Episode #84: Paul Svagdis

Building Championship Culture with Paul Svagdis – Westmont College Head Baseball Coach

In this episode of Significant Coaching, Matt Rogers sits down with legendary baseball coach Paul Svagdis, now leading the program at Westmont College. With over 850 career wins, 10 conference titles, and a proven track record at every collegiate level, Coach Svagdis shares the core principles that have shaped his success—on and off the field.

They discuss what it truly takes to build a winning culture, how to lead with consistency, and why Stephen Vogt, two-time MLB All-Star and current manager of the Cleveland Guardians, remains a lasting example of the kind of player and person Coach Svagdis develops.

Whether you're a coach building your program or a leader striving for lasting impact, this conversation is packed with insight and inspiration.

🔗 Learn more and access free coaching and recruiting resources at CoachMattRogers.com

#SignificantCoaching #PaulSvagdis #WestmontBaseball #CoachingLeadership #StephenVogt #CollegeBaseball #AthleteDevelopment

Transcript

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I had a young man this year, so we're leaving to go up to our first conference tournament. And he knows he's not coming. He's at the bus at 6:00 AM knocking all his teammates. And I, at first I was like, dang good for that. And he was junior, and I was like, man, I, what a level of respect I have for this young man. We get back, the kids won the conference tournament. We get back late that evening. He's at the bus stop when all the, all his teammates walk off. And I told him at the end of the year, I pulled him aside a couple days after that and I said, Hey man you are an incredible one human being and two teammate. And the reason why this team wins is because of guys like yo. Welcome back to Significant Coaching, the podcast where we dive into the mindset habits. And Hart of Transformational Coaches. I'm your host coach Matt Rogers. Today's guest is one of the most respected leaders in all of college baseball coach Paul SMUs. Currently at the helm of Westmont College with 850 career wins, 10 conference titles, and nearly three decades of experience across NCAA Division three NAI and Division two Coach Swaggy has built programs rooted in accountability, purpose, and high standards. He's also coached some incredible players along the way, most notably Stephen VA two-time Major League Baseball All-Star, and the current manager of the Cleveland Guardians. In this episode, we talk about how Steven epitomizes the culture coach Swags creates players who never forget where they came from and who continue to give back. We also dive into how to build a championship culture, what it means to lead with consistency and the leadership lessons that last far beyond the field. Now, before we get started, make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode, and if you're a coach, a recruit. A parent looking for tools to elevate your journey. You can visit coach matt rogers.com. You'll find my books, including significant Recruiting and the Recruits journal series, the Significant Recruiting Launchpad plus opportunities to schedule a free coaching or Recruiting session. All right, let's get after it. Here's my conversation with Coach Paul SDIs. coach Fags, thanks for being on the show. So great to see you. What a great year you had. Yeah, thank you, Matt. Appreciate that. It was fun to watch and I'm always excited. I was a college coach for a long time. I coached at Laverne. I know you coached at Oh yeah. Pomona back in the day. I did, yeah. Laverne, back in the day. I always get excited when I see somebody take over a program in year one and they have the success. You had, I know you're gonna give credit to your ad and the former coach, but how did it feel to step in? I know this is the third or fourth new job for you, but how did it feel to step in and be able to look back now at the success you guys had? It's funny you mentioned being at Laverne when I took over at Pomona Pitzer, our first season, we were eight and 32. So this was de a definitely a different experience than that. Yeah it's been a great, it's an easy transition. I, and I did, I took over for an excellent coach who, who just took over Pepperdine, Tyler Lato who he and I have gotten close over this transition. He really cares about the kids here at Westmont. I got to know him a little bit on the recruiting trail through the years, and so he's been super supportive of that transition. I think that's always key too, right? When a coach leaves and you have that coach that actually cares about the kids and wants the best for'em it, it made it a lot easier for me to come in and coach his guys in a lot of ways. That's great. Yeah. It it's so hard to leave a program that you've built and, but it's so refreshing when you can step into a program that already has a little bit of a culture and the kids know how to work and how to care about each other, so I love that. Coach, I really wanted to talk to you because you're one of the few guys that can say, I've had success at the D three level. I've built programs at the NAI level, I've built programs at the D two level. When you look at your history, is there a common thread, no matter what division you've been at to build a program that's healthy and consistent? Yeah, absolutely. Baseball is baseball, right? Yeah. Whether you're at the Division three NAIA division two I haven't, experienced as a coach, the division one level, but of course I'm a big fan, so I watch a lot of that and I've coached a lot of players from the PAC 12 back in the day when I was at Azua, that would transfer in. So you see the level of talent and I would say to baseball, this thread, I even at Tufts, so I was at Tufts for three years prior to coming to Westmont, we had two players on the roster at Duke in the super regional. So two guys that were incredible young men and players for me at Tufts that had one more year of post grad, or two more years due to COVID and ended up at Duke and had an incredible experience and run there. So I think the talent level, of course, there's a lot more depth at the division one, and then it just starts to depth is a little less at two N AI and three, but the caliber of. Athlete or the mental side of it the desire of the athlete to want to improve and be the best version of themselves is the same. Yeah. I don't think the plan or the theme of what you're trying to do with the kids' changes in terms of the skillset and then probably culture wise, I think in order to have an impact or be able to speak into someone in a critical way, you get to show'em, you care about'em, and that extends every level. Yeah. And especially nowadays, we probably grew up in a generation in the eighties and nineties where the relationships weren't as important as just getting it done, right? Yes. Yeah. As I tell you what to do, you do it the way I tell you, right? That's right. And you, if you went home and you called your old man and said, Hey dad, this guy's saying this to me. He'd say, yeah, do what he told you to do. That's right. I don't wanna hear about it. And we, and I don't necessarily know if that's right. I learned a ton from my college coaches and. Me too. My high school coaches are incredible mentors in my life, but this is a different generation where the kids need to know. And you can see that, look what Jay's doing. Jay Johnson over at LSU and these teams, you see when the coaches get to the podium, there's a lot of emotion there.'cause they're pouring into the relationships. Yeah. So as the Pulse Vegas, that was at Pomona Pitzer 29, 30 years ago. Do you recognize him? He, yeah he doesn't exist any longer. All right. Now I wanna know more. Tell me. Yeah, tell me how you've grown.'cause I keep having this conversation. This is my, I think I've been coaching for 30 years now. Yeah. So