Developing a Player's Intangibles

I Hello, everybody. Welcome into another edition. This is Cross Functionality, the show connecting coaching baseball, softball, male and female hosted by former college baseball and softball players. Our new listeners joining us. Thank you for checking out the podcast, our old listeners. Welcome back and great episode today. Great topic, episode 22 as we discuss developing a players intangibles. We're looking forward to this topic. So let me

bring in my friend and co host softball national champion at the University of Alabama and current day renowned coach, Cassie Riley Bocha. Awesome. Thank you, Jim. Yes, this is anytime we get to talk about stuff that is that's like this and coincidentally, not like what I do for an everyday living, which is breakdown mechanics and coach and a waiter. You know what? Hey, look, we talked

so much about mechanics and with hitting and whatnot and it gets at times, at least for me, it gets a little bit tiresome. I'll admit that, but talking today about intangibles and developing those players and tangibles, it's really a hard thing to do because when you coach a play, I mean, coaching is to me. I don't know. You know, obviously, no better, but coaching to me

is a 50, 50 proposition. But when you're coaching a player's intangibles, you really have to get understanding, get to know that player and see if they actually have those certain tangibles that help them get to the next level. Yeah, and I think, well, I think to just even defining it and to basically say, you know, something that's tangible is something that you can measure, right? So

we can measure our batting average, you can measure our exit velocity, we can measure the number of swings we take, you know, and intangible is something you can't. And when we got, you know, the real thing, is the reason why this has been such a key word or a hot topic for me, what in my coaching career is really because of how I got coached in

college and bring it up a ton, but at Alabama, I learned so much. And that was the one thing at the very beginning of the season, the coaches would look at us and say, okay, what intangible are you bringing to the table? What's it going to be this year? And we all had to go around the circle and explain in front of everyone, this is what

I'm bringing to the table. And it was cool because if it's intangible, it's, it's something you, you can control. It's something that you, you know, you can't control how many hits you get, but this was something you had supreme control over and it was very, very empowering. And certainly something I hope a lot of high school, middle school, younger athletes, coaches who are coaching those athletes

really start to understand. Yeah, we had coach Patrick Murphy on this show as a guest co host filling in for you. Gwen Stetley, he was in a hotel waiting to go over to your wedding. And he talked about the story when he hugged you and hugged players like you, who is trying to recruit. And he said, one of the key differences there, if I'm hugging a

player, I'd want them at my school. I want them as one of my top recruits to play for me in the coming years. And you know, and Pat said this on the podcast, so go back and listen in the archives. You know, if I'm recruiting you if I want you or not. And he is a great example of someone who can really read and it goes

for a lot of great college coaches. They can really read those intangibles of a player. Yeah, I think, I think coach coaches are going to have everyone's going to have this like one skill, just like a player. One skill is going to probably stand out more than others. And you know, Coach Murphy at Alabama has put together a high quality team year after year after year.

And really what you start to notice is it's not always the top five recruits. It's not always the most talented players. It's he's getting these players to play extremely well together. And I think his biggest thing is he's a phenomenal recruiter because he is able to get to know a young athlete. He gets to know the parent and really start to see, okay, they might be

the stud shortstop, but they don't have the intangibles to play with this team. Or they might, you know, lack a little bit on the physical talent, but they possess enough intangibles, enough effort, enough attitude, whatever that may be that he's looking at. In order to contribute to the team in a positive way. And you know, that's really how all of a sudden you start to see

these Alabama teams that are less talented start to beat teams that have way more talent, have way more five stars. And they're athletes or however you they rank up and softball now. But you know, again, it's not that they're an underdog. They just find a way to really play well together. And it's a huge part to do with this with this topic and this concept. Yeah.

And coincidentally, you mentioned effort in there. That's one of our intangibles that we're going to discuss here today. And I look at a college coach, for example, like Lincoln Riley, who goes from Oklahoma to USC and turns USC that program around into a winner within five minutes of being there. And I think it's because he understands which one of his players, which of his players have

those intangibles that he can put that leadership in. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what? I think it is a hand in hand. And as far as, hey, are you able to bring those intangibles in? Are you a leader? Because so much of leadership, I think, is consistent consistently showing up. And when we would be, you know, in Alabama, we go around in the circle. We'd say,

