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Coaching Mind's Podcast: Perform at your best!
Coaching Mind's Podcast: Perform at your best!
#133 - From .500 to Sectional Champs: How Mental Training Changed South Ripley Basketball with Tom Beach
In just one season, South Ripley went from a middle-of-the-pack team to a 19–0 start, a #1 ranking, and a sectional championship. The difference? A full commitment to mental training.
Assistant coach Tom Beach, a 40-year coaching veteran, joins us to share how implementing MTP Academy transformed the mindset—and the results—of a small-town Indiana basketball team.
“MTP can’t guarantee you championships… but I can guarantee you—we wouldn’t have won a sectional without it.”
If you’ve ever wondered what mental training can really do for your program, this is the episode to hear it from someone who’s seen it firsthand.
Are you an ATHLETE looking to take your training to the next level? Check out our website to learn more about 1-on-1 training opportunities:
mentaltrainingplan.com/athletes
Are you a COACH looking for an affordable year-round mental performance training program? Check out the MTP Academy available through our website:
mentaltrainingplan.com/academy
One of the toughest parts of implementing a mental performance training program can be justifying the time. If you've never done something like this before and you're not, maybe, totally convinced it's going to work, how do you explain taking 15 minutes away from practice every single week? How do you tell your players, your parents, maybe even your athletic director hey, we're going to stop shooting free throws for a bit to talk about breathing, self-talk and focus? It can be a hard sell, especially if you're at a small school on a tight budget, trying to get over the hump with kids that are juggling multiple sports. But today's guest Coach, tom Beach, knows exactly what it takes to win. He's spent over 40 years coaching high school basketball in the state of Indiana. He's been to three state championships. They've won two of them and while he never called it mental performance training, he spent his entire career teaching the mental side of the game because he knew the best coaches and players were doing something more than just running drills. Now what he'll tell you is that they had a little bit more of just a random buffet of you know videos that he found, or tools or resources or podcasts or books, and he would just sort of throw stuff at the wall and see if anything stuck. But this year they implemented the MTP Academy. They said you know what? We need a program.
Speaker 1:And so in this episode we're talking about a small public high school in southern Indiana, south Ripley, where Coach Beach is now on staff. Their team had been stuck around 500 for a couple years. They felt like they had talent and they had the effort, but something was still missing. So they decided to go all in on the MTP Academy during the season Not in the offseason, which, if I'm being honest, is maybe more convenient but they committed from week one and what happened next was nothing short of how Coach Beach described it Historic, from unranked to number one in the state, from average, to winning the holiday tournament, the county championship, the conference championship, the sectional championship. I think Coach Beach said it best when he said the MTP Academy can't guarantee you a championship, but I can guarantee you we don't win a sectional championship without it.
Speaker 1:Today's episode is a story about belief, commitment and transformation. Can't wait to dive into this. Hey you, welcome to the Coaching Minds Podcast, the official podcast of Mental Training Plan, joined today by coach Tom Beach, who worked with his son down at South Ripley High School. Tom, I appreciate you joining us today.
Speaker 2:Always a pleasure to be with you, Ben, and thank you for all that you did for South Ripley basketball this year.
Speaker 1:For sure. So you know, I think the audience is in for a real treat today. You know it's one thing to hear like, hey, here's the theory behind what we're saying you should be doing. But you guys lived it out. Mtp Academy, you implemented some weekly mental performance training tools this season and certainly saw some great results, to go along with all of the rest of the things that you guys are doing at South Ripley High School. Before we dive into that, talk to us just kind of briefly, um, because you are certainly not new to coaching basketball. You are, you're an experienced coach who's had a ton of success. Talk to us just kind of briefly about, maybe, your story, your past, where you've been and how you got to where you're at today well.
Speaker 2:Thank you, ben, for that was a really nice way to say that Tom's really old, but I appreciate that. But yeah, I graduated from Purdue University after Vincent's Lincoln High School and got a job out of college at Forest Park High School in Ferdinand, indiana, which most people don't know where Ferdinand's at, but they've heard of Holiday World so it's right next door. But I spent 30 years of my life there. I met my beautiful wife and raised two children a son Seve that you mentioned might have a daughter and had a great career there at Forest Park. In those 30 years Learned a lot of things that were good and learned some things that I quickly learned to forget and move on. And I had some great players, coached freshman basketball, jv basketball, varsity basketball, was very blessed to have some outstanding players and parents and community support there. We were in three state championship games, won two of those and, like I said, very, very blessed to be there, moved on from there. I coached for four years at Shelbyville High School and then coached for six years at Anderson University and then decided that was a total of 40 years that you know, if you do something for 40 years, even though you love it, you think, okay, maybe it's time for the young people to take over and I'll do something else. So I was retired for a couple of years, did some other things. I'm very I'm active still active in the Indiana Basketball Coaches Association. The associate executive director of that organization, which we had 2,000 members and I was blessed.
