THE BEST Recruiting Episode EVER!

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Welcome, welcome, welcome to another episode of In the Creek with Danny and Kevin, a coast to coast discussion of D2 Men's Lacrosse. I'm your co-host, Kevin Stenstrom, and with me as always is the People's League champion, Danny Moran. Hey Danny. I tell you what, when Matt Chan of Sticks and Stones said that line, I use it as much as possible. I I'll give him credit for it. But I love that he calls D2 Lacrosse the People's League.

SPEAKER_03 0:41

But I wouldn't call myself the champion, so that's good.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

I'm doing good at all. No, no, no. You champion, you're the biggest champion of D2 lacrosse. So you're you're kind of like the champion of the People's League.

SPEAKER_03 0:53

Well, you humble me, my friend. You humble me. Kevin, how are you today? Today was a scorcher in New York City. It was like 97 degrees. I was working in a closet. It felt like 125. I couldn't wait to get home and take a cool shower and get in the AC. And I'm really pumped about tonight's podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

Yeah, it's it's gonna be a good one, I think. As you know, Danny, over last season, besides trying to obviously spread the word of how great D2 lacrosse is, we started to emphasize the importance of mental health as well as finding the right fit to play lacrosse at the collegiate level. And I was just recently listening to a podcast, not ours, another one, I'll get to that in a little bit. And I was hit with the blinding flash of the obvious of how interrelated those two concepts are. It was kind of like finding the right fit improves mental health.

SPEAKER_03 1:57

I mean, a lot of things can go through a young man's head at 18, 19 years old. So yeah, definitely it correlates.

SPEAKER_02 2:04

And when you add in that, if they're a student athlete and they've got the pressures of playing, practicing, uh trying to interrelate with their team, it there's there's so many different dynamics. And it was interesting, the podcast that I was listening to actually is sponsored by Morgan's Message, which ever since we did the podcast with Dr. Ro Robin Schofield of USC and Thomas Galgano from Adelphi, I've been following them. Well, they sponsor a podcast called The Mental Matchup, which really focuses on athletes telling their stories of of their playing time, but also maybe how they struggle with mental health now and then. And really it's to help open the dialogue and kind of break that stigma of of mental health and not something that and something that you can talk about more openly. Well, I was listening to one with Reed Meyer, whose story and career path embodies what I think we've been trying to convey and really shows that interrelation. So enough of my rambling though. That uh that that's enough of me talking right now. Why don't we just bring him in and introduce him? So let's welcome him in, Reed Meyer. How you doing, Reed?

SPEAKER_03 3:17

Hey Kevin, hey Danny, how you guys doing? Hey Reed, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I we really appreciate you taking the time this evening. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to chat with you guys.

SPEAKER_02 3:27

Yeah, this is great. So why don't we just start off, Reed? Can you just tell us of your story of how you looked at recruiting, maybe a little bit of how you got into the sport, which is not lacrosse, I have to admit. And and picking the school based on you recruiting, picking the school you originally thought would be right for you. Can you just go through that a little bit?

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Yeah, absolutely. I'll kind of give the overview and then we can sort of dive into it piece by piece. That might be the easiest way to frame it a little bit. So I was uh grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, been playing baseball for my entire life. My dad was a college baseball player, so that was always a connecting point for us. Um, did that all growing up, somehow grew to be about 6'3, 6'4 in high school, was left-handed. Some things started to get kind of get put together in that respect, and then all of a sudden I was considered a recruit. So did that, played really competitively on select ball leagues, travel ball leagues, all that kind of stuff, and ultimately ended up signing an athletic scholarship with Texas Tech University, a Big 12 program down here in Texas. Um, lasted there for a season, ended up transferring out of Texas Tech University at the end of that season and going to a junior college called Weatherford College that was about 20 to 30 minutes away from my home, my original hometown. Um, and then from there, I actually ended up uh quitting baseball entirely and becoming a full-time student at the University of Texas at Austin and having to take classes at Austin Community College to be able to graduate on time. So I can confidently say that I went to uh four schools in four years and kind of the full gambit of Division I, junior college, not playing at all.

SPEAKER_03 5:09

Wow. That's interesting. So, what happened at Texas Tech when you were there? Tell us about your time at Texas Tech.

SPEAKER_02 5:18

And maybe if you can start off, Reed, a little bit with why you picked it uh based on what you were looking for from recruiting, which I find really fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Absolutely. And that'll that'll kind of yes, set the stage a little bit for what for what happened and for what happened in Lubbock. Um, so when I was going through the recruiting process, I was driven entirely by the athletic side of the equation when it came to looking at colleges. Um, I grew up in an environment that was highly competitive, you know, perfectionist sort of circle of support, different things like that. Not to say nobody was, I love my family, I love the people that I was around, but there was an expectation at a certain point, there was it almost felt like a turning point in my baseball career where I it kind of started to define who I was more and more as I got older. I would be the kid that was going and doing all the showcases, I would be the kid that was playing on Team Rawlings or getting picked up to go play at Disney at some tournament or whatever. And so the more that that happened, the more that I kind of embodied that as my as my overall personality. So I was no longer, there's a there's a swimmer at at UCLA named Kenisha Rose that told this to us one time, and I love it. I I was I was not a person who plays baseball, I was a baseball player, and that was starting to embody more and more of who I was and and where my values lied. So as I sort of moved through high school and realized that baseball was more of a priority, it took over everything and how I evaluated schools. So gone, I never even considered location, I never considered major, I never considered culture fit, any of that. I was interested in getting the largest scholarship I could at the biggest school that I could. That was my priority through and through because I wanted to be able to, I think intrinsically, you sort of have motivators for yourself as a competitor. You want to do the best you can. And then I'd be lying if I said there weren't outside pressures of like, man, you know, my family is investing this much money in me, my friends expect this of me. I'm, you know, I am introduced as the baseball kid when I go to friend circles. Like, this is who I am and this is the role that I play. So I need to live up to those expectations. And if I'm not going to a, you know, down here in Texas, it's Big 12, a Big 12 school, then how can I even take, you know, how can I even claim this badge of honor, this thing that I am supposed to be? And so I sign with Texas Tech University on a on a 50% scholarship, which for baseball, we'll take it, equivalency sport, love it. Um I get there, and I'm not kidding you. I my mother, God love her, who went to Texas Tech, by the way. That's her, she's an alumni of the school, drops me off in Lubbock and is just bawling crying because she knows like I've not said, I like slept in my car when I went for orientation because like I didn't get along with any, like I didn't know anybody there, and I was uncomfortable. I'd never been to Lubbock before. Right. So like I just was unprepared, not only for college, but college, you know, four hours away in a city that I didn't necessarily know anything about or was all that excited about. So, you know, it took me, it took me really into winter break to realize that something was up. Um, and that was predicated by my sister pulling me off to the side winter break. So to back up a little bit, I go through a fall semester, and that is a rude awakening, right? I go from being the guy at this private school that I was playing in, and the guy at these teams that I played for or traveled with and whatnot. Now I'm just a guy. And I show up for this listen, I'm I'm a 17-year-old kid and I'm in a locker room full of 22-year-old men that have been grinding out in Ludwig, Texas for two, three years now. You know, we've got a fifth-round draft pick in there, we've got an eighth-round draft pick in there. You know, there's these these dudes are here to work. Like it's a different mentality. So I show up, and that immediately is a shell shock for me. Um, I show up and I have no idea what my college, what my major is. My academic athletic advisor just handed me a schedule on day one and was like, go to these classes. I didn't know what my major was. Turns out I was a exercise science major with an emphasis in pre-physical therapy, and I pass out when I see injuries. So, like that was maybe not the best fit for me, but like no one cared. Like it fit with my clock with my practice schedule.

