Episode #130: Mike Candrea

🎙️ Mike Candrea: Lessons From a Legend

In this episode of the Significant Coaching Podcast, Matt sits down with one of the greatest leaders in the history of college athletics—Mike Candrea, Hall of Fame coach, eight-time NCAA National Champion at the University of Arizona, and former head coach of Team USA Softball.

Coach Candrea opens up about leadership, culture, the changing landscape of the NCAA, the transfer portal, NIL, and what he believes the future of college sports demands from coaches and administrators. This conversation is honest, insightful, and filled with the kind of wisdom you can only get from someone who has lived excellence for more than three decades.

Whether you're a coach, parent, or athlete, this episode will shift the way you see leadership, development, and the purpose behind building programs that matter.

Learn more about Coach Candrea here: https://arizonawildcats.com/sports/softball/roster/coaches/mike-candrea/5249

Explore more tools and resources at CoachMattRogers.com.

Transcript

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Welcome back to The Significant Coaching Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Rogers. As I look back on our first two seasons of the show, I'm honestly blown away by the caliber of leaders who've shared their time and wisdom with me and with all of you coaches and athletes from NCAA Division one, two, and three NAI. And the junior college ranks have joined us representing 31 NCAA National Championships, two former NFL players, four standout student athletes, three college athletic directors, and four university presidents. And countless other coaches who have dominated their division levels and conferences for years. These conversations have been rich, humbling, and deeply meaningful. I've learned so much, and I'm grateful for every lesson in every story that has helped shape this community. With that said. This week's guest has surpassed them all. Mike Kendra is the former head softball coach at the University of Arizona in 2021, he turned his program over to one of the great Wildcats who once played for him. Olympian. Kaitlin Lowe and Coach transitioned into mentoring and administrative roles within the U of a athletic department. But not before completing 34 years on the sidelines in Arizona, compiling a career record of 1,674 wins to only 436 losses and two ties, his total career wins are 1,858, and that includes eight NCAA national Championships at U of A. He also led the USA Olympic softball team to gold in Athens in 2004 and the silver medal in Beijing in 2008. And honestly, I could spend an entire episode just listing his accomplishments, the All-Americans and the Olympians he's coached to put his career in context. There is really only one coach in the history of NCAA team sports who rivals Coach Kendra, and that's the legendary John Wooden who claimed 10 national championships at UCLA. That's the neighborhood Mike Kendra lives in. It is truly rare air. It was a true honor to spend time with him. He humored me by getting deep in the weeds about the state of the ncaa, the transfer portal, NIL, and the future of college sports. And I expect it will take about five minutes for our listeners to understand why he is one of the great leaders in the history of college and international athletics. I am confident you'll take as much from Coach as I did. Before we jump into today's conversation, I encourage you to check out coach matt rogers.com for all of our episodes, my blogs and recruiting and coaching tools and resources, including my book, significant recruiting, the playbook for prospective college athletes, and my new companion workbook, the softball recruits journal. If you enjoy this episode, don't forget to follow, share, or comment on your platform of choice. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Hall of Fame Coach Mike Kendra. Coach Kres, so great to see you and thanks for being on the show. It's my pleasure, Matt, I know you're a grandpa and you love the golf. How quickly did you get rid of that interim ad hat? When the new VP was hired? Yeah. It was thank God it was like five weeks. Every day felt like a month, but, I survived it and kept it, kept the ship afloat and kept it going in the right direction and didn't have to throw anyone overboard. So it was a very good experience for me. I bet it was I did that ad roll for about nine years at the lower levels at D three and D two and it just never stops. You you never get to never get a breather. It's a crazy world today, It's completely different than it was when I. Started coaching in 1976, let's put it that way. They don't look the same. No, they don't. Sure. You and I share a good friend and Wade Wilson, the head coach at Texas Lutheran, he introduced us. I love watching coaches like Wade and you coach. I, I don't know if you remember saying this, but I read somewhere that. You didn't want to have a program where scaring the kids was your culture. But you wore your feelings on your sleeve. You coach with passion. It was a calling like I believe it is for me. Can you still coach that way? Can you still coach with discipline and can you get away with it today with the portal and everything else? Yeah. I think if the good ones right now still, it, it's all about relationships. That will always be the foundation of anything that you do. So that hasn't changed. I just think sometimes how you go about getting to the end result has changed a little bit, when I first started coaching, kids were very task oriented. You tell'em to jump through a hoop and they jump through a hoop today, they like to ask a lot of questions, and so you have to convince'em that hoop that they're jumping through is the right one and it's best for them. Yeah. And and then I think just the. The information system that we're in today has changed so much kids can have at their fingertips so much information and they don't really know whether it's good information or not. And so that, that's the challenge, because with social media now and you can go on YouTube. You can watch a thousand different golf swings, but you don't know whether you're getting good information or not. So sometimes it, it tends to be an obstacle as far as coaches are concerned. But I think the good ones today they build relationships that are built around trust, mutual