Speaker 2:Seve, my son, followed in my footsteps. I tried to steer him a different way but he wouldn't listen, and he's been a head coach and assistant coach followed in my footsteps. I tried to steer him a different way but he wouldn't listen. He's been a head coach and assistant coach and has kind of found his niche now down at South Ripley. He started his own family and found his wife down there and has two sons. That's kept me happy. He asked me to come back and help him.
Speaker 2:I, you know I still had that itch, even though I'm really old, like you so kindly described. I still had that itch. But I didn't want to be that guy you know in charge anymore, help the young men to grow and get better and get to talk to them every day about their whatever's going on in their lives, and that's just a real pleasure. I get all the fun stuff. I don't have to deal with the paperwork and talking to the principals and admitted ADs and parents and those things. That. That you know, and I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean SEVY's people are really good, but I just don't have to deal with that stuff. I get to do the fun stuff. I get to go to practice and then I get to go home and stop somewhere and eat on the way home and, um, you know, game night. I'm not throwing up or sweating bullets because I'm going to go home after the game and think about the next day's practice, but it's been a real pleasure.
Speaker 2:And you know our situation at South Ripley. When Seve asked me to come on, we felt like that physically we had some talented players, but something was just, something wasn't right and so we were trying to figure that out. And, long story short, we found out about you and and your program and we really feel like the entire coaching staff 100% agrees that your program. It helped us to do what we did this last season, um, which was a historical season for South Ripley. It ended a couple weeks earlier than what we would have liked but, um, it was still a historical season and what we did and, um, you know, people would say that I had a very successful coaching career, but even with that, I was never, never had a team that did what what this team did. So it was quite a quite a run this year and a lot of it is attributed to what we did with the mental training program.
Speaker 1:So let's, let's go back to. You guys reached out maybe early September ish, and you know, like you said, you you've already won a state championship before. You've seen, you know the level of high school basketball that it takes to win at that level, and your son was even on one of those teams. So it's not like we were trying to, or I was having to convince you of, hey, training the mental side of the game is also really important, along with training the physical side of the game, along with training the technique side of the game, the schematic side of the game. You guys already knew that. What were maybe some of the things that you guys have really put emphasis on in the past when it came to the mental side of the game, and maybe what areas did you feel like something was still lacking?
Speaker 2:you know, when you do something for 40 years, you see things. Um, you know, I I say it like this there's some of the things that I did that I didn't call it mental training but we did those things. Or you know, I study a lot where I read or watch film or whatever podcast. You know, professional athletes, division one athletes I worked for several years with a program called Point Guard College that you just learn all these things and you have to put them together and be able to relate them to your players and your student athletes. Also, some organization we attempted our second year to do some mental training.
Speaker 2:Seve seriously and jokingly called me the mental training coach and I tried to do some actual things. I said we've got to do something with our players. That's more than just what we do in practice. So we kind of wasted. I don't know wasted is not correct, but it was because I didn't have the expertise and you know I'm not trained in mental training and you know I said, oh, you know it was just kind of hit and miss and oh, this is great, this is. You know, I searched Google this and look for this. And oh, let's do this this week.
Speaker 1:And let's do this, maybe like a buffet of different ideas and tools. Yeah, set them out there in front of your athletes and see if something sticks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, like you said, throwing spaghetti at the wall. And you know there were. There were some things that were good, um, but, like I said, there was no organization, there was no pattern, there was no um being prepared. And then you know, your program's kind of broken up into three sections and it's all organized and laid out and you go in an order and it all makes sense, and the players understood, whereas I was like, oh, this week let's talk about this and next week it's totally off the wall somewhere else, and you know they were being polite to me and paying attention but it just really wasn't the same.
Speaker 2:And then, whereas there was just a total transformation this year with the guys, you know, they look forward to every Tuesday, today's class day. Coach, what's it going to be about? You, you know what are we going to talk about. And, uh, we're going to continue talking about what we did last week and or whatever they they were, they got, you know they were excited about it. One know what was going to happen and and then, you know, from tuesday, tuesday they would do hey, coach, you know we talked the other day in practice, in class, and I did that today and you know, whatever, what you know made my free throws or whatever it was. So it was, it was uh. It was just really neat to see the maturing process and to see the guys get excited about about this, because it was organized and it was well thought out and they, they knew that this was serious and they knew the year before. It was just me going up and saying, well, let's talk about whatever.
