Grit in Your Craw by Robert Luckadoo

Author:Robert Luckadoo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Southern Flair Communications

5

DISCIPLINE

“Do you not know that in a race, all runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.”

—1 CORINTHIANS 9:24

I’VE ALWAYS PLAYED SPORTS. As a kid growing up, I played Little League baseball and peewee football. In middle school, I played baseball and basketball, and in high school I played baseball and football and ran on the track team. As an adult, I played softball well into my thirties, until I got too old and those bumps and bruises didn’t heal as fast as they once did. But after I hung up my cleats, I volunteered with the local Little League softball program as a coach and was soon asked to coach a local high school team. Ultimately, I was recruited to be an assistant coach at the collegiate level.

When I sold my independent insurance agency to a large conglomerate in 2007 and found myself longing for another challenge, I decided to pursue my love of sports and apply for a coaching position in fast-pitch softball. I polished my resume, sent it to a handful of large colleges and hoped someone would respond with an offer. At the time, I was about halfway through an online master’s degree program in business management with a concentration in sports management, and a coaching career at the collegiate level would be the perfect marriage of my business skills and my passion for sports.

In the summer, I got a call from Coach Beverly Smith from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The school was looking for an assistant coach for the Lady Tar Heel softball program, and she wanted me to come in for an interview with her and legendary Coach Donna Papa. This was great! I could work as a graduate assistant coach with the softball program and possibly complete an internship with the athletics department for my master’s degree at the same time.

As it turned out, I was offered both the position as an assistant coach and an internship with the athletic department, and the experience was a life-changing one. The coaching and life strategies I learned from Coaches Papa, Smith, and Janelle Brenneman were inspiring and a major boost for me in many ways. They gave me insight into what it takes to be a successful collegiate coach, a top-level recruiter and a much better person.

In early 2008, just after the Tar Heels had finished their fall season, I got a call from the athletic director at Meredith College, in Raleigh, North Carolina. She’d heard I was interested in a head coaching position in collegiate softball and asked me to send her a resume. Over the next month, I interviewed with the athletic director, the associate athletic director, the dean of the physical education department and the college president. I was offered the job in late January, and on February 23, 2008, I was standing in the dugout for my first NCAA softball game as a head coach. We won

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