3 Things I Do Every Summer to Build a Championship Team Before the Season Starts

The off-season is where championships are built and most coaches are only training half of it. Grab Plug & Play Elite Mental Game for teams → https://elitecompetitor.com/plugplayemg

I spent two seasons watching talented teams crumble at match point. Not because of physical failures. Because we hadn't trained what actually determines performance when the pressure is real.

Mental game. Leadership. Culture. 

👋🏼 I'm Coach Bre - a mental performance coach for girl athletes, Co-Founder of The Elite Competitor, and a long-time head volleyball coach and 4-time state champion.

In this episode, I'm sharing the three things I now do every summer to build a championship team before the season even starts:
👉 Build a Leadership Core: an application-based system that teaches athletes to lead instead of just naming them
👉 Run a Squad System: peer accountability that gets athletes to workouts and shows you who's actually leading in real time
👉 Train mental skills now: because you cannot pull out a Snapback Routine in a championship moment if you've never practiced it

These are the exact systems that helped us come back from championship point down to win our first state title.

If you coach girl athletes and you're serious about what next season looks like, this one is for you.

What You'll Learn:
✅ Why physical conditioning alone is not enough to win when pressure hits
✅ How to build a Leadership Corps that develops real leaders before the season starts
✅ The Squad System for peer accountability and off-season workout attendance
✅ How to teach athletes mental skills in summer so they can access them in October
✅ The exact failure recovery tool that came through in a championship moment

🕓 Key Moments:
00:00 Introduction & Coach Bre's Story
00:45 Why Physical Training Alone Isn't Enough
03:06 Thing #1: The Leadership Core
05:55 Thing #2: The Squad System
07:37 The Three Leadership Meetings
08:37 Thing #3: Mental Training in the Off-Season
13:24 Plug & Play Mental Game Curriculum

💬 Coaches - comment below: What's the one off-season thing you keep meaning to build but haven't made into a real system yet?

📩 Work with Coach Bre: coachfreetraining.com

📌 Free Tools & Next Steps
👉Grab Plug & Play Elite Mental Game for teams → https://elitecompetitor.com/plugplayemg
🎓 Free Mental Training Resource for Coaches: https://coachfreetraining.com
📲 Instagram: @coachhergame
🎙 Podcast: Coach Her Game Podcast
🔹 Follow us on TikTok→ @coachhergame
🔹 Championship Program Membership: https://champions.elitecompetitor.com
🔹 Player Impact Plan: https://elitecompetitor.kit.com/6639eaaf9f

🔔 Subscribe for weekly mental training strategies built specifically for coaches of girl athletes.

P.S. Here's what the research shows:  
⚡️ When athletes mentally rehearse a skill in vivid detail, the neural pathways fire the same way as during physical practice. (Cleveland Clinic)
⚡️ Athletes who reframed pre-competition anxiety as excitement showed measurably higher performance than those who tried to calm down. (Wood Brooks, A., Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2014)
⚡️Only 9% of high school coaches report receiving formal training in sport psychology or mental performance. (Journal of Athletic Training, 2021)

The Coach Her Game YouTube channel is hosted by The Elite Competitor and is dedicated to helping coaches of girl athletes strengthen their mental game and team culture in order to develop a competitive edge.  

#coachinggirls #mentalperformance #girlsinsports #highschoolcoach #athletemindset

Head to coachfreetraining.com to grab our free training for coaches to quickly level-up your team's mental game!