Speaker 1:I'm glad that you brought up that.
Speaker 1:The players were interested, engaged, involved, saw results from it on the court.
Speaker 1:But you know I I'm thinking back to that very first time, that very first time that you guys had me come down and actually do a focus cycle presentation in person, and Seve almost kind of prepared me like, hey, you're going to have some guys that are not really all in on this, you're going to have you know, he's telling me about this kid that thinks this and you know maybe some parents that think you should be doing something different and almost, almost like, warned me before I got in there and you know one of your, one of your guys that ended up being a pretty big playmaker for you guys this year.
Speaker 1:When I was talking with him about just expectations for the season it was, you could tell he was kind of standoffish a little bit and kind of you know, I don't really, I don't really know what to expect Almost like a. To be honest, it was like talking to a completely different person when I came down there just a couple of weeks ago than it was at the very start of the season, and I know that that didn't happen by accident. Talk to us a little bit about how you got some of those players to buy in and maybe when that light bulb went off that they were like, oh my goodness, this stuff actually works. Like we got to take this serious.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So, like, like you said, when we first started, you know, seve and I we talked a lot and you know I said it's going to be the total buy-in from Seve on down. I said you've got to sell your AD and principal on it. You've got to have parent meetings and sell the parents. It's got to be a total program. And you know, like you said, there I mean you got to be honest there was some questions, there was some hesitations. Up front, people you know said hey, shouldn't the boys be in the gym shooting free throws or whatever?
Speaker 2:And when you're an educator, when you're a coach, you've got to work on the total package. You know, when you're a quarterback in football, yeah, you've got to be really good at knowing where to throw the ball. But you've got to know what the routes are that those wide receivers are running. You've got to know what hole the are that those wide receivers are running. You got to know what, what hole the running back's going to go into. Um, and you, you've got to work on the total package. Um, you can't just show up and play, play a game of basketball without going in the weight room. Yeah, uh, you've got to get physically stronger. You've got to get faster, uh, quicker, uh, and. And you've got to get physically stronger, you've got to get faster, quicker and you've got to be mentally prepared. You know, peyton Manning, how much time you know he probably spent more time in the film room than he did out on the field, and so there's all those components. And being mentally trained not only okay, how do I play defense, how do I shoot, how are my shooting mechanics correct, but you know also, you know how do I guard and watch film and how can I guard, defend this other player on this other team. But you know what do I do when something's not going well. You know, my perception is the referee's having a bad night. He can't make a call. How do I get through that? I missed three free throws in a row. Well, am I going to miss the fourth one because my brain is fried? Or how do I handle all those things?
Speaker 2:You came down and gave a great presentation on the focus cycle and that sold a lot of people in that room, which then carried over and as we went through the season, you could just see things clicking and things. You know, we went our first game of the season by 50 points and it was. It's a rival game that normally would have come down to maybe a last second shot. And the boys walked off the floor and they're all just looking at each other and like, okay, you know, that's, that's, that was pretty cool, and you know. And then they move on and we keep playing and we're 5-0 or whatever. And then we're 6-0. And we play another game that's a big rival game and you know we're doing pretty well and we're winning the game. And the other team makes a run at us that the two years before, when they made that run, we would have folded. And and here you can see the guys they're just different. They're picking each other up. They're talking to themselves, saying their go-to statements, or they're patting each other on the back saying, hey, we got this, we're all right, whereas the two years before they would have been calling each other names or why didn't you pass me the ball? Why did you take that shot? And we ended up winning that game. And it just keeps building. Then we go to a holiday tournament where we're playing three teams that are undefeated in this holiday tournament and we're a 2A school and the one team that wasn't undefeated was a 4A school that played an extremely good schedule and they played our schedule. That would have probably been undefeated. So extremely tough tournament. We win that tournament and the guys just all day. You face adversity through games and through practice and through all that you just see them handling things in what I call the correct way and it's because they were being trained to do things and think about things the right way and it was just a joy to watch him to do that because, you know, obviously winning the games helped. Obviously them being a year or two older helped.
