Playing the Bench - The hardest position on any team

This is a great little reminder for those who find themselves outside the starting 9 at this important time of year.  Keep perspective!

You make all of the practices regardless of how crappy you're feeling. They, on the other hand, don't show up if they have a hangnail! Most days you're the first one at training and the last one to leave. They often come late and leave early. You never dog it or cut corners. Ask any of the coaches and they'll tell you that they can always count on you giving everything 100%. They frequently slow down when the coach isn't looking and look for ways to avoid the hard work. You maintain a positive attitude regardless of how brutal a practice is and they whine and moan that the practice is too hard. You consistently outwork many of your other teammates while they seem to just go through the motions.

 So answer a few questions for me. Why is it that the coaches consistently start these guys in front of me? How unfair is that? Why is it that when they make mistakes in games, the coaches leave them in and the instant that I even mess up a little, I get yanked?!!!!

Are the coaches that blind that they don’t see my work ethic in relation to these other guys? Doesn’t my commitment and attitude mean anything to them? Sure these guys may be a just a little bit better than me, (sometimes not even!), but all things considered, don’t I deserve more of a shot than I’m being given?

Whether rightly deserved or not, “playing” the bench is the hardest role on a team to manage. As a result, very few athletes handle it well. A “role player” has to work just as hard as everyone else, has to sacrifice just as much, yet he/she never seems to get any of the playing time “goodies.” It’s a discouraging and de-motivating position to be in and therefore, quite easy to fall into the negativity trap. i.e. “This sucks and what’s the point in trying?” This is just like a class where you have to bust your butt in a tough subject and no matter how hard you work you only pull C’s, while the bright kid who never does a lick of homework or any of the readings, pulls A’s!

So what to do? You may not like your role on the team. You may not think it’s fair. It may NOT be fair! However, your job is to try to conduct yourself as a champion. Continue to work your butt off! Continue to do everything in your power to get as good as possible! Continue to maintain a positive, “team first” attitude! Try to play your “support” role to the very best of your ability. You may not get a chance this season to make a difference. You may even have to wait until you play for another coach. However, don’t let the coach’s not playing you, get to you. Just because the coach seemingly doesn’t believe in you enough to give you more PT, doesn’t mean that you should buy into his/her assessment of you. Keep on keeping on. Keep on working hard. Keep focused on your dream.

MOST IMPORTANT, stay focused on WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL. As an athlete, you do NOT have direct control over your playing time. You can work hard, have a good attitude, etc. and that will increase the chances that you’ll improve and get more PT. However, it doesn’t guarantee it! You also don’t have any control over the behaviors of the kids starting in front of you. They may be sloths, goof-offs or “team dividers.” You can’t control what they do or who they are. Instead, keep your focus on YOU and what YOU can control in the situation that you find yourself in. Stay positive! Be a good team player and play your role like a champion!

Seize the Limitation

Phil Hansen: Embrace the Shake

This is a fantastic TED talk video that was recommended to me by a Coaching Colleague.  I love to hear stories about people who have overcome incredible barriers.   Your challenge for today...what is the limitation in your own life that you need to embrace?

Enjoy. Be Driven. Be Challenged! 

Undaunted

Some times we need a little perspective.  Love this Story!

Rick R Reilly

Josh Ruchotzke has not let the ravages of a near-deadly infection keep him off the baseball field. About 20 people lost limbs in the Boston Marathon bombings. Now they're swimming in that soup of phantom pain and real fear of what their future holds.  Boy, do I have a kid for them.

His name is Josh Ruchotzke. He's 18. And he's one of the better hitters on the Farmington (Ill.) High School varsity baseball team.

Why does Josh matter? Because he's basically doing it all without legs or hands.

Wait! Kill the violins! This isn't some we-keep-him-on-the-team-because-we-feel-sorry-for-him story! The only people you want to feel sorry for are the pitchers who have to face him.

Josh is the starting second baseman. He's hitting around .300. You don't believe a kid with four amputations (and two new hips) could be that good?  You're not the only one.

Back in March, he came to the plate in the first inning, batting second as always, with Batzilla strapped to his left arm. (That's the custom-molded strap-slash-bat he wears on his left wrist that allows him to swing, since he's got no left hand and the nubs of only a few fingers on his right hand.) He dug his two carbon-fiber legs into the box and got ready.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" the Jacksonville High School coach asked the ump. "What's that thing on his hand?!?"

Ruchotzke's coach, Josh Putrich, ran over, pulled the coach aside, and explained it all:

It was 2008. Josh was 13. He started feeling sick. Temp of 105. Mom thought he had the flu. Turns out streptococci bacteria was in his bloodstream. He was being eaten alive. Organs were shutting down. Blood flow to his extremities had stopped. His doctor said: "He's got a 5 percent chance of living through this."  It was a bomb, only it was going off inside.

