#133 - From .500 to Sectional Champs: How Mental Training Changed South Ripley Basketball with Tom Beach

One of the toughest parts of implementing a mental performance training program can be justifying the time. If you've never done something like this before and you're not maybe totally convinced it's gonna work, how do you explain taking 15 minutes away from practice every single week? How do you tell your players, your parents, maybe even your athletic director, "Hey, we're gonna stop shooting free throws for a bit to talk about breathing, self-talk, and focus." It can be a hard sell, especially if you're at a small school on a tight budget, trying to get over the hump with kids that are juggling multiple sports. But today's guest, Coach Tom Beach, knows exactly what it takes to win. He's spent over 40 years coaching high school basketball in the state of Indiana. He's been to three state championships, they've won two of them. And while he never called it mental performance training, he spent his entire career teaching the mental side of the game because he knew the best coaches and players were doing something more than just running drills. Now, what he'll tell you is that they had a little bit more of just a random buffet of videos that he found or tools or resources or podcasts or books. And he would just sort of throw stuff at the wall and see if anything stuck. But this year they implemented the MTP Academy, they said, "You know what, we need a program." And so in this episode, we're talking about a small public high school in southern Indiana, South Ripley, where Coach Beach is now on staff. Their team had been stuck around 500 for a couple years. They felt like they had talent and they had the effort, but something was still missing. So they decided to go all in on the MTP Academy during the season, not in the off season, which if I'm being honest is maybe more convenient. But they committed from week one and what happened next was nothing short of how Coach Beach described it historic. From unranked to number one in the state, from average to winning the holiday tournament, the county championship, the conference championship, the sectional championship. I think Coach Beach said it best when he said, "The MTP Academy can't guarantee you a championship, but I can guarantee you we don't win a sectional championship without it." Today's episode is a story about belief, commitment, and transformation. Can't wait to dive into this. Hey, you welcome to the Coaching Minds podcast, the official podcast of Mental Training Plan. Join today by Coach Tom Beach, who worked with his son down at South Ripley High School. Tom, I appreciate you joining us today. Always a pleasure to be with you, and thank you for all that you did for South Ripley basketball this year. For sure. So, I think the audience is in for a real treat today. It's one thing to hear, "Hey, here's the theory behind what we're saying you should be doing, but you guys lived it out." I mean, you guys implemented the MTP Academy. You implemented some weekly mental performance training tools this season, and certainly saw some great results to go along with all of the rest of the things that you guys are doing at South Ripley High School. Before we dive into that, talk to us just kind of briefly, because you are certainly not new to coaching basketball. You are an experienced coach who's had a ton of success. Talk to us just kind of briefly about maybe your story, your past, where you've been, and how you got to where you're at today. Well, thank you, Ben, for that was a really nice way to say that Tom's really old, but appreciate that. But, yeah, I graduated from Purdue University after Vincent's Lincoln High School, and got a job out of college at Forest Park High School in Ferdinand, Indiana, which most people don't know where Ferdin's at, but they've heard of Holiday World. So it's right next door, but I spent 30 years of my life there, met my beautiful wife and raised two children, the son, Sevy that you mentioned might have a daughter, and had had a great career there at Forest Park in those 30 years. I learned a lot of things that were good and learned some things that I quickly learned to forget and move on and had some great players coach freshman basketball, JD basketball, varsity basketball. It was very blessed to have some outstanding players and parents and community support there. We were in three state championship games, one, two of those, and like said, very, very blessed to be there. I moved on from there, a coach for four years at Shelbyville High School, and then coach for six years at Anderson University, and then decided that was a total of 40 years, that you know, if you do something for 40 years, even though you love it. You think, okay, maybe it's time for the young people to take over and I'll do something else. So I was retired for a couple years, did some other things. I'm very, I'm active, still active in the Indian basketball coaches association, this associate executive director of that organization, which we had 2000 members. And I was blessed. Sevy, my son, followed in my footsteps. I tried to steer him a different way, but he wouldn't listen. And he's been a head coach and assistant coach and it's kind of found it's niche now down at South Ripley, started his own family, found his wife down there and has two sons and so that's kept me happy. He asked me to come back and help him and I was like, no, I still had that yet, even though I'm really old like you so kindly described. I still