So you played college basketball???
How did that help you??
One of the things that I have loved watching lately is the uprise in women's college basketball in the media's eyes. As someone who wrote "Play in the WNBA" every single day of her journal through elementary school, seeing my friends, family, gym buddies, and colleagues as hyped about the game of basketball and the players I enjoy watching has been one of the best parts of 2024's March Madness.
As a former PAC10 (to date myself) and PAC12 (RIP to the Pac Conference), I wanted to share a few things that I learned from being a Division I benchwarmer that has served me in a multitude of capacities in the business world.
Dig Deep
One of the biggest lessons that was transferable from basketball practices was what it truly means to "dig deep." I always remember, with some fondness and some trepidation, a drill we'd do that was focused on boxing out and getting rebounds. As Coach John Wooden said, "Defense wins games, rebounds win championships." If you got the rebound and cleared it to half court, +1 point for your team. If the other team got the ball, -2 points, and, God forbid, if they scored on that rebound, subtract the number of those points.
The goal? To get to five points.
Five simple, easy points.
But one day, my second string side of the team ended up fifteen in the hole. I don't know if the thought was that Coach would give up and make us run or what. It wasn't. It was in that moment of an insurmountable hill that we had to make the conscientious decision, no matter how far behind we were, to just "Get. It. Done." While it about killed us and left us looking for inhalers, the satisfaction of "doing" what we said we were going to do and the challenge it created for us caused us to attack that drill from the start with the fervor required at the end.
Not everything is enjoyable in your day-to-day business work but that doesn't mean that you can procrastinate it and put it off m
Find A Way, No Matter how “Out of the Box” it may be
While this found it's way into the conversation in a number of ways on the basketball court, how this most impacted me going into the business world is through the time I tore my labrum. Horrifically, actually. The kind that leaves you not moving your arm for one month, someone else moving it for the next month and then attaching a float to it and standing in a pool while someone makes waves to make it float kind of injured.
Afraid to be left behind by my teammates when they traveled, I pitched to the local newspapers to write a column, while also creating short videos for their website. It was the start of influencing, in a sense, and it was how I was guaranteed that even if I couldn't serve in the expected capacity, I was still valuable to the team.
Thinking outside of the box has served me so well in the marketing field of business, typically working with non profits or small budgets, it has been the strategic way that I have been able to find innovative and game changing ways (ask me about the PNW Stompeders sometime).
Handling Narcissists
While you probably didn’t expect me to say this out loud, it’s something that I have realized with some accuracy through therapy, self-help books, podcasts and more. It was, in fact, superstar women’s basketball player Kelsey Plum talking about how she had always said she “wouldn’t date an athlete” because all athletes, by nature, have some narcissist in them - it’s what makes them good at what they do.
Whether it was handling a coach that screamed and yelled - meaning that you learned quickly not to take it personally and to realize what the root of the issue was - or it was having to balance and manage egos, these don’t go away. Especially when you work in industries that are extremely passionate. It also allows you the chance to place the right key members within your team, as well within your program to find success and excel.
Playing the under dog
Being an underdog isn’t something that just applies to sports, but oftentimes it’s the only time that we really root and cheer for that person. The under dogs always have an underlying theme to them; their passion and the way that they provide inspiration. You’ve never seen an under dog win a big upset without playing inspired - think of all these amazing March Madness upsets.
Oftentimes in the business world, we find ourselves as the underdog. What I have found most surprising, is that most people just accept it. Being a former athlete, I relish the opportunity to come from behind with a big upset and change the trajectory of our image for the future. In order to do so, you have to have energy, positivity, great leadership and communication. This is an absolute game changer in the business world and something I do have to remind myself of the further out of athletics I get, as it is something that is easily forgettable.
efficiency & strategy
If you know me, then you know that I am all about efficiency and strategy. In college sports, our coach would rank players both on our team and on opposing teams with an efficiency algorithm. The nerd in me was obsessed with these numbers, which were all of your good with determining point value multipliers, divided by all of your bad with multipliers, that then created a percentage.
For example, if a post checked in and coach said they were a 2.8 efficiency center, we would immediately know that they didn’t miss many shots, got a lot of rebounds and were potentially a shot blocker. If they were a point guard with a .5 efficiency, we’d be pretty accurate in assuming that they took some poor basketball IQ shots, turned the ball over more than created assists, and probably didn’t facilitate well meaning that pressure on the ball could result in turnovers and fast break points for us.
Working a fast paced job in my state capitol after college, I quickly adapted an efficiency to do list so that I could rate my days, weeks, months and even the quarter on how efficient I was. It also helped me determine when I could add new projects in and how busy my week would be based off of how many meetings I would have scheduled.
I still use this efficiency to do list daily - which you can find here.