Speaker 2:One of the players had a private conversation with me about his personal life. That had nothing to do with shooting free throws or dunks or whatever, but he said I'm able to deal with some of this because of what we're doing on Tuesdays. He said it's helping me. He said it's still rough, but it's helping me, helping me. He said it's still rough but it's helping me and that, you know, it's kind of, you know, brought a tear to my eye because he was going through some rough stuff and you always want to help them, but he's got to go through it and, uh, he did and and and this helped him and that's. You know, that's the other joyful thing about sports, and what we're kind of talking about here is helping young people to deal with life. I mean, life's just like a basketball, football, baseball game. You're going to have ups and downs and you've got to deal with those ups and you've got to deal with the downs and keep yourself plugging along. So this was really, really helpful.
Speaker 1:I love that and uh, no, I think that that makes it easier to when you can look a parent in the eye and say you know why, why are we, why is my boy in this classroom instead of in the gym shooting free throws or, you know, fill in the blank with whatever else, and it's like.
Speaker 1:Well, because there are these other skills and tools that they need to learn, and not only will it help them be a better basketball player, but it's things that they're going to be able to use for the rest of their life and that's that's powerful, and I'm I'm glad to, I'm glad to hear that Tell us, tell us a little bit about let's go into maybe the logistics of it, because you know when I would say probably the biggest pushback that I get from coaches who are thinking about like, like they know we need to do something intentional about the mental side of the game, and I think you know there's a lot of coaches who just say, hey, go read this book or go listen to this podcast, which I always say is almost like hey, pressure free throws are a really important thing for you to get better at, so why don't you practice that at home on your own or the weight room is really important, you should lift, so you know.
Speaker 1:Find some time on your own to do that, versus we have a limited amount of time together and I'm saying that this 15 minutes spent in the classroom is so important that there's no way we're going to be skipping it. Talk to us a little bit about. I mean there had to have been some questions, especially early on, of is this really worth going back to every single week.
Speaker 2:Yes, there was, and that's something that Seve from the top and he said when we'd have our staff meetings, he said we're doing this and he said it's going to be the most important thing. I don't know how many times we heard this in our staff meetings this is the most important thing that we're doing this year for our program. He stuck to his guns and other coaches all stuck to their guns and then you know so, the players bought in and the parents bought in, because everybody knew that, like you said, every week, sometimes twice a week the logistics thing, you have to sit down and work it out. I mean, we've got, I've got a spreadsheet here up on one of my screens that I'm looking at November the 2nd, november the 16th, whatever we're going to do this, this is what we're going to do that day. And you also have to be flexible because sometimes that 15 minutes is supposed to be on Tuesday and sometimes we had to move it to Wednesday because of game schedule. Basketball, football you play every Friday, but basketball sometimes you play Tuesday or Wednesday, sometimes you play Friday. So you have to adjust that calendar just a little bit and be a little bit flexible. But we had it planned out and knew starting this Tuesday and every Tuesday basically was class day and that 15 minutes it didn't matter. Hey, we want to stay on the court. No, we got to go to the classroom. We're done on the court today. We're going to the classroom. We need to talk about goal setting or whatever the topic was.
Speaker 2:It was just awesome and the kids felt like you were. You know the way you have your program set up. They were all. You know. It changed from. They called me OG, which you can say whatever you think O and the G stand for. But you know, instead of OG, what's class about? It was what's Ben going to talk about today? What's Ben going to do for us today? And then to see the excitement on their faces when you showed up, we didn't tell them you were going to come to the ballgame near the end of the season and then they saw you walk in the gym. Their faces lit up. And then, when you took the time to step in the locker room afterwards, it was like we'd won the sectional championship and we they were jumping up and down and uh, because they got to know you each week and uh, because of the way you had the program set up. So that was cool. That was really cool to see all that happen. Yeah, happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love hearing that. And the the head coach buying in I think is so important and I think there, I think there's also a ton of value in, you know, the head coach, like you said, also has a ton on his plate and I think in my mind there's a ton of value in having someone else like yourself who is able to kind of spearhead this, Because you know, you guys, if I'm honest, you guys even hopped in a little bit late, Like, ideally you would have gone through this program in its completion during the summer, during the offseason, and then, you know, once you got in season, you would have come back to these tools. But you know, you were at where you were at. So there was a, there was a little bit of learning on the fly, there was a little bit of you know, especially as we got toward the end of the season, where you know, where you said, hey, this is coming up, or we just had this experience, or this is how we played against this team, and now we have this team coming up, or we have tournament time is around the corner.
