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Winning and Losing Are Great Teachers
By Dick Smith
Head Coach – University of St. Francis (Ill.)
All coaches want to win. There’s no two ways about it. We feel wonderful when we win and badly when we lose. There are times that we feel awfully lucky when we win, but still that good feeling is there. Winning “ugly” happens when we do everything wrong, but still come out on top. Losing is never good in the eyes of most and this is the way of things.
There are many reasons for losing. The opposing pitcher might have been very good. Our bats just didn’t come around even thought the pitcher we faced was not that good. Our fielding might not have been all that good, and we might have made mental mistakes , especially on the bases. Our outfield might have forgotten their fundamentals and allowed balls to fall that would normally have been caught.
Mental Preparation – The Key Factor for Consistent Performances
By Rhonda Revelle, University of Nebraska
Adversity is guaranteed in athletics. The most consistently successful athletes are those who learn skills to handle adversity through compensating and adjusting to ever-changing circumstances during competition. Mental preparation and skill development enables an athlete to maintain this consistency even when external conditions are inconsistent.
Mental preparation and physical preparation are the same in that they are both skills that need to be constantly sharpened in order to become a consistently high level performer. Athletes understand the need for ongoing physical practice, but sometimes don’t quite grasp the how’s and why’s of mental training. As a coach, one of my biggest responsibilities is to have the athletes understand the correlation between preparation and consistency of play.
Athletes enter college often times without giving much thought to mental skills. In talking with them about the mental game, they just figured either someone “had it” or “did not have it.” We not only let them know that everyone can “have it” but it is a skill that needs to be trained just like any other skill and ultimately, it is the responsibility of the individual to develop her own talents.
Marc Dagenais was born in Mirabel, Quebec, a primary French-speaking province of Canada. As a kid, Marc practiced many sports but baseball was his favorite. In 1989, at age 13, his parents decided to sign-up his younger sister for softball and Marc thought that coaching softball could be fun so he offered to help out. That day, Marc's life changed forever. 