Transcript

0:00

If you're spending all summer with your team just conditioning and working on the physical part of the game, you're leaving wins on the table, and you're gonna walk into next season probably repeating the same things that happened last season, because that's what happened to me. And I'm gonna talk to you in this video about the three things that I'm doing this summer. It's actually the three things that I've been doing for the past several summers to build a championship team before the season even starts. And if I haven't met you, I'm Coach Bre. I'm a 14-year head volleyball coach, won four consecutive state championships as a coach. I've also lost a lot of championships and games and things like that, where I've realized that it's not just the physical training that leads to success in teams and also contributes to the lack of success. It is also the mental side and the culture and the things that you do in the off-season that really set your team up or not for the season. And here's why this matters, because I know you've been here as a coach, because I have. And honestly, I can remember very specific seasons where my team had trained physically really well. Like, all summer, we're conditioning, we're doing the hard stuff, and it's not like you should stop doing that, but that's really where our emphasis was. And I had talented teams that were slated to win it all and go on and go really deep into state. And we get to the point in the season where we're trying to get a spot to state, and we play in, district games where it's a winner to state, loser out situation, and my team ends up losing. And this happened one season, about eight years ago, and I was like, "Okay, well, that kinda sucked." And so then we just went back to work over the summer and in the off-season, only to, have the next season roll around. I got another talented team with all of these, you should go really far at state, and you've got all these girls that are very talented, and you're, you know, training a lot, whatever. We get into the same situation where it's a winner to state, loser you're out situation, and we lose again, in the same exact fashion, which was a reverse sweep style. So if you're familiar with volleyball, it's like you are winning. We were winning. We were up. We had match point within our reach, and then we end up crumbling and spiraling, and the wheels fall off. And now the momentum is not on our side, and we end up losing the entire match and not even going to state In the first place. And so I had to look at myself as a coach after that happened in back-to-back seasons and realize that we're training a lot physically, but what is causing our demise and our sabotage on our team isn't the physical talent that we have, it's our mental game and being able to meet the moment when it's big. It's our leadership, and leaders not really knowing how to actually lead when moments get hard. And it's our culture. Our culture isn't just what we put on the back of our shirt, it's what our athletes believe is true about our program. And so those are the things that I needed to lean into more in my off-season and in my season in order to actually get us to where we wanted to be. So that's the backstory of how this all came to be. I actually went back after that season where we lost again to become a mental performance coach so that I could teach my team really simple mental training skills that will help them with those moments. So I'll talk about a little bit of that in here so that you can be doing that with your team as well. But here are the three things that I'm doing this summer, like, literally starting next week, things that I'll be implementing. Number one is a leadership core. Now, the honest truth is that I used to just pick captains and hope that they would figure out how to lead, and then I would get frustrated that, oh, all the equipment is still out and you just didn't do anything about it, or you didn't communicate with the rest of the team, or you're not the one working hard like you should be and you're a captain. And I would have all these things that I would expect a captain to do because I thought it was obvious, but they wouldn't be doing that. And I have to remember that these are, 15 to 18-year-olds who are learning leadership skills, and I have to put them in environments where they need to lead, and I need to teach them how to lead. And so the leadership core was born. And the way that I implement this is actually at the very beginning of the summer. We just closed applications for it for my team, like, last week. So I put out an announcement, I say, applications are open for our leadership core. This is a leadership opportunity that any returning player is allowed to apply for. When you apply, you are committing to be a leader this summer. So what that looks like is you're going to come to three leadership meetings. We're learning leadership skills, and also being a part of culture decisions when it comes to our program. So being a part of the discussions around our core values and what we want to focus on for next season, things like that. And also really important things like the color of our practice shirts." You know? Su- super important stuff. But also they are going to be put into a leadership role- That I'll talk about in a second called, a squad leader, and that's an intentional system, like leadership system, that I implement to help them actually serve in a leadership role before the season. So I implement the leadership corps. Athletes apply. I've got, questions so that I can really assess what their commitment is to this and if they really wanna do it, and then I choose from the applicants. Now, I like to, as much as