Speaker 1:Now, how do we adjust? What tools do we go back to Talk to us a little bit about. You know, from your perspective, the value of that customization, the value of being able to fine tune this the way you want to. You know, skip around a little bit if needed to go back and talk about things again. Talk to us a little bit about that because you know you, you put time and effort into making sure there was a good plan going into each and every Tuesday yeah, that's like you said, that the head coach obviously has got to buy in, but that doesn't mean the head coach is the one.
Speaker 2:Uh, you know bevy said look, you're this coat, this is your job, take care of it and and that's, you know, to be a bark of a good coach. You know, I, I was, I was short and slow and and so I hired an assistant that knew how to teach post play and I said you teach those guys how to play in the post, I'll teach them how to take it out of bounds or whatever. But and so he said, you figure this out, you know, and do the prep work and be prepared each week. And then it was, you know, my job. I said, okay, this week we're talking about the music class. So you know, I contacted all the coaches. I said give me your favorite you know song from your playlist or whatever. And you know the guys had a great time with that, the players. You know, og listens to that song and that was fun.
Speaker 2:But you try to make it personal. That was, that was fun, but you try to make it personal. You know, you have the class and and the program is set up and organized, but one of the things that I tried to do each week was okay, today we're going to talk about goal setting and I tried to make it personal. You know what I had. These were my goals, and how do you know? You know you have short-term goals and long-term goals and, um, you know you can't just sit down and say, well, we're going to win a state championship, that's our goal. Well, that's a goal, but that's how do you get there? And there's got to be other goals and cause that's all you do is say we're going to win a state champion, it's not going to happen. And so you got to break everything down. You throw in personal little. You know, each Tuesday someone on staff would offer some personal antidote that they could share.
Speaker 2:That was made it personal, and you know the guys oh, yeah, that, oh, I understand that. I get that. That was a big thing in that you've got to have somebody on your staff that's going to push it and make sure it's set up and ready to go. You've got to have some kind of screen to be able to watch the two three-minute videos that you're going to watch, and you've got to run off the worksheets so that they're ready to go. There's a lot of different ways. I could tell you how we did it, but you know it's got to work for your particular situation. But the big thing is you're wasting your time and your money if you just say, well, we're going to buy this program. You know I laughed.
Speaker 2:You said, oh, we'll give the guys a book to read. Well, seve did that. Because guess who did that? When he was a player his high school coach and bought every player on the team a book and said guys, take this home and read it and and you'll be fantastic basketball player. And well, what happened to that book? It went home and got tossed under the bed, or some of them read it.
Speaker 2:I was lucky when I was coaching. I forgot the name of the program, but there was a reading program at the library, librarian at the high school. You could take tests on on books that you read. Okay, and she put that book, she took that book for me and created a test. So I said, okay, you know you smart alex, you go take your test and if, if you don't get a certain score, we'll sit and read the book together. So they all passed their test.
Speaker 2:And but you know this was, it was just, it was just exciting. It really was. But someone's got to take charge of it, someone's got to be there to run the thing. The head coach doesn't have time to do that Now. The head coach has to be excited. You know, seve jumped in with his personal stories, uh, talked about what a jerk his high school coach was and things that he made him do, and uh, and the boys thought that was pretty funny. But, um, you know, it was the, the coach. Probably he's got other stuff on his plate trying to figure out how to be, you know, win the conference championship, um, how to fill out the paperwork the ad and the principal need. Or, you know, make sure the bus is ready to go or whatever it is. But, um, so find, find somebody that you trust and give them the program and follow through with it.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, you and I talked about somebody said, well, we did this on Tuesday and three months later we did it again. Well, that's not going to work. I mean, it's just like shooting free throws. You said you know, if you only shoot free throws on Monday and never shoot a minute, you're not going to make very many, and it's the same. With this. You're training your mind, you're training your body. You've got to train it. Um, we were talking before we came on on live. I had pt this morning and I go to pt every tuesday morning and he runs me through the ringer. But if that's, I don't do anything till next Tuesday. Getting rung through that ringer is a waste of time. Yeah, and so that's we. We, we hit this every Tuesday, but through the rest of the week we would follow up with whatever that particular follow-up needed to be.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a man that's so important. That was, that was one of the things you know. So for me, I was a. I was a teacher and a coach at Westfield for 15 years before stepping away to start doing this full time, and I'll I'll never forget. You know I was. I was speaking with one of the coaches at Westfield and keep in mind I mean, this is my alma mater. Like from a, from a loyalty standpoint, this is where I went to school, it's where my family went, it's where my kids are now going, my wife works in the district, my mom works in the district. You know my brother now works and coaches in the district. It's the only. It's the only. Like I am a shamrock.