SPEAKER_03 9:33

So that's why they just gave you your classes.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

That was because that's where everybody, I mean, it was just okay, it fit best with my practice schedule.

unknown 9:44

Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

And I think they had good relationships with the teachers that they put me in with who would understand when I had to travel or when I had practice or whatever it might have been. And so, you know, I I get to tech, I don't know what I'm doing, I'm bamboozled, I'm five hours away from from uh home. And God love Levick, Texas, pretty much the only thing you could do out there is drink and watch sports. I don't drink, so like that would I've all I could do is watch sports. So I just it was not culturally, it was a friction. There was just kind of a, but when you're 17 years old, like all I care about and all I'm telling myself in this whole process is like, okay, this sucks objectively, but I'm playing Big 12 baseball, I'm on scholarship. These are all the things that I've been told since I was 12 years old was the goal, right? I've made done what I'm supposed to do. So this will get better. I will learn to like these things, or I will, this will, this will move and settle into a situation that that works for me. Um, and I told myself that for four months for that fall semester, and would basically be on a routine of I'd get up at five in the morning, I'd go work out from 5:30 to 8, and then go to class till noon, practice from about two to six, study hall from six to eight, homework from eight to ten, go to bed, do it all over again the next day. That was kind of my kind of my routine. Wow. Um I get home and my sister pulls me off to the side, who's she's six years older than me. We've always had a very lucky to have a close relationship given the age difference. And she was like, hey man, uh you look bad. Like I'm not sure what's going on here, but like there is a problem going on. She was like, something's off, like you look gaunt, like you don't, like you're not emoting the way that you normally do. Like something you need to go like talk to somebody or figure something out. So she sets me up with a with a meeting with her with a psychiatrist that she knows. I go in there, and by the time I leave there, I have been essentially initially diagnosed with severe social anxiety um and depression that's been onset by body dysmorphia um based on that conversation. So I pretty much immediately could put on Lexapro, which is an antidepressant. Um, and come to find out I had been avoiding scales and avoiding, so you can't find a picture of me for like a year because like I was avoiding photos, I was avoiding scales, I was avoiding all that kind of stuff, um, and and sort of internalizing it and not realizing that, but I had lost uh about 60 pounds in in those four months between between August and December because I was looking at these guys in my locker room and going, okay, they're obviously doing better than I am. They've gotten some figured out that I don't. They look like men, I look like a boy. So I need to increase muscle, I need to decrease fat, I need to, you know, I started convincing myself that some really unhealthy practices are what I needed to do to sort of expedite the process of just maturing and growing up as a person. Um I'm skipping meals, I'm going and working out multiple times a day, I'm not taking rest days, and it just wear it just wore on my body over time. And so it it was for me, it was shocking to realize that when I got to tech, the only thing I made that decision based off of was athletics. So when that started to be a stressor in my life and not something that brought me joy and comfort, I didn't have anything else to fall back on. It was a very wobbly stool on this one very unstable aspect of my college experience. Um, and I sort of put myself in that position because of how I approached the the college selection process.

SPEAKER_02 13:19

Wow. That's an interesting story. It's amazing. Uh so talk to us about your decision. Then you made the decision at I think in your second semester to leave. Walk through that a little bit, but kind of go through more about your next step and why you went the junior college route and what you thought about that, and then how did that end up?

SPEAKER_00 13:42

Yeah, so come back from my second semester. I've obviously, you know, I'm I'm on antidepressants, I'm doing a better job of being aware of what I'm eating, being aware of how I'm working out. I'm trying really hard to work on those things. Um and my spring, my spring year, I ended up not being on the the main travel squad for Texas Tech. So you can travel with, I think it's like 22, maybe or something like that, or X number of pitchers. And I just wasn't one of those guys. I wasn't a key guy for us. And so there were a lot of weekends that I had off, which was the first time that I really had that, certainly in college, and it kind of feels like you know, ever since I started playing baseball because of tournaments and whatever else. And I realized that I was I was happiest when the team was out of town. And it's because I got some autonomy over what I got to do during the day. I got to relax, I got to read a book, I got to go to a concert, I got to, you know, go work on things that I was excited about or whatever it might have been. And it was sort of this like sliver into the outside world that I didn't realize how much I missed or how much I enjoyed being a part of. And so for me, that was kind of the daunting moment of like, okay, this is something's wrong. Like it doesn't matter how cool the school is that I can say I'm going to or whatever. Hey, I'm not playing. And like playing is fun. You should want to do that. Right. And two, like where I am is not bringing me joy. Like it's not all I can think about when I'm in Lubbock is like, when is spring break and do I have to travel? When is the Big 12 tournament and will I be invited to go? I mean, those are the types of things that I'm thinking about by this time because I'm in a major that doesn't do me any good, you know, that I personally am not passionate about. I'm in a city that, in my opinion, doesn't really offer me the things that I want to be able to do from a personal standpoint. Um, and now the athletics aspect is not, you know, obviously a positive in my life. It's more of a stressor than anything else, just sort of given the situation I was in. So that to me was sort of a clear thing of like, I need to change what I'm doing. I need to change my environment, I need to change what's going on. And so as I was driving out of Lubbock uh in May, which I did not get invited to go to the Big 12 tournament. So I'm driving home and everybody else is getting ready to go to Oklahoma City. Uh called my mom and was like, I'm not coming back to Lubbock. Like, I don't, I stole like some bands and like my name placard and stuff because I knew I wasn't coming back. I stole the equipment manager called me and was like, hey man, you gonna come back for like a physical and stuff? And I was like, you don't need to worry about that. Like it's we're fine. So I called my mom and I'm like, I'm I'm not doing this anymore. And and then in that same call, I actually called the pitching coach at Weatherford College, which is where I ended up, because he was my pitching coach from when I was like 12 years old. So I had built a really good relationship with him, was actually committed to go there uh before my before my freshman year of college, and ended up getting a laid off for right in the early signing period for Texas Tech. So that's a whole other thing. I I cried in his in his uh I myself cried in his office when I told him I wasn't going to Weatherford anymore and was going to tech, which like hindsight's 2020, that's a bit of an indicator. Like maybe I wasn't making a decision that was best for me. Right. My brain, everyone around me was like, you have an opportunity to go play Big 12 baseball.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:51

