Episode💯: Sue Enquist

Episode 100 – Legendary Leadership with Sue Enquist

It’s a milestone moment on Significant Coaching with Matt Rogers—our 100th episode—and there’s no better guest to celebrate with than Sue Enquist.

One of the most respected coaches in college athletics, Sue helped lead UCLA to 5 NCAA Division I National Championships and another 6 as a player and assistant coach. Today, she’s a sought-after consultant and speaker whose influence reaches far beyond softball. Most recently, she worked with the USA Women’s Volleyball team at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, helping them capture the silver medal by focusing on culture, values, intentional leadership...and FUN!

In this powerful conversation, Sue shares timeless lessons on building championship teams, creating human-centered cultures, and helping athletes and coaches thrive mentally, physically, and emotionally. Whether you’re a coach, a parent, or a leader in any field, this episode will inspire you to raise your standard.

And don’t miss Part 2 of our conversation on the Significant Recruiting Podcast, where Sue talks directly to families navigating the recruiting journey.

For more resources, visit CoachMattRogers.com, and check out my new book, The Volleyball Recruit’s Journal, now available on Amazon.

Significant Recruiting Resources — Take the guesswork out of college recruiting with Significant Recruiting: The Playbook for Prospective College Athletes, sport-specific Recruit’s Journals, and the Significant Recruiting Launchpad. Practical tools to help families research schools, stay organized, and build a smarter recruiting strategy. Learn more at CoachMattRogers.com.

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There's a lot of noise in the bleachers, and I reckon parents are like what do I do? I say, buy two beach chairs. And go park down the left field line and watch your child. That's number one. You have to reframe. It's not a gossip center and it's not about you. So reframe. I'm gonna get out of the noise. I want my daughter and my son to see me. I'm over here. And we always say, watch the movie. Come in quietly. Sit down. Keep your pie hole shut. Welcome back to a very special 100th episode of the Significant Coaching Podcast. I never thought we would get this far, but I wanna take a moment to thank all of our wonderful guests who have joined me, who have educated families and coaches across the country. It has been an awesome journey and I hope to keep it going, I'm your host, Matt Rogers. Today's guest, as you just heard in the opening clip. Is someone whose impact on sport and leadership is almost impossible to measure. She is more than just one of the greatest college coaches in the last 50 years. She has become a national treasure for the work she continues to do to make the athletes and coaches who participate in the sports we love mentally, physically, and emotionally healthier. I am speaking about the legendary coach Sue Enquist at UCLA, her alma Mater Sue helped guide the Bruins to five NCAA division one national championships and a sixth as a player becoming one of the most respected coaches in college athletics. But her story didn't end when she stepped away from the dugout. Today she's a sought after consultant, speaker, and culture builder, helping leaders and teams far beyond softball learn how to perform at their best. Most recently, she worked with the USA Women's Volleyball Team at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, where she focused on building a human centered culture, reinforcing mission and values, and helping the team capture the silver medal. At that level where the margins and physical talent are razor thin, Sue teaches that it's the discipline, the intentionality, and the culture that tip the balance. In this conversation, Sue shares how to create environments where athletes, coaches, and parents can thrive. Why culture is the most powerful competitive advantage a leader can build, and what coaches and families alike need to remember when the pressure is at its highest. And before we begin, I wanna remind you to visit coach matt rogers.com for more coaching, recruiting, and parenting tools and resources. And check out my brand new book, the Volleyball Recruits Journal, now available on amazon.com. Alright, here's my conversation with the incomparable Sue Enquist. Coach Enquist, thanks for being on. It's just an honor to talk to you. I've been a big fan for so long, and as you and I talked before, we recorded, we were colleagues for a while at NCSA. That's right. So I've been next collegiate sport athlete. Yep. Yes. I've been impressed with everything you've done. Obviously world class, career, hall of fame career in so many different ways. So that brings me to last summer where my wife and I are sitting on the couch and we're about to watch the Olympic volleyball team play. And I go to my wife, I go, Sue Enquist is on the bench. And later they did an interview with you and I learned that you were the advisor for the team. And I was like, oh my gosh, what a great decision. Because I'm, I've told you this. I'm a big believer that if you can coach and you can inspire and you can motivate and you can teach discipline, the technique is nothing. The technique, everybody can learn if you can do all those other things. So tell me how that came about. Yeah. My actual role was I was in as a consultant. It was my second quad. I came aboard through the pandemic in our march to Tokyo, and then the second quad was Paris last year. I, my role was as a consultant was really trying to frame up individual mastery, but our true focus was around team culture because at that level and your viewers know this, when you get to the Olympics, the margins are so small around physical talent that you have to be dialed in everything. And the coaches at the time were interested in, and the players were interested in how can we go ahead and dial that in as well. And so during the pandemic, I was doing an event for USA, volleyball on leadership. Pandemic hit everybody. Shut down. It went to Zoom just by happenstance. I'm on the Zoom the same time as the captain of USA volleyball. She had no idea who I was. She goes to Kar Kiri, who's the head coach, and says there was some random lady, I, some random lady was on there. Maybe she could talk to our team. Kch, who is in mastery, who is a such a professional, right? And a Bruin, right? And, but I did not know Kch. A lot of people don't know that. Anyway, long story short, worked out, came in, built some scaffolding around their mission, around their values, and built a culture that was really human centered. And, to be honest with you, in my, I've been in sport over 50 years. I'm 67 years old. I've