okay, I'm going to bring the intangible of the most confident hitter in the country. I'm going to pour my knowledge into my life. I'm going to bring joy. I'm going to have vicarious joy. I'm going to be just as happy for my team. It's successes. If it were my own, whatever that may be. And then all of a sudden, you ask yourself, okay, the leadership part

is actually doing all those things you just said consistently, even when it's hard, even when you're over 10, even when you're not feeling right when you get injured, whatever that may be is still showing up and doing that. So again, if you are consistently showing up with those intangibles, you automatically propel yourself into that leadership position, because you're going to have your teammates. That's looking up

to you. Yeah, I think that's just that's why people wonder all the time, you know, how do teams turn things around with this new coach? Why wasn't it working a year ago? It's because I think some of those coaches, not some, all of those coaches preach the intangibles. And they bring out the best in their players when it comes to their intangibles. And they work with

what they have. So by the way, I want to do give a quick condolence, RIP, of course, to Mike Leach who passed away this week, the legendary college. Football coach kind of passed away very suddenly. So I'm wrenching coaches here, rest of peace and our condolences to Mike Leach and his family. All right. Follow the show on social media, at Jim Tara at Coach underscore Kassie

RB on Instagram at Coach Kassie RB on Twitter and subscribe to the podcast Apple Google Spotify wherever you get your podcasts and of course watch online as well on the YouTube side softball strength academy YouTube page. All right, Bill Connolly. wrote this article from ESPN.com. This was back in 2008. And this was when I think when we think 2008 going that was going into our freshman

year of college respectively. So he wrote this in July of 2008 talked about intangibles, the intangibles in recruiting, but it's, it's necessary to discuss this because this is kind of this is where our four intangibles. This is where they derive from. And he writes in the article quote intangibles are the attributes and athlete possesses or the behavior. He exhibits that require absolutely no physical talent, but

are crucial to success. These intangibles are sometimes different to measure. But any college coach will tell you they're worth their weight in gold. Do you agree with that? Disagree with that? What do you make of that statement? Sure. I mean, okay. So it's to an extent, right? You're going to you have some phenomenal kids out there that are going to work extremely hard and a coach

might see their talent and it just might, you know, they're not it's not going to make the most sense for them. I do think you're going to be limited by your intangible ceiling. I guess if that makes sense. So you could be extremely physically talented, but you're going to start to run into this ceiling, at least when you're playing on a team sport where all of

a sudden, well, your intangibles are either not letting you propel to that next level of play or maybe they're deterring you. Maybe they're causing you to underperform because you have you possess a negative attitude, a poor perspective on how to do it. How how success is measured. And, you know, I think that's so important to when when a coach says to you, Hey, I value your

intangible more than your production on the field field. I value your ability to be a great teammate. I value your effort all the time in the way. Or in practice, I value your positive attitude. All of a sudden, that means the athlete is starting to redefine their definition of success as something they can control. And when a young athlete really feels like they are in control

of their success, that's so empowering. If an athlete feels their success is just primarily based off of their broad production, how many strikeouts they got, whatever that may be, they're not in control of that. And then all of a sudden, their their identity with failure and their identity with success feels very much so out of their control. And that's where you get athletes who are really

not just struggling with mental performance, but start to bend struggle with mental health as well. Let me ask you this. You mentioned something something genius in there, intangible ceiling. How do you measure that as a coach? How do you measure that as a coach? How do you help a player reach that ceiling, that certain ceiling as their coach? Sure. I don't know if you're ever going

to have a perfect, you know, one through 10 scale and they've reached their potential. They're there, right? But I think it's, you know, athlete coaches will start to get this hunch and go with their gut where they're like, okay, this athlete is getting it. They're starting to really buy into the intangibles. They're starting to buy into, well, listen, even though I didn't have a great game,

I see that. I still showed up with my intangibles and you'll start to recognize that bad and good things are happening in their life, but their response to it becomes very consistent because they're so secure and confident. And they've kind of like been like a well oiled machine of, okay, well, no, my intangibles are in my control. So I can consistently deliver on those. And then,

so I think as a coach, you'll start to see, okay, they're starting to make room for their physical talent to come to fruition. It doesn't mean a guarantee is it. But it provides the opportunity. It opens the door to say, okay, we have nothing blocking our way now for our physical talent to come through. Okay, so let's dive into some of these intangibles. We'll start with