You'd be speaking not to do it. And so that's what I'm telling myself over and over again as I'm doing things that feel wrong to do. So I call I call my coach, there's names Flint Wallace on the way back and say, Hey, can I come play with you over the summer? And can I, I don't care if it's a walk-on position, I don't care what the deal is. Can I come, you know, play on Weatherford's team next year? And he was like, Yeah, I think we're all out of money, but if you want to come walk on and you know be a part of the team and Juco Baseball, I mean, shoot, man, you got anything from anybody from 30 kids to 100 kids on that team. He's like, You can come, like you can come and practice if you want to. And so that from the drive home, I was going to Weatherford. So I get home, I kind of read, you know, you hit the reset button almost, and you're like, all right, my my mentality at this point still is okay, the environment wasn't right, you know, that that I went about that wrong. Still love baseball. So I'm going to go to a junior college, which for baseball is pretty, pretty common and pretty popular for folks that are that are transferring. This was pre-transfer portal, and I'm going to be able to play for a year and not lose a year of eligibility. And then I can jump back up to what in my brain was division one, obviously, whenever I go. So like that's still where my head is at whenever I whenever I go to Weatherford. Um and I get there and I play my ass off the fall, the fall season, if we're being honest. And I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I was back home, I was in a more comfortable environment, stressors were off, coaches were, yeah, like it was just bad. It just it just felt better in the fall. And so I think, I mean, I don't think I gave up a run in the fall season. And for Juju Baseball, you play a full fall season and a full spring season. So basically it's two showcase seasons, is kind of how it works. So I'm a you know, I'm a weekend starter in the fall. Um, you know, Texas Tech Coach shows up one game that I end up pitching for to recruit some other guys, and I pitch the game of my life, you know, in my head, I'm just flipping the bird up for the press box. You know, you have that mentality or 1940 and whatever it is. Of course. That's what I'm saying. And so it just, you know, you, yeah, you have you just it was great. And so that goes around. And I and I leave the fall semester with I want to say somewhere in the ballpark of like four or five uh scholarship offers to other schools. And you know, me being the 19-year-old kid that I am, or the vanity of it, which ultimately ended up paying off, but I didn't realize it at the time. I told all the coaches, like, I'm gonna wait till the spring and like see what happens and give myself some more time or whatever, which me was waiting for more offers, so I can like say I had all these things to choose from, right? Like the vanity of it. Um spring rolls around, and you know, we get off to a tougher start as a team in the first couple weeks of the season, and our coach starts having we we lose like you know, first four or six games or whatever, right? And so our coach brings all of us in to do individual meetings. And he brings everybody in and asks everybody the same question at the end of it all is like, do you care more about you know, baseball on this team, or do you care more about just being a Weatherford? And hindsight, I probably should just have lied. Like I think in most situations you just say what the coach wants to hear and move on, kind of a thing. Like that's probably what I would have told myself if I would have gone back. Ultimately happy I didn't because of things that happened. But I gave him an honest answer and was like, you know, coach, I'm not a pro guy. Like, I'm not gonna be a pro guy. It is what it is. Like I know, I know that about myself. I don't want to do the minor league circuit with baseball, even if I were to get in. So for me, you know, I wouldn't be at Weatherford if I wasn't here to play baseball. I think that's pretty obvious, right? So I obviously cared about the team, but I gotta, you know, I'm I care about my classes, I care about setting up for the next step. Like I'm trying to find a good fit for school, you know, kind of had a little bit more of that mentality. And uh I set the bench for the rest of the season after that conversation. I guess I wow, yeah. Now I cannot say one way or the other whether or not that was the reason why I set, you know, it's hard, you know, no one's ever gonna confirm or deny it. But I had a really good fall, was having a really good spring, despite what the record said. Didn't pitch again until our you know, sophomore night or equivalent of a senior night, Juco, uh, which was like the second to last game of the season. So set the whole time. So for me, that was a lot of time to like think and reflect. I'm like, oh, okay, well, this is this thing that has defined me for the last 10 years, it feels like, which at that time was almost over half my life, you know, and and this thing that I'm supposed to be good at, and I'm all this kind of stuff is is backfiring on me tremendously. Like I am, I'm in a bad place right now. I have a really bad relationship with my sport. Um and that, and that sort of led into probably the core of what the mental matchup interview was, which was me deciding I I was done playing baseball, uh competitively, at least. Um and that happened, that happened at Weatherford. I I just in the spring semester, it was I was starting to get kind of similar feelings as I did whenever I was at Texas Tech. And I I don't want to say that it was selfishness from not being able to play. I mean, obviously that was frustrating, but it was more this core of like, man, when I'm not around the field, I feel happier. Like when I go to the field, I feel stressed out, I feel like I'm just kind of I'm just I'm working to like to get a Excited to go back and play this sport that I loved growing up. And it was so easy to go to practice and so easy to see my friends. And now I just all I can think about is other things I want to be doing. And that was, it just ate away at me for months. And it happened again when I got to Weatherford in that spring semester. So that to me was kind of the main sign of like, okay, I need to really decide if I'm going to keep doing this or not. Because I'm now at school number two. I'm not getting any younger. I'm falling farther and farther behind on what would be a normal Keynes for a degree plan. Like I got to make a decision on how I'm going to manage this. And that's kind of where I got to whenever I was at Weatherford.

SPEAKER_02 22:42

I wrote a few notes and we'll get into it, but I I I think a lot of things you said are so normal for student athletes. The one you just said, like, I don't know if it was ego because I wasn't on the plane and the stress of being in practice. Because half the time I saw it with my son, I saw it with some of his teammates. It's stress if you want to get on the playing field, and how do you get that edge? And if you're not doing that, you you can lose that love for just practice when you're trying to get on the field at a collegiate level. It it adds another another stress. But let me ask you this. So you decide to go a different route and you go to the University of Texas and you actually go to community col Austin Community College. Is that what you said? Yeah, so I kind of did a dual thing for a little bit to get to get uh your enough credits to stay. How did that change? I guess the question is, how did that change go for you? What because uh I want to get the next step of what you're doing now, but how did that change go for you?

SPEAKER_03 23:49

And and did Because there was no more baseball at that point, right? No more baseball. So you didn't have that stress on you. So now you were just worried about classes, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:59

Yeah, so it was it it was a bit of a roller coaster, a lot of a roller coaster kind of in that in that transition phase. So leaving Weatherford and deciding that I wasn't gonna play baseball anymore, right? I mean, that I think was sort of the first hurdle of everything. And I think every it's so strange because it's a hundred it happens to a hundred percent of athletes. You have to stop playing competitively at some point. You can move to different leagues or whatever, but I don't care if you're there, Tom Brady eventually will either die on a football field or have to retire a third time. Like he'll do it, right? But like it forever and for 99.9% of the population, like that door comes a knocking for for all of us, right? But we never talk about what that transition feels like. We never talk about the fact that you know you're not alone and in in sort of this realization that you have to let this thing go that you've spent so much time loving and so much time putting this much effort into.

