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Playing on the AVP Tour. If you get distracted during a game, the other team scores. If you get distracted during practice, you miss something important and maybe make yourself or your team have to run it through again. So we learn to focus. To focus when something is on the line. To focus when there are distractions everywhere. It's one of the great things sport teaches us. Then someone asks us: "What are you going to do when sport ends?" You know what that is? A distraction

After sport, a lot of us start looking for replacements. "I need something competitive. "I need a team." "I need another passion." "I need something that gives me the same rush." It makes sense. We miss something we had, so naturally we go looking for another version of it. When asked why we are looking for these things, our response is often… Well, I used to be an athlete. But does that really answer the question? To the person asking, sure. But to ourselves? Probably not. W

As athletes, we're given a lot of hard things to do. And for many of us, doing hard things is actually pretty motivating. But when we transition out of sport, we're given an almost impossible assignment without even realizing it: Go find your passion. There's just one problem. We already know what deep passion feels like. News flash: I know what I'm passionate about. I love, love, love playing volleyball at a really high level. Newer news flash... I can't do it anymore. (For

One thing I’ve noticed after talking with athletes over the years is how many of us believe we have to become someone new once sport ends. I understand why. Life looks different. The rules change. The scoreboard disappears. But I’m not convinced the answer is reinventing ourselves. I think we need to build on the person we’ve already spent years becoming. Sport shaped us in countless ways, and many of the things it developed in us become tremendous advantages beyond sport. Th

Recently, I had conversations with two former athletes who were both trying to figure out what came next. On the surface, their situations couldn’t have been more different. One had built the career they thought they wanted after graduation but was now questioning whether they were even in the right field. The other never planned on becoming a coach. They fell into coaching after graduation, started building a career, and eventually realized it wasn’t the long-term fit they e

Just a quick reminder: confidence wasn't magic. It was built inside an environment designed to help us grow.

Why athletes need a system for building a career after sport.

Former athletes, modern work, and the missing transition between performance and recovery Think back to what happened when you took off the uniform after each game. Probably some quick reflection. “That was awesome.” “I played well.” “That loss sucked.” “Coach is definitely making us do passing drills tomorrow.” Also, I bet if you really think about it often times taking the uniform off was followed by a deep breath in and out. Shoulders dropped and there was a shift in your

“I still wonder where the rah-rah went.” This was something an athlete said to me a couple weeks ago. I hadn’t heard it phrased like that before, but it stuck. The next week, I heard a more familiar version of it, twice. “People used to cheer when I caught a pass. How am I supposed to find that now?” Some version of this shows up often in conversations with former athletes. The packed gym. The crowd erupting at the end of a game. The roar down the final stretch of a race. No

In sport, you always knew how you were doing. The scoreboard told you. The crowd reacted. A coach yelled something from the sideline. A teammate celebrated or let you know you missed something. Even if you weren’t thinking about it consciously, performance signals were everywhere. You always knew what the goal was. You knew what success looked like.You knew what mattered in that moment. There was very little ambiguity. Then we leave sport and enter a world where those signal

A lot of former athletes quietly wonder if they’re starting late. While friends were doing internships, networking, and building resumes, they were doing something else: balancing school, sport, performance, and pressure. So when athletes step into the professional world, it’s common to feel like everyone else already has a head start. But in most cases, athletes aren’t actually behind. They’re just stepping into a completely different ecosystem. You’ve Done This Before Think

If you live in Florida, you already know. The tree pollen this week has been out of control. I never had allergies until I moved here. I’ve lived plenty of places with trees, but apparently the combination of Florida and whatever floats through the air down here… won. This week, it took me out. Somewhere between sinus pressure and tissues everywhere, a post about the “Jordan Flu Game” popped up in my Instagram feed. And it got me thinking. How many times as athletes did we pl

The Manhattan Beach Sand Dune Willpower is great and as athletes we have it in abundance. But in the workplace, if we’re not careful, we start relying on it too much. One of Pat Summitt’s Definite Dozen principles is “ Don’t Just Work Hard, Work Smart, ” reminding us that success isn’t about effort alone. It’s about setting yourself up in the right place, at the right time, with the right tools and awareness of your strengths and weaknesses. And that’s something as athletes

As athletes, we were raised on constant feedback. We didn’t always like what we heard (maybe even struggled with it at times) but it was always there. During practice: Keep that elbow high. How many out of ten did you make? Great! Now try it like this. During training: Get lower on your squat. Lock those elbows out. Knees behind your toes. During games , the scoreboard was real-time feedback. No ambiguity. You knew exactly how things were going. And then there were film sessi

Practice gave us more than just drills. Practice shaped our success in ways we didn’t even notice back then. As athletes, when we walked into the gym, onto the field, or into the pool, we always knew there was a plan waiting for us. Usually on a dry erase board. Side note: As a coach, writing out the practice plan was one of my favorite parts of the day. If you know, you know. The different colored markers, the diagrams, the little arrows… pure joy. But I digress. Okay, back

Remember what it felt like when a long season finally ended?Whether it was a great season or a tough one, the schedule, the travel, and the emotional highs and lows left us completely spent. Body, mind, and spirit. Yes, we felt accomplished. But we also felt emptied out. Ready for the offseason. And if you think back, the offseason never started with a grind. It started with rest, real rest. A little play, no sport, no structured workouts.What was all of this doing? Of course

Last week, I wrote about the invisible structure that supported our athletic lives; the rest cycles, the community, the coaching, the feedback loops. The things we barely noticed because they were simply built in. This week, I want to talk about what happens when we bring the drive we developed as athletes into the real world… but without the supporting architecture that once made that drive sustainable. Because this is where so many athletes can struggle and often times not

I was speaking with a former athlete the other day, someone who, from the outside, had “made the transition” to the real world beautifully. Good job out of college, steady promotions, now in a role she genuinely enjoys. But as we dug deeper, she said something that caught my attention: “In the beginning, I went from one driving thing to the next.” She kept trying to crush everything put in front of her, chasing the feeling she used to have when she was confident as an athlete

When progress feels slow, remember: showing up counts. Felt pretty challenged to write a post this week. Some ideas came to me during the week, and I was excited about them at first. I even started a few, but they’re only half-formed. Others are partially shaped, but I can’t seem to find the energy to do any of them justice. So instead of forcing it, I decided to write about the fact that I can’t seem to write. Truth is, I’m feeling a little stuck myself. Not really sure why.

Forget the quick win, here’s how to play the long game and turn conversations into opportunities. When I talk to athletes (or really anyone) about networking, I usually start with this:Everyone says you should do it, but no one really tells you how . So let’s break it down. The Present vs. The Future As athletes, we’re trained to focus on the next play: “Do the work and the results will take care of themselves. Don’t think too far ahead.” Sound familiar? That mindset works on