possible, uh, invite everybody to serve on the leadership corps over the summer that applies. So I think I had 10 people apply, um, that returners apply, and so I will likely take all 10, unless I have some con- concern about any of these athletes, so that they can experience some leadership development and serve in a leadership role. So the leadership corps is the first thing that I started doing a little bit differently as a way to intentionally teach leadership skills to the people on my team and in my program that identify that they want to be leaders. So this is like a training ground for them, and we do this all summer. So they come to three meetings, and then I set them up as a squad leader, which I'll talk about in a second. I also do a leadership corps in the fall because, we have tryouts, and we're a cut sport, so potentially some of the people, like the personnel, is going to shift a little bit. So we reestablish it in the fall, but I also make this a prerequisite for becoming captain. So you have to have served on a leadership corps, um, the previous season if you want to be considered for a captain So that is number one that I'm doing, this summer. Number two, the squad system. So this comes out of the leaderships corps. So every leader in the leadership corps is assigned a squad. So because I have 10, I have a lot, I will double them up, so we'll probably do five squads, and each squad has, three to four players that are assigned to that squad. So they're a little team, and I actually have them come up with, a team name, and it's part of an incentive, incentive system for the summer because I do summer workouts that, that we want as much attens- attendance as possible at. And so these leaders are trying to get their squad to participate in summer workouts, and they get points for coming to the workouts, and we do little competitions. And so there's that. It's kind of like there's an ulterior motive to get people to show up to workouts and, you know, there's a competition. We find that, peers don't wanna let other peers down, so there's some, social pressure there. These leaders, though, are also responsible for checking in with their squad, and they're connected in, a GroupMe group chat, and I'm in all the group chats as well, so that they're reminding them of the workouts. It's a good place for our incoming freshmen to ask questions. Of course, you know, as the head coach, they can ask you questions too, but it's really nice if there's leaders who can, kinda act as that liaison and, the buffer a little bit just for, simple questions, and it can be a little less intimidating for some of these incoming freshmen as well. And these incoming freshmen, these underclassmen, get immediately plugged in to a squad, which is really great, and it makes that transition in the fall a lot easier, too. Plus, I get to see my leaders lead real time. Like, are they actually leading their squad? Are they actually communicating? I can see because I'm in the groups. Or are they just, saying they wanna be a leader and then not communicating and not showing up to practices or workouts themselves? So the squad system is really great, and it gives me an opportunity to, assess what kind of leadership we have and what we need to work on. The three meetings, I'll go back to that. The first one, we talk about leadership skills. I have developed a leadership curriculum that, athletes are gonna go through, and we sometimes do, we bring in, some books and some things like that, some studies that are fun, but we don't overwhelm them over the summer. So I keep it light, but also just, really easy things that they can do to demonstrate leadership. The second meeting, we go over more leadership skills and conflict resolution process because that's the biggest thing that people identified on our survey, was people talking behind other people's backs. And so we're gonna talk about how to address that and how to prevent it and conflict resolution and all of that. And then the third meeting is typically, like, a forward-facing meeting on, okay, our season is about to start, so what core values do we need to reemphasize? Um, you know, how are we gonna roll this out to the rest of the team? And, um, y- because our leadership corps, once our season starts, is responsible for communicating to the rest of the program what we stand for and what it means to be a River Volleyball player So that is also a really important part of the core and the squad system. Okay, the last one is, um, I think that it is so important to lay the foundation of the mental skills that your athletes will need to compete in their coming season in the summer. And I use the summer, and then I heavily use this pre-season time, uh, to develop mental training skills with my program. Because here's the thing. We as coaches, I, I gave a perfect example of this, is that we assess our last season, and a lot of times when we're looking back on the last season, we'll say things like, "Oh, it was our inability to perform under pressure that held us back this season," or, "It was we couldn't deal with mistakes," or, "My girls didn't believe in themselves," or, "We had too much team drama." All of those things are usually, when we look at what we want to improve on for the next season, it's typically things like that. Yes, physically, we always need to improve our physical skills, but a lot of times coaches, we're saying things like drama, mental training skills, lack of leadership. All of that is what we need to develop. So if we want to actually do something different in the next season, we have to train differently, and that means we have to train the mental side of the game. And this, sometimes when I say this, coaches