been in sport formally as a professional for over 50 years. Outside of the UCLA brewing bubble, I have never been associated with a group of professionals and professional players like I have with USA volleyball. If you're a mother or a father out there and you're not real sure if your daughter should go into lacrosse or volleyball or basketball or volleyball or tennis or volleyball, I'm saying go into volleyball. But you're gonna notice I didn't say softball or volleyball 'cause everybody needs to know where my heart is. But long story short my job was to really just keep our culture dialed, which we're not naturally wired to make it about the other person. And so it takes real intention, real discipline. And the women of USA volleyball are unbelievable. I say this often, if I could put them in the duplication machine, yeah. This world would be a lot better place. Special human beings. Yeah. And I just had you'll appreciate this. I just had Olivia Foley, who's the division three national volleyball player of the year on the podcast, and we were talking about they just won three straight national championships at Junior. And we talked about that mentality and the, they just, sometimes they just played with anger, not towards anybody, but just, we're exhausted. We've, we're playing more games than everybody. We've, we're winning more sets than everybody and everybody's given us our A game. And you had that at UCLA and you were part of that with the Olympic team. Where do you think that begins? Where does that begin? Where we get kids to understand? W where their body and their mind can go to be great. Yeah. It's such a big question to unpack. I think the first thing that people need to understand is performance doesn't matter. Sport or spelling, bees or academics performance is really about this idea of what, what's happening mentally and then being dialed physically, right? It doesn't even matter spelling bee. You've gotta get your body regulated. And when you look at our high performers, the thing that parents and athletes need to understand is it is a very personal journey for every high performer and we overuse high performance a lot. We now know, science now tells us that it's actually a fallacy. That less than 5% of the time you are in your peak performance operating and dialed mentally and physically. Wow. The ones that separate themselves are the ones that know how to navigate all the different emotional levels that you go through, and mastery around failure recovery. So what we now know, whether it's men or women, doesn't matter, team or individual sport, what separates them is they can move through everything with incredible efficiency to be locked in the moment, be where your feet are and give a hundred percent of what you have. Because this generation now has to deal with focus challenges and they have to deal with injuries. Injuries. I say this often, injuries is now a standard. Yeah. It is a part of a conversation with every coach that's dealing with somebody that's deal dealing with high performance or just competition in general. And so if we can dial these things in and look at your body and your mind as an F1 car. You gotta set of dials and you gotta be able to know when to tweak each one of them throughout your pre in and post competition. And those that have got that dialed end up having the best opportunity to be their best. And more importantly, they have joy. They know how to have FUN, it's like the new F word. We know how to do that. And that is a skill that involves rigor. When I say rigor, a disciplined attention to detail takes rigor to create the conditions to have. JOY. What role do the parents play in all that? Huh? Oh, such a I'm just gonna throw loaded general questions at you that are so hard to answer. Yeah let's dive, I'll put some context in this. Let's get off the freeway of high performance and talk about right. First of all, to every mom and dad out there that has a son or daughter of or non-binary children that are navigating high performance academics, athletics, sports, whatever it is I see you how hard this is because there is no standard curriculum around sport performance. There is no standard pathway that parents can jump on and follow with assurance that it's vetted and verified information about the biology of the body, about the physiology of the body, about their mental performance and how the mind works, not even getting into the technical and tactical and failure recovery standards that you need in each one of these sports. So to the parents, I see you in how you have to try to build out a dial for your son or daughter that allows them to be navigating all of these things throughout their life. But this is what I know to be true. Disclaimer, I have no children. Disclaimer, I have no children. But I watched Parenting of Performing Children come across my doorstep for 27 years at UCLI, and this is what I know to be true to the father. You set self-efficacy, and you'll notice I don't say confidence. Confidence gets overused. It's too high of a bar. Gen A, gen Z, they don't totally relate to it 'cause we romanticized it. It makes it sound like I am gonna be the champion. So no one's gonna say, I am confident. Confidence just means trust in the moment, right? Dad sets self-efficacy. Let's just believe in ourself in this moment. Dad can set that self-efficacy by putting out the conditions where that child succeeds and fails on their own. And the father is the guide rail there? No, he's not carrying her. No, he's not coaching her in row three ever. No. Shut your pie hole in the recruiting office. Visit. Shut your pie hole. Let the scholar athlete do all the talking to the mother. I see you. You are the bus driver, the nurse, the big sister, the psychologist, the cook. You are all of it. I see you. Thank you for all the lonely work. But this is what she doesn't need. She doesn't need 17 texts every day from you because you are her best friend. A teenager does not need a mother As a best friend, you're stunting her own young womanhood. To be an independent thinker, to be able to tackle problems. 'cause her default setting is, I'm gonna text mom, I'm gonna text mom. So we ask questions in the recruiting process that is gonna tell me about their critical thinking skills. 