respect, and honesty. I think they have to get to know the kid first before they can push the kid. They're all a little bit different. Some need a hug, some need a kick in the ass. But at the end of the day that hasn't changed. When I first started coaching, you had to figure out what made each kid work and and I think the aha moment for me was to the coach, the person first, and then the athlete can come out. Yeah. If I can make them better people. Then I think I can have a better chance of making them a better athlete. But you can't do the reverse. I agree. I'm with you there. Coach, I'm one of those people that likes to tackle and attempt to solve those impossible problems in the world. I'm a bit of a glutton of a for punishment. Can we talk a little bit about club softball? Yeah. Yeah. Club softball, was the foundation for my success, right? If I look back everything that we recruited was from the clubs and luckily I had some really good relationships with some really good coaches, right? That did things the right way. And I knew that when I brought a kid into my program that they were gonna be probably ready to compete at this level. And so that was good. But. I also have seen the other side of the coin where parents are spending so much money on trying to make their kids a player that they no longer think that the kid needs to earn the scholarship. That they deserve the scholarship. They feel like they've already paid for it. They've already paid for it, and I always told parents, really, if you want to put all your money in your. A bank account and you can send your kid to any school that you, they want to go to versus spending this money because it, it is different. And I think the one aspect that I've seen in club softball today is it's become it's become all about the money. Yeah. I wonder how much. And they're still good ones, don't get me wrong. There's still coaches that I highly respect and teach the game and teach the skills, and but there are a lot of them out there that are forcing families to spend a heck of a lot of money and not getting anything in return. Are they getting better? Who knows? And to me, that was the. The most important thing for me is go play for a team that you know will develop your kid, develop their skills, develop them as people you know, and it doesn't really matter whether you're playing for championships or not. Because at that level it's all about learning how to play the game and playing the game the right way. Then as you move up the ladder, then yes the winning becomes even more important. I look, I kinda laugh sometimes'cause I, I see these posts of these kids at 12 years old with a handful of rings and I'm wondering, man what are we teaching these kids? Because what do I have? At the college level to dangle in front of them, they, the care's gone. It's no longer just about winning a championship and being part of a great team. It's about, self-satisfaction. What can you do for me? Yeah. I wrote a blog a couple weeks ago called it was something about prayers, knowing when your prayers have been answered. And that's my biggest concerns.'cause when I work with kids and parents every day and I'm, when I speak, it's typically to parents and the high school and club coaches. And my concern is, what I'm hearing is I just got a text today from a kid transfer wants a transfer. He got a D three coach, just saw him in the portal, sent him a text that said. I think you are a great influence for our team. I think you're a difference maker, not just on the field, but for who we are as a culture, and the kid texts me and goes, how do I respond to this coach that I'm not interested? Yeah. We start this journey as parents and I've got a 16 and a 12-year-old. And really our goal is I want my kid to enjoy the sport. I want him to get something out of it. That's profound. Being on a team, understanding what that work ethic and accountability and loyalty, what that's all about. And then we dream about them getting an offer from a coach, right? I'll be saying, we like you, we want you to be a part of our family. How do we get back to that? Is the G outta the bottle? Are we never gonna get back to that where kids appreciate when someone appreciates them? You know that, that's a good question and I really don't have a good answer for it because things have changed so much where it's not about the school, it's not about the. Opportunity to be a part of A team and Right, and learn to go through adversity and grow as a person and get prepared for life after softball. It's just about the what do you have for me right now? And, I, that, that's, that would be a tough arena for me to coach in right now because I was so used to even, I retired in 21, so even up to that point, that was right before. NIL right before the transfer portal. And I had kids for four years and I had a lot of kids that didn't play a lot their freshman year, but they continued to grow and they ended up being a big part of a championship, or a big part of some success. And I think those days are long gone because right now it's, if I don't, if I'm not playing. Because it's about playing. If I'm not playing, then I'm leaving. And unfortunately there's third parties out there that are already negotiating for these kids so that they already have a place before they even leave. And it's an ugly situation right now. And I don't know, was it always there, even though it was illegal back then in, in 21 before, is it, was it always there for you though? Was there always kids that were working with a third party even though they weren't supposed to be? I think the third party at that time was not trying to influence a kid to transfer and to move. Maybe they were trying to help them navigate through this experience as a college athlete. Yeah. I don't recall that. Ha. We had some kids transfer for particular reasons. Maybe it's getting back close to home or something happen at home and they need to be closer to mom and dad. Of course. Or they're, they just didn't fit in and they're not getting a lot of playing time. I understand that. I get that. Yeah. But I don't like the negotiating prior to kids today that are all Americans that are leaving, that have had a good experience for three years and that alarms me a little bit. It's you know what? It's funny because I love our homecoming and I love alumni