SPEAKER_02 24:48

And was your identity or your your perceived identity?

SPEAKER_00 24:52

A hundred percent. Yeah, and is and it's pretty much like your exactly like you said, your identity and your identifying factor, sort of as a person, especially when you play at that level. So I was not ready for that train to hit me whenever I decided I was gonna leave. And I and it and I struggled with that. And I think a lot of it for me was was a heavy amount of guilt. Because I had this, I had this feeling or this understanding that, you know, after talking with family is completely in my own the prison of my own mind kind of a situation. But you feel like you owe it to all the people around you, right? You're you know, how how can I be such a failure that I've got to quit this sport two years in after my parents have spent all this money on taking me to all these places and practice? I've got my friends who, you know, they they think it's so cool that they've got a friend who plays, you know, at the time Division I sports or college athletics or whatever. You know, I've I've you know, the person that I was dating at the time, you know, told all their friends that I was, you know. So you you associate it with all the different people in your circle, and all you can think about is how much like what you're doing, you you don't understand where you now fit into the line with all those people in your life. So there's a fear of like, am I gonna lose certain friends? Am I gonna be disassociated from certain people? Are people gonna be disappointed in me? Like what your brain just goes the worst direction immediately, right?

SPEAKER_03 26:12

I mean, that's a lot for young man, that's a lot for young man. You're still only 20 years old, you know.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Yeah, it's it's a lot to wrestle with. And I think for me, and and I mean, and that was obvious for me, and because I uh so that was the portion of kind of my moment or my transition where I actually had a suicide scare. So in and before telling my parents that I was done playing sports, I had fought with it for a while, right? You I mean, you think it's not something that just happens overnight, right? It eats away at you, it eats away at you. And I finally got to a point where I was like, I just can't do anymore. Like I've gotta, I've gotta stop playing, I've got to change what I'm doing. I'm gonna focus on colleges just for college now. But I hadn't told my parents, and and so it's not really real until you tell somebody kind of a deal, is felt. And you're and you're battling with the with the anxiety and the and the you know feeling that you're putting people down or letting people down and things like that. And so in the moment, you know, it it feels so detached right now as I'm talking about it. But in the moment, I remember how black and white it was and how transactional it was in my brain. I remember having this feeling of like, well, what if I just like take care of it, for lack of a better terms? Like if I just eliminate myself from the equation, now I don't have to sort of face the idea that I have failed in front of all these people that I care about and that have that have all these expectations for me and all these types of things. And that's sort of how you how I built it up in my head over time. And so, I mean, it it got bad enough for me to the point where I had written out letters to my parents, my grandparents, and my sister. So I'd written out like five letters basically apologizing for the fact that I like let them down and that I couldn't do this thing and I couldn't be this person that I was supposed to be, and they expected me to be, because that's how I felt in the moment. And I remember sort of having a game, like sounds weird to say now, but like a game plan basically of how I was gonna do everything. And what stopped me in the moment for me was I was having a, we were having a family dinner uh that weekend. And I remembered, I remembered convincing myself in my dorm of like, okay, I'm gonna go home this weekend and I'm gonna tell my parents. And, you know, knowing full well that I've got this other option in my back pocket if the conversation doesn't go well. And again, now saying it out loud, even when you hear it, and I've talked, I've started talking about it more now that I've started athletes to athletes to to sort of help identify with some other some other kids or college athletes. But in the moment, I mean, that it was it was uh disturbing how how normal that felt, sort of as a mindset to have on that. And and luckily, you know, thank the Lord I'm still here because the conversation went wonderful because my parents, I'm in a very fortunate position. My parents were super supportive, you know, they want to make sure obviously you're making a decision that you feel good about, you thought about, and it's not just uh somebody was meaning me at practice today, and now I quit sports forever, kind of a thing.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

But they ended the conversation with like, we're on your team no matter what you decide you want to do. Like we're gonna help, you know, we're gonna do whatever you decide you want to do, you go. And that, I mean, the weight of the freaking world was off my shoulders when they said that. And it was this not even really realizing that I necessarily had it, right? I mean, it was the it was sort of this first out loud admission to me that like I was more than just the sport that I played. And I you know that intrinsically, but when you spend all of your time doing sports and that's your association, that's your conversation, it it it blurs those lines really heavily to the extent that you have trouble separating them.

SPEAKER_02 29:48

And then when all your friends and family say, Oh, look at Reed, he's such a stud on the baseball field, he's playing D1 uh ball, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Look where he's work, where he's going. And and that, like you said, I would assume that helps identify you even more as the baseball guy, the baseball player, like you said earlier. Instead of playing baseball, you're the baseball player. And now it seems, and correct me if I'm wrong, your parents with that supportive, hey, we're on your team no matter what, it seemed to me that that may have started to help break down you being identified as the baseball player and that you could be identified as something else.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

100%. Yeah, that was the that was that was the chink in the armor for lack of a better term, right? In the sense that like I think it was the first time that I had really and the first time that it made sense to come up because I'd played baseball up until that point, but it was the first opportunity that I had to tell somebody like, hey, baseball's not gonna be a part of my life, and that person be wildly unchanged when I told them that. Because in my brain, it was gonna be this idea of like, all right, well, about face, like you've done your purpose, see you later. That's what I had that's what I had sort of roused it up in my head to be. And so my parents were just like, Cool, we love you. Like that, I'm sad that that's making you sad and you can't play anymore. But like that, I mean, you gotta do what you gotta do, man. So we love you, and and let us know, you know, what you're thinking for college and next steps or whatever. And like I remember getting in the car and being like, What the hell? Like, what that's like that's awesome. Like, I didn't so and it needs to be here then like that. Yeah, and for me, it went, I mean, it skyrocketed it back up as far as as far as what I was able to do. So I started focusing on schools just for school, you know. I started visiting friends that were going to colleges that I was always intrigued by to spend time with them, meet the people that they knew there. Yeah, and that's how we found that's how I found the University of Texas. And for me, it was the first time that I ever had like a gut feeling at a school and in an environment. When I was in the city of Austin, when I was interacting with those people that he was with, when I was sitting at a class there, for me, it just felt good. It felt normal. And so for me, it made it easy to go, okay, this is where I want to try and go. Like this, it wasn't this idea of like, I'll figure like I'll learn to like it when I get there, which had been sort of my mentality the first two places that I went to school at.