think, "Oh, I don't have 45 minutes to do things like this," um, or, "I don't even know where to start," which I used to think the same thing. And you don't have to do what I did, which was go back and spend money and time to become a mental performance coach. There are simple things that you can be doing over the summer and in your season to do this, and in fact, hundreds of coaches are also doing this across the nation using our mental training curriculum called Plug and Play Elite Mental Game for Teams. So if you want a really simple plug and play way to do this, I'll explain how to do that in a second. But specifically, the, the skills that I'll be teaching over the summer. Number one, creating a vision of the athlete they want to be, that your athletes want to be next season now. And so it can be as simple as having them kind of explore what do you want to show up next season sounding like, looking like, playing like? What is that? And here's why this matters. Our brain is so powerful, and your athlete's belief about themselves will set their ceiling. They will never outperform their belief about themselves. So they can say all they want, "I wanna win state, and I wanna do this, and I wanna be first team all league." If they don't believe it, they don't believe that that's true or something that they can accomplish, there's no way that they will do that. That will always set their ceiling. They will never outperform their belief about themselves. And most athletes, most people just kind of wait until the season starts and how things unfold, and then that determines how things go. The best athletes and the best teams are creating a vision of the athlete and the team that they wanna be. They're literally visualizing it, putting that out into what their, their goal is, um, and they have a clear vision of what that looks like. Because that's gonna rearrange their habits and how hard they're working over the summer when they have that big goal and that big vision already clearly out there, okay? So that's gonna change your commitment level, it's gonna change how hard your athletes are working, and that's how powerful your brain is. So we're developing that vision. It's not just, goal setting. It's what does this athlete look like? What does this team look like? We're also developing skills to help them deal with pressure before they get into pressure situations. You can't wait until you get into a championship match or until a tough time to just pull out a mental training skill and be like, "Okay, everybody, try a snap back routine. Let's try and take a deep breath. Let's do a, let's say a reset word together." That all has to be found and developed before, before the season starts. So I am developing a snap back routine with every one of my players. That is our failure recovery system that takes, two seconds or less. So a breath, a reset word, a reset signal. So that my athletes have that, and it's come in clutch for us in championship moments. I won't go into the full story, but in our last championship match, when we were playing and we were down championship point, uh, thankfully, I had a timeout, called my team together. We had that common language, and I said, "Hey, let's do our snapback routine right now." They said... They did their breath. They said their reset word to themselves. They did their reset signal. Okay, we can now be in the present moment to be able to go out and meet the moment where it's at, okay? We were actually able to side out in that moment, to come back from championship point, win the next two points, go into the fifth set, win. It was this amazing comeback, to win our first state championship, and it was a clear display of what it looks like to actually fall back on what you've trained. I think James Clear says, "We don't rise to the level of, the expectation. We fall to what we've trained." And if you don't train how you respond in pressure situations, you can't expect your athletes to access it in those situations, so we've got to train it. And summer's a really good time to do this because they've got lower stakes environments to actually practice it. They've got practices. We're doing camps and things like that, so there's opportunities to learn it and practice it so that they can develop that muscle for when they need it. So we're training pressure situations before we actually get into it. So if you want a plug-and-play way to do this, literally get your team together, press play on videos from me, and then lead a short discussion afterwards. That's what Plug and Play Elite Mental Game for teams is. So like I said, there's hundreds of coaches across the nation that are utilizing our curriculum with their athletes this summer. And if you're not training this side of the game, I'm telling you right now, you're only training half the game. They say sports are 90% mental. So don't use the excuse of, "I don't know what to do. I don't have time." These videos are between five and 15 minutes long. We have it taken care of for you. So if you want information on that, you can head to the description below. I have a free training if you want to understand, like, what our approach is to mental training and learn about Plug and Play that way. Or if you want to just head straight to Plug and Play, um, the link is below for you to get that for your team so you can be using that this summer. All right, coaches, here's what I'm doing over the summer. Three things. I'm developing a leadership corps. I'm developing a squad system so that there's accountability and people show up to workouts. And three, we are training the mental game before we need it. I hope that was helpful. I will see you in the next episode of the Coach Your Game Podcast.