Speaker 1:And when it was like you know, is it really okay to go? You know, give this program to potentially our biggest rival. Right down the road, you know, the the head coach at the time was like you have to go, you have to make this available. Like this is, this is too powerful, this is going to change people's lives. Like you can't just hide this under a rock and keep this. You know you, you need to make this available.
Speaker 1:And when I started to bring up you know kind of the awkwardness of well, what if such and such school uses it and they beat you? His reply was well, that's not going to happen because you know in his mind, they have huddle, they have film, they watch film, they're going to break down film better than any other staff that they face. And the same with their practices. Everybody practices. But to win that championship you're going to have to do it a little bit better. And in his mind, the mental performance training was no different. Just having the tool isn't going to magically win you a championship. Using the tool, committing to the tool, bringing it back up throughout the week, the coaches buying in, the players buying in everyone doing it the right way is when you're really going to get the most out of it.
Speaker 1:Let's talk a little bit more about that now Because at the end of the day, like it or not, we are judged as coaches. We're judged on did we win the game or not? And we talked about it at Westfield all the time. On Friday night the whole community is going to come out and they're going to see did I prepare my position group to play at the best of their ability? And we're going to. We're going to see that. So let's let's talk about some of those results that you guys saw, because you had built an entire program. You were training the body, the mind, the, the technique, the schemes on the court. Let's talk about some of those results you guys saw.
Speaker 2:Well, um, what immediately comes to my mind is is at the free throw line as a team. Um, you know, you have a particular class called visualization. I've always believed in and you see things happen. Um, you know, as a coach, I always I visualized how am I going to climb that ladder after we win the sectional and how am I going to cut down that net. And I saw myself doing that, and that's one that.
Speaker 2:That's one of those topics that when you, when you go into that young people, you sit them down and say, okay, you're going to do this, they're going to you're going to get funny looks, you're going to get eye rolls, you're going to they're going to poke through the guy sitting next to him. You know, he's lost his mind. You, you put them in those situations and so guy misses a free throw, you know, and the rest of the team standing on on the baseline and they're all going make it, make it, we don't want to have to run. And he misses it and everybody runs it. But you keep that player that missed the free throw and I say, did you see yourself making that before you shot it? No, coach, I just shot it. Well, why did you not use the tool that we learned. And so let's do it again and close your eyes, shoot the free throw, make it, and so everybody gets on the baseline again.
Speaker 2:You know, and you do different things and you hand the guy the ball and I say, did you make it? Yes, coach, I did. In his mind he made it. Okay, everybody go home, we're not running, he made it and you just do. And you have to train them and over time, and that particular boy that that I'm thinking of right now, he went from a 55% free throw shooter a year ago to an 81 percent free throw shooter this year. Wow, and you know the mental part was a big part. Now, obviously, you know he shot on the gun and you know, and and physically improved, but mentally he walked up. You know when he's going to the free throw line. You know the other team scouting for a year ago was foul him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, it's the fourth quarter fat put him on the foul line yeah and this year it was don't foul him, yeah and um, because he had the mental capability. You know. Now did he still miss a free throw? Yeah, but he made more than he missed, and a year ago that wasn't the case, and but it just takes daily, daily practice, um, of whatever this, that skill is and that's the one that really sticks out to me is is seeing his improvement and there were things across the board that were were that way for us. You know a lot of it was. You know again, how do you treat your teammates, how do you react to you know you get a bad call. It drove me bananas to to watch our boys a year ago when they would a call would go against them and their, their reactions, and this year I can't say a hundred percent, but you know, for this year it was like we had basketball players because things are going to happen. You know the guy's going to blow his whistle and you're going to disagree with the call. Well, you're not going to change the call. So how do you deal with it? You're going to miss a free throw. How do you deal with it?
Speaker 2:There's a session talking about preparing for practice. Session talking about preparing for practice. Guys would say, god, coach, I didn't really think about you know, I need to do this spot while I'm in the locker room before coming out to practice. And I'm like really didn't think about that before. And no, I didn't I. I just I got out of algebra class and went and changed my into my basketball shoes and came out and ready to play hoops and I was like, well, no wonder you played like you did last year. So again, it's just teaching them. You can't take anything for granted and you've got to go through everything and teach it and just reteach it and if you don't, it's not going to happen. And that's again.