effort first. And I was telling you before we started to record, we were kind of joking around. I had a coach in high school. He was one of these raw, rod type guys kind of a dope, but put more stock into his coaching than everybody else did. And he used to say, he used to tell us his players play with heart. He made sense to me,

but as my mind developed over the years as I've gotten older now, it makes, and I've had a lot of experiences. Now it makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. Playing with heart, baseball, softball. I don't know. We're not in a rooting movie here. We're not a Disney movie. There's not going to be music in the background that's going to be playing throughout the game. So

playing with heart really doesn't make much sense to me. And it goes to that intangible of effort. Effort is more than just giving your 100% all out effort on one particular play. In my opinion, and again, I want to hear what you think about this. It's doing the little things correctly. It's making an effort in practice. It's making an effort sometimes to focus and zero in

on what you need to work on. So that term effort is, I don't know, it's kind of ambiguous because there's a lot of things that go into that intangible of effort. Sure. I'm going to put my physics hat on and say, that effort is a vector, meaning that you could have a quantity of it, but it also has a direction. So we can put our efforts

into one direction, but that's not actually what's best for the team. And sure, you're an effort driven person, but you might be only focused on how to get yourself better. And you've also missed the vote on how to get your team better. So I, you know, I think of it in, and you're playing for a team sport, you sit back, you say, what does my, what

can I do to help my team today? And it might be, I'm going to, I need to work to become the best I can personally be, whatever that may be. And you're directing your effort in that direction. And then also the quantity too, I think people think they're going to be able to give the same amount of effort every single time, but you might show up

to practice. You might have had a bad night's sleep. You might be sick. You have allergies. Whatever it is, your homesick, all of a sudden, your tank is only 30% full. And it's a skill to not just check out and actually say, well, I'm still depleting that 30%. I don't, I'm going to give everything I have in my tank today to, to that, to that goal

or whatever we're trying to accomplish. And when you have a great day and your tank's 100%. Again, you might give great effort, but you might have not taxed, you might have not cashed out. You might have still left stuff in your tank. And is that, you know, in comparison to someone else, you might look like you're giving more effort, but you still had more to give.

So I think it, there's a ton of self awareness. Again, this is ever, this is just an opinion base. But from personal experience from coaching athletes from listening to other coaches, are we, are we putting our efforts in the right direction and towards the right thing. And are we teaching herself, are we aware enough of how to actually empty our tank for the, for the rest

of the day? Leave it all on the field, right? And as far as playing with heart, the only thing I can think of is just, you know, being romantic about baseball and softball and, and, and actually like caring about the jersey on and, you know, those types of things. But you're right. We're not like going into battle and needing to dig deep to go up against

alignment. You know, right. We're not, um, who is it? Uh, Gerard Butler in 300. Right. We're not, we're not going to, exactly. So I'm thinking that, that playing with heart is going to become, it's going to be going to be a big deal. So I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to go into the category of, of trust the process or the process on this

show. Well, some of the restricted sayings and old sports cliche. And I will say with effort to, there are players who, sometimes they miscategorize what their effort really is. Like, for example, they give so much effort in the batting cage, because that's what they love to do. They love to hit. I hear, I hear the dinging in the background where you are right now at work.

And, and I hear all these hitters hitting everybody loves to hit. They love and they can do over and over and over again. They can do it until their hands bleed. Cool. That's all well and good. But if you're putting effort into that, cast and not putting the right amount of effort into what you need to work on. If it's your foot speed. If it's your

base running awareness, if it's your fielding little things like that. Your game still will be affected. And you're putting the wrong amount of effort and energy into the wrong part of your game. For sure. And, and, and you think about it too. It's, that's probably the hardest thing in the world to do what you're not good at. It's to all of a sudden look at yourself

and be like, okay, well, granite. I, yes, I love to hit. But maybe you don't need to put the T right down the middle and hit cage bombs over and over again. You need to set the pitching machine up on something really hard. And that's the hitting you need to be doing. And in your 100% right like we, you know, we're, I'm so fortunate with our

gym right now. We have throwing going on on the turf right now. We have hitting going on behind me. We have a recovery arm care station up here. And then we have our full weight room downstairs. So you have four different opportunities to get better. And we have plenty of guys that come in here. They'll throw a little bit, hit a little bit, and then they'll

hide out. And they won't do the hard stuff. They won't do the stuff that's not as fun to do, which is the arm care, the recovery, the weight room and all that. So it's, it's, yeah, it's buying into the process. You know, maybe not trusting it, but buying into that. Hey, I'm going to, I'm going to put my work in right now and have a show

off later on down the road. Well, look, hey, and like you mentioned, you go into the gym, for example, like me with fitness. I don't like to do mobility work. I don't like to do form rolling. But it's a necessary part, necessary evil, if you will, of that process. And also, furthermore, in that article about, about the intangibles that were again written by Bill Connelly of