'cause you learn critical thinking skills. When I say critical thinking, I'm talking about thinking. Meaning do I as a young, soon to be young adult 18, going to college, am I aware about the thinking that is needed in each part of my day? We call it thinking about thinking. And there are three thinking models that you have to have. My thinking model about me, it's all about me. It's just me. You get to be me. When your head hits the pillow and you wake up in the morning, boom, you're done. You've got your eight hours of be me, the second model or what we're calling, thinking about, thinking of. Now I'm in team mode. What does my family need? What does my classmate need? What does my teammate need? And that's the majority of your day. And then last is community. Who am I serving? Whose shoulders did I stand on and how am I showing my gratitude every single day? So for us, we literally say your individual lens, your team lens and your community lens. Thinking about thinking, moms, we need you to help us in this area. So when she comes to the coach can sit there and ask really challenging questions and the child doesn't say this I what? The minute I see that, yep. It's a red flag. 'cause mom and dad, I've got 20 shortstops that have an open ba, a backhand that can throw a rope to first base. I have 20. So someone that can't articulate and doesn't have clarity around their performance skills and their relationship skills, you are gonna go drop down on that list. And so that's critically important in the interview process to be able to look me in the eye, tell me what you are, tell me what you're not, and give me examples about how you master failure recovery. Yeah. How do we teach parents to focus on those things? I think parents I wish that we could get parents to re, we want, if we want parents, if we want parents to be at the same bar that we're expecting our scholar athletes to be at we have to put them through a learning ecosystem. Who is teaching that? We say, I hear this often, like there's no books on parenting. Yes, there is. Yeah. There's hundreds too many. This idea about what does a parent of a performing child look like? Your job is to create the conditions for them to succeed and fail on their own, and then be the leveler in between to be their engineer belief. In other words, you are gonna create the conditions. You're gonna create the questions for that athlete to answer, I failed today. I have a better tomorrow. Coming and projecting optimism. Projecting optimism is, I believe the strongest, most important skill a parent can have. Hey, you know what, Susie? Yeah. You went, oh, for four today. It was painful to watch. You're not a failure. You failed. Yeah. Tell me what we're gonna do tonight, tomorrow morning before we go back to the park. Non-emotional. Hell yeah. Look at thumbs up guys. Yes, we're celebrating people. We're celebrating. We're celebrating 1% better every day. If we can get our parents to actually walk through these little step-by-step moments in between the child's performance environments to be the engineer belief, you're not supposed to be the hero you're supposed to be projecting. It's gonna be a better tomorrow if we do A, B, C, D, and then that falls on the athlete through their effort and their attitude. The only two things they can control in life. I say it often, you can only control two things. Your effort give a hundred percent what you have in your attitude. Whether I'm starting. Or I'm literally in the dugout as a game changer. We call 'em game changers on USA volleyball, we call them game changers, right? It's a super important role. Parents need to be a part of that, be on a learning pathway as she continues, or he continues to go up. That up the food chain of serious competitive sports. Sue, I know you, you understand this, but I find it, there's so many parents that don't wanna read the book. They listen to this conversation, they go, I wanna do this. But then they get overwhelmed and they stop, or they revert back to who they're comfortable being. Where does executive function skills. Come into play here to help the parent have some simple things that they know, okay, this is what I want to count my, I want to, I wanna make sure I'm doing for every game. And those executive function skills for that kid that maybe has, that just can't grasp all of this that we're talking about and just needs those two or three things. Remember, okay, this is how I'm gonna prepare. This is what I'm gonna do during competition. This is what I'm gonna do after. How, where does all that work? Into this? For, let me first I'm really interested in tackling, having conversations with the parents because if the number one thing there, you have to shift this thinking around she's just playing a sport. Because what happens once they shift a travel ball, they're now in this engine. Yeah, they're in this dialogue. They're in this language that they can't get out of. So the first thing is just understand the minute you sit in the bleachers, you're in the noise zone. There's a lot of noise in the bleachers, and I reckon parents are like what do I do? I say, buy two beach chairs. It's worth the $75 to buy two beach chairs in Southern California. It's probably about $125 for two good beach chairs, right? And go park down the left field line and watch your child. That's number one. You have to reframe. It's not a gossip center and it's not about you. So reframe. I'm gonna get out of the noise. I want my daughter and my son to see me. I'm over here. And we always say, watch the movie. Come in quietly. Sit down. Keep your pie hole shut. Because now we know all the data that we're getting. They're feeling pressure because parents are being overly positive. You're all right. You've got this you know what the kids tell us from eight to 18. I wish it could just be quiet. So that's number one. Reframe where you physically sit. That's a marker that it's not about me. Number two. Don't talk to your child after the game about the game unless they want to. So that's the number two. You gotta be in your executive functioning brain. Once again, it's not about me. I know your D Dad. I see you. I know you wanna know about the fourth inning was the runner on second there was one out and the count was two and two. And you wanna know why she didn't swing at that curve ball? And that's her pitch. I know you wanna know that. And I just say, just remember 10 and two. 10 and two. Get in the car, hands on the 10 and two and just drive home. If they wanna talk about it, let them talk about it. You may look back there, you probably see the part of their head. 'cause their head's down and they're already in their phone. Yep. Yep. Let 'em, if they wanna talk about it, let 'em talk to you. That's another reframe. The third reframe is parents are looking at the path to college and the recruiting process as some sort of party that they're gonna get invited to. And I and you. Can you tell I'm retired? 'cause I could never talk like this if I was a full-time coach. Coaches can't talk like this. 