struggling with. This is who I am and people see, and this is who I want to be, and how do I get the who I want to be out there in the way that makes me feel comfortable?

Speaker 1:

Well and you guys know your players. I mean, it was very hard for me to learn that large of a roster. That also challenged me. But there were a few interactions, which is gig X. Gig X is on O-line.

Speaker 3:

Yep, yep, a few interactions which is gig x.

Speaker 1:

Gig x is on o-line. Yep, yep, yeah. So I remember I think it was the first minnesota game, or no. I don't think it was minnesota. It was the first home game that I came to and it was one of those moments where I think it was after a loss. I think it was after that lost in minnesota. Who did you guys play after Minnesota?

Speaker 3:

oh, might have been St Paul.

Speaker 1:

Red.

Speaker 1:

I think it was yeah yeah, so the same years here I am on the sidelines and, um, I get that football is a completely different beast than the softball world, and so I was trying to understand something from gig acts. And we had a brief interaction on the sidelines where we had gone through the first half and, of course, like it's physically demanding, and and I just went up to him and I said, hey, I'm just checking in and and are you a one or are you zero? And I was flabbergasted, he paused, he actually paused and admitted oh my gosh, like just that quick check-in, I'm actually at a zero, like if I can't fully commit to telling you that I'm a one, then it has to be a zero. And so, to explain this technique I haven't really incorporated this with a lot of teams because it's a tricky. It's a tricky blame, you know, pointer finger, don't use it as we're pointing fingers. It's a check-in. And so the idea is is that in computer programming it's called binary code, and if you want the code to do what you want it to do, it's groupings of ones and zeros, which, in computer language it's an on or an off switch. There's no in between, and a lot of the clients that I work with you know, if I ask them, you know, on their performance profiles, give me a scale of one to 10, they always want to give me a seven and a half, or they want to give me, you know, a five. Oh, maybe I'm a five, or maybe I could be a six. And the beauty of ones and zeros is there is no gray area whatsoever and I think that worked beautifully with your team because it was.

Speaker 1:

If we're going to be a championship team like you, gotta be in, and if you're not in, then you have to give me a zero. And there's no shame in being a zero, it's more of a. You know, if you're listening as a coach or a parent, we don't go up to our players. I would have never gone up to gig X and assumed what I thought he was, because if I was assuming, I would have assumed that he was a one. I would have gone up to him and I would have said, hey, we got the lead at half high five, like let's go, and he was actually at a zero. And that quick check-in with him I think he had an epiphany of we still have the second half of this game to finish out and it's a zero, zero scoreboard, and I think that's something that really flipped the offense is you got to carry the offense into the second half and you know Giga X, being a leader like that was huge.

Speaker 3:

And honestly, I think, when I think back back, I think the one or zero in a lot of ways is what propelled us in our championship game. We heard it in our, in our pre-game uh talks. We heard the players talking about it, but not in a, not in a sarcastic way, but in a genuine. We have to be ones today, like we have to be. Um, and and Jay would tell you the same thing, our players would tell you this, a lot of them. Part of what made winning sweet is, if we're being really honest, we had no business winning that game. Um, that team throttled us, you know, twice this season.

Speaker 1:

So let's give that context, so we're talking about the Minnesota Warriors and I wrote down these scores. So you lost seven to 40, which was a shocker for the entire program. Like that was like how did this happen? And that's when I started to get buy-in.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Because our next meeting they were like oh, coach, ab, we might actually want to listen to what you have to say, because now we're facing down the barrel of some big failures. And then was the game after that? It was 28 to 33. Another loss. Yep up Like we were winning big for a majority of the game and then blew it in the second half.

Speaker 2:

So I mean it was even more crushing for the guys. Like you lose that game right, your mentality is a little bit different. Like you just lose a close game to give up a big lead. Andrew and I said multiple times that we were worried that the mentality was going to start to dip a little bit because it's like we had them. We were right there and did all this work and Coach AB helped us do so much and our mentality was right and we were in there. And then that happened and we were afraid all those skills were going to go right out the door. And you know, right back, those skills were gonna go right out the door and you know, right back, and it was actually really cool to see it not and to see those skills prevail in the end, um, and hear them then during that championship game well and mental skills don't guarantee success either.

