Excellence in your program needs to become a lifestyle not an event.  We are not excellent once in a while when we do community service; we are excellent all the time. We are not excellent once in a while when we practice. We’re excellent all the time.  It’s a “deserving to win” mentality.

One of the ways Irvine helped shift from a want to into a deserve to mentality was to measure the things that they were going to do and grade themselves vs a previously set standard of excellent effort.

I remember being at UCI in 2007 and we’re clearing off the infield after batting practice.  Very go through the motions.  I Said to Coach Serrano, “You want to win a national championship?”  Absolutely.  “Do you want your team to have more ownership of your program?”  Absolutely.  “You want your team to be more disciplined?” Absolutely.  “You want your team to shift from want to, to deserve to?”  Absolutely.  “Look at the way they are clearing the field right now.  Is that excellent?”  What do you mean?  Serrano Said, “Can we do that better than we’re doing it?”  He said yes.  “Then how come we’re accepting that instead of raising the bar for a standard of excellence?”

So we have them set the field back up and he grabs a stop watch because measurement equals motivation.  He pulls up all the pitchers and gives them a system for clearing the field.  Systems and routines have definite start and end points.  He said everybody stand in front of the dugout on the dirt.  When you say team and break from your huddle, you’re going to sprint and grab all the screens, you’re gonna put the screens away and when everybody comes back and their feet are back on the dirt, the watch stops.  Let’s see how we do.

In the first day, they’re running over each other and two people are grabbing the same screen and it’s just unorganized chaos.  Well, they then took ownership of it and everything changed.  So now, weeks, months down the road, they’re clearing that infield and they are trying to set a record.  They went from about five minutes to clear the infield to under 30 seconds.  Simple.  Measurement equals motivation.

The team took a boring monotonous task that every program in the country has to do and they made it a challenge.  They said let’s start by winning batting practice and then clearing the infield.  If we want to be the best team in the country, we want to deserve to win.  Let’s start maximizing the things we can control and start doing them to the best of our ability while competing with ourselves.