'cause they may be. I may. I'm gonna turn off 60% of the people that are listening. I'm gonna turn off. They're gonna go screw her. I'm gonna, I'm gonna speak the truth of what coaches can't talk about. Coaches are sick and tired of parents thinking it's the coach's job to find them. The half a million of them. Yeah. Parents stop waiting to be invited to the college party and look at the path to college. Like you look at your health insurance, your life insurance, and your car insurance. Oh man. We spent a lot of time. Comparing, fitting up, find the match. But when it comes to travel ball, we drop Susie off to Chuck in a truck and we don't even look at what kind of background they have in their recruiting clinics. They're putting on. We don't look at their science background if they're teaching mechanics, that's tough. As a college coach, knowing these parents come into an environment that isn't certified, there aren't standards. And on the flip side, I know there are club coaches. Club coaches, I see you out there. So many of the club coaches are doing it. If you are a club coach out there that is a volunteer, you're like, dude, I'm a banker Monday through Friday and I do travel ball on the weekend. Thank you so much, sir. And ma'am, thank you. Yeah, I'm not talking about the volunteer coach, I'm talking about those coaches that are doing this full time. If you're gonna talk about mechanics, you better have some certification around OnBase U or somebody that's doing the science behind the mechanics of movement. If you're gonna be talking about what mental toughness is, you better be using people that are vetted and verified in the industry. If you're coming across as a full-time travel ball coach and I say this the same thing on the college side, that we're now at a point where softball is a business and we have standards that we should uphold, even though nobody is holding you accountable to it. Once again, I'm gonna say it three times. Volunteer coach. I'm not talking about you. I wish you could, but I understand your job. You could be a banker or a baker and you're just putting in your four hours on Saturday. I appreciate you and I see you. I've been in so many interviews. I've been interviewing coaches and hiring coaches. I've been gone through interviews to be a head coach. No one's ever asked me this stuff. No one's ever asked me about, I just talked to a university president. He goes, Matt, every time a coach comes in here that we're interviewing I point 'em to the whiteboard and say, tell me what your culture's gonna look like. Tell me what you're gonna be known about. Tell me why these kids are going to be healthy and successful, find joy. They're gonna be disciplined. They're gonna leave here better people. If it, if the ads and the presidents aren't asking those questions what are we expecting from what we're getting? Even, and I know this is provocative and people roll their eyes when I say this and I do. I own my bias. I'm a college coach, so I have more empathy for the college coach. 'cause I know today what the college coach is going through. I'm a consultant. I work with college coaches in all sports. It is. We are in any, I've been only in one other renaissance in my career, my 50 years. This is only the second Renaissance. The first renaissance was when a IAW association of Intercollegiate athletics for women transferred into the NCAA two A. It was a clown car. Yeah. Doesn't it feel like a clown car right now? Yeah. One day you're an amateur. The next day you've got NIL for a million dollars. And if any parent could be behind the curtain of how a coach is trying to navigate. This massive shift. Have empathy and parents take charge of your recruiting journey. It's not a party where you're waiting for an invite. Don't wait for the phone to ring. There are too many of you and not enough coaches. Do the math. Use the technology. We have recruit education services out there that can do the technology for you. You can get free services and not pay a dime for recruiting service. We start doing that. I think the parents are gonna become more educated and understand their role in this whole process. 'cause right now, Matt, right now what parent does they get in the bleachers, they meet Mr. And Mrs. Jones, their daughter is three years ahead. So they become the authority. They everything they're saying, it's oh, I'm gonna do that because look at, she already got a verbal to Northwestern. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go there on that path. Instead of saying every child has their own path and you've gotta do the matching. Before you start doing the cold calling and the cold emailing, go ahead and email the 1400 colleges. Good luck with that. Yeah I'm with you. And that's why I do what I do is, it's all about the kid. First, you can't worry about the colleges, you can't worry about divisions. You have to worry about who your child is because if they don't know what their priorities are, they don't know what brings them joy and what makes them happy and what makes them healthy. H how do you even know what type of college to look for, what type of coach they need and what kind of communication they need to be prepared for. And Matt, one of the things just to be relevant because it is such a growing thing where this renaissance and remember every renaissance if history Yeah. They're always, there's always a messy front end. We're in the front end of a Renaissance we'll Recorrect, we'll get it back. To, to making more sense. It will never be the way it was. Yeah. But what I want parents to understand is what I see when I am consulting, and this is at all levels, I'm at all levels, but it's a similar principle. You have to decide when you make a decision, am I gonna be a customer or am I gonna be a student athlete for four years and get a degree from there? You have to have an honest conversation with your child around that. That if I make a commitment to go to Arizona, but deep down inside, if I know another school, if Oklahoma comes calling, am I going to Oklahoma? Then I'm a customer at Arizona. I'm a customer. I'm just shopping every year. This is the hard part. People don't like to hear me say. College coaches hate it. When I say this. The more college coaches that have it broken down like this, they're crushing the NIL. They're crushing the transfer portal. They look at the transfer portal. It is an asset. It is an accessory for me, but they know how many people on their team are traditional student athletes. They want the degree and how many are customers. And when you learn as a college coach to start using that vernacular in your recruiting process, we can now open the door and not make it this big secret. I'm not saying they're gonna do what they say they're gonna do because life changes, decisions change. The reason this is important is this traditional student is thinking every other student is a traditional student. And our default mindset is everybody's gonna be here for four years. Graduate. No that world's gone guys. It's gone. Let's, in our cultural scaffolding framework around how we operate individually and as a team, let's have conversations around this and let's get it out of the closet. I think transfer portal feels very similar to when we first started talking about mental health. Back in the early two thousands was the first time we really started publicly talking about mental health. We're still not there, but we first started talking about it. I go around telling college coaches, talk about it, get it out of the closet because it helps you strategize more. 