ESPN.com, talking about effort, part of effort to is finishing. And he talked about that in the article as well. It's a player needs to be able to finish. That's part of the effort finish. Whatever job they are doing in that moment, they use an offensive lineman, for example, finishing their block. So I'd say, I mean, the title of the book I wrote was called What It

Actually Means to Finish It. And it was, it was not just, so it was like your warm up girls, it was training yourself to finish through the line. It was the last five minutes of practice, the last set of a lift, the last last two to three reps. Let's say you're doing a set of 10. How many times you come out of the gate strong and

then you're kind of like coasting through the end. If you can also flip the switch of like, no, no, no, I'm finishing eight, nine and 10 just as good as I did one, two and three. And granted, that bar speed might not be the same, but your effort into it. You might be putting that that you might be gassing yourself to the same type of effort.

So all of a sudden, you've trained yourself to be at your best effort to have the gas pedal down at the very end of your lift of your spread of your warm up drill of practice. You get to the seventh inning of a game and you already trained yourself to be at your best when you are supposed to be coasting when you're supposed to be at,

you know, my most tired, the end of season playoffs. That idea of finishing it, that effort driven why those intangibles are weighted in gold is those are the teams that win those are the teams that squeak out the wins are not supposed to or come back or finish the playoffs strong. They peak at the right time. So yeah, all of that matters. It's not the most

talented team that's winning the World Series every year. It's not. So it's those guys that are coming together and playing at their best baseball or softball at the right time. Well, you know, I mean, what a great point because I mean, look at the Phillies this year, you look at the nationals in 2019. They were not better than the Houston Astros. They had a deep lineup,

but they came together at the right time and boy, I mean, did they did they and the braves too in 2021? I was just going to say braves and mints. Yeah. Yeah. It just matters. Yes. Also, leadership, another quality intangible vocal leader, not so much lead, whatever. But I think what with coaches trying to develop those leadership type skills and getting the most out of that

player when it comes to their leadership and kind of that leadership intangible fitting their personality. What's best for that? Sure. You know, I think the biggest message that I used to try to talk to my teammates about was that it didn't matter if you wanted to be a leader or not. Like people think of a leader. Like, oh, this is the gold statue of a leader.

If someone's looking up to you, you're in a leadership position. So whether you like it or not, you've just been promoted to a leader. Now we think it's a good thing all the time. It's sometimes going to be a bad thing. Like you could be leading in a poor way. You could be coach could be saying something. You could be rolling your eyes in the background

and you're a senior and now all of a sudden a couple of freshmen saw it. You've just led in the wrong direction. Right. So just having athletes become aware that they could be in a leadership position. Whether they like it or not. And that goes for a younger athlete too, who maybe isn't vocal. The hardest working player on the team we won the World Series was

a sophomore. And I guarantee you every junior and senior looked up to her when it came to work ethic. So, you know, having that athlete become aware of it, I remember vocalizing that to her and just being like, Hey, yeah, I look up to you and how empowering that is and how important that is. And, you know, certainly there's probably other intangibles that have gone into

that team first in order to get seniors and juniors willing to admit to a sophomore that they're looking up to someone. But that's that was a huge piece of the puzzle to just and I explained to my athletes all the time. You can be a leader and you don't even realize it, especially with social media, you have now opened up so many more doors and windows

for people to look at you and look up to you. You might have someone you've never met before that's looking up to you. And that's just that's a that's not a burden. That's a very cool privilege to honor. Yeah, coaches, how do they determine a player's ceiling? There's not word a lot here in the episode. They need to determine a player's ceiling when it comes to

their possible leadership down the line when they're ready for that type of role. Will they be a vocal leader or will they just kind of be that quiet leader that just goes about their business? Sure. I think I think college coaches get a unique experience because they get to recruit an athlete and they get to see that athlete as a senior in high school on their

travel and high school teams. Right. So they get to see them in the senior role. And then they get the athlete coming in and other freshmen and you know, that's such a strange transition. You go from top dog to to low man on the totem pole within a month. Right. And so I think coaches can start to get a glimpse of like, wow, we saw them