SPEAKER_02 32:06

Right, right. What a story. Now let's kind of switch over to what you're doing now with athletes to athletes, your company that you founded. I'm assuming, and I could be wrong, and we know when you assume what that can do to you and me, but I assume that what you went through and how you went through it, I equate to how you went through it and you said, Oh, I'm I'm going D1, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go early, I'm gonna sign early at the and get the most money, and then your second thing when you were at Juco uh and you said, Oh, I'm gonna wait to see how many offers I can get. I think all of that is normal for a kid in the same position. So is that what and through your study your years at at University of Texas getting your degree, is that kind of what led you to say, hey, maybe I can flip the flip the tables on this and and help other student athletes really figure out a good match.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

Yeah, so that certainly was a was a part of this scene. I think, you know, it's funny, I think the origin of athletes to athletes kind of stemmed out of my own stemmed out of my frustration about the about sort of the the system that we currently have. I think I I had to work through a lot of anger, both internally and sort of externally, with kind of how the system is set up as I was working through, you know, the different mental health struggles that I had. It's like, how could this have happened? Like, you know, coaches are supposed to be there for you, schools are supposed to be there for you, you know, all these different, you know, supposed to have all these different support structures and whatnot. And I really just felt like I was just like getting pulled in different directions from different people based on their priorities or based on what they thought was cool or whatever. And I kind of let other people dictate how I managed my college experience and how I manage my college selection process. So for me, trying to get a better handle on understanding how it all worked, how did the college selection process work? How does recruiting work? How can you put yourself in more advantageous positions to make, you know, to be the one making proactive choices and not reacting to things that are just happening to you? That gave me a lot of comfort as I was working through sort of my own mental struggles on those things. And that happened my last semester of UT. And so I literally started writing out notes to myself, like note cards and pinning them up on my wall when it was like questions that I wished I would have asked myself in high school to avoid going to the four schools. Right. I had friends who had, you know, lifelong friends that were going to be in their wedding and all these different things because they had gone to school and had these experiences. And I'm just sitting in this, I'm sitting in this one bedroom apartment, just trying to get through college because I've had such a disjointed negative experience with it. And so I start writing this stuff down and I fill up it. I mean, it looked, do you guys ever seen 23 with Jim Carrey? We just started writing on the walls and stuff. That's where I felt once. Like I just filled up like my entire little kitchenette wall of just of pushpins of like what I wish I would have asked myself, things I wish I would have known, stuff I could have Googled, just anything like that, right? Just a bed of it. And when I kind of got it out of my brain and on the paper, then I started calling my buddies up. Because a lot of my friends that I still knew were one were guys and girls who play college athletics, because that was a lot of you know the circles that we we moved in and things like that. And so I called, had to have been. I wish I had the exact number, it'd be great, but I had to have called 25 to 30 people and different sports, different, you know, some transferred, some didn't, some whatever, and just started asking them. I was like, hey, I feel like I'm going crazy over here. Like, here's what I'm going through. I feel like I didn't really have a good handle of this. I feel like it was, it just sort of happened to me, for lack of a better term. Like, did you feel that way? Or am I just, am I, did I just do this bad? And they're like, and and every one of them was like, no, like even if they ended up at a school, they're like, they were like, no, I kind of showed up and was like, we'll make it work, I guess, because like I didn't really, I just sort of reacted to things that were happening to me. I didn't really know what was going on, had different people telling me different things. And so I would get them to tell me the stuff they wish they knew, and I put that on the wall as well. And by the end of it, I mean, I had filled up, there's no way I got my security deposit back in that apartment. Like, there's no way. Like I just I completely covered the thing with, you know, little drywall pokes or whatever. And I mean, I had two full walls full of full of post-it notes. And that literally quite literally was the origin, I guess you could say, of Athletes to Athletes. And so I spent the next, you know, few months, certainly there and as built, obviously, but spent the next few months sort of condensing all of that down to booklet formats and answering those questions that were on those note cards and calling, you know, professional college counselors to ask them about things and essay or admissions or whatever it might be, calling the college coaches that I knew that I knew wouldn't give me, you know, BS and they'd shoot me straight on things and how they, you know, react to certain things in recruiting or what strategies they have to try and keep kids, you know, on their line so they can make a decision about you later on in life. So different things like that, and just built up sort of what was this original booklet for athletes to athletes, and it's grown from there to be a full-scale college counseling service for high school student athletes that want to go play in college. And it's helping them look at that, look at the college experience as what it is, a holistic college experience. And and using sports as just one of many pillars that you need to satisfy in order to have a college experience that's going to allow you to thrive for 40 years and not just that four that you're playing that sport in college.

SPEAKER_02 37:42

Right. I I love how you use the word holistic, because that's the word I was going to use for what I think athletes to athletes is just hearing it from you and reading the website. And I'll equate it, I think what you went through, and I think I was talking to Danny before we got on about this. Everyone is kind of a specialist, even at the in the high school or in the education profession. You've got teachers who are educators, you've got counselors, their job is to help you get to that next transition, but those counselors really don't know about athletic athletics. And you've got coaches that know about athletics and can help you get to a school, but they're not combined. I look at it like when my dad was really sick and he he had heart problems and he had cancer and he had a cardiologist and an oncologist, and he had this other pulmonary specialist, and they're all giving them different medicines. And when you mix those up, if you don't know what you're doing, it causes more problems. And I look at what you're doing at athletes to athletes is to try to look at each student athlete individually, what are their goals in mind and help them actually figure out what their goals are post-athletics and add that into the mix. Is that am I getting that right?

SPEAKER_00 38:55

You're you're dead on. I mean, literally the way you described it right there is is what what our original sort of mission statement and and business purpose was is we're, you know, you need almost a synthesizer for all these different people because they all come from different backgrounds, they all have different expertise, they all have different priorities, they all have different uh definitions of success in college.

SPEAKER_02 39:14

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

And and that can be really tough when you're 14, 15, 16 years old trying to just disseminate all that information, figure out what makes sense, make the best decision, not get caught up in the vanity of college athletics, which is easy to do, especially when coaches get paid six figures year over year to show you the nicest buildings and the nicest facilities and tell you you're awesome and you're gonna do all these things. And that's tough. You're a kid, right? Trying to figure that out. And so having somebody who has a counseling background, has been a former college athlete, understands how you're feeling because they're close enough attached to what you're doing that they can, you know, they know what it feels like to make those decisions. We we wanted to create something that fits that niche that we don't feel like is currently being being filled. The closest thing that we can really think of is like, you know, those those online recruiting websites, which we could have a whole podcast on how I have and how they dip, they're a disservice to kids, right? They take it, they use your kids to make these objects. Yes, and they're they they're the the majority of money that is made from those from those companies is on ads from schools because their entire goal is to get the this heighten the user base and then sell ads based on clicks to colleges and different training modules and whatever it might be. They don't, it's a numbers game, and they'll call and they'll call these families and they'll try to have them upcharge for certain things and tell freshmen that they're already behind in the process and just like they just take advantage of of the fact that families don't understand it because it it's I mean, there's a reason college counselors exist, right? If it wasn't a full-time job, they wouldn't exist. There's a reason guidance counselors exist, coaches exist. Like, you need someone to kind of help put all that stuff through, and a a profile online is not gonna solve that problem, right?

SPEAKER_03 41:01

So now I'm a young baseball player, I'm 16, I'm a lefty, I'm 6'2, I'm about 180, I'm throwing at like 87, 88. I'm getting recruited, and I come to you and I say, Reed, you know, you've had the quite the story. Help me. What's the first thing you're gonna say to me?