had that itch, but I didn't want to be that guy, you know, in charge anymore. And so I'm able to go to practice, help the help the young men to grow and get better and. Get to talk to them every day about their. Whatever's going on in their lives and that's just a real pleasure. I get all the fun stuff. I don't have to deal with the paperwork and, you know, talking to the principals of the minute A D's and parents and those things that. You know, and I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean, say these people are really good, but I just don't have to deal with that stuff. I get to do the fun stuff. I get to go to practice and then I get to go home and stop some money on the way home and. You know, game night. I'm not. Oh enough or sweat and bullets because I'm going to go home after the game and. Think about the next day's practice, but it's been a real pleasure and you know, our situation at South Ripley went when Sevy asked me to come on. We felt like that. Basically, we had some talented players, but something was just something wasn't right. And so we were trying to figure that out and. Long story short, we found out about you and your program and. We really feel like the entire coaching staff 100% agrees that your program that helped us to do what we did this last season. Which was a historical season for South Ripley. It ended a couple weeks earlier than what we would have liked, but. It was still a historical season and what we did and. You know, people would say that I had a very successful coaching career, but even with that, I was never never had a team that did what what this team did. So it was quite a quite a run this year and. A lot of it. It was attributed to what we did with the mental training program. So let's let's go back to you guys reached out maybe early September ish. And you know, like you said, you you've already won a state championship before you've seen you know the level of high school basketball that it takes to win at that level. And you know, your son was even on one of those teams. So it's not like it's not like we were trying to or I was having to convince you of. Hey, training the mental side of the game is also really important along with training the physical side of the game along with training the technique side of the game, the schematic side of the game. And you guys already knew that what we're what were maybe some of the things that that you. guys have really put emphasis on in the past when it came to the mental side of the game. And maybe what areas did you feel like something was still lacking? You know, when you do something for 40 years, you see things, you know, I say it like this, there's some of the things that I did that I did call it mental training, but we did those things. Or, you know, I study a lot where I read or watched film or whatever podcasted professional athletes, division one athletes. I worked for several years with the program called Point Guard College that you just learn all these things and you have to put them together and be able to relate them to your players and your student athletes. There has to be also some organization. We attempted our second year to do some mental training. Sevy, the mentally training coach, and I tried to do some actual things. I said, we've got to do something with our players that's more than just what we do in practice. So we kind of wasted, I don't waste it's not correct, but it was because I didn't have the expertise and, you know, I'm not trained in mental training. And, you know, I said, oh, you know, it was just kind of hitting this and oh, this is great. This is, you know, search Google this and look for this and let's do this this week. And let's do this. Maybe like a buffet of different ideas and tools and set them out there in front of your athletes and see if something sticks. Yeah, yeah. Like I said, to one spaghetti at the wall. And, you know, there were some things that were good. But like I said, there was no organization, there was no pattern, there was no being prepared. And then, you know, your programs kind of broke up into three, three sections and it's all organized and laid out and you go in an order and it all makes sense. And the players understood where I was like, oh, this week, let's talk about this. And next week is totally off the wall and somewhere else. And, you know, they were trying, they were being polite to me and paying attention, but it just really wasn't the same. And then, whereas there was just a total transformation this year with the guys, you know, they look forward to every Tuesday. Today's class, they coach, what's it going to be about? You know, what are we going to talk about? We're going to continue talking about what we did last week and or whatever. They were, they got, you know, they were excited about it. One, know what was going to happen. And then, you know, from Tuesday to Tuesday, they would say, hey, when we talked the other day in class and I did that to Dane, you know, whatever it was, you know, made my free throws or whatever it was. So it was, it was, it was just really neat to see the maturing process and to see the guys get excited about this because it was organized and it was well thought out. And they, they knew that this was serious. And they knew the year before it was just me going up and saying, well, let's talk about whatever. I'm glad that you brought up that the players were interested, engaged, involved, saw results from it on the court. But, you know, I'm thinking back to that very first