Alex Morgan reveals she didn’t start playing club soccer until 13 years old, and says parents today who start elite training for their kids at 7 years old shouldn’t be surprised when they burnout before their senior year
“I didn’t make the jump from rec soccer to club, youth club soccer until I was 13 years old. People are flabbergasted by that because they’re starting their kids at like seven years old now.”
“I will not be having my daughter in youth club soccer at seven years old. I just don’t think that you need to really suck the fun out of it and be training multiple times a week with games on the weekend every weekend and traveling both in and out of the state at that age.”
“My experience was a little bit different because I chose to play on my city rec AYSO soccer team for many years. My parents were like, ‘When you are ready to make the jump, you’re ready to make the jump.’ And I did.”
“I propelled after that, getting on the youth national team and getting scouted for college. But I was definitely late to the game, and now it would be unheard of.”
“My parents just didn’t put that pressure on me. The jump was then a 45-minute drive to training, doing homework on the way, homework on the way home, getting home late. It was a bigger commitment, and I needed to be ready for that. And I wasn’t until the age of 13. When I came onto the scene, yes, I was late to the game a little bit.”
“I had to find the team where the coaches accepted me and saw the growth potential rather than being like, ‘This is a waste of my time now.’ Going on the youth national team, I was definitely one of the more raw players. My technique was not necessarily up to speed with some of those players that had been playing for many years before me at a higher level.”
“But also, some of those players ended up just having burnout in college or didn’t end up making it to the 20s or the senior national team. Because they didn’t have maybe the motivation or the drive that I had because I decided my path rather than anyone else.”
Billy Cosh - HC, Stony Brook
Practice with purpose.
Coach Cosh teaches four simple rules that define his practice culture: communicate with your side, be on time, play hard, and eliminate pre-snap penalties.
Great teams don't just practice hard. They practice the right way.
Egypt forgot how to build the pyramids.
Rome forgot how to build the aqueducts. Some still carry water today. What they built still stands. Neither civilization remembers how they did it.
Musk: “You look at great civilizations like ancient Egypt, and they were able to make the pyramids, and they forgot how to do that.”
Musk: “And the Romans, they built these incredible aqueducts. They forgot how to do it.”
No army invaded them. The knowledge just stopped getting used, and the moment it did, it was gone.
Same collapse. Compressed into fifty years instead of a thousand.
Musk: “In 1969, we were able to send somebody to the moon… Then the space shuttle retired, and the United States could take no one to orbit.”
Musk: “People are mistaken when they think that technology just automatically improves… it will, by itself, degrade.”
Capability doesn’t sit in a vault. It only exists inside the people doing the work right now.
The second they stop, it doesn’t pause.
It disappears.
That should not scare you. It should focus you.
Nobody loses a civilization to war. They lose it the moment they stop building.
Nobody is owed the future. It belongs to whoever keeps building it.
Nick Saban on why adversity isn't the obstacle - it's the requirement.
🎯Most people treat adversity like a detour. Something to avoid. Something to survive until conditions improve.
Saban sees it differently.
"Life is difficult. This camp will be difficult. But you have to overcome adversity if you're going to have a chance to be successful in your life."
Not might have to. Have to.
You're going to have to earn it. Listen to his next line.
"There can be no great victories in your life unless you can overcome adversity. You can't be a great competitor unless you can overcome adversity."
No great victories.
📌That's not a motivational line. That's a law.
And here's the part most people miss:
"That's mental. It has nothing to do with physical ability."
Physical ability is given. Mental toughness is built. And the only way to build it is to go through something hard - and choose not to quit.
The adversity isn't in the way. The adversity is the way.
You don't find out who you are when things are easy.
You find out when they're hard and you keep going anyway.
Great victories don't come without great resistance.
That's not a coincidence - it's by design.
Nick Saban - Responsibility as Coaches
- "Leadership is all about helping someone for their benefit. If you're helping them for your benefit, that's manipulation."
- "If you just think drawing up plays, running pass patterns, playing defenses, playing Cover 7, Cover 4 and running this blitz or that blitz and that's about winning... It's about getting the players to buy in to the accountability that it takes for them to be successful & for them to be accountable to the other players on the team."
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Talent gets you there.
Process keeps you there.
Nick Saban said it best:
“You must focus on the things that have made us good all season long.”
Championship teams don't chase the moment.
They live the process.
🎥 Watch the clip.
"Great players come ready to play with the right approach every day.
The wins are a byproduct of the foundation of what your program is about."
Wins don’t come first.
Discipline does.
Accountability does.
Consistency does.
Winning is just the result of great habits.