Audrey LeClair, DO †

Emergency Medicine PGY-2 | If you're going to put your name on something it better be your best work. Keith LeClair #23 #StrikeOutALS

[Audrey LeClair, DO † @audreyleclair23]

I was 7 years old when my life was forever changed. No more kids deserve to lose loved ones to ALS. I have lost my dad, my Grammy, & my Aunt Sharlene to this disease...ALS your time is up! #23 #ALSAwarenessMonth #UntilTheresACure

[ECU Baseball @ECUBaseball]

See y'all later tonight 🏴‍☠️

[Stephen Igoe @StephenIgoe]

Cliff Godwin: "Look, this team has had its back against the wall all year. We've been playing playoff baseball for the last two weeks. There's not anybody sitting up here, or wearing an East Carolina uniform, that's worried or scared."

[NCAA Baseball @NCAABaseball]

PIRATES SAIL TO VICTORY 😎

@ECUBaseball outlasts Tennessee through 14 innings and wins 7-3!

#RoadToOmaha x 🎥 ESPNU

[Jacob Rudner @JacobRudner]

Mercer missing the field is bad for college baseball.

If a mid-major can win 44 games, finish top 30 in RPI, rank among the national leaders in homers and still miss, what exactly is the path supposed to be outside the power conferences?

Column: https://t.co/S37EUPSVzn

[ECU Baseball @ECUBaseball]

Coach at the 9:25am meeting:

"When we win and dogpile, I'll be right in there with you"

Coach at 3:10pm ⬇️

Man of his word 😂

[VMI Athletics @VMIAthletics]

ICYMI: @VMIbaseco’s Bradley Garner played all three games against WCU over the weekend, ran the Boston Marathon yesterday in honor of his late father and to help bring awareness to Alzheimer’s disease, and is back in the lineup tonight against Longwood 💪

#RahVaMil | #VMIBaseCo

[ECU Baseball @ECUBaseball]

23 tonight 🤟🏼🏴‍☠️

[ECU Baseball @ECUBaseball]

Picture perfect night, literally

[ECU Baseball @ECUBaseball]

Year long bragging rights are on the line between @DavinWhitaker and @GBeschloss91385. Get your vote in for the 2026 Mustache March Champion!

Join us in our movement to help provide support, spread awareness, and bring hope to those facing ALS
🔗- https://t.co/lcND6d3XF2

[ECU Baseball @ECUBaseball]

Our Mustache March Final Four voting opens at 11am.

Mustache March is coming to a close and every donation you make helps go towards our fight against ALS🔗-https://t.co/lcND6d3XF2

[Stephen Igoe @StephenIgoe]

Final few days of Mustache March to support ECU baseball in its fight to strikeout ALS.

Donate today!

https://t.co/7RPEZG30my

[ECU Baseball @ECUBaseball]

Back-to-back run rule wins to start the week 🤟🏴‍☠️

[ECU Baseball @ECUBaseball]

Mustache March is off and running!

All donations go towards helping our efforts to strikeout ALS.

🔗- https://t.co/lcND6d4vuA

[Left Field Lunatics @LeftFldLunatic]

Enjoyed hearing @mattstillwell share some stories about Keith on broadcast. Particularly liked him rolling into the weight room, not saying a word to the team, ripping out 225x15 on incline, then leaving.

@audreyleclair23 your dad was a badass. WCU & ECU lucky to have had him

[Stephen Igoe @StephenIgoe]

It's officially Mustache March.

ECU baseball is once again raising money to Strikeout ALS in honor of Keith LeClair, and the many people this terrible disease has impacted.

Donate today to a great cause to help the Pirates reach their goal!

https://t.co/7RPEZG30my

[ECU Baseball @ECUBaseball]

Very special first pitches today 🤟

[Barstool Sports @barstoolsports]

This gold medal was brought to you courtesy of the red, white, and blue

[Steve Magness @stevemagness]

Team USA just won its first Olympic hockey gold in 46 years.

On February 22. The exact anniversary of the Miracle on Ice.

Forget the storybook narrative for a second.

What happened today is a masterclass in what performance science teaches us about pressure, identity, and legacy.