games, and pretty soon those are gonna be non-existence because these kids don't even have a place, or they played one year and. And that was it. They played one year for a coach in a school and they graduated and that was, they had a senior night at, after one year. Yeah. That's wild to me. Or they've had, or they've had yeah, they're, they've gone to four schools in four years, yeah. What are you learning from that other than to to run away from your problems run away from adversity? Run away from the challenge. And to me, I think that's one of the greatest things that we have to offer kids, is to learn how to be a part of a team and learn how to handle adversity, learn how to to better yourself each and every day, and to earn the opportunity to be successful. We talk about earning the right to, to handle pressure. Right now it's, I don't know how many kids are earning the right to be a part of a team. Agreed. They're looking for the open door and it's not the cash it's not money in softball right now. I can tell you right now, there may be a little money out there, but it's not life changing money. Now, if you look at men's football and men's basketball, that's life changing money that I understand why they're shopping, because they have a very small window to, for many of those kids, a very small window to make that opportunity happen, because they're probably not gonna play professional football. Or basketball. But softball is just, it's changed so much. I go back to 1985 when I first got to Arizona. Man, those kids were playing the game just to play the game. That's right. For the joy enjoyment of playing softball. Because as women, they didn't have that opportunity. That was their first opportunity to have a scholarship. That's right. And to have a field that was theirs. Where today, now we, that's all a given, it's a given that they have a scholarship, it's a given that they're gonna have a great facility. So now they're looking for the next thing on, on their list. And God knows, for every kid it's a little bit different, but. To me it's it's just a different environment right now and takes me back to my junior college days where you recruited one year at a time. That's what it's like right now. I think that's the toughest job in all of college sports. Yeah. Don't you? Yeah. When you have a, you gotta bring in a kid. I I love being a four year coach'cause I had a year to develop. Maybe halfway through the sophomore year, I was like, okay, I've got them thinking the right way. I can use them more and more in my junior, senior year. Work ethic was built in. Junior college coaches. You gotta do it now. Yeah. It's, yeah, it, in fact, that was my upbringing, so it taught me that mindset, but then I fell in love with the four year school and having a kid for four years and see the progress that they make. I. You gotta think about it. You're bringing a kid in at 17, 18 years old. They're a kid. Yeah. And then they leave you as a woman, and to me that was one of the most magnificent things to look at with the opportunities that I had to watch kids grow. And to me, that was my my prize at the end was. God this young lady is ready to go out any and do anything they want to do and be successful because of what they've learned about competing and about being part of a team. Yeah. Yeah, it's changed. And that's the part for me.'cause I have a daughter. I coached women, I coached men. Yep. I've done it for both, for a long time and I love the fact that we're getting closer to some level of equity where we have young women fighting for what the men have always gotten. Sure. So I really respect that and I appreciate that. But we're already a little bit off track with the NIL and where that's headed. I know you have a wonderful new Vice president for athletics, and I know you're a special assistant to her. And I'm not asking deep into your conversations, but talk a little bit for the families and the high school coaches that are listening to this because there's so much unknown that's coming. W we're hearing 10 different stories every week about where this is gonna go with the NCAA with Power four, and then everything's gonna trickle down. I'm talking to D three athletic directors and presidents right now that are telling me that there are collectives happening, NIL collectives happening at the D three level in certain areas. Wow. Yeah. So talk a little bit and be as specific as you want or as general as you want. What are some of the. Big picture conversations you're having on where you want University of Arizona athletics to go and how you wanna be a part of the leadership of that future? I think the first thing that comes to mind right now is the revenue share.$20.5 million to open up your doors is a pretty significant amount of money that we have to raise, yeah, some of that might come from media rights, but. Truthfully, a lot of that comes from donors, comes from people that, that love your programs that have followed your program. And what I'm seeing right now is a little bit of donor fatigue, they enjoyed it when they were donating money and putting in bricks and mortar and watching facilities grow. And but to be able to say that you need money to give a kid who may not be there, but only a year. To come up with this million dollars, whatever it is getting a little bit difficult. And so I, I think right now we, things are gonna change. They're gonna change. What today is gonna be different three years from now. Conference realignment is a big deal. I think. There's gonna be, there's gonna be a few that are playing for. The marbles and there's gonna be a bunch of us that are just gonna be fighting like hell to survive. And the one thing we wanted to do is not cut any programs. We didn't want to cut any people, we didn't want to cut any programs. And Desiree's done a great job of taking a deficit that we had when she arrived$30 million down to five, and after end of this year, we will be, we'll be even, but now we have another challenge, and that is revenue share. NILI think NIL is a better off today than it was last year because of the collectives are gone, now it's gotta be a legitimate NIL deal. It's got, and there's a clearinghouse that's approving anything over$600. So all I want is a le I want a level playing field. I want to know what the rules are. And I think I do too. Up until