time, that very first time that you guys had me come down and actually do a focus cycle presentation in person. And Sevy almost kind of prepared me like, hey, you're going to have some guys that are not really all in on this. You're going to, you know, he's telling me about this kid that thinks this and, you know, maybe some parents that think you should be doing something different and almost almost like warned me before I got in there. And, you know, one of your, one of your guys that ended up being a pretty big playmaker for you guys this year when I was talking with him about just expectations for the season. It was, you could tell he was kind of standoffish a little bit and kind of, yeah, you know, I don't really, I don't really know what to expect. Almost like a, to be honest, it was like talking to a completely different person when I came down there just a couple weeks ago. Then it was at the very start of the season. And I know that that didn't happen by accident. Talk to us a little bit about how you got some of those players to buy in. And maybe when that light bulb went off that they were like, oh my goodness, this stuff actually works. Like we got to take this serious. Yeah. Yeah. So like, like you said, when we first started, you know, Sevy and I, we talked a lot, you know, I said, it's got to be the total buy-in from Sevy on down. I said, you've got to sell your AD in principle on it. You've got to have parent meetings and sell the parents. It's got to be a total program. And, you know, like you said, they're, I mean, you got to be honest. There were some questions. There was some hesitations up front. People, you know, said, shouldn't the boys be in the gym shooting free throws or whatever? And when you're an educator, when you're a coach, you've got to work on the total package. You know, whether when you're a quarterback and football, yeah, you've got to be really good at no one where to throw the ball, but you've got to know what the routes are, the toes wide receivers are running. You've got to know what, what hold the running back is going to go into. And you, you've got to work on the total package. You can't just show up and play, play a game of basketball without going in the weight room. You've got to get physically stronger. You've got to get faster, quicker, and you've got to be mentally prepared. You know, Peyton Manning, how much time, you know, he probably spent more time in the film room than he did out on the field. And so there's all those components and being mentally trained, not only, okay, how do I play deep dance? How do I shoot, how am I shooting mechanics? Correct. But, you know, also, you know, how do I guard and watch film? And how can I guard defend this other player on this other team? But, you know, what do I do when something's not going well? You know, my perception is the referees having a bad night. You can't make a call. How do I get through that? I miss three three throws in a row. Well, well, am I going to miss the fourth one because my brain is brighter? How do I handle all those things? You came down and gave a great presentation on the focus cycle. And that sold a lot of people in that room, which didn't carry it over. And as we went through the season, you could just see things clicking and things, you know, we went our first game of the season by 50 points. And it was, it's a rival game that normally would have come down to maybe a last second shot. And the boys walked off the floor and they're also just looking at each other and like, okay, you know, that's that was pretty cool. And, you know, and then they move on and we keep playing. And we're five and over whatever. And then we're six and oh, and we play another game that's a big rival game. And, you know, we're doing pretty well. And we're winning the game. And the other team makes a run at us. That the two years before when they made that run, we would have folded. And here you can see the guys, they're just they're just different. They're picking each other up. They're talking to themselves, you know, saying they're go to statements or, you know, they're patting each other on the backs. Hey, we got this. We're all right. Whereas, you know, the two years before they would have been all in each other names or, you know, why didn't you pass me the ball? Why'd you take that shot? No, they just were and we ended up winning that game. And it just keeps building. Then we go to a holiday tournament where we're playing three teams that are undefeated in this holiday tournament. And what we're two A school and the one team that wasn't undefeated was a four A school. They played it, you know, extremely good schedule. You know, and they played our schedule that would have probably been undefeated. So, extremely tough tournament. We win that tournament. And the guys just all that, you know, you face adversity through games and, you know, through practice and who all that you just see them handling things in what I called the correct way. And it's because they were being trained to do things and think about things the right way. And it was just a joy to watch them to do that because, you know, obviously winning the games helped, obviously them being a year or two older helped. One of the players had a private conversation with me about his personal life and that was, you know, had nothing to do with shooting free throws or dunks or whatever. But he said, I'm able to deal with some of this because of what we're doing on Tuesdays. He said, it's helping me. He said, it's still rough, but