It's that time of your mom's tryouts the week where moms probably lose more sleep than their athletes for good reason. Tryouts are. Stinking stressful for parents, for coaches, for athletes, all the way around. So if you are in this boat, this episode is for you. I'm going to be breaking down some strategies that can help your athlete prepare for tryouts and also the things that you can be doing and saying to help your athlete as well. Now, before we get into it, I do wanna give a shout out to a mom in our community, which coincidentally, her daughter just went through some tryouts. So her name is Nicole. She said. My athlete is afraid of disappointing others. She's a perfectionist for sure, but yesterday she had a tryout for a national team. She came home with a smile and said, I didn't cry. That's a first mom. I embrace this as a huge victory in my book. That's enormous progress. Now, what I wanna point out about this is that if you have athletes who are. You know, will use the word emotional or sensitive. This is a good thing, but it can't always be a good thing sometimes in sports, right? So if we have athletes who are deeply feeling kids and they end up, you know, feeling emotional on the court, that can really be a negative When it comes to tryouts, it can get in the way. It can be potentially a poor reflection for coaches to see. And so. This athlete now has the skills to be able to regulate her emotions so that she can actually try out for this high level national team without having something that sets her off. Like that is enormous progress. So I am so happy for you, Nicole, and also for your daughters, so that she has these skills that are serving her in tryouts, but also in life so that she can show up and be the athlete that she wants to be. Alright, let's get into our strategies to help with tryouts because they are super stressful. And if you're in this boat where like it's right around the corner, I feel you. Now we're gonna start with you. Okay? It always does. It always starts with us. So I want you to acknowledge that your nerves around tryouts are normal. Your anxiety, whatever you're feeling around tryouts are normal. But we wanna make sure that we're not projecting that onto athletes. So. What stress are you bringing into this whole equation? And so we need to be able to ground ourselves and realize that like. This is tryouts. It's not like the end of the world. You know, we we're going to be okay no matter what happens. And I want you to also just to check your motives. Like check in with yourself, like are you chasing a specific team or level for your athlete or are you supporting her goals? And a lot of times the stress comes from because like. She has said she wants to make a certain team and we're not sure if it's gonna happen. Like there's a lot of stress there. We just want our kids to be happy. And so the stress of disappointments, like all of that is a part of it. Okay, so there's a good reason for us to feel this way, but let's avoid projecting onto our athletes. Let's manage our emotions around this in a really healthy let, let's ground ourselves in the present and realize that like. Hey, it is just tryouts. No matter what happens, I'm gonna be okay. My daughter's gonna be okay, and we're gonna get through whatever happens. Okay? So that's just a good check in with ourselves. Part two, what are her goals for tryouts? Let's check in with her. Like ask her, what are your goals for these tryouts? What are we going after here? All right. What would make you feel proud afterwards? You know, how kind of helps shift the energy a little bit from like, making the team to showing up and doing her best. And tryouts really are just like. A showcase of what you can do and. I'm a coach myself. I'm a high school coach, so I'm about to do tryouts in a few weeks. I will tell you from the coach perspective, that tryouts also suck. And so just know that like it's all just kind of a tough thing. But what I'm looking for as a coach in athletes for tryouts, like obviously I'm looking for specific skills for specific positions, and I make that really clear to athletes. And so hopefully they know ahead of time like. How many girls are we carrying on a team? What positions is coach looking for? All of that. Like hopefully the coach has made that clear. And even if they haven't, like it's okay. don't get into a tizzy around like, oh, I don't know what's expected. No, you just go up and you just play. You just do that. Okay. But what I'm looking for in an athlete, aside from some of those skills, is. What's their resilience like when they make a mistake, how do they respond? Do they get super down on themselves and start bringing other people down? Or do they bounce back and get back into the game kind of teammate? Are they right? Are they cheering other people on? Are they encouraging other people or are they somebody who is just kind of focused on themselves? Do they hustle, right? Are they like moving between drills fast? Are they hustling to get water? Are they the first one? You know, background, do they volunteer for things? Like if I'm asking for some help, do they volunteer to help, to demonstrate? What else? Like just the little things like that. Are they loud? Are they talking like all of those that actually have nothing to do with skill? All of those things are things that will set your athlete apart and that you can tell her like, these are things that you can do aside, like you can't show up and perform. More than you're physically capable of like your skills are your skills. You're gonna go in with what you've got, and your goal is to just show what you've got. But beyond that, coach is also looking for some intangible things, like the things I just mentioned. Okay. So know what her goals are. I think what gets a little bit hard is like if she tells you a goal that you're like, I don't know if that's possible. Okay. Now you don't need to burst your bubble. We just need to. Bring it back to what's in her control. Okay? All right. That's your goal. What are you doing to get there? Okay? What are you gonna be focusing on? You can ask things like, okay, what's your backup? Like, if that doesn't happen, then what? Okay. And so having a backup isn't like, you know, telling her that it's not gonna happen. Backup is like a good plan. So what I mean by that is like, if we don't make the team, okay, what are our other options? You don't need to talk about that right away. Like, I think that's all right. But knowing in the back of your head, okay, what are our other options? Are there other sports? Are there things that we can do? Okay, but let's focus on like setting her up for success. So next part of this is just some really low hanging fruit. to help with this. If you have a bit of time before tryouts, then she should be training, like to prepare for them. Okay? So she should be going to all the things that are offered by the coach and by the team so that she can prepare the best she can and be present in, in all of that. She should be like, if she has goals to make varsity or JV or make a team like she should be doing the things required of her to do that. She can't expect just to show up at trials and having done nothing. And expect that to go well. Alright, so set up for success. Like if you've got a few weeks before tryouts or months or something like that, then you've got some runway. If