it's one of those things, I look back at that kid that got his first college job at 26. I'm like, oh my gosh, you were just a hot mess. Yes. Yeah. Same. I was 25 I think when I got the Pomona job. Yeah. Head job grew up in the eighties and nineties where. Intensity and just do what you're told to do is a common denominator. And my, I'm still very close with those Pomona guys. In fact, the Pomona picture guys, my athletic director who was the coach here and really developed the Westmont program Robert Ruiz played for me. Pomona Pitzer, and he was one of my guys. That's great. And so that's great. They we'll get together and they'll come to my house now, these Pomona Pitzer guys with their kids, or, and we'll hang out and they'll come to our Westmont games and they'll go Faggy, they call me Faggy. You are not the same guy you were when you coached us. Adapt, right? Yeah. You gotta adapt to the times. It's so funny when I, I have the same relationship with my first group of guys at Maryville and they just tease me so much, and I love it.'cause there's just things that they remember that I have no, no recollection of. Yes. And they come at me with a coach, you said this to me and you said this to him. And I was like, oh my gosh. I would've, yeah. Today's world. I would've been fired in a second. 100%. 100%. And I also think you remember, you were 26, I don't know if you had kids at the time, but I, my first, my daughter, my oldest was born when I was. 28, 29. So the first probably four years of my head coaching career, I had no perspective on what it meant to have a child, yeah. And even now at 55 when I'm sitting in a room now with a young man that I have to have a hard conversation with, which it might be pulling his starting job, right? Just'cause he's struggling. I think about, I, my son's a rower at Tufts, a college athlete. My daughter was a volleyball player in college. And the one thing as a dad, I would expect is that coach respects and cares about my kid. That's right. So that perspective really changed for me after having my own kids and going, this is someone's son, or this is someone's daughter. That's right. I need to handle this in a true, in a real way. But also to understand the emotions that they're going through when something hard is being delivered. I have a daughter and a son, I. I say we were smart. We were married for 12 years before we had a kid, so I was probably almost a dozen years into my coaching career before we had children. Okay. So that perspective, it was an easier transition because by then these kids were my kids. You know what I mean? And you understand that. But now when I go to her games it's so hard for me to watch other coaches. Yeah. Especially young coaches. Sure do. Do you struggle with that watching other kid, other people coach your kids? I think I did. So my, my son who, he's older now and he's again, he goes to school in Boston. He's back out in California right now spending time with us. We, he just said this to me the other day'cause I was making fun of myself for being an awful dad or something. And we like to laugh about it and he goes, dad we've already discussed this. You're a great dad and you're a great coach, but you're not a great coach dad. That is a great way to put it. Yeah, I think that, that it's so perfect. Yeah. Because I'm the same way. Yeah. So I think I just think I probably with my daughter was a little easier. This was the best advice I got from my wife when my daughter was transitioning from that junior high to like high school. And now it's okay, it's high school now and you love playing, so I'm gonna come watch you play. And I might not know anything about volleyball, but I know something about effort and athleticism. And, there was some moments where we'd come back and I'd do the dad coach thing and it would get very tense with my daughter who has a similar personality to her dad. Yeah. And so my wife pulled me aside and said, Hey, I got a question for you. Do you want your daughter to be a great athlete or do you wanna have a great relationship with your daughter when you're older? And it hit me and I was like, wow. Yeah. I said,'cause I know, we know this athletic thing is fleeting. It's for you the best of the best. And I want her to experience high school volleyball. And hopefully she, I want her to experience the collegiate environment.'cause as it can be very special, right? Yep. Yep. But that was the best advice. So you'll laugh at this. So I post volleyball games. I would go into my room and give myself a 45 minute timeout. The kids would be like, what's Dad doing? Ma would be just like, Hey, he is just, he's chilling for a little bit so that I wouldn't engage in the whole coach dad thing with my daughter. Yeah. And I'll say this to this day, I just said this to my wife. I said, Hey, thanks for that advice.'cause I have a great relationship with my daughter. She trusts me. She under, she knows I'm in her corner. And she had a, despite what dad thought about coaching her, she had a great college and high school experience. So That's great. It was good. Yeah. Yeah. I'm the same way. I've had to just tell her, listen, I'm gonna be a little aloof after games. It's gonna sound, it's gonna look like I might not even have been there. Yeah. I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be really quiet. I'm gonna say good game. It was fun watching you play. And that may be all you get outta me. Yeah. Until maybe tomorrow and if you wanna talk more, I've had to really train myself. Yeah. You I, my wife and I sometimes both need a horse collar Yeah. During games and after games, but it's we're getting better at it. I think that's the great challenge of being a parent of athletes is, especially when you've actually coached, is learning that, okay, you gotta go back and go, how do I want my parents, of the players I'm coaching to act? How do I want them to talk? And you have to live in that world a little bit. Sure. Absolutely. And they, I've noticed, and I don't know if this is right or wrong, but. The parents do play a major role, especially in our sport in baseball. Yeah. The mental psyche. And so as I've gotten older where when I was younger you were like, Ooh, parents can be hard, right? Yeah. Because playing time and you gotta create boundaries, and I still think boundaries need to be created. But one of the things as I've gotten older, I've tried to create is this atmosphere for parents to feel like they're a part of the process, but also separate it from it. Yeah. Because you want the kids, I need our athletes to be in a great frame of mind, if I'm fighting battles at two or three different fronts, emotionally, that's hard to do as a coach. Yeah. Having the parents feel like you, not that I'm going outta my way to make the experience important to them, but whatever that is, a tent time on the road to take the kids out or, I've learned that they're a big part of the process as well. They are and they want to be involved. Yeah. And and when it's done it can be really positive. Rich Grower was the best high school coach when I was a college coach in St. Louis. He was the best high school coach around. And I would go coach at his camps and help him. And I remember Rich did, this was almost 30 years ago, rich did a communication guide for his families at the start of every year. And he would have every parent sign it, this is how we're going to communicate with each other. And I stole that and I've tweaked it and changed it over the years. Are you doing something like that at the college level or is it more just a conversation? It's probably while you're recruiting. Yeah. It's probably in the recruiting process. Hey I, because the parents are pretty, pretty involved in that and it's probably a conversation of, and I know we're gonna talk a little bit about recruiting later, a later segment, but it's probably more of letting them