'cause some of these dollar offerings, they can be life changing for the first five years of your life after college. And this is what I always say, oh my gosh, you got $250,000, that's great. Your life's gonna be amazing until 2029. Now what are we gonna do? You have no degree. That's right. No place to go. That's right. And you've already spent all the money. Now what? That's right. So this idea that if I'm getting hundreds of thousands of dollars, that's life changing. It's not, you want parents to make a 60 year division decision. Where do we wanna be in those 40 years of my working life? Pick a school that aligns with that. Or even if you're transferring, pick a school that aligns with that. So win, lose, draw, or you're getting a lot of money, you're gonna get that degree to take care of yourself for the next 40 years after you graduate when you're 22 years old. I love it. I'm on 100%. I have a 16-year-old daughter who played club volleyball for the last six, seven years. And I wanna talk about mental health a little bit with you. My biggest concern that I see with what she's gone through is the time commitment. She goes from high school volleyball in July. To November and then immediately into open gyms for club, and then they're competing until July and then right back into high school. Yeah. It's a lot to unpack, right? Let's go. Let's start. Let's start at the top and then peel it down. I wish I truly believe this. I wish we had amateur club sports partnered with the NCAA two A. Yeah, so that student athlete is mirroring a very protected schedule and based on how many sports you're playing, it would be a mandatory dead period where it is a legit dead period. So if it's a dead period, you can't go play another sport. You're in your reset rejuvenate period. That's number one. Number two is. The brain isn't wired to be on 24 7, but society-wise, we haven't acknowledged that. So the poor scholar athlete is trying to keep the brain on 24 7. We know we're failing miserably on that, but let's start at the top. When we talk about mental health, we have to break it up into two categories. One is clinical. So we have young children out there that are actually suffering from chemical imbalances that require a clinical health expert. And then we have many more that are dealing with mental performance challenges. They've got performance anxiety. They've socialized these words like pressure. Anxious, anxiety, and the brain is very compliant. So when you start talking about, I'm super nervous, I have so much anxiety, the brain is like you. You have anxiety. Puts on all the red lights, the brain puts on the red lights, gets the chemicals going. The blood now starts flowing everywhere. So now that young child is sweating, possibly tacky throat, lumping their throat, sweaty palms, stomach ache, mud butt, we've all been there Once we can teach our young children. Everybody has mental performance challenges and there are somes that, that have clinical mental health challenges and both of them can get to the top. Coached at UCLA for 27 years and 15 Olympians. We've had athletes that had serious case of both and still went to the top, stayed on top, and now are really high functioning humans in society. So we need the parents to look at mental performance and mental health, almost like it's a management cycle and not a disability. So we're not looking for accommodations. We're not saying, oh, she wants the day off 'cause she's got a lot of performance anxiety. And in high performance we just call it energy. So when my energy is misdirected, misguided, we now know our breath can realign us. In terms of being anxious, anxiety, feeling pressure, it's just energy. It first starts with our words. We've gotta change the vernacular that I'm feeling really elevated today. Brain's oh, you're elevated. I know how to dera decelerate you. I'm gonna go ahead and put my breathing kits to work. We now have specific breathing kits to elevate or calm down and from the day forward, from when they're in second grade, when they were feeling anxious. Everybody's body deals differently with environments that they pick up a vibration. We have children, we have young adults, we have Olympians and high performers that are empaths. Their body. We call them high frequency, meaning their frequency. When they walk into rooms, they go to ball games. Their frequency is picking up everything. They're picking up the temperature of the room. They're picking up the noise, they're picking up the closeness of people. Their little bodies are taking all that in. We call 'em high freaks because we wanna celebrate them because they actually have the capability of going to even a higher level once they can control that. But we have to stop shaming people that are empath. Dude, stop it. Quit whining. Quit being a baby. Get off the floor. Stop crying 'cause you're overwhelmed. No, actually race to over to her and say, you want me to go through some breathing with you right now? Here sit. Sit up and let's just close our eyes. Let's ground our feet. Let's start to get centered with our breath and let's work, breathing kit number one, and let's get our breath back. We'll start there. Let's be where our feet are. Be the helper. Don't be captain obvious. And that starts with the parents and then it goes to the teammates at the top. Mental health, break it up. Mental health, mental performance. Understand in this, we have people that pick up a lot of signals. This one, it could be chemical. There may be other assets that need to be a part of their kit, their mental performance kit. And we have to feel good about all of it because all of them are capable of going the top. How much of this were you doing 30 years ago that you couldn't define and couldn't put it into categories like you can so easily now? Where were you 30 years ago with all of this? Now remember, 30 years ago I was 37. Let's talk about, 40 years ago. Okay. 40 years ago whatever you're comfortable with. Early in my career I was just a yeller. Yeah. I'm not talking about how are you feeling? I'm not talking about your breath. All I'm talking about are your feet that have to run. 