GRIT

Football Legend Ricky Watters is a Super Bowl Champion, National Champion, motivational speaker, and inspiration to many in football and beyond.

Now while you may know Ricky’s name from his time on the football field, his work beyond the game deserves just as much recognition. Ricky and his wife Catherina are active philanthropists via their work with the Ricky Watters Family Foundation which advocates for mentoring foster and at-risk youth, in addition to being stewards for the game of football through the Watters Warriors and Ricky Watters Pro Experience camps.

In addition to the above, Ricky is a lover of music and poetry and is a proud father to his two sons, Ricky jr. and Shane.

If you enjoyed this episode, please let us know by leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform and by sharing it with other athletes and coaches in your life who you think could benefit from WIN; Championship Traits For Life.

What are your metrics for success? Dr. Cassidy Preston of Consistent Elite Performance joins WIN to talk about how overcoming adversities during his time in sports had led him to a profession centered around helping others do the same. Dr. Preston and his team have used their combined education, athletic careers, and coaching experiences to create a mental performance system to guide elite athletes to clearly understand what mental skills they need to work on and how to do it.

If you enjoyed this episode, please let us know by leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform and by sharing it with other athletes and coaches in your life who you think could benefit from WIN; Championship Traits For Life.

Tina Whitlock is a tech fellow with the St. Louis Cardinals organization. A former all-American with the South Carolina Gamecocks –  a team she helped lead to the College World Series – Tina also played for the US National team in addition to making the professional softball ranks.

As playing turned to coaching, Tina interviewed with several MLB teams before she received a call back from the St. Louis Cardinals organization through a program that was specifically created to train prospective major league coaches and scouts. She became one of five women coaches in the minors with the role in addition to being the Cardinals’ second woman hire.

She is both a trailblazer and a leader in baseball and sports in general.

Lauren Ammon, is a certified professional coach that has dedicated her personal life to helping student-athletes. After spending 17 years as a swimmer, Lauren entered into what would become a successful career in Human Resources for many years. What we find amazing about her, is in spite of her success in that industry, she decided to take the leap away from the safety net of a career she was accustomed to, and dive into coaching full-time. It’s a journey we set out to uncover during our time with her.

Lauren is the founder of Performance Reimagined, an organization focused on helping student-athletes reach their full potential.

Traveling to Hell and Back can hurt just as bad (if not worse) than a check to the head. Just as Brady Leavold was skating his way to a bright future of playing professional hockey, he hit rock bottom. And we’re grateful he found his way back to solid ground (well… ice, but you get the point).

After his life took a dramatic turn towards addiction, crime, homelessness, and jail, he began sharing his story of pivotal moments that changed his life.  He now spends his time educating others, and guiding those who are struggling out of the darkness.

Brady created and hosts “Hockey 2 Hell and Back” – a podcast that dives into mental health for hockey players, and is the founder of Puck Support, which has the mission of “Igniting Change In Mental Health & Substance Misuse By Setting The Hockey World In Motion while also Honoring Those Lost to addiction and suicide.”

Carly Helfand is setting the example for women to always have a seat at the table in the sports industry. A table in which 84% of athletic scouts’ seats are occupied by men.

During her time as a scouting assistant for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Carly won a Super-Bowl ring, served as a recruitment specialist with UPENN football, and is a graduate of Drexel University’s top-level Sports Management program. She currently works for NBC Universal and is the founder and co-host of the Next Woman Up podcast, which highlights the journey of women in sports and the role that we all play in evolving that medium.

In this episode we explore the mentality it takes to pave the way for a career in the sports industry as a woman, the gender stigmas that still exist, and the resilience of the champion that is Carly Helfand.

Today’s guest is one of the hosts from the extremely popular podcast, Zero-Pod-thirty, on Barstool Sports. Connor Crehan has also served in the US Army, having graduated from West Point, where he was a varsity Quarterback for the Academy – following a stellar High School football career. Above all, Captain Con, or Con as he’s known on Twitter, is clearly a mental fitness advocate, and we dove into that with him on WIN.

When discussing life’s challenges, it’s common to hear metaphors about “climbing the mountain”, and reaching the “summit”. We also hear that reaching the peak of the mountain, while incredible, is just a moment and that we should enjoy the accent as much as the descent. We are told to soar toward our dreams and be humble in our approach. Ben White has done all of this literally and metaphorically.

Ben has been an adventurer since a young age. Ben hiked and skied all 48 of New Hampshire’s 4000-footers at the age of 17 with no backcountry ski knowledge. In 2011 Ben attended the University of Utah and graduated with a geology degree, an atmospheric science minor, and earned undergraduate researcher of the year in the college of mines and earth sciences for his work studying how natural arches vibrate and degrade over time. It was also during that time he also learned to rock climb, ice climb, and fly paragliders. Simply put – Ben LOVES this stuff.

But, like most journeys, Ben’s path had its fair share of adversity. In our episode today we will navigate through some of the challenges he has had to overcome, both mentally and physically, and learn how he has used his experience to help others, as they quest through the odyssey of life.

The greatest of all-time debate is something that never stops raging amongst sports fans. Like any true debate – in order to even crown a title like that – you must first set the standards – and thats usually where the conflict begins. Is it based on championships? Today’s guest has won two world championships, three national championships, and three olympic gold medals.