Speaker 1:

Like if I could, I would be, I would be on the cover of magazines, I'd be the wealthiest mental performance coach ever. But like that, literally just because you have mental skills does not guarantee success. But one of the things that we talked about was compete to our standards, not the scoreboard.

Speaker 3:

Yep, yeah, and I think that's the important thing is is you can use those skills to put you in the right mindset, in the right place to be successful and at least, if you're not successful, at the end of the day you can say you put your best foot forward, you were in the right mindset, you were there for your team, like all of those pieces. And I think the most telling thing for me is so. I know you weren't up at this game, but it's. You know we're end of the game, it's overtime and, honestly, you could see the tides turning a little bit.

Speaker 3:

We had to fight back in that game to get where we were, but you could see we were. They were starting to move the ball on us more. We were starting to not, and so in overtime, we scored the touchdown and somebody on the sideline said to me you should consider going for two. And you know, at this point, right now, the game's tied. So we go for two. You win or lose, Right, Right there. And we made a decision to go for two, but I was second guessing it. We actually we ended up taking a timeout and I man, I cannot remember who came up to me, but somebody came up to me and literally grabbed me right, right here and they said everybody on this field right now is a one, Don't question it, let's go.

Speaker 3:

And I thought that really, that really encapsulated the whole season and everything that we did with you. And I mean I still to this day we cannot find, like I thought somebody to have a picture or something, but you had all, everybody but the 11 guys on the field. You had every coach, you had every player. I mean you couldn't have gotten tighter. We were all down on one knee, guys' arms around each other, just watching that play develop. And I mean it was just utter euphoria after, you know, scoring that winning two-point conversion of guys just losing their minds. But I just felt like that and it's tough because you don't want people to like you said, you don't want people to be like oh great mental skills you're guaranteed to win, but I think it showed the mindset and the effort that our guys put forward.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I think too like, but like with athletes, it's the it made. It doesn't guarantee wins, but what it does is it builds resilience. I only one team can win in every sport across the entire world. Only one team out of every team in the world gets to win in their respective sports, in their respective leagues. And all this and it builds that resilience of you.

Speaker 2:

May have lost this year, but it's coming. Your shot is going to come again and when you use those skills, sure they don't result in, maybe they don't result in wins, maybe your team still goes and gets their butt kicked the entire year, even though you have a great mentality. But it's easier to handle and you have each other's backs and then you rebound, you're resilient, and then that's where I believe true change starts to happen and then you start to see the impact and performance on the field. I think a lot of teams that can be connected in that way. You're going to see them outperform Even teams that are supposed to walk all over you. I truly believe that that's why upsets happen. Um, one side had the mental advantage and had each other's back and the other side thought that they had it one.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, and competitive wise in the league. I mean, how many times did you play the same team, bouncing back that resilience and that tide shift? I wish, yeah, I wish, I could have made that trip. Um, it was right after the retreat so we could have turned around.

Speaker 1:

Sia has been gone for a week. I'm going to be. I was so dead I almost I like looked at flights. I didn't admit this to you, but I found a flight for like 200 bucks. I'm like, oh, I could just get that last, that last seat on the plane. See ya, cole.

Speaker 1:

Malia, your kicker, experienced this firsthand.

Speaker 1:

Like, without going too much into details, it was one of these moments where, like um, the conversations I had with Cole of like, if anyone else would go up to Cole as a teammate or as a coach and say, hey, like you're better than this, you can make these kicks until he believed that he could make those kicks, until he believed that he could make those kicks, we had done, um, you know, a thought model with him where, you know, your thoughts create your feelings and your feelings create your behaviors, and that's a vicious cycle.

Speaker 1:

And when he started to realize what was at the root of that cycle, which is his thoughts, that was so cool to see Um and he made those adjustments. You know, like, even in the games that we lost to the Warriors you know those are those games that he needed that you know, like, obviously, cole's not going to come out and say like, hey, woohoo, like I made my kicks but we lost the game. Like he's not going to celebrate that. But as a mental performance coach, like even those losses you could see those micro wins with individual players.

Speaker 3:

And in Cole's case it's hard because in a competitive game you get people questioning you, even though they're not directly questioning you as a person. And what I mean by that is in those situations you start to get coaches and players that are like, hey, let's go for two instead of going for one, um, because we keep missing the kick and they're not directly tearing down cole in that case, or their kicker. But those guys in turn, I mean that's their job, their job is to make those kicks. And so, hearing that, hearing you debate, do we go for one, do we go for two? Man, the, the, I can only imagine the internal struggle there. And it does. It makes you we, we could see it in practice it makes you start pushing harder. You're like I gotta prove it, I gotta prove, but it backfires a little bit.