'cause you're one minute late. So go do your 400 up downs. Shut up. Put up. And I regret that. I regret that I could have been a better coach if I had more knowledge. Yeah. I'm with you. I'm around. Treat them as a human first. Yeah. And a person second. Yeah. I was the same way. And a player second. Where's the balance though, coach? We, there still has to be an understanding how to get there. Can we do that without the challenge? Without, i'm talking about readiness. I'm not talking about physical standards. Physical standards we're, they're they're unchanging. Your physical expectations based on the coach you're playing for. He or she doesn't have to change that. We get confused. Okay. When we get confused when we talk about mental and physical, and we talk about spent spending spending seven minutes to get mentally ready. People think it goes like this. Oh, mental readiness, that means I have to lower the standard. No, it doesn't. That standard stays there, beginning, middle, and end. There's my standard. It's unwavering. It my world, it's unwavering because we don't have the capacity to be able to take a weekend off these programs. When you're to our sport parents, when you're watching these programs, when you're watching the UCLAs and the Oklahomas and the Alabamas and the Floridas. And the Texas and Texas Tech, you're watching these top, they don't get a weekend off in general. And we now have to acknowledge as a leader, coach, teacher, if I don't get a weekend off physically, because I'm supposed to win every game, I've gotta learn how to regulate my mental performance. I've gotta learn how to regulate my body. So now the next I call it the 22nd century thinking is we're looking at rest and rigor with the same level of commitment that rest is built into your digital calendar. How many students out there, and let's not get into time management, but you should be scheduling rest into every digital calendar. Parents should be putting it in and you should have rest, what we call rest blocks. Three day, three times a day. You stack those just like you stack your workouts, right? We're always saying we're trying to stack another good day. I now say, stack a good day physically and stack a good day mentally. Did you get your rest windows done? What is, what does a rest block look like? Imagine what a rest block is it or we also call it the zero block. What do you think they do in the zero block? I would imagine it's some kind of meditation or sleep. Yeah. You're doing zero. Yeah. Nothing. Nothing. No phone, no lights, no distractions. If you wanna just sit under a tree and hear your breathing, that's a beautiful zero station. What would you recommend a block like that? How long should it be? Depends on the person. Depends on the time of the day. Okay. There are athletes right now that have to, they have to execute. I was going through a time management 'cause time, we talk about an epidemic around mental health and I acknowledge that it is. Epidemic. You wanna know another epi Epidemic? Time management. Oh, it's terrible. Parents. Yeah. Parents, please teach them time management. Yeah. Don't tell them everything they're doing hour by hour, Johnny, now you're gonna go take a shower, Johnny, now you're gonna put your shoes on. Johnny. Now we're gonna go to practice. Johnny. Now no. Give Johnny the week and tell him to put it in his digital counter. And people always, I always get emails after and people will say, when do I start that? The minute you give them a phone. My, my daughter's 10. She has a phone start then. Yep. And they're like, oh, I don't know. It's so complicated. Have you ever seen those kids? I'm so impressed with Gen A. So Gen A is coming after Gen Z, right? Parents will say to me, oh, this is so complicated with all the digital and. I said, are you watching your daughter do those TikTok dances? She is legit. She could do three minutes with her friends, completely in sync. The amount of mental load, physical execution and timing, just like filling your digital calendar. She can do it. Give her a chance to do it. Ab absolutely. I'm a huge proponent of it, and I wish somebody would've taught me this 40 years ago, because for me, yeah, I know, me too. For me this phone, as much as I hate it, sometimes if I didn't have it, I think I would be a hot mess because an alarm will go off and he'll say, you gotta prep for sue. An alarm will go off and say, Hey, grab your son and go for a walk. You're not gonna have any time with him today. This is gonna be your hour to go spend some time with him. Yeah, exactly. And so what we call those intention, what you just said, we call those intention blocks, right? I'm gonna have intention, like for example, I have a, let's say I have a history test on Monday. My intention block on Sunday is reread chapters one through five. And so we have blocks of what we call hard events. And then every event usually involves a prep block. So how many prep blocks do I need for the history test? Depends on how prepared you are. So if you're not prepared, it's Friday. Now my test is Monday. You're gonna have to put probably six preparation blocks in your calendar to read. Okay. But remember you gotta put your rest blocks in there as well. And then I'm recommending with our Gen A, when I work with Gen A's. Putting what age is that coach? Is that it, I think they're saying like, there's an overlap, but it's around eight to 10 years old to like up to 18. It, there's a crossover. So that's my son and my daughter. It's right behind. So yeah, so gen Zs I think are like 18 to 20, 8 30, somewhere in there. Okay. I don't quote me on that exactly, but they're coming up after the Gen Zers. And what we're working on is having them look at social media, like it's homework, so it should be in your calendar. And there are times that you do it, and there are times you don't do it like that a lot. And that's, that takes baby steps because right now for our half of our millennials, for our Gen Z and Gen A, it is not technology. So I always tell parents, let me explain it to you. We look at the phone as technology. It came into our life. We didn't have it. And then we had it. So it sits out here. I always tell parents think about the phone to your daughter is like the toilet to us. Okay. You, someone said to you, Hey Matt, you know we're gonna do, we're gonna put a timer on when you can go to the bathroom. You're like, wait a minute. I've had free access 24 7 to the toilet my whole life. But it will help you understand how difficult it is for them to separate. 