understand why it's important that I build a level of trust with their son. And then I also try to identify as a parent of a college athlete to say, you know what I've received, I receive emails. Please don't let Jimmy know I'm reaching out. And I, so I use that as an example with some of our incoming parents. And I say to something to the effect of, now I feel like I'm in the spot.'cause now I'm being asked to be dishonest with someone I'm trying to build trust with. That's right. And trust is key to having any sort of success. I said, but also as a parent, I wanna protect you from with your relationship with your son.'cause I know if my dad did that without me knowing. That could create conflict in my relationship with my dad. So I said, just understand when you reach out in those fashions with, please don't tell my son. That's a, that's really putting us all in a really tough bind now. And then I might talk to some if you need me to reach out'cause you're concerned about them emotionally.'cause we have a lot of, mental health issues, with this generation and Instagram and social media. Our job is to work together to help your son or daughter be the best version of themselves. So you try to have that on honest conversation. I haven't run into too many. It's easier when you get older though. I bet you've seen this, yes. Yeah. I don't take it personal anymore. Being a parent of a child, I sat in my daughter's volleyball games in college and. My, her college volleyball coach was a colleague of mine that I knew 10 years prior. And I'd be like, I wanna rip this guy's head off. I never told my daughter that, but I'm like, dude, my kid's a baller. You know how you do that as a parent? Yes. Or my kid's a coach's kid. She gets it right. She's all in on what the coach wants. And I remember feeling those emotions never acting out on them. And I'm still close with her college coach to this day, but I had that emotion. Yeah. So now when I have a dad that's upset about playing time, or I have a mom that's upset that I'm not playing her kid enough, i've felt those emotions and I can sit there and go, I know why you feel that way. You should feel that way. That's what a parent should feel. Yeah. But I still have, I'm still gonna make the decisions that are best for this team based on what I think when you're 55 and you've coached this long, it's, you're a little more confident in that answer. Yeah. Yeah. When I was 25, I was like, why are you attacking me? Yeah. So it's amazing what happens when we hit 50 as a coach. I, and I don't know why that number, but it just, it does something to your brain where you're like, all right I've done everything I've set out to do. Now it's about, I want some peace. I want happiness. Yeah. I wanna be able to coach the way I want to coach, but I don't want any drama. Yeah. So how do I go into this conversation to eliminate the drama? Said. Said. That's what I've learned at from 50 on. Yes. Because I had a lot of drama prior to that. Yes. I, I'm thinking of a story. My best player, this was 20 years ago, his dad called me probably seven, eight games into the season. We're in first place. We're leading the league, we're ranked top 20 in the country, and his son is our best player. And he calls me and wants to talk about how to use his son better. And I listen and I say thank you, and I'll go, I'll take all, I'll take all your words to, to heart and put some thought into it. This was a 30-year-old ver 30-year-old version of myself. I hang up the phone and I call his son. I say, Hey, what are you doing right now? I know you're not in class. Can you come over and see me? He comes over and I say, Hey do you like your uniform? He goes, what do you mean coach? I go, do you like your uniform? Do you like wearing it? Do you like how it fits? Do you like how it feels on you? And he goes, yeah, coach, I do. I go, if you want to keep it, your dad never calls me again. Yeah. I get a phone call 10 minutes later from the dad in tears. Oh, wow. See Coach, I'm so sorry. It'll never happen again. I was like, Hey, this is your son's thing. Yeah. I'm never gonna yell at you. I'm never gonna be mad at you. This is your son's thing, and he has to learn how to have a relationship with you as an adult. Yeah. But this has to be his thing. If he's got a problem, I've got an open door policy, he's got my cell phone twenty four seven. So I want him to lead that conversation. So I don't think I would've handled, I don't think I'd handle that the same way today as I did when I was 30. But I was pretty cocky back then, yes. Yeah. And that's, yeah, that's exactly, my experience as well. Coach I'm gonna transition here a little bit. I know you've been, and tell me if I'm wrong, you've been really intentional about integrating your faith into your coaching. Yes. Do you agree? Yes, 100%. Yep. I'm not, I my, my spiritual faith is really important to me, but I'm not a very religious man anymore. I was raised Catholic but this is always a really great conversation for me, and I love talking about this from a coaching aspect. When you think about a practice, a 7:00 AM practice, an 8:00 AM practice, you get, what does that integration of your faith and your spiritual self and what you want these boys to take away from you as a man. What does that look like at 7:00 AM on a Wednesday in the fall? Yeah. I I enjoy being around the guys and and the spiritual like development of our athletes. I'm not a, although we'll do planned out stuff'cause some of our players will be like, Hey coach, can you lead like a bible study? Or something like that. If the players come to me and ask for that, I'm all in. I can really make that happen. I'm a little more organic. Yeah. And usually I'm a little more a authentic in the sense of Amen. Lemme tell you about what I've been going through and how I've been losing my identity and being a coach and not an identity of a follower of Jesus, which this happens even at 55 years old. Correct. And I, you guys can wa you can see how it played out this potential weekend, right? Yeah. For me, maybe my energy level get up, maybe my intensity, what intensity's good, but what's behind the intensity, right? Yeah. And that's what I'll try to explain to the guys. I'm like, D daily I have to think about, I. I was created this way, which there's a lot of positives in it, right? I come to practice with energy, I come to games with intensity. I hopefully you think I come prepared as a coach, but sometimes I start relying on my own strength and the strength from my faith and understanding that God is in control of my life, right? And so I think when the kids can see Hey man, I struggle with the same things that you're gonna struggle with. I've gone through it now, right? And I look back at what I look felt like at 22 and now I'm 55. Hopefully you guys can see the value in not making this your primary like identity, right? Yeah. Baseball's my identity.'cause baseball's gonna, any, if we keep putting our identity in things that are gonna fail us, it's gonna be a long, miserable life. Agreed. Yeah, agreed. And I would also say to that I get every day I have to walk through that process. Like I even struggle with it myself spiritually. I'm like, Hey man, why don't I just show up? Understanding that every day, right? Yeah. Like I have to whatever have to, is have some quiet time, right? Have some prayer time, just like I gotta bang the weights. I'll explain to the kids like, we're banging weights now. I gotta bang the weights spiritually, otherwise I just start relying on my own strength. And once I do that, I get very lonely. Yes. And so I just try to find moments like that and be real with the kids. I don't know if it works the toughest, when I was at Pomona, when I was at Tuft's, I wasn't hired to share faith with the kids. And I think I'm a pretty, pretty good person that way. Like I'm hired to be the baseball coach here