It's that time of year, moms. 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 want to 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 want to point out about this is that if you have athletes who are, you know, we'll 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, 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 daughter, 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. All right, let's get into our strategies to help with tryouts, because they are super stressful. And if you're in this boat where, 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 want to 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, the end of the world We're gonna be okay no matter what happens. And I want you to also just to check your motives, check in with yourself. 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, she has said she wants to make a certain team, and we're not sure if it's gonna happen. There's a lot of stress there. We just want our kids to be happy, and so the stress of disappointment, like, all of that is 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 way. Let's ground ourselves in the present and realize that, hey, it's 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. Ask her, "What are your goals for these tryouts? What are we going after here?" All right? "What would make you feel proud afterwards?" It kinda helps shift the energy a little bit from, making the team to showing up and doing her best. And tryouts really are just, a showcase at 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, it's all just 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. Hopefully coach has made that clear. And even if they haven't, it's okay. Don't get into a tizzy around, "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, 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? What kind of teammate are they, right? Are they cheering other people on? Are they encouraging other people? Are they somebody who is just 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, back? Do they volunteer for things? If I'm asking for some help, do they volunteer to help, to demonstrate? Just the little things like that. Are they loud? Are they talking? 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. These are things that you can do aside... you can't show up and perform more than you're physically capable of. 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, 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 her 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? If that doesn't happen, then what?" Okay? And so having a backup isn't, telling her that it's not gonna happen. A backup is, a good plan. So what I mean by that is, if we don't make the team, okay, what are our other options? You don't need to talk about that right away. I think that's all right. But know 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, 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, to prepare for them. Okay? She should be going to all the things that are offered by the coach, by the team, so that she can prepare the best she can and be present If she has goals to make varsity or JV or make a team, she should be doing the things required of her to do that. She can't expect to just show up at tryouts ha- having done nothing and expect that to go well. All right? So set up for success. 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, showing up early, making sure that she knows where the facility is, reducing some of that stress. Making sure, like I said, having those lists of, intangibles, like effort, being a great teammate, being coachable, her attitude, like, helping her focus on those things. All of that is gonna help her just 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 all of that is just putting, extra pressure. So keep everything around, 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, it can get 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 sport. You're like, "Well, what does that have to do with it?" It really does increase her confidence because now she is not just tied to the success or the failure of her tryout. It is around, 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. 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, play their best. I always recommend, if your athlete doesn't have any mental skills to be able to cope with anxiety, pre-performance anxiety, coming back from mistakes, 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 at trainhergame.com. I break down, the simple things that she can be doing, things that are in your control around her mental game. But some really good tools for tryouts. Number one, breathwork. 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, just helps calm, regulate nervous system. All that is really great. Visualization. Okay, visualization is something that she can be doing leading up to tryouts. She can see herself in that moment. See yourself hustling, see yourself enjoying tryouts, feeling confident. Like writing out her goals ahead of time and then visualizing them, like all of those are really great. Self-talk. 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." Things that she can ground herself in when she's feeling a little bit overwhelmed in that tryout space. 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, "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. Highlight her strengths as well. I tell athletes, like, "Tryouts are not a time to focus on your weaknesses. Showcase what you're good at." If you're a really great blocker, that's what you're gonna go all in on. Obviously, you've gotta showcase all of your skills, but 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. This is where I'm gonna be able to utilize that skill." Not "Oh, well, she's not so great at passing." It's 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. It's a combination of breath, a reset word, a reset signal. It's so great to have because they can come back from mistakes without having to dwell on them. Those are just like simple things that your athlete should have in place before she heads into, not only tryouts, but her season, right? These are the foundational mental training skills. 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 trainhergame.com. All right, recapping this, tryout season, I'm acknowledging right now, I know it's stressful for us as parents. Check in with yourself, like where is the stress coming from? You know what? It- 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. The longer that your athlete is in sports, the longer that you're gonna see all 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, I'm 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. 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 the team or doesn't, you can move forward from it, 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? Also equip your athlete with mental skills that she needs before she heads into tryouts. You can do that by going to our free training at trainhergame.com. That'll give you everything you need to know. All right. Good luck with tryouts, 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.