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Goals don't work when they stay big and vague. They work when you break them down into steps small enough to actually manage, week by week, rep by rep. That's true for athletes and coaches both. Proverbs 16:3 puts the deeper piece of it plainly: "Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established." Put in the work, hand the outcome to God, and watch the plan actually hold together. Philippians 4:13 backs that up: "I can do all things through him who strengthens

As a recruiter, I get asked all the time what I actually look for when scouting young athletes. Skills and talent matter, obviously, but what a lot of people don't realize is that a player's attitude off the court can matter just as much. I'm drawn to kids who respect personal space and the people around them, who show real gratitude toward their parents and coaches, and who carry themselves with positive body language on the court. Eye contact during a conversation matters t

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

The phrase “I’d rather be lucky than good” gets thrown around a lot, usually as a way to explain outcomes we can’t fully control. And in sports, there’s some truth to that. Matches can turn on a bad call, a net cord, a weird bounce, or an opponent having an uncharacteristically great night. You can do everything right and still lose. You can play average and still win. But building your mindset around luck is a losing strategy. Volleyball—like life—is full of variables you do

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 Healthy debate has been replaced by hostility.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,

For those who don't know me, I'm a professional volleyball coach and a passionate scuba diver. As a certified PADI Divemaster, I've gone through rigorous training to help others explore the underwater world safely, whether they're just enjoying a relaxed dive or pushing themselves on something more challenging. Scuba diving is incredibly rewarding. It opens up a whole new world filled with beauty, mystery, and adventure. It's not without real risk, though, which is exactly wh

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

Coaches and team captains have to find a balance between building character and relationships and building a genuinely fierce competitive mindset, and that balance starts with clear expectations that make room for both. Coaches who take the time to build real relationships with their players understand how to motivate and push each one of them differently, because what pushes one athlete forward shuts another one down. Captains play their part too, creating an environment whe

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

The mental health of college athletes has become a real and growing concern, and I don't think that's an exaggeration. In 2022 alone, at least four NCAA student-athletes died by suicide, and it sparked conversations across the sport about what intense competition and sky-high expectations are actually doing to these young people's minds. The NCAA has responded by pushing to get mental health services onto campus and by working to strip away the stigma that keeps athletes from

I've watched enough injured athletes go through recovery to know the tape and the swelling are rarely the hardest part. The physical pain is real, but it's usually just the opening act. What follows is harder to see from the sideline: depression, anxiety, a fear of failure that wasn't there before, a loss of identity that can blindside even your toughest player. Guilt creeps in. So does loneliness, especially once the team keeps practicing without her. Confidence can drop fas

Getting a team to actually put the group ahead of the individual is one of the hardest things to build as a coach. You can't just tell athletes to be selfless and expect it to stick. What actually works, at least in my experience, is grounding it in something bigger than a locker room rule, and Scripture gives us more than enough to work with. Four verses in particular have shaped how I think about this: Galatians 6:2, Philippians 2:3, Mark 10:45, and Hebrews 10:24. Each one

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

Finding the line between cocky and confident is something almost every college athlete wrestles with at some point. Confidence in yourself matters, it has to be there for you to compete at a high level, but it can't come at the cost of belittling the person across the net from you. Setting real boundaries with people who try to tear you down matters too, and so does staying humble enough to keep improving instead of coasting on what you're already good at. Job's story, of all

Being a college athlete is an incredible opportunity, but it also comes with responsibilities and pressures that most people never see. College athletes are expected to balance practices, games, travel, academics, strength and conditioning, recovery, relationships, and everything else that comes with being a young adult trying to figure out life. They have the opportunity to represent their school, compete at a high level, travel to different places, and create experiences an

Every coach who's been at this long enough has had that one athlete. The one who pushes back on every piece of feedback, who brings a bad attitude into the gym like it's part of her uniform, who makes you question whether you're actually reaching her at all. I've had plenty of them over twenty years of coaching, and here's what I've learned: how you handle that athlete says more about your coaching than how you handle your best one. The relationship between a college coach an

I watch it happen in my own gym all the time. Athletes sitting three feet from each other at practice, both scrolling, neither one actually present. Social media isn't going anywhere, and I'm not interested in pretending it's all bad, it keeps us connected to people we'd otherwise lose touch with, and it's given plenty of college athletes a platform they never would have had a generation ago. But it's also quietly reshaping how a lot of these young women see themselves, their