SPEAKER_00 41:20

First thing we're we're gonna say is that's great. I love all the things you just told me. I want you to take all the athletic stuff you just told me. I want you to put it in a box and put it up on a shelf over here. With uh we're gonna talk about it later. The first thing we're gonna do is figure out who you are as a person. And I want to learn about that kid. I want to learn about what their interests are, what their passions are, what what's what are they good at in school, what are they not good at in school, what's their relationship with their parents, what's their favorite vacation they can think of. Like, let's just get to know each other and let's learn about who this person is. And once we've done that, then we can start to talk about all the foundations that make up what a college experience is going to be and do it through the framework of hey, I played in college and I'm telling you these things are important. So let's talk about it. Here's what, here's what demands are gonna be whenever you think about going to, you know, going to classes in college. Here's what it's gonna mean to try and bring athletics into that fold. Here's what it's gonna mean when you have mandatory study hall your freshman year and you have to allocate for that. Here's what it means when you have weights in the morning, and if you miss, you're gonna be doing barrel rolls for the rest of the day. So, how do we manage time management? How do we understand? We need to understand what college athletics is, and we need to understand what role it should play in your overall college experience. And once we have sort of determined those things and we've built a relationship with one another, now we can bring that sports aspect back into it and go, okay, we know who you are, we know what your priorities are, we know what your do's and don'ts are. You were always going to work hard at sports. That you didn't come to me to learn how to work hard in sports. I know that's where you're at. So once we've identified what we want to do, now we can start, as opposed to just shotgun blasting to a hundred schools and hoping for the best or reacting to any school that comes to me. Now we've got a we have a tactical plan as far as things that you care about in sports, things that you care about in your personal experience, in your academic experience, career objectives, whatever it might be. And they're 16, right? No one's gonna have it figure out all the way, but we've got things we're interested in, things that light our brain up. Now we can start to focus on schools that satisfy the majority of those aspects of what you want in college. And we can start to inject that athletics portion into what we're talking about and make meaningful and rifle shot communications with those coaches. And now we're doing it with true passion. We're not just sending a blanket email to 100 coaches seeing who responds, and then that's how we create our college list of where we're gonna like become an adult human being. Like, let's find places that we think could help us do that, and then let's focus on those and let's build from there. So we don't really one of the things that I like to tell everybody, because they always have, you know, what's the differentiator between the differentiator for me and one that I find most fun to say is like, I don't care where you go to school. I really don't. And I don't mean that in a lazy way of like, we'll Just put them anywhere and it's all good. What I mean by that is traditionally, coaches, recruiting services, whatever it might be, if they make their money off of being able to tell everybody that they've got all these D1 kids in their recruiting class and they send all these kids to all these prestigious schools and whatever it might be. That's great. You can have that. You can, I want, I want my kids to go to schools that they love the college major that they're in. They love the environment that they're in. They love the size of school. They feel comfortable in that environment. They love, they feel they have a worthwhile and matching philosophy to the coach. They feel like that is a person who can be a mentor to them and a coach to them. They've got a group of people who live in an environment where they feel comfortable and they feel supported as an individual to be able to grow into the person that they want to be and not the person that they're trying to mold themselves to be to impress some coach in Tennessee they'd never talked to before that waived a 25% scholarship in front of their face. Those are that's what our that's what I want our kids to do. So I want my kid to call me five, you know, four months into his college experience, and the third thing he tells me about is baseball, or the third thing he tells me about is lacrosse. He's got so many other things in his college experience that he's excited about. That's what we want.

SPEAKER_02 45:15

That's awesome. That is awesome. That's awesome. So I I have to ask this because Danny and I talk about this a lot, and it's kind of a corollary to what you said in Danny's great setup that he's 6'2, which yeah, he's close to 6'2, aren't you, Dan? Nah. Um but he's not even six foot, 5'11. Yeah. The uh I'm wiry, bro. Student athletes come in with that uh I want to go D1. Do you get a lot of that? Like they they they have that like just like you, where they've been the the the guy, the guy or the gal. And so their metric is I've got to go to D1 school. And and and maybe that's the wrong thing, but is it is it more when they come in, they're coming more from the athletic side, or are you now getting kids saying, Hey, I really, I really need to be balanced?

SPEAKER_00 46:09

I would say 90% of the kids that come in when we first meet with them have that mentality that you're talking about, where love D1, you know, they you know, you say, Hey, what are your favorite schools? And they list off like seven of the top 25 programs in the country and whatever sport they play. And that's kind of where they start. And I think I would just I mean that's yeah, it's totally normal. Like that's you start the funnel big, man. Like, who knows? Because that's what they see.

SPEAKER_03 46:34

That's what they see on TV. 100%, you know, because what you see, you know, Notre Dame and South Carolina, you know, like they see those schools constantly on TV.

SPEAKER_00 46:44

You're a hundred percent correct. It's who they see on TV, and then the only other time that we'll get fastballs every or curveballs ever so often is usually when a parent has gone to a school that maybe isn't a top 25 or whatever, but it's an alumni. So the parent remembers it so fondly and it and it impresses on the kid, which again, those might all end up being very valid choices and very valid options. I have no problem with that. Like we tell every one of our kids we're gonna start the funnel as big as we possibly can, and we're gonna distill down as we discover what your priorities are in college and what your realities are with GPA, test scores, playability, things like that. You know, it sorts itself out on both ends of the spectrum at a certain point. But the funny part is it's way easier to get the kids going in the right direction than it is to get the parents going in the right direction. The kids will jump on board pretty quick when you kind of say, Hey, I've been there, I've done that. They'll immediately go, okay, and I believe what you're saying. And then when you start to talk to them about all the things, you go, hey, do you want to, you know, do you want to just live and die at a baseball field your entire day or a lacrosse field the entire day? Or like, do you want to go study abroad at some point? They're like, oh yeah, I only want to go to college if I can study abroad. And you're like, all right, well, that narrows the tube a little bit for some stuff. Like things like that sort of made realize, like, oh, like there's a trade-off in all these things. So I've got to decide what of this I want to do and how much of it I want to do.

SPEAKER_01 47:59

Right.

SPEAKER_00 48:00

God love parents, man. And it's come and the bummer is like the parent problem stems from such an irrational love for their kid and the desire for their kid to do everything they would possibly want to do in life ever.

SPEAKER_02 48:11

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 48:11

But like that's the part that's tough to turn around because usually what happens is, like you said, kids watch the top 25 programs on TV, they watch the alumni, whatever it is. And so when they're 13, 14 years old, they're telling their parents, I want to go play for Texas, I want to go play for Duke, I want to go play for Notre Dame. Well, now that kid, that parent's idea of success for their kid is, well, they want to go play in Texas, they want to go play at Duke, they want to go play in Notre Dame. So now they're a thousand percent in on trying to get that kid to go do that. Sometimes, a lot of times early on, way more intensely than that kid is doing it. Okay, they want so badly to help them do that. And so it's this weird transition moment of like, I get that you're doing this because it's coming from a place of love and because you think it's helpful. But like your kid is old enough now, they need to define what success in college is, not you. And that's a really tough thing to do as a parent to let your kids sort of make that adult decision. Um and I I say that as I say that as not a parent. I mean, I'm sure you two can agree that reading.