it's helping me. And that, you know, it's kind of, you know, brought a tear to my eye because he was going through some rough stuff. And you always want to help them. But he's got to go through it. And he did and this helped him. And that's, you know, that's the joyful thing about sports and what we're talking, you know, kind of talking about here is helping young people to deal with life. I mean, life's just like a basketball football baseball game. You're going to have ups and downs and you got to deal with those ups and you got to deal with the downs and keep yourself plugging along. Yeah. So that this was, this was really, really helpful. I love that. And I think that that makes it easier to when you can look apparent in the eye and say, you know, why are we, why is my boy in this classroom instead of in the gym shooting free throws or, you know, fill in the blank with whatever else. And it's like, well, because there are these other skills and tools that they need to learn and not only will it help them be a better basketball player, but it's things that they're going to be able to use for the rest of their life. And that's, that's powerful. And I'm, I'm glad to, I'm glad to hear that. Tell us, tell us a little bit about, let's go into maybe the logistics of it because, you know, when I would say probably the biggest pushback that I get from coaches who are thinking about like they, they know we need to do something intentional about the mental side of the game. And I think, you know, there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of coaches who just say, hey, go read this book or go listen to this podcast, which, which I always say is almost like, hey, pressure free throws are a really important thing for you to get better at. So why don't you practice that at home on your own? Or the weight room is really important. You should lift. So, you know, find some time on your own to do that versus we have a limited amount of time together. And I'm saying that this 15 minutes spent in the classroom is so important that there, there's no way we're going to be skipping it. Talk, talk to us a little bit about, I mean, there, there had to have been, there had to have been some questions, especially early on of, is this really worth going back to every single week? Yes, there was. And, you know, and that's something that, you know, Sevy from the top. And he said, you know, when we'd have our staff meetings, he said, we're doing this. And he said, it's going to be the most important thing on how many times we heard this in our staff meetings. This is the most important thing that we're doing this year. Or our program. He stuck to his guns and, and that's other coaches all stuck to their guns and, and then, you know, so the player is bought in and the parents bought in because everybody knew that, like you said, every week, sometimes twice a week, the logistics thing, you have to sit down and work it out. I mean, we've got, I got a spreadsheet here on one of my screens that I'm looking, November the second, November the 16, whatever, we're going to do this, this is what we're going to do that day. And you also have to be flexible because sometimes, you know, okay, that 15 minutes, it's supposed to be on 2D and sometimes we had to move it to Wednesday because of game schedule, you know, basketball, you know, football, you play every Friday. So, you, but basketball, sometimes you play Tuesday or Wednesday, sometimes you play Friday. So you have to adjust that calendar just a little bit, be a little bit flexible. But we kind of, we had it planned out and new starting this Tuesday and every Tuesday basically was, was class day. And that 15 minutes, it didn't matter, you know, hey, we want to stay on the court. No, we got to go to the classroom. We're done on the court today. We're going to the classroom. We need to talk about goal setting or whatever the topic was. It was, it was just awesome. And, and the kids felt like you were, you know, the way you have your program set up, they were all, you know, it changed from, they called B OG, which you can say whatever you think, oh, oh, and the G's can't for, but, you know, instead of OG, what's class about it was what's been going to talk about today? What's what's been going to do for us today? What, what, what, what's, and, and then to see the excitement on their faces when you showed up, we didn't tell them you were going to come to that ball game near the end of the season. And then they saw you walk in a gym. Their face is lit up. And then when you took the time to the step in the locker room afterwards, it was like we'd worn the sexual championship and we, they were jumping up and down. And, because they got to know you each week. And, because of the way you had the program set up. So that was cool. That was really cool to see all that happen. Yeah. I love hearing that. The head coach buying in, I think, is so important. And I think, I think there's also a ton of value in, you know, the head coach, like you said, also has a ton on his plate. And I think in my mind, there's a ton of value and have someone else, like yourself, who is able to kind of spearhead this because, you know, that you guys, if I'm honest, you guys even hopped in a little bit late. Like, ideally, you would have gone through this program in its completion during the summer, during the off season. And then, you know, once you got in season, you would have come back to these tools. But, you know, you were at where you were at. So there was a, there was a little