Speaker 3:

Um, and I think there's a lot of that side of I don't know if I can do this, um, but again, come that championship game too. I mean guys asked ahead of time do we need to make you know? Do we need to go for two in this game? And? And in the end we didn't go for two because of anything to do with Cole. It purely was a. We needed to end this game now, um, or I'm not sure we would have won it, so, um, but I mean, man, he made some big extra points in that game, you know, to keep us where we needed to be. So and we believed in him the entire time. But, like you said, he needed to believe in himself, and I think this was the first time he had a opportunity to see what just that process of your thoughts and the mental game and how that can all come together. You know, I don't think that's anything that ever been presented to him before.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, there were a couple of guys that came up to me that were starting to like really connect the dots of um maybe you know who this is. He plays slow pitch softball. He's like so excited he's like I told my friends about this. I'm using this in slow pitch, like I'm using this in whatever other sports, like he was playing multiple sports and it's like of course, like of course or kids that you know I have one-on-one calls with. It's like you can use this on tests, you can use this in your relationships, you can use this in tough conversations, like if you haven't ever been taught I mean, I say it all the time, I probably said it multiple times on the podcast If I could redo my career, knowing what I know now mentally and to be back in my, you know, prime body, like lean, mean, like what, please, can we just redo this? So?

Speaker 2:

what do you guys?

Speaker 1:

feel like were your biggest takeaways, from a coach's perspective, this season.

Speaker 2:

I think that it so. So I mean, there was one point where in the season where I had a conversation with Shaka because you know, I I trust that guy he doesn't always think I trust him, but I do trust him and you know, I asked him what am I doing? Maybe that's not helping the offense, that's not. You know, what do I need to do better? You know, and he made a comment to me that he was just like you know, you work with kids. What would you do with kids when they were doing this or they were doing that or this was their mentality or whatever. And that really spoke volumes to me, because what it told me is that we may be adults, that may be an adult football team out there, but their mental health is just as important as a kid and humans alike are. We respond similarly that we are looking for certain things to help us be successful and kid adult.

Speaker 2:

What he made me realize is that accountability, but also, uh, you got to treat these guys like they have value. Whether we are a paid sport that making millions or we're just this small time semi professional team, it just doesn't matter Like they need to be valued, they need to be heard and they need to be praised honestly for the things that they're doing. They need to be praised honestly for the things that they're doing because I think what these multiple players showed is, as coaches, you can get down on these guys really quick. When you want to win, nobody wants to come out onto a field, spend a bunch of time preparing and then we lose, right. Nobody wants to do that. But coaches can then also hit that zero mark and and that bleeds down into the team, and I think that that's was my biggest takeaway from the year is that? Not that I'm going to treat them like kids, but that the mentality is very similar of what we, just as human beings, need to be successful.

Speaker 1:

Well, I want to point out what you said. You said that you know they want to be praised. It's a very slippery slope and I experienced this firsthand. I hated being the bad guy as a head coach and it's a slippery slope and and you all know me like I'm super positive. I want to be that hype girl and you get into these coaching environments and you're looking at that scoreboard and you're looking to get that dub and it's like you forget the basics.

Speaker 1:

You're like I'm, my job as a coach is to fix, fix, fix. What do we need to fit? What did we do wrong in the game? What do we need to fix at this week's practice? And I need to make sure that my girls, my guys, they know exactly what they're doing wrong so we can fix, fix, fix. And then, lo and behold, we wake up one day and we realize when was the last time that I praised them for what they're doing? Right? It's like ding, ding, ding. And if you're listening and you're like, oh, that would never happen to me, like you've never been a coach, like you've never been a head coach at a high level, like it will happen to the best of us, like that makes me alive Again. Going back to redos, can I redo being a head high school coach?

Speaker 3:

No thank you. I think for me, my biggest takeaway, honestly, is very simple, in that the mental performance game works. It works, it's impactful, it's important. Our world is so different, our kids are so different, our adults are so different than even 10 years ago and I honestly think anybody that doesn't see the value and try to incorporate these pieces into their programs is really just missing a golden opportunity to impact the lives of their athletes.