Consider the pressure this team was under.
They walked into today carrying 46 years of near misses.

The US hadn't won Olympic gold since 1980.

They lost the gold medal game in 2002 and 2010...both times to Canada. Last year at the 4 Nations tournament, Canada beat them in overtime. That loss was still raw.

The 1980 hero, Mike Eruzione, was in the building. He told the players before the game: "It's just a hockey game."

It wasn't. And everyone knew it.

Canada outshot the US 41-26.

They dominated the second and third periods.

Nathan MacKinnon missed an open net. Macklin Celebrini had a breakaway and couldn't convert. Devon Toews had Hellebuyck beaten and somehow the puck stayed out. Then Charlie McAvoy cleared a puck off the goal line with his glove.

This was not a dominant performance. It was a team surviving enormous pressure and refusing to break. That distinction matters.

How does a team perform under that kind of weight? It starts with the environment the coach creates.

Mike Sullivan is now the only American-born coach to win multiple Stanley Cups AND Olympic gold.

When he took over the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2015, the team was loaded with talent — Crosby, Malkin, Letang — and completely broken. His description: "There was a dark cloud over the locker room."

His first move wasn't a new system or a motivational speech. It was a reframe.

He told the team: "There are certain things in life we can control and certain things we can't. We needed to focus on the things that we could control and not dedicate any cognitive resources or worry to things we couldn't control."

The team adopted a two-word motto: "Just play."

Six months later, they won the Stanley Cup. Tonight, he helped USA do it again on the biggest stage in the world.

Sullivan builds what he calls a "safe zone for learning."

His video review sessions are explicitly NOT about blame.

"We don't want a player walking into our video room on eggshells worried about 'Am I going to be in the film? Is Coach going to yell at me?' It's a game of mistakes. Our responsibility is to learn from them."

His guiding principle from his college coach:

"Before players want to know what you know, they want to know that you care."

It's the difference between compliance and buy-in. Buy-in wins championships.

Research backs up Sullivan.

Fear-based environments don't produce peak performance. Especially when pressure is already high...

They produce anxiety, risk-aversion, and choking.

When people feel psychologically safe — when they know mistakes won't be weaponized against them — they take smarter risks, recover faster from errors, and perform better under pressure.

We could see it in how Sullivan framed this moment in the weeks before the game.

"What an incredible opportunity we have in front of us."

Not a burden or expectation...Opportunity.

He took the unusual step for a hockey team and kept the team in the Olympic Village instead of a hotel.

His reasoning: "The Village is part of the experience."

The Hughes brothers roomed together. The Tkachuk brothers roomed together.

He didn't try to ignore or isolate them from the pressure. He was embedding them in it, together.

And then there's the guy who scored the goal.

Jack Hughes came into the Olympics injured, underperforming, slotted on the fourth line.

Sullivan moved him up mid-tournament because, as he put it, "We thought by moving him and getting him more ice time, he could impact the game more."

Hughes's response: "I believe in myself more than anyone. Wherever I was slotted coming into this thing, I knew I was going to play well."

A coach who believed in him when results said otherwise. A player who believed in himself when the lineup said otherwise.

Then two teeth got cracked in half by a high stick in the third period. And he scored the golden goal anyway.

Everyone's going to remember this as the night the US ended a 46-year drought.

On the anniversary. In overtime. Against Canada.

But the real lesson is quieter than that.

The environment you create determines the performance you get. A safe zone for learning. A focus on controllables. Relationships built on care, not fear. Pressure reframed as opportunity.

That's what it looks like when a team is ready, with the right environment and support to tackle the ghosts of history.

They built a culture where a team could survive 41 shots and a kid with two broken teeth could score the biggest goal of his life.

The 1980 Miracle was about belief overcoming talent. Today was different.

Today was talent, preparation, identity, and 46 years of accumulated hunger arriving at the same moment.

-Steve

[Front Office Sports @FOS]

46 years to the day of the Miracle on Ice, the U.S. men's hockey team beats Canada in OT to win Olympic gold.

[Sports Illustrated @SInow]

THE GOLDEN MOMENT!!!!

(via @NBCOlympics)