bit of learning on the fly. There was a little bit of, you know, especially as we got toward the end of the season, where, you know, you said, Hey, this is coming up or we just had this experience or this is how we played against this team. And now we have this team coming up or we have, you know, tournament time is around the corner now. How do we adjust what tools do we go back to? Talk to us a little bit about, you know, from, from your perspective, the value of that customization, the value of being able to fine tune this the way you want to, you know, skip around a little bit if needed to go back and talk about things again. Talk to us, talk to us a little bit about that because, you know, you, you put time and effort into making sure there was a good plan going into each and every Tuesday. Yeah, that's like you said, the, the head coach obviously is kind of by end. But that doesn't mean the head coach is the one, you know, that he said, look, during this coat, this is your job. Take care of it. And that's, you know, to me, a bark of a good coach, you know, I was, I was short and slow and so I hired an assistant that knew how to teach postplay. And I said, you teach those guys how to play in the post. I'll teach them how to take it out of bounds or whatever. But, um, and so he said, you figure this out, the, the, you know, and do the prep work and be prepared each week. And then it was, you know, my job, I said, okay, this week we're talking about the music class. So, you know, I contacted all the coaches. I said, give me your favorite, you know, song from your playlist or what, and, you know, the guys had a great time with that. The, the players, you know, OG listens to that song. And that was, that was fun. But you try to make it personal. You know, you have the class and, and the program is set up and organized. But one of the things that I tried to do each week was, okay, today we're going to talk about goal setting. And I tried to make it personal. You know, what I had, these were my goals. And how do, you know, you have short-term goals and long-term goals. You can't just sit down and say, "Well, we're going to win a state championship. That's our goal." Well, that's a goal, but how do you get there? There's got to be other goals. That's all you do is say, "We're going to win a state championship and it's not going to happen." You've got to break everything down. You throw in personal. Each two, someone on staff would offer some personal antidote that they could share that was made it personal and kind of like, "Oh, yeah, I understand that. I get that." That was a big thing. You've got to have somebody on your staff that's going to push it and make sure it's set up and ready to go. You're going to have some kind of screen to be able watch the two, three minute videos that you're going to watch and you've got to run off the work sheets so that they're ready to go. There's a little different ways. I could tell you how we did it, but it's got to work for your particular situation. But the big thing is, you're wasting your time and your money. Well, we're going to buy this program. I laughed. You said, "We'll give the guys a book to read." Well, Sevy did that because guess who did that when he was a player? His high school coach and bought every player on the team of book. He said, "Guys, take this home and read it, and you'll be fantastic basketball player." Well, what happened to that book? It went home and got tossed under the band or some of them read it. I was lucky when I was coaching I forgot the name of the program, but there was a reading program, a library, a librarian at the high school. You could take tests on books that you read. She took that book for me and created a test. I said, "Okay, you smart Alex. Go take your test. If you don't get a certain score, we'll sit and read the book together." So they all passed their test. But this was just exciting. It really was. But someone's got to take charge of it. Someone's got to be there to run the thing. The head coach didn't have time to do that. Now, the head coach has to be excited. Sevy jumped in with his personal stories, talked about what a jerk his high school coach was and things that he made him do. The boys thought that was pretty funny. But the coach probably, he's got another stuff on his plate trying to figure out how to be when the conference championship, how to build out the paperwork, the AD and the principal need, or make sure the bus is ready to go or whatever it is. But find somebody that you trust and give them the program and follow through with it. You and I talked about, somebody said, "Well, we did this on Tuesday and three months later, we did it again." Well, that's not going to work. It's just like shooting free throws. You said, "If you only shoot free throws on Monday, you never shoot them." You're not going to make very many. It's the same with this. You're training your mind, you're training your body. You've got to train it. We were talking before we came on live. I had PT this morning. I go to PT every Tuesday morning and he runs me through the ringer. But I don't do anything. So next Tuesday, getting wrong through that ringer is a waste of time. That's we hit this every Tuesday, but through the rest of the week, we would follow up with whatever that particular follow-up need to be. That's a man that's so important. That was one of the things. For me, I was a teacher and a coach at Westfield for 15 years before stepping away to start doing this full-time. I'll never forget. I was