right now, we really didn't know what the rules were the last few years. It was the W Wild West where I think we're getting closer now to at least knowing what the rules are. Yeah. And if you're, if you wanna play at this level, then it, this is what it you're gonna have to do to play at this level. If you don't, then you don't have to do that. You don't have to invest 20.5 million. But here's the scary part for me. In the past we have, I always told people, if you want to help softball buy season football tickets, because they were the engine that provided the revenue for all other sports. Football, men's basketball were the only two revenue producers that we had. And we have what, 22 sports, I think at this point, that two sports are trying to fund. All of these opportunities for all of these kids. Yeah. What scares me is now$20.5 million. Were coming up for football and basketball and a few other sports. I'm scared that we're gonna be losing sports. The Olympic sports are gonna gain less than they were five years from now because there's such a premium on raising that 20.5. Football's gonna get the majority of it. Men's basketball's gonna get a pretty good chunk of it. And then you have to select who, who's going to be involved in the revenue share. And at Arizona we're women's basketball, of course. I think around the country, most people are putting money into women's basketball. And then it's a crapshoot. Some people, for us it's baseball and softball, right? Because those are sports that we can at least put people in the seats and maybe. Yeah, bring some revenue back. But the thing that was scary about it all was that, are we gonna be cutting sports? Because you see it every day. People that are dropping sports because they can't afford it, they can't afford to fund these sports at a particular level to compete for a national championship. And so you're gonna have a couple choices. Number one, are you gonna fund the sports? Two. At what level? So back in the day, we were whether we knew it or not, we were kinda regionalized. Softball, you could go, you could play anyone that you wanted to as long as you could travel in vans. Yeah. That's how I grew up as a coach. You're pretty much playing in the west coast. Now it's coast to coast. Now we have grown so much that there's opportunities from the east coast of the West coast, and we have conferences now that include people from the west coast to the East Coast and the amount of travel that it takes, the money that it takes to travel these teams. Across country to have a competition, you're gonna have to decide is it worth it for, football is the easy one. They don't play a lot of games. But when you're talking about a baseball program or a softball program, when you're playing 56 games, there's a price tag that goes along with this conference realignment, right? In traveling cross country. So I think a lot of those answers are gonna be looked at and, reviewed and I think today, yesterday we just we had a, we named our football stadium for naming rights,$60 million, and those are the things that we have to do right now to compete in, to keep our head above water. But that's tangible. Yes. Give, giving$500,000 to a second string wide receiver that you hope becomes the first string wide receiver. There's, it's so intangible. It's, I don't know if I had a billion dollars, I'd have a hard time giving you money to give it to something that's intangible. So that's my concern. Play with me with this. Is there a reason with all the money that's coming in from TV and we have profit sharing we went through all these lawsuits that the kids brought and the NCAA was buried under billions of dollars of lawsuits. Is there a reason we're not just saying, we're gonna pay these kids as employees, we're gonna give every kid$2,500 a month. And maybe the longer you're there, it goes up. Maybe it goes from 2000 to 2,500, but it's money where you can go buy clothes, you can go to the movies, you can buy, you can have a car, maybe you can afford an apartment. Is there a reason we're not funneling all of our energy in that direction? Or we're saying we're gonna do some profit sharing, every kid's gonna get a little piece. Is there a reason we're not putting all of our energy into that? Because I would've loved that if someone who said, Matt, we're gonna give you, we're gonna pay for your education and give you$2,000 a month at 18, I would've done a back flip for it. Absolutely. And in fact, while early on, it was just a scholarship and, kids were tickled to death that they were getting their education paid for. And then yeah, I understand it. When you start looking at the billion dollar deals that the NC two A has. As contracted for women for men's basketball, for instance, the tournament, right? And said, Dempsey was a really good friend of mine. He was an AD at Arizona and went on to be the president of the NCAA two A. And I got a chance to listen to him about some of the challenges and it's just there's not a perfect world out there. And the reason why is because, here's my thought. It's not a perfect world because even today with the media rights, they're all different. So the Big 10, the SEC, the A CC, the big 12, the poor PAC 12, just. Disintegrated because of that one fact right there. That's gotta hurt your heart, doesn't it? It's a killer. It is absolutely a killer. That was your world for four years. That was my world. That's the world I knew. And you had to look forward to those two plane trips to Washington, Oregon. Hey, it was a conference of champions. And if that was the important thing, we were flourishing. But unfortunately it became a money thing. And trying to keep up with the Joneses is awfully tough, so here's my thought is, if you look at the model of the NBA and MLB Yeah, there, they don't have as much. Product to sell to TV as college football does, right? So you would think why didn't college football just combine everything? Sign this one big package and then disseminate the money accordingly? Yeah. But it's never got to that point yet because of the challenges with each conference, and so this is the first step. The revenue share, I think is the first step of at least giving us some rules. Yeah. To say this is what it's gonna be like. I think it's gonna continue to change. Yeah. We have yet seen the final version of what this is all