Mental Toughness: Is it in you?

I found this article online about Mental Toughness interesting. It listed 69 characteristics of mental strength.

Mental toughness is not about showing your emotions on your sleeve, but dealing with a bad day or things out of your control, and sometimes your own sub-par performance. We did not make the post-season last year. I have to do better. The team has to do better.

Mental toughness allows you to be coached. A pair of sophomore catchers -- Kyle Koslowski and Ryan Fitzgerald -- both had major flaws last year and had little chance of playing as freshmen. I once kicked Fitz out of the batting cage for pulling balls foul in batting practice!

We began camp with 8 catchers. We still have all 8 players -- some have now been moved to new positions -- but Fitz ad Kos kept their heads up and are our two most improved players -- in every area of their game -- hitting, defense and baserunning and either could be our No. 1 catcher. Fitz has two legitimate steals this fall! It would have been easy see all the players in front of them and give up. They have proven to be solid leaders by example. They could also end up as our No. 5 catchers if they let up.

I heard a speaker at the annual ABCA (baseball coaches) convention last year. He spoke on emotional maturity. Self-awareness was a big part of emotional maturity which I feel athletes sometimes lack. Sometime athletes need to be more aware of their actual performance. Most players feel they should be "starting" -- however, when they take time to look at their performance directly with what others have accomplished, "starting" is not a reality at that point. Getting to where you should be after someone passes you up takes mental toughness -- and happens everyday.

That is what we are looking for this fall. Mentally tough BASEBALL PLAYERS!