In this video, I share my experience of transitioning and how it positively impacted my mental health. Learn about the unique challenges and opportunities that come with adapting to change and how coaching can help build resilience.
Lacie Ham shares her journey of transitioning between teams, highlighting the mental hurdles and victories along the way. From coping with different coaching styles to finding one's place in a new team environment, Lacie's insights offer valuable lessons on resilience, adaptation, and the importance of mental health in sports.
Tune in to explore how athletes can mentally prepare for new beginnings, foster a sense of belonging, and turn challenges into stepping stones for success.
A couple of years ago, as a family, we created family core values. One of them is, "We face challenges with optimism while displaying a growth mindset." We wanted to tell our story so others, who relate, can navigate through these challenges better. Contributing to our Podcast will show we're on the right track and we're making a difference to those who have similar stories. Buy Us A Coffee
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[00:00:00] But that's because those are the standards of the word localization.
[00:00:04] But when we get to travel weekends, he's giving us rides to the field.
[00:00:10] The girls don't travel well.
[00:00:12] If we needed groceries or snacks.
[00:00:16] He always brought them for us.
[00:00:18] We'd always be making jokes with him too.
[00:00:20] He's jokester. He'd make bad jokes all the time.
[00:00:24] He always had that soft spot in him. mental health and the importance of support from the sidelines. Welcome back everyone. I'm your co-host of Ketchin' You, Rusty Ham. With me is the other co-host, my daughter, Lacey. Lacey say hello. Hi everybody. Lacey, it looks like you're in a quad. Where are you currently located?
[00:01:42] I'm on.
[00:01:45] I'm almost at the center of my campus.
[00:02:43] of when we played in a snow blizzard in New Mexico, but it was almost crossing the line.
[00:02:49] We were in the cages practicing
[00:02:51] because it was raining so hard
[00:02:52] and the winds were up to like 50 miles per hour.
[00:02:55] So all the pitchers are pitching in one cage
[00:02:58] and there's nets falling down,
[00:03:00] there's buckets of baseballs tipping over
[00:03:02] because the wind's going so hard.
[00:03:06] Yeah.
[00:03:07] And then we watched a little movie together as a team Yeah. I just remember you being six years old and you picked the promises that you would never grow up in your life. You broke that promise. You know, I wish six year olds were immortal, but they're not. And that's why we have this tattoo. It's two pinkies. If you're watching YouTube, there's two pinkies pinkie swearing. So awesome stuff. Lays, so let's, I know we were gonna talk about
[00:04:24] second year 14s, but we're gonna hold on.
[00:04:28] So if you guys were anticipating that, and, oh, you know, I'd have a key to the house and I'd be on my shelf. I'm seven, eight, nine, 10 years old because my mom was working, right? So, um, you know, back in our day was, you know, suck it up, figure it out. Um, the times have changed. Did sports psychology exist when you're playing sports? I'm sure it was.
[00:05:40] And it probably was last on the list of majors in college.
[00:05:46] I'm saying just like in general, I didn't care what it was. You had to come to practice. If you were not dying, you were coming to practice. So you would bundle up and take your cold medicine, whatever you needed to do, and you
[00:07:06] would sit in the stands. Yeah, I found this up on this. You guys are weak. You guys cream of Donas, you know, slam the ball and just walked out and we were all kind of like looking at you was like, what the hell? So that was, that was kind of like, you know, my experience. Now your experience. It's of the girls from Oklahoma played for him. You played for him, which is kind of cool. Yeah. I mean, not not our best weekend, not our best weekend. I don't think we got to seven innings any of the games, but like five games and describe every tribe. Who did we play Martin, we played Oklahoma. We played
[00:10:48] were there. Yeah. We'll get into that later. Anyway, we're always at your games anyway. So yeah, you played really well considering you didn't start any of those games and
[00:10:54] relieves and you did really well. I guess Oklahoma, I think you gave up one home run
[00:11:01] and then teammate that I played on Mark's team there's going to be some like, some hard days where you feel like,
[00:13:24] to travel weekends, he's like giving us rides to the field. The girls don't travel alone.
[00:13:26] If we needed groceries or snacks.
[00:13:30] Like he always brought that for us.
[00:13:33] We'd always be making jokes with him too.
[00:13:34] Like he's jokester, he'd make dad jokes all the time.
