All aspiring leaders can learn from Oakland @Athletics Manager Mark Kotsay on the power of zooming out, navigating criticism, and understanding the filter between perception and reality:
📆 A day doesn't define you. Neither does a game, a season, a week, a month, or even a year. What defines your trajectory is how you respond to those moments.
Don't put too much weight on individual days. Focus on decades. Work with the intention of becoming the coach, athlete, leader, or person you want to be 10 years from now, not 10 minutes from now. And trust the process enough to stay steady through both the peaks and the valleys. Success and failure are not destinations. They're simply data points along the journey.
📰 Critics are a fixed cost of ambition. The more people you impact, the more opinions you'll attract. That's not a sign you're doing something wrong. It's often evidence you're doing something meaningful. Since judgment is inevitable, you might as well pursue work that matters to you.
🔬 Most criticism comes from people who only see the performance, not the preparation. They see the 1% that happens on game day. They don't see the 99% of work, sacrifice, discipline, and repetition that made it possible. That's why you can't let perception outweigh reality. Stay rooted in the truth of your process. Refine it. Master it. Build systems strong enough to withstand inevitable setbacks and stretches of adversity.
The noise will always be there. Your job is not to silence it. Your job is to become so focused on the work that it fades into irrelevance.
Zoom out. Focus in. 🔭
Play a game so big and pursue growth so relentlessly that the opinions from the cheap seats no longer matter. The best response to criticism has never been an argument. It's becoming so successful you forgot they said anything to begin with.
Recap from last week’s conference meet. Let’s start with O’Neal and his 4 inch PR in the high jump! Conference champ and now tied for the school record! 🏆
Ethan Payne is a prospect to know in Minnesota's 2029 class! Highlights of the 6'6 post prospect running with Minnesota Select 15u @EthanPayne2029@mn_select
Mark Few explains the process Gonzaga uses to work on mental toughness and adversity.
"We spend probably 25-30% of the athlete's time now on mental."
Then he explained what that looks like: "We do this thing called PGMs - Personal Growth Mondays."
"We start every Monday with this Personal Growth Monday. Staff, myself, coaches aren't allowed in there. It's just the players and Travis Knight, our strength coach and mental coach."
They invest the time every week. You can't let the mental game be an afterthought.
"They can dive into a myriad of anything that's currently happening or that they've requested...Processing pressure. Processing expectations. Lack of confidence. Hitting adversity. Handling success."
The best teams train the mind, the body, and develop the person.
Your mind is affected by your daily thoughts, habits and unconscious biases.
Mental fitness helps you build resilience and thrive.
Without investing time in mental fitness, managing stress, anxiety, and challenges becomes harder.
(🎥 Walker Webcast)
John Thompson kept a deflated basketball on his office desk. He always told his players:
“ A basketball is useless without 9 lbs of air. Do you want to pin your future on 9 lbs of air. Make sure when basketball is over, you have your degree. Get an Education. “
@HoopsWeiss @dandakich@TimBrando@DickieV@SethOnHoops@DanWolken@NILnotNLI
Before he got to Michigan, Dusty May started working with a former high school principal and education expert who has studied the cognitive science behind high-performing teachers.
It speaks to a larger idea: the benefits of coaching like a teacher. https://t.co/Bw1ksSCOmz
Students who took notes by hand scored ~28% higher on conceptual questions than laptop note-takers.
Writing forces your brain to process and compress ideas instead of copying them.
2025-26 March Madness Scouting Series is live!
18+ hours of full video scouting reports breaking down personnel and actions from EVERY team in the NCAA Tournament:
https://t.co/8VSH1bK9Cm