now. Hopefully I'll live in such a way.'cause I know those kids are gonna struggle in life somewhere along the line that I develop a relationship with them and that they know faith has been important to me without me throwing it at'em or forcing it on'em, or constantly bugging'em with it. But just trying to live it out in an authentic way that then those young men will think about when they're struggling with their marriage, they're struggling with their job, they lost, didn't get a job, they didn't get promoted, they lost their job. They trust me enough to pick up the phone.'cause maybe they saw me tell stories about failure and how maybe my faith played into overcoming that failure. Does that make sense? Yeah, exactly. So I think those are the ways that, that I try to bring it into my daily kind of routine. It's such valuable, it's such a valuable conversation. Yeah. And I think every coach. Needs to have it because I go back to my failures as an athletic director and, you'd see a, you'd watch a coach overreact to a call or you'd watch a coach overreact to a player. And I think now how I'd want to handle it is I'd want to go into their office a couple days later and say, Hey, you doing all right? I saw you do some things that were outta your character and say some things outta your character. You doing all right? Yeah. What do you need from me? And I think as coaches, the older we get, the more we're doing those things, the more we're watching how a kid's reacting and how they're showing up at practice or how they're making a change. But I think we all need to understand that as we coach what you're doing, what you're saying is, I'm still that guy. I can still overreact. I can still get pissed off. I can still get ornery. Yeah. But now I'm much better at. Saying, Hey guys, I failed a little bit yesterday. I wasn't true to myself and how I handled that situation. And I want you to know that I'm learning too, and I love that about you, coach. I love I, again, I think we could get 10,000 coaches in a room and that would be a message that would change a lot of their futures as a coach. Yeah. Thanks for that. So I appreciate that more than and I appreciate where you're coming from with that. Let's talk about your journey a little bit. You've coached all Americans, academic, all Americans, major leaguers. One of your guys is the manager of the Cleveland Guardians for crying out loud. Super cool. I still don't believe it, but that's pretty cool. Yeah, let's talk about that.'cause I, and I, for me, it's I don't often think about my best players, the kids that, gone on. I think about those kids that I, I had a great relationship with or, did something special. But, you look at Mr. Vote, man, he's, yeah, he's had a great career. What is that like to see that a kid that you coached and grew up and now he's coaching Major League baseball? Yeah. It's certainly it's a proud moment to feel like you were semi part of that process. I. I, I think what's super cool about Steven and Alyssa's wife, and she was a Zeus, a grad as well, and an athlete. And then he has three kids at home. And my son was in their wedding when he was in the minor leagues. So prior to all of this incredible success at the big league level I think much like you were talking, we were talking about earlier, the relationship that I would have with Steven that I have now was the same relationship. Whether he just started teaching high school math and coaching, which was the path he wanted to go on, and and I think what's fun about this too is we have a lot of teammates. That played with Steven, right? And he's the same guy as the manager of the Guardians right now and manager of the year. As he was as a player and a clubhouse guy. So we'll all end up down at Dodger Stadium and go out to dinner after, and he's just one of the guys still. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's what's, that goes back to that authenticity and the genuineness of people and then being a part of a great team culture, right? Yeah. He still is. Great about staying in touch with his teammates and when they come down to a game and he, I get pictures from his teammates with their son, with Steven at the Angels game, that's so awesome. So it's that's great. It's pretty neat part of the process. But I would say this, and I really mean it it's, I had one of his teammates down that didn't play at Westmont. That I haven't seen in 15 years that lives down in LA now. And we were at Vanguard this year and we reconnected and he said, he has a daughter that plays softball. I said, Hey, does she want to be our back girl down at Vanguard? He said, I love it. And so we reconnected. She came in and she was our back girl during the game. It was wonderful. That's awesome. I'm just as excited about what those guys are doing as their lives, as Steven is doing as his, I think the cool part from a baseball standpoint is, although it was, he was a, he's a lot busier now than he was as a big league player. I bet. Yeah. So there was, we, there was a lot of times where we could just jump on the horn and talk baseball, and now I'm like, dude, I don't wanna bug him right now. Yeah. He's in the midst of a, divisional run or they traded somebody or, you know what I mean? And he's. He I would hope he knows this and I know he does. He's got a lot of good, his dad's a wonderful guy. His brother's a great guy who, here's a cool story. So his older brother Danny, was a captain at Westmont College. Really? Yeah. And he played, so my, I. They crossed over. So when Steven was a freshman for me at Azusa Pacific, Danny was a senior at Westmont. So the first guy I called when Robert Ruiz called me for the job is I called Danny'cause we're all close. Danny Gold, of course, who's a great guy and very successful in his own right. And I said, Hey Danny, what do you think? Should I take the Westmont job? And he's no way, skip, this would be great. And I said we're just keeping it all in the family, in the baseball family, yeah. I love it. Yeah. It's such a small world. It isn't it? Yeah. But that's what makes it fun, it does. It's, there's, there, I have so much joy in all the guys and gals that I've coached over the years, but when one of them is coaching, and I don't care if they're coaching high school or middle school or something, it's, there's just so much joy for me when we get to talk coaching together. Yes. You know what I mean? Yep. Yep. 100%. And R Rob Ruiz, my ed coached Steven with us. Okay. Who's the idea here at Westmont, who was the coach here for 10 years? Took him to the series, did a great job. I think that's a super cool connection too. He was there at Azusa when we recruited Steven. He was a part of my staff. Yeah. And then he took over Westmont. So baseball community is a lot smaller than we think. We come across people and it's a cool community. My college coach used to say this, I coached college football for nine years, collegially at the D three level prior. I didn't know that. Yeah. So three years at Tufts. And then when I graduated undergrad, I did a GA position there in football and baseball. And then I got my head job at Pomona Pitzer. But they, the real job was a football job and they gave me baseball. That's pretty much, that's pretty much what it was. But that's small school athletics 20 years ago. That's to some point. It still is. Yes. That's exactly right. And so my coach said to me,'cause he was a college football coach, my college coach, John Casey, who's an A BCA Hall of Famer case, said, I go, case, why didn't you become a football coach? You were like, great football coach. Why don't you go, be a head coach somewhere. And he goes, he goes, baseball guys are just different. They're not afraid to share the things that they're doing. They're not afraid to, football, I don't want to tell you how I'm running this play because, that's my I have like in intellectual property