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College athletes have more influence on younger athletes than they sometimes realize. A kid at a camp may remember what a college athlete said to them years after the athlete has forgotten the conversation ever happened. Younger players watch how college athletes compete, communicate, respond to coaches, treat teammates, handle mistakes, and carry themselves when nobody is asking for an autograph or taking a picture. That kind of influence creates an incredible opportunity fo

Finding the balance between showing Christ's love and not allowing everybody else's opinion to control you can be hard for Christian coaches and athletes. We want to represent Christ well, we want people to see something different in the way we live, and if we're being honest, most of us still care what people think about us. I know I've felt that tension myself because criticism can sting, rejection can get in your head, and being misunderstood can make you want to defend yo

College coaches spend a ridiculous amount of time developing skills that athletes eventually won't use anymore. We teach footwork, technique, positioning, speed, strength, decision making, and every tiny detail that might help somebody become a better player, but eventually every athlete plays their last match. When that happens, I want the people I've coached to walk away with a whole lot more than a better serve or a higher vertical. That's where I think coaches have a resp

Self reflection is one of those things everybody says is important, but it doesn't accomplish much if all we're doing is sitting around thinking about ourselves. Real self reflection requires enough honesty to look at our habits, motives, reactions, priorities, and choices without immediately defending everything we find. Athletes spend hours watching film because you can't fix what you're unwilling to see, and I think we should be willing to turn that same camera on ourselve

Ever heard the phrase, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?” Nietzsche and Kelly Clarkson were both onto something, although I’m guessing Nietzsche didn’t expect his philosophy to eventually become a pop song. In athletics, weakness isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes the areas where you struggle are exactly where the most growth needs to happen. The key is being honest enough to identify those weaknesses and disciplined enough to work on them instead of hiding them, ma

Working with college athletes means constantly balancing two things: treating them like the adults they technically are, while still recognizing they're in the middle of real, ongoing social and biological development. Young people often struggle with emotional awareness and communication, and that struggle shows up everywhere, in family relationships, academics, mental health, dating, time management, even their spirituality. A mentor's job is to give them room to actually e

As young athletes progress from youth to high school to college-level performance, a fundamental question arises: Does recognition earned through hard work and dedication yield better results than awards given for mere participation? While both approaches can lead to successful athletic careers, their impact on athletes' mentality and skill development varies significantly. This post will explore the effects of earning notoriety versus receiving participation awards on young

Being a parent (step-parent) and coaching college athletics are both genuinely enriching, and both demand patience, dedication, and real hard work. At the core, they're the same job in a lot of ways: building an environment where growth and learning can actually happen. That takes being well organized, handling hard moments with grace and common sense, and staying current on what kids and athletes actually need developmentally. Communication holds it all together. Keep expect

Over the past few years, I've had some tough medical battles to face. I've undergone four surgeries, consumed countless medications, and...

Sharing your faith openly, as a coach, an athlete, faculty, or staff, comes with real obstacles most people don't talk about enough. Fear of rejection. Fear of being labeled or pushed out. That fear can quietly limit how honest people are willing to be, and it holds back real personal growth in the process. I want to look at how that plays out, both in athletics and on campus more broadly. As a coach, I prioritize team bonding and real communication, the kind that actually bu

Respecting someone's beliefs and accepting someone's beliefs are not the same thing, but somewhere along the way we've started treating them like they are. Today, if you disagree with someone's worldview, you're often labeled intolerant, closed-minded, or even hateful, regardless of how respectfully you've treated that person. We've lost the ability to disagree well. Healthy debate has been replaced by hostility. Curiosity has given way to conformity. Instead of asking questi

For college athletes, being an athlete is rarely just something they do. It becomes part of how they see themselves. Their schedule revolves around practices, lifts, film, travel, competition, recovery, and their teammates. They spend years being introduced by their sport, recognized for their accomplishments, and measured by what they can contribute to a team. That athletic identity can build confidence, discipline, resilience, leadership, and an ability to handle pressure,

Success for an athlete means consistently showing excellence in her sport, and that takes dedication, hard work, discipline, and mature decision-making. It also means training to reach new levels, building the mental grit to handle real pressure, and having the right people around her, coaches, teammates, family, who actually push her toward growth instead of just cheering from the sidelines. At the end of the day, success is about setting real goals and reaching them in a wa

Conflict has shown up on every team I've ever coached, and honestly, on every team anyone has ever coached. That's not a flaw in the group. It's just what happens when a group of people care enough to compete together. What actually separates a good season from a rough one isn't whether conflict shows up. It's whether the team knows what to do with it once it does. Most of it starts small: a disagreement about strategy, a misread on what a play was supposed to look like, some

Kobe Bryant’s 10 rules and how they relate to Biblical teachings 1. Get better every single day 1 Corinthians 9:24 says, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.” College athletes must constantly push themselves to strive for excellence. This encourages us not to lose focus and keep striving, no matter the challenge, to reach our goals and obtain success. Let this serve as a reminder that improvement

Every coach has felt it. A team that's clicking, reading each other without a word, feeding off each other in a way that's hard to explain to someone who's never been on a court or a field. Players and coaches call it having "energy" together, being "in sync." I don't think what's actually happening there is some kind of energy transfer between people. I think it's something more specific than that, and Scripture actually gives us better language for it than "energy" does. St

I once worked for an Athletic Director who never seemed too busy for people. He'd meet with prospective student-athletes, send them a personal email, sit down and actually talk with their parents, not because it was required, but because building real relationships was just who he was. You don't see that kind of consistency very often. This one's for him: Marcus Manning, Executive Director of the Durham Sports Commission. A leader has the power to influence, direct, and inspi

One Body, Many Backgrounds: Real Inclusion on a Christian Team Diversity, equity, and inclusion gets talked about constantly in college athletics right now, and I think a lot of that conversation has drifted from what actually builds a strong team. I don't buy into Critical Race Theory, and I don't think the best way to understand people is by sorting them into competing groups based on race or identity. A lot of what gets labeled equity today is really about engineering outc

Christianity hasn't always been part of how I coach. For most of my career, my faith and my job lived in two separate rooms, and it never occurred to me they were supposed to be in the same one. That changed, and it's part of my testimony now, a story I don't take lightly because of how much it reshaped me. These days, faith isn't something I bolt onto a practice plan. It's the foundation the whole thing stands on. It's also one of the largest faiths in the world, with more t