"We had five minutes and then they took him in to amputate," his mom, Angie, recalls. They took both legs below the knee, all of his left hand but the pad, all his fingers on the right but three finger nubs, and all of his right thumb but the last half inch.

Did quadruple amputations stop Josh Ruchotzke? Please. All his life, Josh knew his life path: Play all the way through the major leagues, then become a major league general manager. When he came out of the anesthetic fog, none of that changed.

"Mom," he said. "No matter what happens, I HAVE to play baseball again."

First, he had to learn to walk again (two months). Then close his hand again (four months). Then run again. Catch again (thanks to a custom-made glove sent to him by Rawlings.) Swing again. Make the team again.

"Oh, I tested him," says Putrich. "Over and over. He had to be able to hit. He had to have range. And he did. He's been one of our best players all year long."

Remember that Jacksonville coach? At the end of that game, he ran over to Josh's dad, took him by the shoulders and said with tears in his eyes, "Your son is a God-given gift. A gift!"  Maybe. But maybe the gift is a prosthetics builder in Denver named Chris Jones who designed Batzilla at a cost of $6,000 and then gave it to Ruchotzke for free.

Maybe the gift is parents who are up to their haircuts in debt and yet continue to run through fire to allow Josh to chase his dreams.

Rick Reilly:  Ruchotzke willed himself back to the diamond.

Maybe the gift is opposing coaches who don't say boo about a kid running to first with a bat strapped to his wrist. Or a school that doesn't freak out about insurance liabilities. Or opposing players who suddenly realize the kid playing second doesn't have hands or legs and yet still try to beat his brains in.

"Wait, he doesn't have any legs?" asked Princeville High School pitcher Brody Noonen on Wednesday after Farmington's 8-6 win, highlighted by Josh's 360-degree spin in the hole. "Really?"  His pants cover up his plastic legs and he runs so well on them, only his teammates know. "They make fun of the way they squeak," Josh says.

Come to think of it, maybe the gift is Josh himself, especially to all those people lying in Boston hospitals right now who might read this and decide not to throw away their hockey skates after all.
"I don't worry about the people in Boston," Josh says. "Because I know they're going to be all right. If I could, I'd tell them, 'It sucks what you're going through, but don't give up what you want to do in life. Just because this happened to you, doesn't mean you have to change.'"

Josh hasn't. He's not going to play college baseball, but he's going to be a part of it, as a manager at Vanderbilt, thanks to his friend, St. Louis Cardinals center fielder Matt Holliday, whose brother used to coach there. Holliday can't believe the same gauze-covered kid he visited in a Denver hospital five years ago is starring in high school today.

"In the major leagues, we worry about our batting average and results and trying to achieve this and that," Holliday says. "But then I think about Josh and what he's gone through to play baseball again. He amazes me. And it reminds me why I loved this game in the first place."

FROM ESPN: http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/9250670/inspiration-boston-bombing-victims

How bad do you want it? pt 2

How bad do you want it?

 

Great Motivational Video, and a couple new training ideas ;)

NEVER!

 

Teamwork is...

 

 

video courtesy of K. Watt

Thankfulness

Thanksgiving is coming up and it provides a great time for reflection.  It is so important to be thankful for all that we have (especially as Canadians).  So often we can get caught up in a cycle of complaining and negativity.  This cycle can sabotage an athlete's progress and be extremely detrimental for a team. 

Back when I was in University, our softball team took a spring trip to Cuba to play their national team for a week in preparation for our season.  I can remember how excited I was to play them as I had seen them a couple years earlier when they were playing at the Pan Am Games in Winnipeg.  They were very skilled and certainly know how to have a lot of fun...but the really remarkable thing is how they survive and excel with so little.

We played all of our games at their "National Training Centre" where all of their national team athletes from every sport train and many live there.  Although the setting was beautiful (ball diamond on the ocean) these players have little equipment or tools to help them perform and their training centre is arachaic and horribly run down.  About half of the team had cleats.  They only had a couple helmets and if they had 3 baserunners, one of them had to give their helmet to the batter.  They had the most ancient bats I've ever seen.  Their ball diamond was rough and there were more than a few holes in the field.  Yet they were so happy and upbeat and so skilled.  In spite of their lack of resources, Cuba still manages to compete on the international scene.

That trip was an incredibly impactful one for me.  It is so important for us to face every day with a grateful spirit and not give in to negative thoughts and feelings.  I see it far too often where athletes find excuses for why they can't attend training, why they can't train hard, why they can't hit the ball harder, why they can't dive or run hard, or why they don't have enough energy.   The list goes on and on.  The reality is that we live in such a priviledged nation and have so many opportunities and resources available to us.  Go out and seize them with a grateful heart!

~ H

haha

Baaaahahahaaaa....so true!

say no more....