Speaker 2:I felt like with this program it was such a good thing because of the organization, because sometimes you know when you're playing three games in a week as a coach, you get caught up in. Okay, do I have the game plan? Is this? You know what are we going to do to prepare for this team? And you still have to do that specific preparation. But really playing Team X is no different than playing Team Y as far as your general preparation. It's doing all those things your mental and physical, making yourself get better every day and then you throw in the little specific things of okay, this team plays zone, so we have to practice our zone offense a little more. Zone, so we have to practice our zone offense a little more. But the big things that you know, like I said, visualizing making the free throw, you got to do that every day, yeah. Um. Creating your teammate right, you got to do that every day, um, or it doesn't work yeah, and and you have to, you have to reinforce the skills.
Speaker 1:They can't just live in a notebook. They can't just live in a notebook. They can't just live in a classroom on a Tuesday. You have to have that conversation as the coach of hey, you know you had this plan. It doesn't look like you used this plan. Why didn't you use that? Why didn't you do that? And you teach them how to do that. You hold them accountable to.
Speaker 1:Are you using these things that we're talking about? I mean, it's no different than if you have a film session and then you point out these things but you never practice those things, you never talk about them again. I mean, you're not really getting a ton out of that. You gotta come back to some of those things and I think it can be difficult. As coaches like you brought up, you know we can sometimes. We can just expect that players should know things. I know we were.
Speaker 1:We were joking on the on the front end of this episode about you having a little more life experience than me. Um, but I I'm certainly. I am no longer the young coach in the locker room and on a high school football team for sure, and I'm guilty of you know there's times where I've been in football you know I've been coaching football longer than most of these guys have been alive that I just assume. Well, you should know this and you should do this. And I know we talked about the, the music module, for example.
Speaker 1:You know that that's usually one that it's like if you got a trim one, if you don't have 19 sessions, you know, do we, you know, maybe get rid of that one? But you, you guys came back and you were like this was this was one of their absolute favorites. And you know, being able to use media to to get your mood, your emotions right, to be able to control physical energy, kind of build that up, heading to a game, not get too hyped up ahead of time, uh, it's, it's just so important. So here we are, you're on the back end of this season as you look back and you reflect on kind of the season as the whole, maybe some of the things that you were able to accomplish, not accomplish, and then you start to look at moving ahead into the future. What are some of your thoughts, kind of wrapping this up, as you reflect back on the season?
Speaker 2:Well, one thing, like you mentioned earlier, we jumped into this a little bit later than what we would have liked to. It ended up being a positive, but we still feel like overall, it was a negative that we were rushed a little bit, and so one of the things that we've already discussed is we're going to revisit the modules and kind of do the program again, not as a review for the returning players, but we'll have new players coming in that weren't directly. They were at your beginning of the year when you came and did that first program.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But they were in middle school they were doing, and now they're in high, they're going to be part of the high school team, so everything will be new to them as far as the entire program. So we're going to start earlier. Spend it won't be as rushed uh. Spend, uh, it won't be as rushed uh. And and then and then what's we anticipate will happen is the guys, the returning players, are going to be doing some of the teaching. You know, now we're going to see that carryover and they're going to. They're going to talk about when we talk about fmr. You know the they're gonna go. Hey, man, I did this before every free throw, uh, or I did this before the game and it really worked. And those, those young guys, are gonna go. Oh well, if he's doing that, I'm gonna do to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's where it's not just some old guy like us telling them to do it. It's like oh, the starter, the star on the high school basketball team, uses this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So that's where we think it's going to be more powerful this next year, because we'll reinforce it with the older guys, but they're going to push that onto the younger guys and we'll see that and everybody's just going to be more enthusiastic about it. So that's where we think it's going to go, and, as we revisit that and bring everybody further along, it's just going to be even more powerful.
Speaker 1:I know beforehand, tom. We were talking about some of the accomplishments that you guys were able to achieve as a team. Talk to us just a little bit about how the season unfolded and what that looked like this year.
Speaker 2:We were obviously hoping we would be better, thought we would be better, and we actually had an eight-game improvement over the regular, over the total season. We had a 10-game improvement from the last year in wins and coming into the season, you know, as as coaches you always play the game, you know well, I think we'll win 15 games or I think we'll win 18 games, or I think we'll win 10 games, whatever the game is that year. And you know so, this year we, we, we were I think 13 and 11 a year ago and a year ago and we thought, you know, we'll win 16, 17 games. We're physically good enough to do that. If this mental training program works, that'll help us win those 16, 17 games. Win that holiday tournament, which was one of our immediate goals. And you know're we start the year off. We're not even ranked in any of the polls, um and and that. We know we're starting to get ranked and we're moving. You know we're ninth, we're seventh, we're fifth.