'cause there is no separation. It did not come into their life. It's been there all along. That's right. Interesting. Coach I wanna go back to what I asked you before. I loved where we went with it, but I want to talk about the length of the travel ball season. 'cause I think we, we have to address it at some point. 'cause we have all these great athletes who love their sport, they're passionate about their sport. They can't wait to get up and get better at it and go be with their team. And by the 90th game of the summer, they can't imagine picking up a bat or being out in the hundred degree weather anymore because they've done it so much and they're so burned out with all the noise we're talking about. Can we start there? Is it reasonable to say we're gonna block this out where, like you talked about with the ncaa, it's gonna be a three month season for travel ball and that's it. Yeah, the water's under the bridge. It's very difficult. You see how they get around the rules? There, the high school did it, right? They built in policy. Yeah. But you saw how they get around the rule. And so I think for me, I would love to be more proactive around, I just wish there was a deeper connection with n NCAA two A and club ball. And what would that look like? Let's say there's two areas for me, technically. Three. The physical, how the body moves. So let's just say functional movement, mental performance, time management, critical thinking skills. Okay. Just think, okay. The office skills. Okay. I would love for the n NCAA two A to put together a consortia, men and women and any travel ball group can come and be a part of that and access the information. And no. NC two A is not gonna make money off this. Travel ball's not gonna make money off it. What's happening right now is colleges travel ball are going into the pocket of the parent telling them, you gotta get, you gotta do this tournament, you gotta do this recruit. And the parent, the poor parent doesn't know how to discern what is life threatening and what is, we're trying to keep our travel ball program going, or we're trying to fundraise for our college program 'cause they're equally guilty. So I sit here, I have a bias, I wanna own it. I'm a college coach, but for the last 20 years, I'm now in everybody's mess. I now consult with travel ball coaches. I have a new understanding. When I started one softball mat. I had a whole new understanding of what the poor travel ball coach is dealing with, right? Especially the ones that are doing it part-time. I do not have empathy for people that are making a business outta travel ball, and I don't have a problem with it either. I like it. There's some beautiful, big organizations that are doing it right? Driven by character, has a legit transparent process and they're delivering results. I love that. I feel badly for that group that doesn't know what end is up. Wouldn't it be great if a parent knew that vetted and verified, good Housekeeping seal for travel ball is this and you can get it at all of these sites. And so the travel ball coach is gonna get out of the business of recruit education, get out of the business of business skills, get out of the business of mental training, unless that is your certified area and you are a subject matter expert in. And you th and your idea is we, the ncaa provides those things that these coaches, NC two A and the, and wouldn't it be beautiful it would be the U-S-O-P-C in all our national governing bodies, partner with the NCAA two A and create this layer that is required. You know what I equate it to? And the only way you could get this done, and I'm, I'm speaking innovation. This could get done if we tied all of this path to college education for children that are performing. I don't care if it's dance, I, anything sports. If we tied it into insurance, if we tied it into insurance, now everyone is gonna shift. This is serious. We're gonna hold it over The parent, you can't play. We all know you can't play unless you get your certified insurance. If we put all of that underneath insurance. Then before they get into their first tournament, they already know about what the odds are, mom and dad. The odds of your daughter or son getting a full ride to the school of their choice is 1e-05% and you're gonna go, no wait. The staff high year is five to 20%. No. I said, tell your choice. Not oh, I got offered a scholarship at this school. I never wanted to go to that school. What if we said that? But right now, we're living a world where parents are hand over fist money. It's the lotto. They are living a world for eight years. It's a lottery. It is the way we're doing it. Imagine if we said no, we're actually gonna have a way through technology. You're actually gonna see from a third party is gonna say, this is where you fit. Not the travel ball coach, not the college coach, A third party. Is gonna be able to say, here's the clump of schools that would love to hear from you. Imagine if we gave that answer book to the parents. Don't they deserve that? Don't the parents deserve that? If we can figure that out, I will. I'll do everything to be a part. Listen, I just believe in America. I'm a believer. Can you imagine if we got the top insurance people together the legit ones? Not the criminals. We got the NC two A education. A lot of people don't know about NNC two education. Get on the website, get into NC two.org. If the parents ever clicked on all the student athlete links that they've put together, it is the best. But good luck. Great. Good luck having people tell you that it's there. Yeah. And then imagine if we just grabbed 15 of the top. Amazon executives and said, Hey, Amazon, I don't work for Amazon, so people don't be texting me that you're working for, I'm not working for Amazon, but I am fascinated. I'm fascinated that if I go in there, I exactly where you're going. Yeah. If I buy those blue socks that have neon yellow trim, it is two minutes later I'm like, Hey, look at these cute racing pants that you could run your race, your road race in that would match your socks. The technology is there. Do you think it is, from an evaluation standpoint though, do you think the AI is there to evaluate what you're looking for in a softball player? Oh, it's coming my friend. We already have bots that can play center field that can read the trajectory of the ball. So trust me, it's coming. It's just a matter of who's gonna control it. That's the problem. And then there's the character side and then there's, mental. But imagine if we had a think about this on your parent when you're a young daughter, she finishes pre-K and she's getting ready to go into K and then into first grade. You already know she has to go through certain standards and will be dipping into certain domains. Yeah. That would be a perfect place to start. But right now, you know what the parent knows. Get on that one team that's gonna be in the Colorado tournament that mom and dad, that is a tournament lotto. There are 32,000 softball families there. Yes, they are 175 miles away from each other. Good luck for that one school, gonna find your daughter at the same time that you happen to be playing. It is such shenanigans. Yeah. And being out of it. And I was in it, I was in it, I'm a guilty one. I hold myself account accountable. I was part of the problem 'cause I was a college coach that just kept benefiting from the system. 