speaking with one of the coaches at Westfield. Keep in mind, this is my alma mater. From a loyalty standpoint, this is where I went to school. It's where my family went. It's where my kids are now going. My wife works in the district. My mom works in the district. My brother now works in coaches in the district. It's the only school like I am a Shamrock. When it was like, is it really okay to go give this program to potentially our biggest rival right down the road? The head coach at the time was like, you have to go. You have to make this available. This is too powerful. This is going to change people's lives. You can't just hide this under a rocket and keep this. You need to make this available. When I started to bring up the awkwardness of, well, what if such-and-such school uses it and they beat you, his reply was, well, that's not going to happen. Because in his mind, they have huddle. They have film. They watch film. They're going to break down film better than any other staff that they face and the same with their practices. Everybody practices. But to win that championship, you're going to have to do it a little bit better. And in his mind, the mental performance training was no different. Just having the tool isn't going to magically win you a championship. Using the tool, committing to the tool, bringing it back up throughout the week, the coaches buying in, the players buying in, everyone doing it the right way is when you're really going to get the most out of it. Let's talk a little bit more about that now. Maybe the, because at the end of the day, like it or not, we are judged as coaches. We're judged on, did we win the game or not? We talked about it Westfield all the time. On Friday night, the whole community is going to come out and they're going to see, did I prepare my position group to play at the best of their ability? And we're going to see that. So let's talk about some of those results that you guys saw because you had built an entire program. You were training the body, the mind, the technique, the schemes on the court. Let's talk about some of those results you guys saw. Well, what immediately comes to my mind is at the Frito line as a team. You have a particular class called visualization. I've always believed in you see things happen. As a coach, I always, I visualized, how am I going to climb that ladder after we win the sectional and how am I going to cut down that net? And I saw myself doing that. And that's one that's one of those topics that when you go into that, young people, you sit them down and say, okay, you're going to do this. You're going to get funny looks. You're going to get eye rolls. They're going to poke through the guy sitting next to him. He's lost his mind. You put them in those situations. And so, guy and Mrs. of Frito, in the rest of the team stand on the baseline and they're going to make it, we don't want to have to run. And he misses it. And everybody runs it. But you keep that player that missed the Frito. And I say, did you see yourself making that before you shot it? Now coach, I just shot it. Well, why did you not use the tool that we learned? And so let's do it again and close your eyes due to Frito. Make it. And so everybody gets on the baseline again. And you do different things. You hand the guy the ball. And I say, did you make it? Yes, coach, I did. In his mind, he made it. Okay, everybody go home. We're not running. He made it. And you just do and you have to train them and over time. And that particular boy that I'm thinking of right now, he went from a 55% Frito shooter a year ago to 81% Frito shooter this year. Wow. And you know, the mental part was a big part. Now obviously, you know, he shot on the gun and, you know, and and physically improved. But mentally, he walked up, you know, when he's going to the Frito line, you know, they're the team's carrying a year ago was foul him. Yeah, it's the fourth quarter fat put him on the foul line. Yeah. And this year it was, don't value him. Yeah. And because he had the mental capability, you don't know, did he still miss a free throw? Yeah, but he made more than he missed. And a year ago that wasn't the case. And but it just takes daily, daily practice of whatever this net skill is. And that's the one that really sticks out to me is seeing his improvement. And there were things across the board that were that way for us. A lot of it was, again, how do you treat your teammates? How do you react to, you get a bad call? It drove me bananas to watch our boys a year ago when they would a call would go against them and their reactions. And this year, I can't say 100%. But this year it was like we had basketball players. Because things are going to happen. The guy's going to blow his whistle and you're going to disagree with the call. Well, you're not going to change the call. So how do you deal with it? You're going to miss a free throw. How do you deal with it? There's a session talking about preparing for practice. The guys would say, "Gosh, coach, I didn't really think about, I need to do this while I'm in the locker room before coming out to practice." And I'm like, really didn't think about that before. And now I just got out of algebra class and went and changed my into my basketball shoes and came out and played hoops. And I was like, well, no wonder you played like you did last. [LAUGHTER] So again, it's just teaching them. You can't take anything for granted. And you've got to go through everything and teach it. And just reteach it. And if you don't, it's not going