[00:13:38] Like he always had that soft spot in him.
[00:13:41] And sometimes it rarely came out,
[00:13:44] especially when it came to business weekends. then you're not cut out for it and you can go find somewhere else to go, right? It takes some special players to really withstand that because honestly, we talked about this before, but I was never really taught about mental health when I was growing up in school,
[00:15:02] like middle school, high school. I mean, high in freshman year, you know, so, but that type of coaching, it takes some special players and just really have that have to have that one goal in mind.
[00:16:20] Like you want to play Don't For Some Of One, this particular school, are these,
[00:17:29] into the way. But yeah, and as a parent, again, I grew up as a Gen X or I was, I was sucking up, figured out when you came to me, you know, in first year 12s or I think when
[00:17:38] we, whatever episode we talked about it, where you broke down and cried because, you know,
[00:17:44] I was throwing the ball back at you as hard as I could because you were a wort hitting get it used to now is like learning how to describe certain feelings that I'm having. Because now I have more knowledge of what anxiety is, what depression is, what fallout looks like or like burnout. So what I really kind of want to do, I mean,
[00:19:03] this is kind of what I'm studying to do too, is to really like want, I want young girls to She's actually an ex, D1, and professional player. She's a pitching coach now. It's all her. And she posed the question on TikTok. It was a nine year old, and she was being taught by her, the pitching coach, a certain way to pitch.
[00:20:20] And then she was going to her travel team.
[00:20:23] And the coach was having her pitch a different way.
[00:20:27] No, you're building those strong habits that are just going to continue on with you. But yeah, I mean, it's easier now when you know your body, I'm bodily aware and I can make adjustments on my own and know what's right for wrong. And I can feel within my body what feels right.
[00:21:42] But at nine years old, you don't know.
[00:21:44] You're supposed to be listening to your coaches
[00:21:47] and like people that are wiser than you I mean, staying sideways. Staying sideways could mean staying sideways and staying open are the same thing. Right. What is it? Like getting close too early is the same as your back hip turning to it.
[00:23:01] Right.
[00:23:01] I don't know.
[00:23:01] I'm trying to think of references.
[00:23:03] I teach kids like.
[00:23:05] Right.
[00:23:05] And this goes for anything.
[00:23:06] Right. Because then some girls think that's normal. And like, that can take a toll on you, hearing different perspectives and like, say it, hearing that this one's wrong, but this one's right and this one's right and this one's wrong. Like, well, I can't, they both be right, or why can't like, I just go off of my feeling
[00:24:20] and let what feels best.
[00:24:24] But I mean, it just, it takes a lot of transition.
[00:24:26] It takes a lot of self-reflection too. but she used to be a bad boxer. So she was a bad buster once the firecrackers as she committed suicide, right? I don't remember that. We had the big ceremony, not ceremony, but kind of a year. Yeah, so we had it at, you know, at STC. And then there was some college, right? Some college players at the Minnesota side as well.
[00:25:41] We don't know why, right? There's probably some underlying reasons why, but that's kind of like why I got into it. Why I want to study sports psychology, mental health, all that stuff. And people can say it's not real. People can say it doesn't exist. But I mean, just look at the facts. Look at the stats. So.
[00:27:02] Yeah. And again, we're not saying kumbaya's all she wants to muster up, then that's it. But if there's more, then there's more. Yeah. And then after that, I think we're gonna, we're gonna start maybe interviewing some other parents and players and get their perspective on their journey. Maybe talk to some other people that are in the mental health community and
[00:29:26] You were a, it was your, your refreshment. 14 going.
[00:29:28] You were going to be 15.
[00:29:31] No, you were 15.
[00:29:32] I was 15 because it was second year.
[00:29:34] Yeah.
[00:29:35] How.
[00:29:38] A dramatic injury can literally change the course of.
[00:29:42] Your career.
[00:29:44] And I mean And with
[00:31:02] How
[00:31:04] Like you've been you've been saying like we're not you have a goal in mind, you have to take action towards it. Can't just sit around and wait for it to happen. So there's think there's there's steps that you have to take for to be successful. And I'm going to give you those tips and I'm going to give you that advice.
[00:32:21] But you have to stay disciplined and you have to work hard.
[00:32:25] It's not just like, oh, I pitched once a week and then I go D one.