Speaker 2:So we come back from that holiday tournament and we have the county tournament, which is a big deal for South Ripley and obviously all the four county schools. It's a big deal. We win that within a two-week span. You know, I'm starting to think, okay, this stuff's working. And now, you know, as a coaching staff, we're instead of talking about how do we deal with adversity. Another part of adversity is the positive stuff. You know, hey, we're ranked number five in the state. Whoopee, we're pretty good. We've just won the holiday tournament. We just won the county tournament. Whoopee, we're pretty good. You know, but how do you deal with that? So now we move on and we continue to win. The guys just keep plugging and we get to 19-0, and we're ranked number one in the state by now at this time in Class 2A. It was just one of those perfect storms we lost, so we're 19-1.
Speaker 2:And then we come back. The next game played really really well. I mean, the guys were like, okay, we just we didn't handle things last week really well, let's get back to doing what we were doing. And we focused in and finished the season really well. We had to go on the road to the co-favorite, the sectional. The sectional was on their court. It was a big game. We beat them with less than a second to go. We beat them during the regular season to win the conference.
Speaker 2:So now we have to go play them on their floor for the sectional championship and we get off to a good start. We're playing well, we've got a lead. They make a run at us basketball's game of runs and, okay, are we going to handle this year? Before we would have folded, we never would have won that game. Um, we had um like a would have won that game. We had like a 12-point lead. They cut it to five with the ball and we get a stop. We go long story short, we end up winning by 15 and cut down the nets at the sectional and you know all these things being sectional champion, conference champion, county tourney champion, the holiday tournament champion, ranked number one in the state in class 2A the community support just grew and grew and grew for the team.
Speaker 2:It was just really, really exciting to see all this happen for these guys. We, as a coaching staff, felt like physically, they could have done this the year before, but we weren't there, we weren't the complete package and we felt like this year we had the complete package, physically and mentally, to get the job done and they just they proved that week in and week out and that's it was just. It was just a really exciting year. You know, the wins were fantastic. Those trophies and nets were exciting, but to see those young men grow and mature mentally was even more exciting. Mentally was even more exciting.
Speaker 2:And that's, you know, the the wins. They're fun, you know, gives you something to talk about. But what you're really talking about is what you mentioned earlier to see those young people to grow and know that they're gonna have the tools to go out and be. You know, in our, our case, we're working with young men, so hopefully they're going to have the tools to go out and be. You know, in our, our case, we're working with young men, so hopefully they're going to be good husbands and good fathers and and productive in whatever occupation they want to spend 40 years of their life doing. I just feel really blessed and thankful that we were able to give those boys some tools that are going to help them for the next 40 to 50 years.
Speaker 1:What thoughts would you have? You know, maybe, if a coach is sort of on the fence about, you know, do we do this, do we not do this? Is it worth the time, is it worth the money? You know, what thoughts would you have for a coach that's maybe in that spot?
Speaker 2:I would tell them don't hesitate, Write the check, Figure it out. Don't hesitate, write the check, figure it out. But if you really want to be good, if you want to walk the walk that you're talking um, do it.
Speaker 1:So the the last question I always love to ask guests is knowing what you know now. If you could go back and tell a younger version of yourself just maybe one piece of advice that that first year coach, what would it be?
Speaker 2:Enjoy it. Enjoy it more, enjoy it more. It's too easy to get caught up in the negatives. You know I'm going to throw this out there and I'm going to sound like that old guy, but I do feel bad for the young coaches. Um, because of the things that they hear and see and their families go through now that those things were there when I was young, but I didn't have to hear it and see it because there wasn't the social media and so I didn't have to deal with it. I could, I could, and they have to learn how to not deal with it or to deal with it. Whatever they're going to do, but enjoy it. Enjoy it and find the positives in whatever it is, because you know, even when you lose, those players didn't want to lose, they were trying to win for you, and so find those positives, correct the negatives, but enjoy it. Enjoy it and you'll be a lot happier.
Speaker 1:Love that Well, tom. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us today and just talk a little bit about your experience. Congratulations on a on an outstanding year and best of luck to you guys in the future moving forward.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much, Ben. Always a pleasure.
Speaker 1:If you have questions, want to reach out? Head on over to mentaltrainingplancom. Click on the contact us button at the bottom. Would love to have a conversation about how we could help you individually or your entire team. And, until next time, make your plan and put it to work.