to happen. And that's, again, I felt like with this program, that was such a good thing because of the organization. Because sometimes when you're playing three games in a week as a coach, you get caught up. And OK, I do what I have the game plan. Is this-- what are we going to do to prepare for this team? And you still have to do that specific preparation. But really playing team X is no different than playing team Y as far as your general preparation. It's doing all those things. Your mental and physical, making yourself get better every day. And then you throw in the little specific things of, OK, this team plays zone. So we have to practice zone all the things a little more. But the big things, like I said, visualizing, making the free throw, you got to do that every day. Freeing your teammate right. You got to do that every day. Or it doesn't work. Yeah. And you have to reinforce the skills. They can't just live in a notebook. They can't just live in a classroom on a Tuesday. You have to have that conversation as the coach of, hey, you had this plan. It doesn't look like you used this plan. Why didn't you use that? Why didn't you do that? And you teach them how to do that. You hold them accountable to, are you using these things that we're talking about? I mean, it's no different than if you have a film session. And then you point out these things, but you never practice those things. You never talk about them again. I mean, you're not really getting a ton out of that. You got to come back to some of those things. And I think it can be difficult as coaches like you brought up. We can sometimes we can just expect that players should know things. I know we were joking on the front end of this episode about you having a little more life experience than me. But I am certainly-- I am no longer the young coach in the locker room and at a high school football team, for sure. And I'm guilty of there's times where I've been in football. I've been coached in football longer than most of these guys have been alive that I just assume, well, you should know this. And you should do this. And I know we talked about the music module, for example. That's usually one that it's like, if you got a trim one, if you don't have 19 sessions, maybe get rid of that one. But you guys came back and you were like, this was one of their absolute favorites. And being able to use media to get your mood, your emotions right, to be able to control physical energy, kind of build that up, heading to a game, not get too hyped up ahead of time. It's just so important. So here we are. You're on the back end of this season, as you look back and you reflect on kind of the season as the whole, maybe some of the things that you were able to accomplish, not accomplish. And then you start to look at moving ahead into the future. What are some of your thoughts wrapping this up as you reflect back on the season? Well, one thing's like you mentioned earlier, we jumped into this a little bit later that what we would have liked to end up being a positive, but we still feel like overall it was a negative that we were rushed a little bit. And so one of the things that we've already discussed is we're going to revisit the modules and kind of do the program again. Not as a review for the returning players, but we'll have new players coming in that weren't directly, they were at your beginning of the year when you came and did that first program. But they weren't there, they were middle school, that they were doing there. And now they're in height, they're going to be part of the high school team. So everything will be new to them as far as the entire program. So we're going to start earlier, spend, it won't be as rushed. And then what's we anticipate will happen is the guy, the returning players are going to be doing some of the teaching. Now we're going to see that carry over. They're going to talk about when we talk about FMR, they're going to go, hey, man, I did this before every free throw, or I did this before the game and it really worked. And those young guys are going to go, oh, well, if he's doing that, I'm going to do it. Yeah. And that's where the old guy like us telling him to do it. It's like, oh, the starter, the star on the high school basketball team uses this? Yeah, yeah. So that's where we think it's going to be more powerful this next year because we'll reinforce it with the older guys, but they're going to push that onto the younger guys and we'll see that. And everybody's just going to be more enthusiastic about it. So that's where we think it's going to go and that as we revisit that and bring everybody farther along, it's just going to be even more powerful. I know beforehand, Tom, we were talking about some of the, just some of the accomplishments that you guys were able to achieve as a team. Talk to us just a little bit about how the season unfolded and what that looked like this year. You know, we were obviously hoping we would be better, thought we would be better. And we actually had a eight game improvement over the total season. We had a 10 game improvement from the last year and wins. And coming in this season, you know, as coaches, you always play the game, you know, well, I think we'll win 15 games, right? I think we'll win 18 games, right? I think we'll win 10 games, whatever the game is that year. And, you know, so this year we, we, we, we, we were, I think 13 and 11 a year ago. And we thought, you know, we'll win 16, 17 games were physically good enough to do that. If this middle training