Over the past several months, I’ve been slammed with requests for mental performance coaching sessions regarding the NCAA recruiting process and its collateral damage on confidence, expectations, and performance.

Up until now, the recruiting process has been pretty straightforward. Get on the best team possible in the best league possible. Go to ID camps. Send emails. Create highlight videos. Train hard away from the field. Do extra! Build a social media brand. Get great grades. Play in the best showcases. And of course, perform well on the field! June 15 signals the first time where a player sees if this work has been seen and/or will be rewarded.

The harsh reality is that you may not have received a call on June 15. Or maybe you didn’t get the call from the schools that were on your wish list. Maybe you received calls from schools you’ve never heard of.

“Why would your schools of choice call?” you may despairingly think to yourself.

You did all the things necessary up to this point. Nothing. No calls. No texts. No messages. Nothing. This kick to the gut gets compounded by seeing social media posts from teammates or friends posting about getting calls from the colleges of their dreams. You worked harder than they did. And then it hits. “Maybe I’m not good enough to play college soccer?” You begin to question everything. Self-doubt grows! You put all that work into your dream of playing college soccer. Your parents spent a lot of money and sacrificed a lot of time to help you try and achieve this goal. You feel like you failed. You feel like you disappointed all of those who helped along the way, coaches, teammates, and friends alike. Athletic anxiety begins to settle in. You just can’t make sense of it.

Does this mean that your college soccer dream won’t come true?

Some will say the market will dictate your opportunities. You don’t have a choice; you don’t have any control or say in this process at all. I completely disagree and so should you. We do have a choice here.

You can’t control what college coaches think. You can’t control what they like about a player or what they don’t like about a player. You can’t control if they call you or not.

But maybe you can…

Two things you can control in recruiting.

1. The first is your actual recruiting process tasks; the emails, the texts, videos, camps, and ultimately your on and off-the-field performance. These are completely in your control. The more that you recruit a school, the more likely they will recruit you. The more you work at this process, the more opportunities you will create! We can talk more in-depth about this at a later time. 

2. The second aspect is more important and maybe a bit harder to achieve, but it’s long-lasting and will apply to every part of your game and life. You can call it your recruiting mindset; I’m going to call it Amor Fati. Translated from Latin as, “a love of one’s fate.” It has its roots in the ancient greek philosophy, Stoicism. Simply put, it’s a tool in the pursuit of self-mastery, perseverance, and wisdom. It provides much-needed strength, understanding, and stamina for all of life’s challenges. Stoicism is a way of acting, living, and thinking that helps you deal with adversity and difficulty. (Read more on Stoicism) The great Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt were all Stoics. Modern-day coaches Nick Saban and Bill Belichick are Stoics. The German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche popularized Amor Fati in his formula for human greatness.

What does this have to do with June 15 and college recruiting?

Great question! Amor Fati is a Stoic mindset that you develop to make the best out of anything that happens. You accept whatever happened and then make the best out of it. Everything is an opportunity. Treating each and every moment—no matter how challenging—as something to be embraced, not avoided. This is mental toughness; this is mental resilience and everything in between.