on that and baseball. He goes, you go to a convention and you just start talking baseball. Yep. About hitting or pitching. And everybody's an open book. Yep. And and I, when I was younger I was like, oh, okay. But now that I'm older, I really appreciated that perspective that he had on that.'cause it's very true. Oh I've told stories. I actually was just talking to Kevin Brooks at Angelo State about this.'cause he was, he coached basketball, he thought he was gonna be a basketball coach. I told him I thought I was gonna be a baseball coach. Yeah. And the way our paths go, but we were talking about, I remember at 2324 going to conventions and having Lew Olson. Yeah. I'd say, Hey coach, I got a question. He'd pull me aside and he'd spend 30 minutes with me talking post play. Yeah. He didn't have to do that. He could have walked out and left. And, but he had a conversation with me and Tom Izzo. And so for me, that's how I think about coaching is how important it's that we share and that we,'cause you and I can have the same understanding of bat path, but how you teach it is gonna be different than how I teach it. But the shared knowledge is so valuable and that's why the game just keeps getting better. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yep. I want, we talked about Steven A. Little bit. I wanna talk a little bit about,'cause I don't think we've really talked about this on the show at all. I wanna get your thoughts on it.'cause you have such a great relationship with all your guys that have gone on to after playing. How do you mentor kids to lead their life after they're done playing when the cheering stops and there isn't that big goal anymore. They, they've been playing baseball their whole life. Yeah. How do we get them ready to go onto the world without that?'Cause it's different. We're not training every day. You're not, there's nobody pushing you every day. There's not a game to play or a championship to win. How do we prepare them for that next part of their life? Oof. I think it's tough to prepare him for that. I think you, it goes back to that identity piece that we were talking about earlier. What's my identity? You're gonna battle that your whole life. You're gonna go get a job and your job's gonna come a priority and your family might take a backseat to that. Where's your identity right now? I'm always encouraged'em to put their identity in their family and who they are in their community and Right, the leadership component. But I, it goes back, I think integrity and being honest Hey guys, you're gonna have a whole, you're gonna have a void when this ends. And your parents are gonna have a void.'cause they been driving you everywhere. Arizona, Pacific North, they've been all over the country taking you around to be seen. There's gonna be a little bit of void. But the skills that you're learning, this is the stuff I, five minute post talk conversation. The skills that we're learning on this field, you're gonna be able to apply in your life as whatever your life is. Doctor, lawyer, business. Teacher, educator, some of you guys will coach. That's an easy transition, right? You'll learn that actually, you I remember telling, going back to Steven Bo, he got DFA with Oakland after having two all star seasons, and we had a lot of emotion on the phone. I remember sitting right behind my dugout at a zoo and Hey, coach and this and I remember telling him, and I don't want to jinx him right now, but I said, listen, I'm like, you're gonna be a big league manager someday. Like you had this was, and he still had a career after that. He had four more years in the bigs after he got DFA with Oakland the first time. And I said, you I said you have all the qualities of being an incredible manager. And I said, right now, at some point, you're gonna have to stop playing the game. And that's gonna be heartbreaking.'cause there's a lot of difference between playing and coaching. But I'm gonna tell you, you're gonna be more satisfied and have more gratification from the coaching component because you're pouring into someone else. You're pouring into a young prospect, you're helping him overcome adversity. You're helping him get his career off the ground. You know what I mean? And also being a mentor to him about what it looks like to, hopefully be a good dad and a good husband through a very tough lifestyle, right? In the big ones, right? And I said, you are gonna enjoy that buddy a lot more than the home runs that you hit in the big leagues. And I remember talking to him after last year. Now last year was pretty Cinderella for him, other than going to the World Series, but being the manager of the year. And I said, do you remember I told you that? And I said, what do you think? Do you love it? And he is yes, absolutely. There's, because you're giving, you're not taking. Does that make sense? Yeah. Like sometimes when you're a player, even though you're, when you're a part of a great team, you should be giving to your teammates. Yes. There's also that self-absorption of I'm not hitting over 300, or I'm not getting the playing time that I, we've worked hard for. When you're coaching, it's just all about the other guy. Yes. In a lot of ways, right? Yes. So I try to share those things with the kids. But I also am honest with'em, you're gonna have a little lonely time'cause you're not gonna not know what to do with it. Does that make sense? Yeah. I very much it's, if we're not teaching selflessness as a member of a team, you're gonna have a hard time learning that when the team isn't there. Absolutely. And that's what makes great coaches. That's what makes you a great coach, is your selflessness. You're always gonna put your family and your players and your program and the school ahead of yourself and it's a calling, it's a service. Life. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.'Cause we don't get paid a lot at this level. No. No, we don't. And that's what people understand. We don't, and we don't stop. We work seven days a week. We work 52 weeks a year and Yeah. Like you said you're on the phone after a game behind the backstop talking to a kid that graduated 20 years ago, absolutely. Yeah. You're always a part of that life. That family is huge. Yes. They're always there. Yeah. My, my kids are learning that the hard way, you know about me. They're, my wife will see that I've got two meetings on my calendar and they'll go, why were you so busy today? You only had two meetings. I got eight phone calls and six emails that I had to respond to, yeah. Yeah. And it, it's the day fills up because everybody needs you. You're the person they've been counting on for so long. Absolutely. Yeah. For sure. And that's why I love it, and I know that's why you love it. Yep. Yep. I wanna talk about high academic because you coach and not that Westmont and Azu Pacific aren't great schools'cause they are. But when you're coaching at a school like Tufts and Pomona. Pitzer Yep. Your talent pool is very small. Yes. Because it's a very small group of kids that could get in the door. Yep. What did you learn about building a program at those two schools that have shaped how you build it now? Scholarship level. Yeah. I think, yeah. I in order you, in order to win games right there, it's what comes first? Do you build great culture and then you win games? Or is winning games a part of building great culture and, but winning games is definitely a part of it, right? And I've always said this even as a Christian, like to my wife, when I was younger, when we were eight and 32 my first year, I'm like, babe, like you gotta start praying. Because if I played for a coach that was eight and 32, I would not listen to that guy. So I'm like, I need, we need to win some games, right? Yes. So when you're at these high academic elite schools, like I think you have to really find that diamond in the rough, right? It probably at the division