in their comfort zone. And we saw how well they led. Right. And now they get them in as a freshman. And I remember our assistant coach looked at me and said, I am not coaching you as the freshman. You are today. I'm coaching you as the senior leader. I see you as in four years. And I want to get you to that point as soon as

possible. Let's not wait to be a senior for you to become this great senior leader that you know, you can become why are you waiting. So yeah, there's a lot of holding accountable to like, you know, I know this is within you. I've seen it within you. Let's start to bring it out. But then also to how can we get this athlete? I don't, I don't

love the word comfortable. I wish there was a better word because I don't think comfort and growth can exist together. But put on the show band list. That's another. Yeah. So I don't know. I'm trying to guess the right word. How do we get the athlete to strip away their insecurities in order to get their best self to come to the to the forefront. And I

guess that's that's the coach's job. All of a sudden on a team. It's, it's looking and saying, okay. I, I, I see something in her. I, whether it's a moment or whether it was what they witnessed in high school. And, and now it's my job to get to know this athlete as best as possible to start to see what we need to do to, to have

their best version of themselves come out. By the way, I have to tell you, I like that sweatshirt. The Strupple Strand Academy sweatshirt. Yes. And I like the, um, the camel, I'm a big camel person. I think it looks great on people. I like it. Looks great on me. Where can they get something like that? That lovely sweatshirt. We have, we have our shops set up

on our Instagram. If you go to our, our link tree, we have our shop. This was actually, I was headed on a flight and I was leaving from work and I totally forgot our, my sweatshirt that I wanted. And we have our own heat press here. It's like a nine year old heat press. We order logos. We get the search. Me is, he pressed. Everything you

were discussing before about as ties in with effort and leadership. A lot of it ties in with cult team culture too and team attitude. How is a player going to fit in? In with that team based off their attitude. That's kind of one of their, more of the intangibles as well for a player in developing that. Being able to get along with people, being able to

get along with teammates and fit into that team culture and do it very quickly. Sure. I think so much of it is, is, is. It's understanding where an athlete's coming from. It's being willing to show up and get to know that athlete. There are certain people that I met my freshman year in college where I was like, if I was not on a team with this

person, I would have steered left right away. And I probably wouldn't have talked to him. And if I met them in high school. How, why is that? Yeah, just like initial conversation. Everyone has a front. Maybe they put up or like a wall they put up at first. And I recognized right away that if I had just met them in high school, I would have been

like, all right, I probably won't talk to this person again. But when you're on a team, it's all sudden. You're demanding more of yourself to go show up to that relationship and see, you know, there's a reason our coaches picked us here. We both have, we both want to win an actual championship. How do we start working together? And, you know, that, that same person, I'm,

I'm lifelong. I'm a friend with him is at my wedding. And, you know, it's, it's one of those things that it's, it's just so cool to be on a team. But then also be on a leader driven team where the coaches find it so imperative to have those conversations, to strip away those insecurities, to get to know what's going on underneath because, again, that's where the

best intangibles get to come out. You get, you can, sure, like the walkoff home run is awesome. But like, how did that athlete get in a position to feel confident? Again, I don't want to go back to comfortable with how does she get in a position to feel confident? I think that's the point of the position where she can hit that walkoff home run in the

first place. It's because of all those intangibles leading up to it, not just because she's a great hitter. Yeah, I was, I was like, I've always been the type who, I don't know, I, like, for example, go back to you because you love the Yankees. I'll go back to the O1 World Series or O3 2003 when they beat the Red Sox, right? In game seven. Aaron

Boone's home run was great. Right. Don't get me wrong. One of the best moments, I think, all time baseball history. But what the moments that led up to that show the true character of some of those players, like the Horey Posada game time, Blue Single, and DeCenter Field, it's those moments that I really enjoy watching and breaking down in a game that show what a team's

intangibles are all about. And I think that that kind of illustrates to me why I really enjoy seeing how a team got to a certain place. Like, I love the Bryce Harper home run this year in the, in the NLCS against the podgers. That was great, right? But there are so many things that led to that, right? JT Real Muto, what he did to start that

inning that I just, I can't get enough of because that shows what the intangibles in a player, but also the intangibles in the character of a team. Yeah. And what you just said, you can't get enough of it as a spectator as a fan. I, why do like, listen, I love baseball and softball. Literally, World Series comes around and I'm like, oh man, like I'm so

