Your brain has a system called the Reticular Activating System (RAS) — a filter that determines what information from the world around you reaches your conscious awareness. It works like a search engine: whatever you program it to look for, it will find.

If you walk into a gym looking for reasons to be frustrated — missed calls, mistakes, things that aren’t working — your brain will surface exactly that. If you walk in looking for effort, improvement, great plays, and things to be grateful for, your brain will find those instead. The game doesn’t change. Your filter does.

This is not wishful thinking. It is neuroscience, and it has direct consequences for athletic performance. A parent who focuses on what their child is doing wrong communicates that negativity in body language, tone, and conversation — all of which their athlete picks up on. A team of athletes who look for excuses will always find them.

Gratitude is a competitive advantage. Athletes who are trained to look for what is going right — even within a loss — maintain better mental states, recover faster from setbacks, and build the kind of resilience that wins championships over time.

Ask your athlete what went well before you ask what went wrong. Ask what they learned before you ask what they should have done differently. This small shift in perspective, practiced consistently, builds the mental framework of elite athletes.

Research from sport psychology is consistent on this point: the single most performance-enhancing thing a parent can do is make their athlete feel unconditionally loved and supported regardless of outcome. Not loved because they scored. Not proud because they won. Loved because they competed.

The most powerful phrase in a parent’s vocabulary after a competition is also the simplest: “I love watching you compete.” Nothing about the score. Nothing about mistakes. Just presence. Athletes who hear that consistently develop the psychological safety to take risks, to compete freely, and to handle failure without fear — and those are exactly the traits that produce elite performance.

Contrast that with the athlete who knows that a missed shot will generate a car-ride critique. That athlete learns to play not to fail rather than to win. They become tentative, anxious, and overly cautious — the opposite of what great competition requires.

Ask the right questions. After a competition, the questions you ask communicate what you value. “Did you win?” and “How many points did you get?” tie your athlete’s worth to outcome. “Did you have fun?” “What’s something you did well?” “What do you want to work on?” — these questions build ownership, reflection, and intrinsic motivation.

Be their safe landing place. Athletes carry pressure from coaches, teammates, and competition. Home should be the place where that pressure is released, not extended. Your job is not to add analysis to what the coach already said — it is to be the consistent, calm, unconditional presence that allows your athlete to recharge and show back up ready to compete again.

Praise effort, not talent. Dr. Carol Dweck’s research shows that children praised for intelligence or talent become risk-averse — afraid to fail because failure threatens their identity. Children praised for effort and persistence become more resilient and more willing to take on challenges. “I love how hard you worked today” does more than “You’re so talented.”

Dr. Carol Dweck’s decades of research at Stanford established one of the most important ideas in modern psychology: the growth mindset. Athletes with a growth mindset see effort as the path to mastery and failure as information rather than identity. Athletes with a fixed mindset see failure as evidence of permanent limitation.

The difference in outcomes between these two groups is dramatic. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. He processed that failure as motivation and information. The version of himself that went on to win six championships was built on that rejection, not in spite of it.

Every athlete in this program will fail. They will lose games, miss shots, make errors, and fall short of their goals. That is not the problem. The question is how they are taught to respond to it — by everyone around them.

When an athlete fails and the people around them immediately assign blame — to the coach, the referee, a teammate, or bad luck — they remove the one thing that actually produces growth: accountability and reflection.

When an athlete fails and is supported with perspective — “What did you learn?” “What will you do differently?” “I’m proud of how you competed” — they develop the mental toughness that defines elite performance over time.

The Holmen Vikings program is committed to building athletes who can fail well. That is one of the most transferable skills sport provides — not just for the next game, but for college, careers, and life.

Winning does not happen by accident. It is the cumulative result of disciplined choices made over weeks, months, and years — in the weight room, in the film room, in practice reps that nobody watches, and in moments of adversity when the easy path is to quit or complain.

But discipline in sport is not only physical. The hardest discipline to develop is the mental and cultural kind. Waiting 24 hours before having a difficult conversation takes discipline. Cheering for a teammate when you feel like you should be playing takes discipline. Coming to a coach with a solution instead of a complaint takes discipline. Choosing gratitude over frustration when the call goes against you takes discipline.

Every single principle on this page requires it. None of them are easy. All of them are a choice.

What separates great programs from average ones is not talent alone. It is a shared vision — athletes, parents, coaches, fans, and administration all pointing in the same direction, all holding themselves to the same standard, all making the disciplined choice even when it is hard.

When that shared vision takes hold, the results compound. Athletes who see disciplined parents become more disciplined themselves. Fans who model composure give their team permission to stay composed under pressure. Parents who bring solutions instead of problems build trust with coaches — and that trust creates better communication, better outcomes, and better athletes.

Holmen has everything it needs to be a model program — for this community, for this state, and beyond. The talent is here. The coaching is here. What unlocks it all is a community unified around a shared culture of excellence. That starts with every single one of us choosing discipline, every single day.