one level, maybe they're a two to three tool player. Does that make sense? And yes. At my level here, they're like a two to one tool guy. You gotta find those one tool guys that you say, man, I, okay, that guy's six three and he is got a short swing. But he's, a buck 70, he's a skinny kid playing third base, and his arm is suspect over there. Like from a baseball standpoint. Yeah. And then you have to project out. We'll be, we'll get in the weight room, we'll get him to 200 pounds and that guy's gonna be a good player. And then he has to fit that academic component. Is he a 1450 SAT? Is he a four oh student? Is he a AP guy? But I think one of the things that we tried to do at Pomona was find those kids that had that one, something that I felt like, and for me it was always, I would wa either pitching wise, just watch how their arm worked. Very simple. We didn't have data back then. And he, let's be honest, even if we had data what guys? That the da, the data guide do that I want, am I gonna get at Pomona Pitzer versus Cal State Fullton. They're gonna get that guy before I get him, or Harvard's gonna get that guy before Pomona College gets him, or Stanford's gonna take that guy off of data before I get him. So for a long time it was more of Hey, does his arm work well? And then from an offensive standpoint, did he show some semblance of bat speed with his hands? And I felt like if a kid's hands were good, even if he was a defensive kid, if I thought he had quick hands, I was like, oh, I can teach him how to hit at this level. Do you know what I mean? Where now as I've moved to Azusa and now I have scholarship and I'm at Westmont, there's there, maybe now I'm looking at their speed now with that bat speed, or I'm looking at their arm strength with that bat speed, I'm looking for one more tool. Does that make sense? Absolutely. You. You're always looking for that multiple multiplier. Exactly. You know that kid can give you one extra thing. But it sounds like for you, it's all about development. No matter what level you're at, 100%, you're just able to recruit a little bit higher level or somebody a little faster, a little stronger, a little bigger, but the mindset is still, they've got the tools I need, but they've got the tools I can develop as well. Absolutely. Like I, and I really have this mindset and I think it's, I. This development growth mindset starting over at Pomona College. And going from eight and 32 and program never really having a lot of success to now Frank osi, I don't know if you've heard of Frank, he took over from a, taking him to the World Series, like Yeah, they're good baseball team. There's really good players on that team that could play for me, that could go play division one. Like I said, my Tufts guys were on the Duke team and Uni University of Connecticut, which is a regional team in Northwestern. Yeah. So as coaching at the mid levels you have kids that then have developed'cause you, you saw something in them that they may not have seen in themselves at the time. Yeah. And then you believed in that skillset and then you developed it. So there was a book I read, I was in a doctoral program when I was at Pomona. I didn't finish. They said they gave you a book and they said, Hey, 80% of people don't. Finished doctoral programs and I was like, I'm not gonna be that guy. I was that guy. Yeah. Yeah. My second child came along and I was like, I ain't doing it, but we, yeah, I was same way. And you're coaching and all that. But I got pretty far along. There was a book that was it's called Strengths Finder and it's like a personality task, blah, blah, blah. I know that book. Yeah. One of the things I brought into my coaching was this idea that we all have our strengths and we should focus on our strengths, not necessarily our weaknesses. And and I may be butchering the premise of Strength Finders, but it hit me as a coach. If I have a plus offensive or a good offensive kid and I can make him a plus offensive kid, I only have so many ti, so much time in the day to do that. So let me try to take the good hitter, let's say, and turn him into a plus hitter. If I'm spending time and he's not a good defender, I need to find a space where he can be maybe average as a defender or find a position where average can play with his plus offense. And I might flip that with a defensive kid. Make sense? Yeah he's a plus defender in the middle infield, he's got great hands. So I'm gonna spend a lot of time on making that strength. Even making it elite. Yeah. Because that elite strength's gonna help us win games. And my job is to pu put him into the puzzle that creates a winning team. Yeah. Does that make sense? Very much and I think when you and I grew up, I think that's the way Major League Baseball was. I that's you weren't expecting your shortstop to hit 20 home runs and get 80 rbis. If he finished the season with nine airs and batted 2 45, you were happy. Yep. That to balls and maybe war and stuff like that. I'm not big data guy. I'm old, so I'm trying to figure it out'cause young kids like it, but maybe those things factor in now, but I'll take the Wizard of Oz any day. Yeah, absolutely. Me too. Yeah, because I know I'm, he's gonna make every play. Plus he's gonna get us plays, I'm a Cub fan, so I talk about Whitey, Whitey way too much, and those 82 Cardinals. Yeah. It's hard for me to talk about, but to me that was, that's where baseball was at its heyday. You had a lead off hitter with great speed. You had a guy that could hit behind a runner at number two. Yeah. You had a guy that hit with average and you could hit with a little power, and then you had your big hammer at number four. And it's it's hard for me to watch Kyle Schwarber about leadoff. Yeah. Yeah. It's just it's a challenge for me, the way baseball's changed. I understand the analytics, I get it. But it's those things I'm always, I'm constantly learning and trying to adapt. Coach, this has been a lot of fun. I could talk forever with you. I want to end this coaching session with some quick hitters, but I got one, one more question for you, and I want you to think about talking to young coaches. What advice would you give to young coaches who are trying to build their voice, and especially those who want to lead, lead a program for a long time and really grow in that program? What advice would you give? Yeah, I would say. Find it's a fine line between being a buddy with a player and being someone that cares about a player, but drawing the line, yeah. I think the, in this day and age with social media and being a young coach with young athletes, I think sometimes we, I would just encourage a young coach that I have. There's something different between the coaching staff and the players, and I care about you and I love you, and I'm gonna work my tail off for you and I would hope you're gonna work your tail off for your teammates, but we're not buddies yet. French buddies happen when you graduate and I have you over my house and take you out to dinner, and, you know what I mean? At that point, I'm not your coach anymore. I'm not your boss, because I think when those lines get blurred. You as a young coach lose I think some sort of emotional control of your team. Agreed. That's great advice and that's a tough one.'cause I'm also saying be relational. Yeah. You know what I mean? It, there, there is the line. And finding that line is a big step for a lot of coaches. And I, I just, I did a coaching session with a brand new college coach before you and I hopped on today and I told her the same thing. I go, you gotta find your voice. I go I've called you coach a couple times since we got on the phone. And I go, how did that feel to hear me call you coach? She goes, it's still a little strange. Yeah. And I go you gotta learn to own that. You gotta learn to love that's who you are. Sure. These kids are looking at you for advice and direction