excited because they're not playing like it's, they're so not concerned about their mechanical breakdown and how good their swing is. They are, they are just playing with those intangibles. And I think why people get attracted to a college group or why playoffs become so exciting and so important. It is, of course, it's all those things. It's the story that you want to tell it's, it's you

realize you're witnessing something that like you don't normally get to see. You're kind of peeling back the initial facade of, okay, here's the skill of the sport to getting to the underneath of it. And I, and I think people who really love the game of baseball and softball, they have this little bit of ex-revision to those intangibles because if you don't, the game appears very boring

on the surface. And teams that don't play with those intangibles or lack them, it does feel boring to watch. There was a stretch of time where I'm, I would me Yankee fan till I was, I mean, I'm such a Yankee fan that when I was younger, I had an aunt get me a subscription to sports illustrated in 04. But the, the first thing that came was

the Red Sox team of the year, right? Because they won the World Series that year. And I, I said, thank you. And I immediately went to my attic. I think you may have to bring that on to the attic. Yeah, I do still have it in my attic. But I just was like, I couldn't stand to look at the Red Sox. Like I, I couldn't, I

really didn't like them that much. But when I got older and I'm watching, there was a stretch where the Red Sox were way more entertaining to watch than the Yankees were where I was like, if I wasn't such a diehard Yankee fan, I could see myself really enjoying and rooting for the Red Sox. You know, it's, they're, again, those intangibles are just what make it fun

to watch and what the game is. You know, what the game is about, like you're missing out on some of the best parts of the game. If you're denying yourself or your team, the ability to tap into some of those. There's not amazing. Then the roles that we're in as we get older, we don't necessarily, and you still like the Yankees. I don't want to miss

speak for you. But you, as you get older, you watch teams and you like teams based off how they play off their tangibles and not so much just a diehard fan of one team. You know, like I, I enjoy, I have season tickets for those that don't know to the lightning have season packaged. I enjoy the lightning, but I enjoy watching them play every night because

they just do things right and things are just done. Boom, boom, boom. It's always done orderly. And then I'm watching, like, for example, the flyers, no disrespect to Philadelphia fans and the flyers, but they're not very good right now. So it's hard to kind of watch and like a team like that. Yet they still have a fan base that will always be there for them. But

you and I as we get older, we mentioned with the Red Sox. There was a decade there. I mean, that was too long. But there was a time. There were you really like watching them play because of the things they did on the field and it wasn't just the homeruns. It wasn't just the big hits. It was little things that led to them to up to

those big moments. Sure. It's I always can say I always say you when you watch the way a team celebrates. It's you start to recognize. Okay, there's a lot more going on to this team than just the Xs and O's. They're genuinely like because that's that's how like a kid plays right. They play and they like get excited about things and as an adult, we kind

of try to subdue those. But when you can rid yourself of that and just play just like, okay, I'm back to like this freedom of being able to play. And I guess maybe that's the ceiling that we're talking about that all of a sudden I've I've totally bought into the intangibles. I've bought into this team. I'm willing to do anything. I need to do to help

this team win. And now you have the freedom to just let your talent go. That's probably best made to be playing. Let's let's talk about developing the final intangible and that's intelligence. How does a player continue to develop that mental integrity and that intelligence they need on the field to help their team? You know, that's so interesting. You say that. I and I'm sure this is

the case in football. I'm sure this is any any sport. I had some classmates who could not pay attention in class. Could not get a good grade in class. Yet their intelligence was like through the roof when it came to their sport. It really was so relative like something that caught their interest. They knew everything about I had I had football players from Alabama in my

classes. They knew that playbook inside and out. They knew every single thing that was going on in the field. But when it came to what was on in class that was there. So it intelligence shouldn't be like overall IQ. That really it's really that are they able to absorb what's going on around them and create these intelligent if you will conclusions about what's going about the

game and the willingness to learn the game and little things like watching an outfield or go for a ball and knowing that the shoulder they're catching and over is is the one where they're going to have to catch it and spin and turn and how difficult of a play that's going to be and now I'm going to tag because the balls going that way. And just

a little like gosh little little things like that. Just like the thread that we've through the game. That's what I think about what I've seen intelligence. But I think it developing it is you have to start by watching the game. You can't just be on Instagram watching highlights. You can't just be practicing your skill. I can't get over how many of my girls don't watch college