gonna look like. But I still think, man, if you look at Saturday mornings college football, man, there's so much on there. There's so much inventory there. There is and I don't think that we've cashed in on it as much as we could, but I don't know the answers. I don't, I'm not sitting in the room that's making these big decisions. I'm just I missed the days where you could count on Arizona and USC. You could count on. Arizona State, UCLA you just knew that was gonna be your rotation and it was regional, so if you did wanna travel, it was right. It was a short flight. But like you said, you could get in a van, you'd get in a car and you could go Absolutely. And those competition was great. I don't understand why ESPN and Fox and all these corporations aren't going. Listen, let's get back to that. We're gonna be equal. We still want UCLA to play Ohio State. We still want Michigan to play Texas. Okay. I don't understand why the TV people aren't saying, let's get back to the regional stuff, and you can dump more money into regional, can't you? The reason why they don't right now is because they need the matchups. If you look at college basketball right now, for the first time, you look at the matchups of college basketball early in the season, they've been unbelievable. We are playing tomorrow at Yukon. Yeah we just played in Las Vegas. We just played in LA against UCLA. Yeah, it's gonna be, draw a big number whenever those we played in Las Vegas against Florida. That was Tommy's openers, and so I think that might be a little bit of what's ahead. And here's the other thought too. Pretty soon you're gonna see these big programs put together a tournament where. They're gonna make money that the money's going to the players. Yeah. I don't think we're too far from that happening. You take eight, eight of the best teams in the country. You, you play a, four different sites and then you play like a pool play. So you play. One game at in Seattle, one game in Vegas, one game in, in Chicago. And then the winners play in New York. Yeah. And the money from that goes to the pro, the teams to divvy up. All right. I'm gonna be, I don't know, I'm not smart enough to know all the what's happening. No, I'm not either. And I don't ever get into these conversation expecting that we're gonna, that we're gonna solve the world. We're not. I like having the conversation because for me, if we don't have the conversation, it's just like politics. If we don't have the conversation, we don't ever get out of the slump we're in. Absolutely. So I'm gonna be a little bit of the old man on my lawn telling the kids to get off, but is there. Is there hope for you that education's ever gonna be a part of the conversation again? That we're gonna care about the classroom again because Yes, because no matter what we say, when UCLA's gotta go to Maryland to play a conference game. Something's wrong. The good thing is that COVID taught us that we could do a lot of things online. Yeah. It's amazing if you look at the statistics right now of different sports and the percentage of online classes those kids are taking so that they can travel. Yeah. I think that's one of the elements that you're seeing right now. Our, baseball or softball, probably 70% of the classes they take are online. Have to which, which frees up their schedule. So yeah and I think we're too proud as a university to not say here's the interesting thing. In the eighties. I remember like our GPA man, if we had a 2.8 GPA as a team, I was ecstatic. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. If you look at today's GPAs, they're all in the threes. 3.3, 3.6, and I always say, have we made school easier? Or what? But there's still a premium put on our education with our student athletes. Because even if you have, the NIL thing is great, but you have to educate kids now that they're getting this money. You have to educate them. So they need some financial literacy on how to deal with taxes and everything else. Yeah. So it's added. Are you just doing that? Yes, we are. Okay. Absolutely. What does that look like? I don't know exactly what it looks like, but I do know that we have we spend a lot of. Time and energy on educating our student athletes and what, whether it's, we have what's called the Katz Program, the Center for the Athletes Total Success. Love that we've had that for. That was said Dempsey's vision, and we had that for many years, but now it's expanded. It used to be about resume writing. It used to be about making sure every kid knew how to interview. Preparing them for life after their sport. Of course. Yes. Now we've added this other element, and that is financial literacy. We, if we're paying you money, we need you to make sure you understand how to deal with this money. Yes. Yeah. It's like giving a 18-year-old a Ferrari, bad things are gonna happen. Absolutely. Could you see a world coach where NIL goes into a fund for when they're done? Where they have some time to grow that money. And would I like to, would I like to see that? Yes. Will it happen? I don't know. High in the sky. Yeah. I don't know. There, there's a lot of challenges that I don't even know. That you don't know that. Why are these kids not employees of the university? There's reasons for it. I agree. And I don't want it to go that way. I'm not a proponent of that. No I don't wanna lose the idea of student athlete. And maybe I'm hanging on to things that are un unrealistic. But I just, I know at Arizona we take pride in in, in the student part. Yeah. And we provide a lot of resources for them to be successful academically. And I think if you look around the country, I think everyone's doing that. There's, every university at that level is putting a lot of money into making sure that their kids are being successful, not just on the athletic field, but in the classroom. It's hard to look in your faculty in the eye if you're a president or a chancellor if you're not. Very tough. How important was it for you that. That classroom experience though, and the resident hall experience and having that true college experience, learning how to deal with conflict dealing, how to deal with chaos, dealing how to, learning, how to deal with a roommate that didn't do what they were supposed to. Where is that in your eyes? Are we, is it still there in the power four? It's still there. Yeah. I think