you don't have a whole lot of time, then there's not much you can do. Okay? You're gonna show up with how you show up, but you can do some things to help. So. You can help her by like showing up early, making sure that she knows where the facility is, you know, reducing some of that stress. Making sure, like I said, having those lists of like intangibles, like effort, being a great teammate, being coachable. Her attitude, like helping her focus on those things, like all of that is gonna help her just kind of feel a little bit more prepared. Avoid you as a parent saying things like, well, you better make this team, or You should make this team. Or like, all of that is just putting like extra pressure. So keep everything around like what's in her control and, avoid also comparing her to other athletes. I think sometimes as parents we get. Caught into this trap and we try and compare and like, you know, it can get kind of ugly. So focus just on her, on what's in her control. We talk a lot in our community or in our program about praising her positive innate qualities, who she is outside of her sports. You're like, well, what does that have to do with it? It really does increase her confidence because now she's not just tied to the success or the failure of her tryout. It is around like who she is as a person outside of just. An athlete. Okay? So all of those things are helping to prepare her for that day. Now, mental training, this is like, tryouts are so mental. It's tough because sometimes athletes don't perform their best because they are nervous. They're too nervous to be able to like play their best. And so I always recommend like if your athlete doesn't have any mental skills to be able to cope with. Anxiety, pre-performance anxiety, coming back from mistakes. Like give her those tools if you want the fast way to do it, go to our training. Okay. Our, free training for parents and that is@trainhergame.com. So I break down like the simple things that she can be doing, the things that are in your control, around her mental game, but some really good tools for tryouts. Number one, breath work. Okay. Just. Allowing her to have the skill of knowing how to breathe correctly when she is overwhelmed. I mean, that's a very low lift skill. So breathing into her diaphragm, filling her belly, filling her lungs, exhaling fully, like, just kind of helps calm, regulate nervous system. You know, all that is really great visualization. Okay? Visualization is something that she can be doing leading up to tryout. She can see herself in that moment. See yourself hustling. See yourself enjoying tryouts, feeling confident, you know, like writing out her goals ahead of time and then visualizing them. Like all of those are really great self-talk. Okay? So all of the athletes in our program have affirmations and mantras that they fall back on. So something like, I'm prepared, I belong here. So things that she can like ground herself in. When she's feeling a little bit overwhelmed, in that tryout space. Okay. Also just like taking a moment to write out and journal and also visualize like how she wants to show up in tryouts. She's probably already visualizing it just in a negative way because that's what we do. We have a negativity bias and so. When we anticipate things, we tend to focus on what all the bad things that could happen instead of like what could go right? And so just visualizing like, here's how I wanna walk into the gym. Here's what, how I'm gonna treat other teammates. Here's how I'm gonna hustle between drills. Here's how, you know, highlight her strengths as well. I tell athletes, like, try to turn out a time to focus on your weaknesses. Like showcase what you're good at. If you're a really great blocker. That's what you're gonna go all in on. Like obviously you've gotta like showcase all of your skills, but like all athletes have strengths and weaknesses and so show what you're good at because that's probably the thing that you're gonna be chosen for. When I look for athletes, I'm like, oh, she's a great blocker. Like this is where I'm gonna be able to utilize that skill. Not like, oh, well she's not so great at passing. It's like, well, you don't need to be a great passer to be a great blocker. Okay, and so highlight what she is good at. Now a snapback routine is another really useful skill. It's one of the number one skills that athletes come out of our program, the elite mental game. You know, just saying like it totally changed their sports trajectory because they now have a way to get over mistakes fast. Okay. It's a combination of breath, a reset word or reset signal. It's so great to have because they can come back from mistakes without having to dwell on them. So those are just like simple things that your athlete should have in place before she heads into not only tryouts, but like her season, right? These are like. You know, the foundational mental training skills. So if you wanna learn more about these as well as our program, the elite mental game where she can go in depth and learn these, herself, go to our free training, that's at train her game.com. Alright. Recapping this try out season. I'm acknowledging right now, I know it's stressful for us as parents. Okay. Check in with yourself, like where is this stress coming from? Are you, putting stress on her and pressure on her to make a certain team? And if so, let's let go of that. This is her experience. I guess one thing I didn't talk about is, you know what? The chips will fall, where they fall and there's going to be every tryout season, there's gonna be some disappointments, probably there's gonna be some happiness. you're gonna experience it all. You know, the longer that your athlete is in sports, the longer that you're gonna see all of the things that happen. Okay? Her not making the team that she wants to make is not necessarily a terrible thing. And so we have to equip athletes to also handle disappointment better as well. That's part of resiliency. And if your athlete is disappointed after tryouts and you just go to, well, we're gonna go talk to the coach and that's not right, and all of these reasons, you're automatically teaching her that when we don't get what we want. We're just gonna go into victim mindset and blame everybody else. And that is not the mindset I know because you're listening to this podcast that you wanna be teaching your athlete. And so, yes, it's okay to be disappointed, but also, all right, what are our options here? How can we problem solve? It's reasonable to ask for feedback of course, but that needs to come from your athlete. But also any situation like whether she makes a team or doesn't like you, can move forward from it. Okay. And we have to teach our athletes that skill of I'm adaptable. No matter what happens. I'm gonna find a way forward and I'm gonna find how I'm gonna get better as a result of this. That's ultimately the mindset that tryouts teach us. Okay? So there's that too. But also equip your athlete with mental skills that she needs, before she has into the tryouts. You can do that by going to our free training@trainhergame.com. That'll give you everything you need to know. Alright, good luck with tryouts at Moms. Know that I am rooting for you, and no matter what happens, it's going to be okay. All right. I'm Coach Bre. I'll see you in the next episode of the Raising Elite Competitors podcast.