softball and they don't really have an excuse anymore. It's on all the time. College softball is now on and they're like yeah no I don't really like watching TV and it's like just the the ability to sit and watch the game is just not there and it that blows my mind because I mean my parents and I used to cancel our our events we had for

the week of the World Series because that was the only time we got to watch it and it was just I don't know I don't know if it's a tension span thing I don't know if it's an interesting but it is very different that we have players not watching the game and I really do think we see that overall game IQ or game intelligence plummet. How

do you counter that then as a coach I mean is that that were you for the future how do you counter a player just a player or a generation really that doesn't have that attention span. It is interesting I I would say that's probably something I'm very limited with in a private sector because you know I might be in a cage and I can I can

do situational hitting type stuff or I can talk about hey we have a pitcher who's throwing a rise ball a drop ball but she's hitting her strikes for a screw ball what are we looking for and they're like confused they're like well I don't know if she's throwing three pitches I'm like no no she's throwing a rise ball out of the zone like just the concept

and I would stop it every two minutes and be like okay do we understand what's going on be like a teaching us and we pull the wipe right out more than we playing at that time but I I would think just like bringing athletes aware of like the little the little things I have 22 year olds that when I say hey we got a runner in

second base it's a tight game a really good pitcher no outs we got to get her to third base what what pitcher you looking for and they have no idea we're trying to hit to the right side of the field that just was never taught and or it was taught and it was never to sunk in so again those little things probably what they define success

as right they wanted to get a big hit why would they ever hit a ground ball the second you know that was just never in their their protocol but again I think the willingness to have that out and and give your effort for your team that is another layer of intangible that's missing you know another question I have to though how do you develop intelligence how

what how do we define intelligence right I mean Elon Musk is very very intelligent he's an outlier I think that that guy can probably do anything but there are people who are intelligent in their own sector if you want to do it or not. Yeah, I think it's not necessarily a little bit more like the real world of their career of their life you brought a

great example there with football players they know the playbook in and out but they're not paying attention history class. Not necessarily anything wrong with that especially if that's not their major but it doesn't mean they're not intelligent it doesn't mean that softball or baseball players or basketball players hockey players. They're not intelligent because they're not paying attention in algebra class right or they're not understanding completely

the the work and the material that is going into that algebra class I don't know it's just intelligence to me is another is it's not a straight line it's not there's there's many ways to go with that right I mean right I mean I had and I had as a coach determined if that player has the right intelligence if I guess that's the best way to

put it. Sure I mean we choose and then you have emotional intelligence right I played with it that my coach wanted to strangle because I couldn't remember signs could would forget about this would forget about that and then all of a sudden that's the same teammate who looks at it at a girl that's struggling at the plate looks back at her dugout and says hey guys

she's been struggling to take a high pitch this girl's the wrong had it if she takes it let's let's make sure we really let her know like that is such an insightful and smart thing to think about and and that's like that's intelligent on the emotional level and like she could have connected with anybody any parent any kid it's why she's a phenomenal coach but when

she was in when she was younger and she was developing intellectual intelligence you know that's it's not that one. Yeah exactly right exactly so it is interesting and I think you know if anything especially with just the way our school system is as a coach we probably need to become really aware that if someone is lacking in intelligence they're probably very insecure about it and so

trying to meet the parents and that's the way they're trying to get to know because the athlete is intelligent in some capacity but they're probably protecting themselves right they don't want to let you know just how because they they've been probably scarred by it a little bit so getting that connection with the athlete learning and then when you do find out where their intelligence lies grow

that let's hone in on that let's focus in on that and let's make this your your mobile podcast 21 gmail.com do you have anything to promote. Shoot we just filmed about six weeks of posts so in the coming weeks keep an eye out we got some different posts different learning posts we have our drill library out so that's if you're looking for drills to try to

improve your coaching role a dex of of stuff you can offer your athletes definitely check that out and then if you want any gear of course yes where did they go where they where do they go exactly website to get the gear. Sure okay so honestly the easiest part is our Instagram so at softball strength academy is the Instagram and there's a link in the bio

that's our link tree so when you click on that you see the drill library the t-shirts all that all but right there all the links are there perfect all right well great job today Cass and thank you everybody of course for listening watching episode 22 episode 23 next week and we will talk to you then take care. Thank you. you