it's still there to a point. We still have some kids that are living in dorms and getting the college experience that we were used to seeing back then. But on the other hand, we have a lot of people now that are kinda skipping that, and they're, they've got their own apartment and Yeah. And, they have resources to do things that we never did. I remember when I went to college, my dad gave me 20 bucks, said Good luck. And I said, was that, is that for the week? He goes, no that's it. That's all you're getting. You're gonna learn how to figure it out because if you're gonna be successful, it's up to you. Yeah. And I think today we we used to have. Helicopter parents, and then we went to the bulldozer parents where they're bulldozing the kids' path. And so I, things have changed but there's some parts of it that I think are the same, yeah. There's nothing better than a Saturday afternoon football game and Yep. They always talk about athletics being the front door of the university, and I still think that's very true. I remember when Luke won the first basketball championship here, the enrollment went up by 30%, and you look at Alabama in the enrollment there. You can look at Nick Saban, what he's done for that university. Yeah. And I think you see those stories all over the country. So it, at college athletics is still a high priority and I think will be around for a long time. It's just gonna take a different shapes time. Different form. Yeah. But we still, it's still entertainment and it's, it's still. People having something that connects them. Yeah. And for us, there's nothing better than a college football game to connect everyone on campus. I agree. I wanna transition a little bit, and this is a good transition for what you've been talking about. You coached elite players. You coached Olympic gold medalist players, and then you coach those everyday role players those grit and grind kids that you just loved having a part of your program. What separates that athlete who becomes a pro in life not going to make money as a softball player, but what separates them? The kids that you've seen that left your program, that have gone on and done really well in life, they're healthy, they're happy. What's, where's that line and where's some of those characteristics for those kids? If I look at the Olympians, for instance. There's one common thread for every one of those kids, and that they're great teammates. Yeah. So they get it that they're not gonna do it by themselves. It's gonna take a village to make it happen. And they learn how to take care of those people in their village. And I think that is a big difference because they know how to utilize their village moving forward in life. And they're good connectors. They're, obviously they. They're competitive and I think that's a, a huge fact. I don't know of anyone that's gonna be highly successful unless they are competitive. But at the end of the day it's, they know what it's like to be a part of something that's bigger than them. Yeah. And it I always looked at those kids every day and I marveled at them. I'm going, what makes'em so special? And I, i'd always say they got great eyes. Yeah, they got great eyes. They're hitting a 72 mile an hour pitch from 38 feet. Talk about tough but the biggest thing that, that you saw was their work ethic. They're being great teammates. Understanding the process, very process oriented, because you know what, when you're playing for in on an Olympic team, you're practicing for four years, for one week of competition, you talk about learning how to deal with the process. That's it. You have to put yourself in that Olympic arena as often as possible, and sometimes you have to make those. Up. Yeah. During practice you have to make practice and so all the little things that they have to do, I think highly prepares them for success. Once they're done, was there anything harder for you than picking that those 18 people Oh, no. To be a part of that team? Have you ever had a bigger challenge? Luckily we had a selection committee, I was still at the end of the day, you, I was, I one vote. I was one vote. But yes you're splitting hairs, truthfully, you are splitting the hairs there. There's, I'm sure others that. Maybe didn't get the opportunity that could have. Yeah. Done quite well. Yeah. And that all the time, and I think that's still a challenge, right now is trying to find 18 of the best players in the world. Because in the United States, most of our softball players are the best in the world. Until Yoki Ano came in and beat us in 2008, right? Yeah. Japan's phenomenal to watch. They are meticulous about their preparation. There's not a team that, that practices more than them. Yeah. And to, to me it's their mindset. They're mentally, they are so prepared for whatever's gonna come their way. And I think we took from them. Opportunities to, to do the same thing with our program. That's great. In 2004 was the first time that we actually had an Olympic team be able to train full time to prepare for the Olympic games. It's a huge difference.'cause before that it was just, they would do their thing and then you'd bring'em together for a camp and then you would go play the Olympics. Yeah. So that's the interesting part. The other interesting part is that the average age was 27 years old. So huge, the maturity. Absolutely. The maturity is something you can't teach, and that's why it's, that's the difference between coaching with the Olympic team and coaching your college team. Yeah. The experience factor. I was probably a, not probably, I was a soft, lazy kid till I was about 14 years old. And I probably didn't. I had no idea. I was, I thought I was, yeah. A good athlete. And then my parents bought this tiny little restaurant in our, I grew up in a town of 2000 people. We bought a restaurant and I, all of a sudden was up at six 30 cleaning, cleaning floors, bathrooms, bringing up big tubs of ice from the basement. Five times. I was working a grill for eight, nine hours at a time. Wow. And then I was mopping and, cleaning up afterwards we'd have, in our little restaurant, we'd serve 800 people on a Saturday morning. Wow. And it was at that point as frustrated I was with the work and having to do it. There's nothing I appreciate more than those four years working in that restaurant and who it made me. How much, when you