By Denzel Rustempasic
There is only one skill that unifies the great athletes of history, that skill is mental toughness. When you think about the legends of every sport, their bodies or abilities are never the constant, their attitude is. Babe Ruth is undeniably the greatest baseball player ever, and he did it all with a chubby portly body and the vertical of a turtle. Now look at Michael Jordan, he was one of the most athletic, agile and explosive athletes in history and his body fat percentage was in the single digits. The link between the two is a mental one. Anyone who watched this year’s men’s varsity baseball team grow had a unique opportunity to watch that killer mentality take shape.
The season started poorly. A team that would end the season with a 19-10 record was only 6-6 and fingers were being pointed. The team wasn’t taking things seriously and Head Coach Kandler was fed up. For the team to develop the mental toughness they needed, they would first have to endure the consequences of lacking it completely. With full understanding of his team and their abilities Coach Kandler sat his team down, ripped them apart, and lit a fire under them that would last the entire season.
What coach K explained was the concept of mental toughness. He called them out in complete honesty, explaining to them that talent and ability didn’t mean a thing without the right mindset, and they were lacking that mindset entirely. Coach K had this to say about that pivotal moment in the team’s season: “Mental toughness comes from within. There’s no drill you can run to get it. It has to come from inside you.” Once this seed was planted in the minds of the team, they responded with a 6-game winning streak and ended the year with a 19-10 record.
As sophomore Joe Swingle stated, “A workout can make your muscles a little stronger, a sprint can make you run a little faster, but an idea will change how you approach the game completely.”
The team made it to the second round of the playoffs before eventually losing to the elite and highly regarded Joy Christian. Making it that far was something the team couldn’t have dreamed of before the pivotal speech they got from Head Coach K. Just like Ruth and Jordan did when they were young, this team accomplished something rare and vital: they rebuilt their minds. These ideas will last long into these players’ careers, so be ready for next season when they prove it to the league.