Speaker 1:

You don't have to wait until something's wrong. You guys were I want to reiterate, tenured, successful program roster, deep, depth chart. Like you guys had all the components. And I get that a lot too from parents and teams. You know, like I've had championship level teams at the high school softball level, that they don't pull the trigger on mental performance and then they get to where they're expected to win and then they wonder you know, what could we have done differently? It's like you can be neck and neck physically and all it. Well, I mean, what do you think the warrior, what conversation do you think the warriors are having? Right, like at that point, the championship game was mental.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 1:

One more question. So Rise as One was kind of your theme, which was so cool that that just matched perfectly with ones and zeros. Can you talk more about Rise as One? Where did that come from and how did you guys use it?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I've coached at a bunch of different stops. I've coached um NAIA college, I've coached indoor, and my thing had always been that, from what I'd learned from other coaches, is like each year you have a different theme, or each year you have the, you know, or each game you have a different theme. And, um, we've actually used rise as one now, I think, for three, I think, three years. Um, that's really what we've actually used. Rise as one now, I think, for three, I think, three years. That's really what we've stuck to because it getting paid and things like that.

Speaker 3:

But in our level it is really easy to become about yourself, um, because you're not getting paid, you're not um, and so it's about me.

Speaker 3:

I want my stats, I want, I want my recognition, um, and so we really had to. I mean, a lot of people don't know this about the stockman, but there were days that 10 years ago, nine years ago, that we were getting blown out 70 to nothing every game and we really had to sell people that came to play for us on. We are one team and until we, we, everything we do, is about the team, we're not going to be successful. And when guys stopped caring and I mean, they still want their stats in there. But when guys really genuinely stopped caring who got the credit, who got the tackles, who got the all these pieces, that's really when I think you saw a big turn in our organization. And so that's where rise, as one came from, is. Literally we rose as one team out of we joke the depths of hell and became what our team is, and so really we've latched onto that and kind of kept that at the forefront of what we do.

Speaker 1:

Which the alumni I mean the previous players that would come to give pregame pep talks and hang out in the stands at games. It was like this expectation of like, well, this is who we are now. And there was a little bit of jockeying and and, like you know, a few jabs of like what. I can't remember which game it was. It was after we lost and it was like come on, guys, like what are you doing? You have to win. It's like you're not seeing what, what we're working on on the inside and to so to see the previous guys come in and and kind of give them those pep talks. It's like that outside pressure and expectation to win was so real this year.

Speaker 2:

Yes, it was.

Speaker 1:

This is a great conversation and, um, I just want to say thank you and I've told you both this, but thank you for pushing me. As a mental performance coach, I really think that this has made me uh, uh. It's opened my eyes not only to different sports, but how men are wired differently than women and just the pace of sports right, like you don't always have, you know, a whole inning to do a failure, reset routine, like it's a different pace, it's a different environment, definitely a different environment being on the sidelines. So thanks for having me.

Speaker 3:

Well, I mean, I appreciate a ton that you were willing to step into something different, because I knew you could. I had no doubt you could have an impact. And I remember texting you and saying, hey, how would you feel about stepping into the football world? And you were like call me that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that was probably a long conversation.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, but I think it was awesome, I think good for you but also good for us, Like it was a Good for you but also good for us, Like it was a. It's a, not was, is. It's a great partnership, and I know I can speak for Jay too that we appreciate all that you did and the work that you put into it, and you guys are doing one without you.

Speaker 1:

It's and, yeah, and it's the guys in the buy-in. And again, going back to that rises. One is like we could have reached a point where it would have been an impasse, Like they they didn't have to buy in, they they started using it. So, and you guys are doing some really cool things with girls flag football, which is cool. So, um, we want to keep this short, so maybe we'll just have you back on, but you guys are growing youth sports in a really cool way and partnering with the retreat and just the impact and it's symbiotic Is that come on, teachers, help me out. It's a symbiotic, it goes both ways.

Speaker 2:

I'm a therapist, not a teacher. I don't teach grammar. I probably don't even use it right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it goes both ways. So I appreciate you both very much and continue to to carry on the stock and legacy awesome yeah, thanks for having us.

People on this episode

Contributor

Amanda Schaefer

Host