look at the Olympians and the All Americans and the national championships you've coached, how much of that comes from the parents? Oh, or from, but how much of it comes from those kids just. Allowing themselves to get over that hump, get through that governor, that's slowing them down and understanding, here's my potential. Is it, is there a nature nurture balance there? I think you hit a couple things. Number one, the parents play a big factor. Yeah. Because I don't think, I think, when I recruited, I always went to the home to see how the kid treated their parents. But really, what were the priorities of the parents? When I walked in the house, was it the parents that were talking all the time? Or was it the kid that was asking questions that I was recruiting? Because I never wanted to have a parent that was so overbearing that you felt like they were the ones that were being recruited instead of the kid. So I think parents, your upbringing is huge. You learn so much from. Your upbringing from work ethic to, for me, my faith comes from my mom. I can tell you that right now. So I think that, that's a huge part. When it comes to that. And then the other part I think is just the work ethic part. And you mentioned it, I think kids that understand hard work and embrace hard work the sky's the limit. It's awfully hard to convince a lazy person that, that if they work hard, they're gonna get better. They're just, they're wired that way. They are. So I think we're all wired a little bit differently. I know, I'm a very process oriented person. I'm, I'm meticulous about being on time. The, a lot of the little things that you learned being part of the team. And being part of a coach that, that has standards and expectations, and I've always been one that had very high standards, very high expectations, and I wasn't. The biggest thing that I learned really, and I coach men and women, and I think you've probably heard this, but men have to play good to feel good. Women have to feel good to play good. Yes. I spent a lot of my time teaching young kids how to feel good about themselves. And I think you can't deny that. And especially in today's world, there's even more, challenges for our young people growing up with social media. See, we, a lot of my career, we didn't have to worry about social media. But today's social media is, it's a fact and it's real. There's a lot of kids that are suffering and have mental health problems because of the expectations that they're trying to reach that. Someone else is channeling their thoughts on them, and I don't know how, I don't know how kids can do it if it, I don't even look at social media because there's nothing really good on it. No. Yeah. And unfortunately, that's what our kids live by. Yeah. The other day I was at an A restaurant watching this couple eat, and both of them were on the phone the whole entire time. Never said a word to each other. Yeah. And, that's the difference right now. I grew up with a black and white TV with rabbit ears, man. And Yep. That was our entertainment. Yeah. And you know what? Our entertainment became going out and playing with our friends. That's right. And today you don't that living outside. I was, I had to be home in dark and that was it. Yeah. No one knew where I was for 12 hours of the day, but they knew I was out doing something. And you look at the parks today and they're empty. They are. You don't see kids. I'm a former college basketball coach. It kills me when I walk past, drive past the park and there's nobody playing on the courts. No. No one playing hoops. Yeah. Absolutely. I love it when I walk outside of my neighborhood and I see. Dads and moms playing catch with their kids or kids playing catch and it just brings joy to me. Oh man. I remember taking a pasture and we made our own baseball field out of it. Yeah. And you came home and you got your homework done, you got a chance to go play, and then everyone would end up being there and you'd play whiffle ball. You'd play pickle. The things that we did to learn how to play the game was unbelievable because all I had was a black and white TV to emulate. The people that I watched. That's right. I didn't have, I didn't have any lessons. Yeah. I was self-taught, trial and error, and today this game is still trial and error, but unfortunately people are they want instant gratification, so they won't go through the trial and error. I agree. I agree. And I it's the part of me and it's why I'm even on social media is I try and teach these things. Yeah. And it's the reason I'm having these conversations with people like you, I feel like if we're gonna, social media's gonna be a part of our world, I wanna put something good into it. I wanna put some good messages and some good ideas and like you just did for me, I gotta tell you, coach and I'm not pandering to you at all. I live for those moments when I'm having a conversation like this where I can take something from it and go, i'm gonna be a better coach because of that. So what you said and I don't, this isn't earth shattering, but the way you said it and the way you came to it, you spent a lot of time helping kids learn how to feel good about themselves. I wish somebody would've told me that at 25 when I got my first head coaching job. I really do. I wish that would've been a part of the job description at the top. Your job. Before we win games, before we practice swinging the bat. Before we practice ground balls, we're gonna talk about how do we make these kids feel good about themselves? Yeah. Not in an oversaturated way or saying, you're great, Betty, you're the best that's ever played, but. What are you good at? Why do you want to be a good person? Why is it important for you to be a good teammate? I just, I love that. And the other thing the Olympians were so good at was handling failure. Yeah. And I think that's another big lesson in life is, failure is a positive thing. It depends on how you look at it, but you learn more from failure than you learn from success. And the game of softball's, a game of failure. Yeah. And the game of life is a game of failure. It's about failure recovery. Absolutely. That's the way I look at it. Absolutely. I've had to recover from some very tough things in my life and I had a choice to make whether I was gonna take the high road with it or let it take the best of me. And I