SPEAKER_02 49:10

You you hit the nail on the head, and I've got a great little story to tell. Um my oldest, our oldest, was a sophomore in high school, they had a a kind of a they had a admissions counselor from a small college, North Carolina, come and talk at the school and talk about college, you know, looking for colleges and whatnot. And he was awesome. I he retired, but he was the best one of the best speakers I ever heard. And what he said was in a nutshell, he said, look, it I've I've got good news and I've got bad news. The good news is there's over 4,000 accredited colleges in the United States, and about 90% of them accept well over 50% of their applicants. The bad news is, and I live in Northern Virginia, which is very competitive academically as well as well as athletically, he said the problem is that that 10% of schools that give uh get under 50% or accept under 50%, it's all the schools you want your kids to go to. Harvard, Yale, MIT, University of Virginia. And he went down the list, and all of our eyes, we just have these big wide eyes, we're like, Well, he's just nailed me. And what he said in the end was you've got you can't fit the school to the student. The student has to find the right fit school for him. And that stuck with me from my oldest all the way down to my youngest. And it was the same thing when my son went and was looking at you know, division one or division two or division three college lacrosse, and he ended up going D2, and that's what Danny and I talk about a lot is the fact that there are other choices where you can play very high-level athletics if you find the and you have just have to find the right fit.

SPEAKER_01 51:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:04

It's I mean, you're absolutely right, right? I mean, it's it's incredible, and and I think it's the number of people that I've met, especially now starting this and talking to folks that have kids in college or college athletes themselves and things like that, it's always this idea of like, man, I wish somebody would have told me that when I was in high school. Or like, man, I wish somebody would have told me that when my kid was going through this process. Like it would have it would have lowered the stress level on the house, like it would have made everyone feel a little bit more comfortable with what we were doing and kind of how this stuff works. And it to your point, right? Like I've met plenty of people, and and down here, you know, rice and Texas, UT Austin are kind of the two big ones in Texas, right? Like that's where everybody wants to go. I ultimately ended up in Texas, would not have been able to do it out of high school, didn't, didn't prioritize my grades nearly as much as I should have. Um, but I met plenty of people at Texas that loved it and loved that they were there, and I met plenty of people there that had no business being in Texas because it wasn't a good fit for them, but they were in that top seven percent and and in the state of Texas, and that's what she did.

unknown 52:03

Right.

SPEAKER_00 52:04

So I mean, exactly like you said, right? It's it's gotta fit the person. And we've got a school. Has either one of you guys ever heard of Sweetbrier College before?

SPEAKER_03 52:12

Sure have. No, sir.

SPEAKER_00 52:13

Sweetbrier, Virginia? Yep, yeah. I've heard of it. It's up, it's up in the hills right outside of Lynchburg. It's got one of the best equestrian programs in the country. It's got about 450 kids, some of the nicest people you'll ever meet there. And I went there, went there for a visit probably two months ago, I think, something like that. Because I'm a so I'm a certified college counselor now. So I go visit colleges all across the country during the year. And those, I mean, the girls that I met there, even just walking around, right? Not the ones that they put in front of you during the visits because they sound the best. Like had a you know, had a plan, had a specific teacher they they enjoyed being around, had things that they like to do around the city. I mean, you don't have to go to the top school to have that kind of experience. You find it everywhere. You find it everywhere.

SPEAKER_02 52:58

Exactly. Exactly. So let me ask you this for families who could be listening and may not be able to afford your services or be able to get to you, what would be one takeaway from what we just talked about, or maybe something you haven't said yet that you'd want to pass along?

SPEAKER_00 53:17

I think anytime we do any type of presentation or anytime we do anything like that, I think the number one thing we we well, one thing, I'll say that one thing for parents and one thing for for perfect kids. We'll do that. Uh, parents, take a breath. Just take a second. Like, just I feel like every like it's and I I get it. Like, I not as a parent, but as somebody who has experienced a lot of those things and talked to a lot of people, you want to there's this, we've created this weird dichotomy where we make everybody think they're behind. Like Jimmy's over here and he's got this, or Sally's got a scholarship here, or whatever it is. Okay, they're over there, they're doing their thing. Like, what who cares? Like, you cannot change that what's happening over in that part of the world. Can you talk to that person and maybe see, like, hey, did you guys go to a certain like that's fine, like gather some involve you went through whatever, but like you're it's gonna go at the rate that it goes. If you've got a plan and you have things that you're working towards and you have goals that you want to set, having an understanding of how the process works and taking those step-by-step directions is way more important than just looking up and going, we're behind, we got to do this. They're here, they're here, they're here. Just take a just take a breath to start and like write down the things you want to accomplish. And then it's gonna make it seem so it's like when you look at your syllabus for the first time at the beginning of college, you're like, I don't know how I'm ever gonna do all this stuff. And you look at it week by week and you're like, okay, I can see the path on how we get there. So I think for parents, just like taking a breather at first is probably good, or like just taking a step back. Great advice. Just sort of letting it, letting it settle, right? Yeah. And for the and for the kids, uh, my favorite thing to tell them is be unapologetically yourself during the process, whether it's the college recruiting process, the college selection process, whatever. Because I think a lot of kids, you know, you're 14, you're 15 years old, you're running into these coaches that are saying a lot of cool things, you're getting called by certain people or whatever it might be. And college is an opportunity for you to become the person you want to be and the person you are capable of being. If you spend your recruiting time and you spend your college selection time and you spend your college career trying to fit into this box or fit into this mold that you think this person over here wants you to be, you are never going to have the opportunity to do that. That school is, for lack of a better term, using you for your athletic services if you go as an athlete, right? They're getting something out of you when you go. You have every right in the world to get something out of them and should get something out of them when you think about what you're paying and where you're going and what you're doing when you go. So be unapologetically yourself. And if that means not connecting with a coach or not having an opportunity at a certain school, then that's what it means. I promise you, when I say you would rather go to a school that's a lower division or a lower scholarship offer or a walk-on or whatever, sometimes for some people, even doing it as a competitive club sport in an environment that you can thrive in and you can be the person you want to become, rather than going over here and making all these concessions as an individual and as who you are, just so you can play for this person. That that to me is if you can, if you can get that, if you can get kids to buy into that mentality, the recruiting process becomes so much easier because you don't see them struggle with this idea of like, you know, they want me, so I want them, but it's not really a good fit. Like you can cut through all of that, you're or a good portion of it, and just focus on the stuff that that's gonna help you be who you want to be.

SPEAKER_03 56:49

Right. That's awesome. It's great, great advice. Great advice, especially.