program works, that'll help us win those 16, 17 games when that holiday tournament, which was one of our immediate goals. And, you know, we're, we start the year off. We're not even ranked in any of the polls. And, and out, we know we're starting to get ranked. We're moving, you know, we're nine, we're seven, we're fifth. So we come back from that holiday tournament and we have the county tournament, which is a big deal for South Ripley. And, and obviously all the four county schools, it's a big deal. We win that within a two week. I'm starting to think, okay, this stuff's working. And now, as a coaching staff, we're instead talking about how do we deal with that adversity? And another part of adversity is the positive stuff. Hey, we're ranked number five in the state. We'll be, we're pretty good. We just won the holiday tournament. We just won the county tournament. But how do you deal with that? But now we move on and we're, we continue to win. The guys just keep plugging and, you know, we get to 19 and 0. And we're ranked number one in the state by now at this time in class 2A. It was just one of those perfect storms we lost. So we're 19 and 1. And then we come back. The next game played really, really well. I mean, the guys were like, okay, we just, we didn't handle things last week really well. Let's get back to doing what we were doing. And we focused in and finished the season really well. We had to go on the road to the co-favorite, the sectional that was sectional was on their court. As a big game, we beat them with less than a second to go. We beat them during the regular season to win the conference. So now we have to go play them on their floor with the sectional championship. And we get off to a good start. We're playing well. We've got a lead. They make a run at us. Basketball's game of runs. And okay, are we going to handle this year before we would have folded? We never would have won that game. We had like a 12 point lead. They cut it to five with a ball. And we get a stop. We go long story short, we enough winning by 15 and cut down the nets at the sectional. And you know, all these things, being sectional champion, conference champion, County Attorney champion, the holiday tournament champion, ranked number one in the state in class 2A. The community support just grew and grew and grew for the team. It was just really, really exciting to see all this happen for these guys. We as a coaching staff felt like physically, they could have done this year before. But we weren't there. We weren't the complete package. And we felt like this year we had the complete package physically and mentally to get the job done. And they just, they proved that weekend and week out. And that's it was just, it was just a really exciting year. The winds were fantastic. Those trophies and nets were exciting. But to see them, those young men grow and mature mentally was even more exciting. And that's, you know, the winds, they're fun. Give you something to talk about. But what you're really talking about is what you mentioned earlier to see those young people to grow and know that they're going to have the tools to go out and be, you know, in our case, we're working with young men. So hopefully they're going to be good husbands and good fathers and productive and whatever occupation they want to spend 40 years of their life doing. I just feel really blessed and thankful that we were able to give those boys some tools that are going to help them for the next 40 to 50 years. - I love that. As we wrap up here, you know, what thoughts would you have, you know, maybe if a coach is sort of on the fence about, you know, do we do this? Do we not do this? Is it worth the time? Is it worth the money? You know, what thoughts would you have for a coach that's maybe in that spot? - I would tell them don't hesitate right to check, figure it out. But if you really want to be good, if you want to walk the walk that you're talking on, do it. - So the last question I would love to ask guests is knowing what you know now. If you could go back and tell a younger version of yourself, just maybe one piece of advice that first year coach, what would it be? - Enjoy it, enjoy it more. Enjoy it more. It's too easy to get caught up in the negatives. You know, I'm gonna throw this out there and I'm gonna sound like that old guy. But I do feel bad for the young coaches because of the things that they hear and see and their families go through now that those things were there when I was young, but I didn't have to hear it and see it because there wasn't the social media. And so I didn't have to deal with it. I could, and they have to learn how to not deal with it or to deal with it, whatever they're gonna do, but enjoy it, enjoy it and find the positives and whatever it is because even when you lose, those players didn't want to lose, that they were trying to win for you. And so find those positives, correct the negatives, but enjoy it, enjoy it and you'll be a lot happier. - Love that. Well, Tom, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today and just talk a little bit about your experience. Congratulations on an outstanding year and best of luck to you guys in the future, moving forward. - Thank you very much, Ben, always a pleasure. - If you have questions, wanna reach out head on over to mentaltrainingplan.com, click on the contact us button at the bottom. We'd love to have a conversation about how we could help you individually or your entire team. And until next time, make your plan and put it to work.