think today, young kids don't they have some failure and they panic. They don't quite understand how that failure. Peace fits into their growth. And their development as a human being. Who was the player you grew up admiring? Mickey Mantle. Mickey. Yep. I didn't know a lot about his personal life, but I did like him as a player. And in fact, I have a whole room a whole Yankee room here in my house. And Mickey Mantle was my hero.'cause when I was. Young, we had a black and white tv, and the only game you could really see was the Yankee Game of the week. And so I grew up being a diehard Yankee fan. We gravitated from White Plains in New York. Okay. I was gonna ask you in New Orleans where I was born, because my dad was a jazz musician and I grew up watching the Yankees, and to this day, the Yankees are still a big part of my life, love it. That's fantastic. Yeah. Do you still play, do you play any instruments? I don't play, no. My dad died a frustrated man because he had four kids and none of us had any musical talent. It skipped a whole generation. Yeah. That's how I feel. I was a basketball coach for 25 years and none of my kids play basketball. Yeah. So I can relate to that. I want to end this segment. I want to talk, I wanna come back for segment two, a real quick one and just talk about who you were as a recruiter. And give some advice to recruits and families going through that journey. And I know you've been out for a while. Yeah. Before we get into that segment, coach, give a piece of advice to the youth coaches, the club coaches, the high school coaches out there that you think they just. Need to think about a little bit, make a bigger part of their world when they're building a team and running practices. I, the one thing that I always go back to my three C's and not because of my last name, but the first thing I always wanted to be was competent. So if I could tell young coaches to be a student of the game and learn as much as they can, because the better, the more information they have, the better information our kids are gonna get, and that never ends. We constantly can get better. So be a student of the game and bring your kids the best information because if you're gonna teach the game, you gotta understand the why. Why am I teaching this way? And I used to ask myself all the time, why do I hit the way I hit? Why do I throw it away? I hit and I want my kids to be able to understand that and explain that, right? I think the second thing is consistency. Consistency I think is a huge part of championship environment. And you as a, an adult has to bring the consistency to your program. So young kids don't need drama. They don't need someone that's high one day and low the next day. They need someone that's got some emotional stability. And I think another thing that the Olympians had is those kids had emotional stability. They never got too high, never got too low, and then the third thing, probably the most important thing is your kids have to know that you care about them as an individual. So coach the person and then the athlete will come out. So if every conversation you have with your kids is about the game, then you're going down the wrong road. Find out how they feel, find out how they're doing. Find out what they need from you. Ask more questions instead of talking too much. Yeah. I think is a huge thing. But to me, if I look at the kids that I coached number I'm proud of about a couple things. Number one, I don't miss a birthday. The first thing I do every morning is I have birthdays in my planner. I text them a happy birthday, and that's kept me connected with them forever. It's amazing. I'm a part of their family. I'm a part of their kids growing up, they send me pictures. It's just phenomenal. Yeah. Agreed. And to me, that was one of the best things I realized is it takes just the little things to make kids feel like you cared about them. Because at the end of the day, championships don't change your life. I used to think that if I didn't win a championship, that I was a failure. And I realized I can't live my life that way because it's not quite that easy. And I realized the sun came up and went down the same way, whether I won or I didn't. So what can I control in my life that will make me feel good about what I'm doing? That's right. And that's why I always tell people I never worked a day in my life because I followed my passion. I look back at my career and I was so blessed. That, that I picked something that I thoroughly enjoy doing every day, and I never looked, I never worried about the past. I never was a guy that worried too far ahead. I tried to worry about today, how can I make today better? How can I get 1% better today? And if I can get 1% better today, then just imagine where I'm gonna be 10 years from now. Yeah it's those three things are I think, important for any coach. Those are gold Coach. Thank you so much for being you. And yeah, thanks so much for saying yes to me and sharing your wisdom with us. If you're up for it, we'll come back and those those are your list and come back on Monday and we're gonna talk a little bit of recruiting with Coach. Pick his brain on how he recruited and what he's seeing in there. Thanks, coach. You bet. What an absolute gift of a conversation. Anytime you have the chance to learn from someone who is led at the highest levels for as long as Coach Andrea has. You walk away changed his humility, his clarity, and his ability to balance unbelievable competitive success with his deep care for people. That's what great leadership looks like. I hope this episode challenged you, encouraged you, and gave you a fresh perspective on what it really means to build a program and a life centered on significance. Don't forget to come back on Monday for part two of my conversation with Coach Condre where we shift the conversation to college recruiting. It's a good one. If you're a school, a club, or an organization looking for help with recruiting, education, leadership development, or creating healthier and more effective teams, you can schedule a strategy session with me anytime@coachmattrogers.com. Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting this community, and thank you for continuing to invest in your growth as a leader. Until next time, stay focused on what you can control. Stay humble and keep chasing significance.