'cause I was at UCLA. But would you if I told you all this 30 years ago that you. That you had this, that you could do this a different way, would've you have, would you have ego have allowed you to change it? Because that's the problem. If nobody that's in that position now will let go of their ego and say, yes, I'm gonna be a part of this new way we're going to recruit and the new way we're going to evaluate, would you have done it? Let me reframe it. I get a little heightened on the word the ego. 'cause college coach here, I gotta take care of my college coaches. People think that the college coach doesn't wanna let go of their ego. It actually has to do with everybody is doing all these tournaments. 'cause they're trying to get to the top schools. The top schools don't need the standardization because the best percolate to the top. Yes. So Patty Gasso at Oklahoma, No. When you're the best, no one's coming to Patty's pity party. Because she's the best. But she actually has this same challenges because she has no margin for error. Every single year, Oklahoma, Texas, UCLA, whatever, they have to, they can't be off by one or two pitchers or they're gonna drop to eight or nine or 10. Okay. But if we said, look, we're doing this for the other 80%, okay, then I think we could get coaches to say, yeah let's do that. And there have been some people, we've gotta acknowledge Dave King and Triple Crown. We have to acknowledge them working so hard to standardize talent. And it is the future. We're just not getting the buy-in at the same rate. Historically, we're actually right on pace. Like baseball. It took baseball decades. It took baseball 40 years to start creating a true common language around a five tool player. So we've gotta be patient. We just, we were just starting the standardization and I was at the end of my career when we started it all and look, we're already 25 years in and we're, we still don't have a complete common language where everyone's speaking the same language around physical standards. And we've got some wonderful mental profiling standards out there, but there's just too much noise and the parent stays away 'cause they don't know which one's vetted what, which one's verified. Yeah. That's a big problem. Where do we go? Which one do we choose? Coach? I could this conversation needs to continue to grow and I'll be a major proponent in pushing it and making sure people are listening and we keep having this conversation at a high level. I wanna take a little break and then for five, 10 minutes just talk about recruiting and really give some advice to parents and coaches and kids. Gimme one piece of advice to the coaches out there that they just need to hear. Whether you're a youth coach, whether you're a high school coach, whether you're a college coach, just that one nugget that you think if you're gonna go into your season, if you're gonna coach young people, this is the one thing I want you to start thinking about. If you're a parent and you're a fan, I want you to understand there's a big recruiting engine behind the curtain that you don't even see when you come to the park. I want the parent to know when you're sitting there and you look over and that top 10 coach there, I'm gonna ask the parent, try not to get nervous. They're actually, what the coach is looking for is, I wanna see them fail and see how they react. Yeah. Of course the, of course they wanna see if they can hit that great picture. Of course that's a given. But they, the college coach knows that every day that kid's not gonna be hitting that oppo, double off the fence. They're looking at barrel angle, they're looking at reaction time. But one thing they're really looking at is how are they managing their failure recovery? Are they a good teammate? They're looking at the interaction. Those college coaches are looking at a lot during warmup. They don't miss a beat. And so as a parent, be the voice to your young child to say on game day it's celebration day. You get to wear a special uniform. So you got your, we always say it's good old softball with a party dress on, 'cause it's game day. Have a lot of joy out there. Be the engineer belief as a parent, Hey, you know what, today. I just can't wait to watch you play. PLAY. Yeah. So be that person that is that comforter for the child. And then during the game, just be heads up. If you're a big mechanics yeller at your child, have you ever asked your child, Hey, are you good with me saying, level up. Level up. If your child says, yeah, I love it when you say that, perfect. Never heard a child say that. Yeah, the second. The second thing is, every single time this is a marker, a mental marker. Every time you sit down on the bleachers, for every hour of watching softball, have you put 10 minutes into your recruiting plan for your daughter. Yeah. Okay. Love that. So the 10 to hour rule, right? So if you're at the park for six hours. You owe your daughter an hour of recruit planning. It's a great way to keep the balance. I agree. I agree. Coach, you're a national treasurer. Thanks so much for doing this. I appreciate everything you've done and I'm so excited that you're in this world. Thank you my friend. It's great to be with you. That wraps up part one of my conversation with Sue Enquist and wow, is she a wealth of information? What a gift to learn from someone who has shaped not only champions on the field, but healthier athletes and coaches in every arena she touches. But we're not done yet. Be sure to come back for part two of my conversation with Coach Sue on the significant recruiting podcast, where we'll dive deeper into our perspective on the recruiting landscape and the advice every family needs to hear. You won't want to miss it. That'll be out this upcoming Monday. In the meantime, if you're looking for tools to guide your own recruiting journey, visit coach matt rogers.com and don't forget to check out my brand new book, the Volleyball Recruits Journal, now available on amazon.com. It's built to help athletes and families stay organized, stay focused, and stay grounded throughout the recruiting process. Thanks for joining me today. Until next time, stay focused, stay humble, and stay in the fight.