SPEAKER_02 56:54

Well, both of them were fantastic. I I think your experience and what happened at Weatherford, where you said, I maybe should have lied to the coach, but in the end, it was the smartest thing you did. You were honest with yourself and you were honest with him on what you wanted, and that made the difference. And I think that's great advice for it's actually great advice for adults too, as you're going to look for a job. I always tell people as when you go in for and you interview for a job, it's like being on the first date. Everyone's on their best behavior. They're trying to see if you're a good fit, and but you really on that first or second interview, you don't know anything or not enough about that company or the culture unless you really dig. And like you do when you go to college visits and you talk to students off the beaten path to see what they really think. So I think that was some phenomenal advice. So let me ask you this how can people reach you or your company? What's the best way to for them to connect with you?

SPEAKER_00 57:56

Yeah, so I think the easiest way is probably our uh our website, uh athletestoathes.com. Uh both athletes are plural, and it's too in the middle. So athletes to athletes.com. Um, we've got a contact form on there. It goes directly to me and my co-founders. So would love to love to connect with anybody who wants to talk more. Um I'm on LinkedIn, which feels weird to say now, but like that is where a lot of people do, a lot of social media. I know. So uh James Reed Miner, you can find me on there. Uh athletes to athletes is on there as well. We're on we're on that page. Um, Instagram, athletes to athletes, those are probably the most common ways to to get in touch with us. And any one of those will go directly to us, and we'd love to talk to anybody.

SPEAKER_02 58:38

We are we'll add those. I'll add in your Instagram and your website into our show notes so people can get right to it uh on the on the podcast for you. All I can say, Reed, is this has been phenomenal. It's been the best recruiting episode I have ever heard or been a part of. And I've been a part of several, including a lot of those pitches from those recruiting companies to help you out. And I think the advice you gave was was phenomenal. I wouldn't even say spot on, I just think it was just really phenomenal and and and I think can help a lot of people. And I think athletes to athletes is is a company that is really doing something that is when you look at it holistically like you are, is is phenomenal.

SPEAKER_03 59:22

Reed, I'm gonna be honest with you. Uh your story uh brought a tear to my eye before. It really did. I got a little teary-eyed, a little misty-eyed, and I'm thinking to myself, wow, this guy's such a well-spoken young man. He's got his act together, he's got his butt you know what you went through a hard thing and you came out on top. And that's your sister is a big part of that. I mean, that story right there, your sister right then and there. I mean, I'm telling you right now, I'm getting a little choked up about it because I don't know, I have a heart when it comes to that kind of stuff. Always when I coached football for many, many years, and I just always had a special place in my heart for kids, um, especially the underdogs. I don't know why. I just always did. I always played them, you know what I mean? I just got them on the field and I had this heart. And your story is interesting because my middle son, he got he got offers from three different divisions, and he didn't know what the hell he wanted. And we, I mean, poor guy. I I I I felt actually bad for him because there was nights when he just had to answer emails back and he was like, I don't want to do this, man. And it was like 30 emails he had to answer back. And we went, we went up and we worked out from Michigan. He's like, Dad, this is too big for me. This is too big. This is not where I kind of want to be. And then we started looking at lower divisions and went and wound up going to Division II in a small school down in down south, and uh he went on campus and just loved the campus, and that was it. And he had a great career there, you know. So again, I admire you for what you did and your story, and I thank you so much for coming on and telling your story tonight. It was great. I really do appreciate you taking the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:12

Yeah, no, thank you two so much. It was an absolute blast to talk to you both about this. I I love it. I, you know, I feel extremely fortunate to be in a position where my my full-time, you know, my day job gets to be helping kids and doing this stuff. Like I get to stay in sports, I get to feel like I'm making a difference. It's it's it's not fair that I get to do this every day, but I'm happy that I get to do it. So I'm I'm I'm pumped that you guys had me on, and I'm super happy we got to we got to have a chat today.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:40

It's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:42

And my sister does get the biggest gifts out of anybody, so don't move with her. Yeah, it's yeah, we're on the same page.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:49

There we go. That's awesome. Ladies and gentlemen, Reed Meyer from Athletes to Athletes. Thank you so much for coming on tonight.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:57

Thanks, guys.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:58

Boom. Mic dropped, Danny. That's all I can say with that discussion with with Reed Meyer. I was blown away.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:07

I was blown away. What a story. I mean, here's a kid. The kid. He was the baseball player, he was the guy. You know, all the accolades, all the big tournament teams. How many times have we talked about the kids, the tournaments, and the duff and the guys? He was that guy. And he chose Texas Tech, and Texas Tech gave him a scholarship, and it didn't work out, man. He just wasn't himself. He didn't feel right. And you know, he went through a lot for a young man, 17, 18 years old, and just his story and how he how he fought through it and and the things that he did and the support that he had from his family, it was just a remarkable story. I am even though it really wasn't lacrosse related, you can relate a lot of what he has talked about in the lacrosse world.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:00

Without a doubt, I think as he was going through not only his story, but talking about athletes to athletes and what he sees and what he talks about with student athletes and the advice he gave takeaway for parents, so much of that I can see myself in, I can see my kids in from what they went through. It's all seems so it it's not like it just happens to one person, it happens to so many, just like what happened to him. Now, sometimes it's a perfect fit right off the bat. I'm not saying it's not, but I just saw so many correlations to what we talk about all the time. And we talk about hey, D2 lacrosse is great, and you people have gotta lit watch that and the reasons why, and it's not just D1 and D3, it's D2 and Lacrosse world, and everyone's gotta know about that. I still believe that, but I think, like we talked about, you've got to find the right fit, whether it's lacrosse or something else. Is it is it NCAA? Is it N-AIA? Is it club? Is it not playing sports at all in your college career and and focusing on uh on academics? You gotta figure that out, and and that's why I thought this was so important tonight.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:14

You know, there's kids in D2 that say, hey, you know what, this isn't a fit for me. They do it. There's kids in D3 that get there and they say, you know something, mom, dad, this just not it's not fitting for me, you know. I'm sure it happens at the other divisions as well. Um, but to be able to get through it and you know the the mental side of it as well, Kev, you know, and these kids, they're balancing so much, like like Reed said, you know, between you know, um lifts and and and classes and and practices and um you know library time and and time management, and you know, there's a lot there. So he he he's got a good thing going on with athletes to athletes, and I think what he's doing is what a lot of kids need to go through, is you know, answer some of those questions and figure out what the good fit is.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:08

And I and I think like we said at the top of the episode finding the right fit improves mental health during those years in your college career. And and I I I think that proves out from what uh we saw from Reed's experience and what he's kind of trying to do with athletes to athletes.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:34

Yeah, 100%. I mean, he's taken something that he learned and something that he went through in his life to help other people. And I admire that. I like when people start helping other people and getting them on the right track, and that's what Reed's doing with athletes to athletes.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:51

Without a doubt, without a doubt. So I think with that, Danny, that's a wrap.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:57

That's a wrap, Gev.