and it's hard to be their best friend until you figure out how that role is for you. Absolutely. You know what I mean? I did a you'll, I did this when I was at Azusa with my ad. I was trying to get a little bigger piece of the pie, right? Yeah. And I had just turned 50, I think it was, and it was right during COVID. And I did research on on coach Corman at Vandy Bill Belichick. I'm a huge Patriots fan. I think. Coach Greg Popovich. Yeah. Who actually coached at Pomona College. Another Pomona Pitzer alone. Yeah. Pomona Pitzer. Yeah. Great guy. Yeah. And one of my highlights of my career was at a Hall of Fame dinner and Coach Pop is there and he's getting inducted into the Hall of Fame. And I get to meet him, of course. And he had just won his second, I think, NBA championship. And he and I would bring my captains to these things.'cause I'm like, this is incredible. I want you to hear from Love it. Highly successful people that were here, that loved being here at D three. And Coach Pop said, he goes, I have one trophy in my office. He had already won two. And he goes, it was sitting behind me and he goes, it was the net when I won my first kayak championship at Pomona College. Love it. Yeah. And I was like, dude, he's won two NBA championships. He's coaching the Admiral and all these incredible guys. But that experience for him was so meaningful. Yeah. So anyways, I did all this stuff'cause I was going back to young coaches and older coaches and young coaches can certainly have done incredible things in baseball and basketball and football and things like that. It's definitely become a young woman and man's game in a lot of Yes. Because of the relationship stuff. But my soul goal was like, to get my ad to buy in, I'm 50 now at Azusa. This is, I'm in my prime as a coach and I went through Mandy's success at the World Series happened after Coach Corbin was 50 and won his first world Super Bowl at 52 and Pop and I, and then there was, I think Joe Torry, I probably had Joe Torry, yeah. His first World series. And I'm like, Hey Gary, I'm good friends with him. I'm like, I just turned 50 all and then I took all these coaches and they said they had great general managers that were all Hall of Famers. Like your ad. And I'm like, we got this now we got the next 10 years to take. Azusa Pacific to a national championship. It's just gonna require some money. I didn't get it, but it was a great presentation, great sales pitch. Yeah, I love it. But I do think there's something about, my wife will say this those guys, you learn from your mistakes, you learn from your failures. And I also think, obviously Coach Corbin is the class of college baseball and incredible guy. I think he knows how to create relationships and let his players know what he cares about him. But I think when you walk on the field, there's such a high level of respect for the expectation that he probably has that they know he cares about him, but they also know. There's a little bit of a line there, and I wouldn't know if Coach Corbin would say that, but that's what I would observe probably. And why he's so successful. I agree. I agree. And I'm learning too. I see coaches that are able to stra that line and really have great success. And I don't know if it's how I was raised or how I grew up in the game. It's just it's still a challenge for me. I, like you said, when they graduate I'm okay getting rid of the coach hat, yeah. Yeah. But while they're playing for me, it's, that line's still valuable. It's still important. Absolutely. Yeah. Coach you up for some quick hitters. Some fun. Sure. Some fun questions. Absolutely. You'll like these. Okay. Best baseball movie of all time. Oh. Field of Dreams. I'm with you There. Anything with Kevin Costner in a baseball, I'm happy. Yeah. Yeah. I know you've already mentioned the strengths finders there one book every Coach should read. Ooh, That's a tough one. I should have, you probably sent me this question. I should have thought about it. Every we can come back to it. Yeah, we'll come back to that one. I read a bunch of books. I've read a bunch of books on leadership. I like the re Speed of Trust was but I don't know if it's a book everyone should read, but it's called The Speed of Trust and I think Covey was the author and I think I, I've, that one kind of gave me a little bit of man, if I'm not creating trust amongst my athletes. I'm at a zero. I'm starting from scratch. And so it sounds like a pretty darn good book for young people to read. Young coaches. Yeah. It was more, it was a book on basically you have to create trust in your organization in order to move forward and excel and then collaborate. Yeah. And so when I read that I was probably 38 years old, I was like, am I creating trust when I'm just hammering these guys emotionally? Yeah. That I gotta be able to be a little more authentic. Some of those words we used earlier. Yeah. Yeah. I have to find ways and not, I'm not one of those guys. Let's do a trust fall. You know what I mean? I'm not gonna do a retreat. Yeah. But who I am as a person in their life. Am I there? Am I trustworthy? Is coach, is his word does he care? So those things really played into it early on when I hit that crux of my career at 36 years old. Yeah. I love that. I'm gonna check that book out, that sounds. Like the ideal thing for at least the thought process, the speed of trust, and how important trust is in those relationships. I love that. Yep. What's the first thing you notice when you were recruiting a player? And this is a good transition to what we're gonna talk about next. I'm sorry. I was looking it up. It is Steven Covey. Love that. Yeah. Yeah. You can't go wrong with Covey books. Yeah. What's the first thing you notice when you're recruiting a player? Oh. And maybe a better question to start with. Do you recruit? No, I think you recruit yourself. I, the loaded question for me, the first thing I notice is size. Okay. See, I that, that doesn't make sense. So the first thing, your eyes gravitate to a six three guy hitting left-handed. Yeah. Or a six three guy on the hill. Yeah. It just, it is what it is. Except that, but that I. I just recruited two middle infielders this year in our first recruit class, and I think they're dynamic athletes, right? Yeah. And so it's just because I might go to the field and my eyes gravitate to the six three kid. Does that make sense? Yeah. Doesn't mean my best players have been guys that have been undersized. Yeah. This is baseball's the equalizer size actually doesn't always matter. Does is speed the thing that gets you hooked though? Size might catch your eye. Is it the speed and the athleticism that you I think athleticism. I think athleticism, although I run a lot more as a coach strategically now. Yeah. I think because I got taught from a former teammate of mine when I went back to Tufts. Incredible guy. He came on board with me, one of the best coaching experiences of my life. He was great at the base running game Mike Ward. Very good friends with him and Mike taught me a running game and I've like literally implemented that. So it goes back to you evolve now. I kinda, if I can find a guy that can run, I know I've been taught from Mike a way to teach them how to do this successfully, that's gonna be an asset for my team when I, that's huge. When I was younger, I might've said, ah, you don't have to run hard if you put it on the other side of the fence. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now I'm looking for that dual threat guy. Yeah. I love how it's coming back. We talked about the early eighties and how things were, I feel like speed is coming back to the game. Yeah. It's and maybe we needed to shorten the, make the bases bigger and change some of the rules at the major league baseball to do it. But you're starting to see Yeah speed is so huge. I see. In the big leagues. I, one of the things with Voda, I would be like, I te I'll text him'cause I'm watching the games. I'm like, Hey, you guys are ripping third base now. Huh? Big leagues are a little different. And he was, yeah, he was safety squeezing. They were playing some small ball last year in that run. Love it. And he was like, good for you. That's baseball, right? Favorite ballpark you've ever coached in? Oh, I don't even wanna say this on here. Point Loma is pretty, or maybe your favorite ballpark you like to visit. Point Loma is pretty nice. I used to kid around with my Azusa guys. I was like, Hey man. If it was, shoot, Jay Johnson was there when I was at Jay Johnson with LSU was there when? Yeah, Azusa and I used to go, Hey guys, if Jay or Joe Schafer's at Northwest Nazarene's done an incredible job, coach gets him. I'm like, Hey, if Joe calls me over and says I can be his assistant, I'm coming. I'm bringing a surfboard. And they'd all be like, come on coach. It was so nice. Westmont. I'll tell you what we, we're a pretty close second to that, we're a little further away from the ocean, but when I walk down from my office, we have an incredible ground crew. Jorge Santos is amazing. So like the grass is perfectly green and cut, and the weather's beautiful. And I walk down from a hill down to our field and I can see the Pacific Ocean off in the distance. I love it. Right field. So I would say those too. I'm a Boston guy, so Fenway Park, it's pretty cool. Yeah. Never coached in Fenway, but been there about bunch of times. Pretty cool to go. Yeah. Fraser quote, you see all the time to your players. Oh, shoot. Or they tease you about or they come back to you with a lot, man. I don't know. I do follow up. I probably did it on this pod right now. I always go, does that make sense? Yeah. And I'll give it that one, yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. And so they, they probably would kick that back to me quite a bit. I do that a lot myself. Last one this one you'll have some fun with. What's the most underrated skill in a great teammate? Underrated skill? Yeah. Or characteristic. Man I selflessness that's a big, easy word to say, but like utter selflessness. And doing it in a fashion where you actually know that this kid, this young man or player puts my personal success ahead of his own. So I think being a part of great teams, I had incredible teams at Pomona. I felt like kids did that at Azusa Pacific. There was some incredible teams that I was like, I'd go home and my wife would say, how's it going? I'm like, this group of kids? I'm like, when this guy bangs a double, these three guys look more excited than when they bang their double. They really are into like being there for their teammate. And then we had a young man this year on our team Griffin Brown he's a backup catcher. So he is a bullpen catcher for three years. He's been a bullpen catcher. And I think he's. Dynamite baseball player and all I heard about was Griffin. Griffin. Griffin Brown. And he's a good athlete. He's, I played him in center field at the end of the year. He never, only because he'd go out and shag during BP and I'd be like, Hey, is that our starter out?'Cause I'm old, I can't see out in center field if I don't have my glasses. And they're like, no, that's gr. And I'm like, Griffin Brown. And he'd be chasing balls down. So we had wrapped up, I had heard, we were at Azusa where I had been 19 years and we had won game one, which meant we won the regular season. So I said, Hey Griff, you're gonna play center. And he did an incredible job out there. But he, everything I heard about him when I came into this program was this kid's like a rockstar teammate. And then I got to observe it this year and was really cool. I'll tell you this story'cause we had a group of alum that are incredible at Westmont and Brett Begar was a former player here and a former coach who had passed a few years back and his class of guys came together and said, we wanna raise money and give out a scholarship in his name. And what we would like you to do is pick an athlete that reflects Brett's values of leadership and selflessness and commitments to the team. And it was a pretty hefty scholarship. And they said, we want you to give it out to a non-scholarship athlete on your team. We're not at our scholarship limits. So it's easy for me to be able to do that. Yeah. And instantly when they brought me this and we collaborated and I talked to Mrs. Begar Brett's wife, and we talked about these characteristics, I said, I get the guy for you. That's awesome. And it was this kid, Griffin Brown, and so going into his senior year, he got this really surprise gift from a group of alum towards his tuition that he just reflects like a pure interest in helping his teammates. Yeah. And then so those kids can celebr that I'm a big believer in celebrating those kids over the starters because the starters, you get your celebration by knocking the head or striking that guy out. It's all the kids that nobody sees at practice, as, as a coach. Yep. So I That's incredible. Those guys, the ones that aren't getting their 24 at bats every week. Yes, exactly. That are still loving it. And I, and you tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm constantly teaching kids. Not to fail the way I failed, I forgot how important it was to put that jersey on. I forgot how important I got to be outside playing. Yeah. I forgot how important it was that I got to be on a team. And I got to play a game I loved every day. Yep. And when you have kids like that and they're role models and they're leaders, man, your culture can change so quickly for the better. 100%. Love it. I had a young man this year, I had to we had some things go on and I couldn't bring him to you, you can, you have to reduce your roster size. And so then there was some other things. And so tough con you have those tough, caring conversations, but you're like, Hey man, and and I'm getting to know these guys, right? And it's a culture. And I'm like, Hey man I love you, but this went on and now we have to have some, we gotta address it. And so we're leaving to go up to our first conference tournament. And he knows he's not coming. He's at the bus at 6:00 AM knocking all his teammates. Wow. And I, at first I was like, dang good for that. And he was an old junior, and I was like, man, I, what a level of respect I have for this young man. We get back, we, the kids won the conference tournament. We get back late that evening. He's at the bus stop when all the, all his teammates walk off. And I told him at the end of the year, I pulled him aside a couple days after that and I said, Hey man that you are an incredible one human being and two teammate. And the reason why this team wins is because of guys like yo. So it's cool when you as a coach can watch that and you had nothing to do with it. Yeah. You just got an opportunity to be a part of it. Yeah. So coach thank you so much for being you. Thank you so much for being authentic and we just, we need more coaches in the world like you. And I'm so glad I got to share you with our audience today. So I'm looking forward to talking some recruiting with you here in a bit. Thanks. Yeah, right back at you. Be. That's a wrap on this week's episode. A big thank you to coach Paul VDIs for joining me today and sharing such powerful insight on leadership, culture, and the long game of coaching. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to check out my other episodes and subscribe so you never miss what's next. And don't forget whether you're a coach looking to build something special or a family navigating the recruiting process, you can visit coach matt rogers.com to explore my books, significant Recruiting and the Softball Recruits Journal, and to schedule a free coaching or recruiting session with me. As always, remember this leadership is about significance, not just success. Thanks for listening. See you next time.