Slaying dragons with mindset

The hardest path often reveals the best in us.

It stretches us in ways we didn’t plan for, but it’s also where real growth happens. And it’s also where the best stories are born!

This is one of the most powerful stories of grit, determination, and resilience in sport from 2025. And at its core, it’s a story about leadership. The steady kind of leadership that we all crave and admire. It’s the kind that shapes identity well before the pressure arrives.

In December, Texas A&M (the Aggies) were crowned USA College Women’s Volleyball National Champions. It was an incredible underdog-turned-champion story. They were a team few expected to go all the way, but they managed to knock off powerhouse after powerhouse to win the title.

But when we look closer, it reveals something deeper.

When head coach, Jamie Morrison, arrived at Texas A&M three years ago, the program had talent but very little momentum. There was promise amongst the players and staff, but not belief. Winning a championship felt like something that happened to other teams, not theirs.

Morrison was a seasoned coach. He arrived with a quiet certainty and deep understanding of pressure. Before Texas A&M, he’d coached at the highest levels of international and Olympic volleyball. He’d seen what pressure does to people. More importantly, he had seen what preparation does to pressure.

And instead of leading with tactics, he led with mentality.

Throughout the Aggies’ tournament run, Morrison repeated a simple idea in different forms.

“I care less about mistakes, and I care more about responses.”

That line tells us so much.

The tournament schedule itself was brutal. Texas A&M entered without hype or expectation. The spotlight was firmly on their opponents. That mattered.

To win the national title, the Aggies had to beat:

An undefeated No. 1 seed, Nebraska. Then Pittsburgh, another No. 1 seed playing its best volleyball of the season. And then finally, they had to beat the defending national champions Kentucky, also a No. 1 seed.

Back to back to back No. 1 seeds.

And they did. They beat them all!

In each match, the same pattern emerged. Calm in chaos, collective trust and, equally important, no emotional hijacking when momentum shifted.

And there were moments that held huge momentum swings. In their first game against the undefeated Nebraska (seriously, they hadn’t lost a single match all season!), Texas was up 2 sets to 0, but Nebraska fought back to even the score 2-2. Texas finally won the 5th and final set to win 3-2. What’s important is that these young athletes didn’t flinch when those sets were lost. They were able to hold composure after mistakes.

Morrison again summed it up perfectly:

“As you get further and further into the tournament, it’s about who can handle the moments of tension for the longest. When a team goes on a 4-0 run, I don’t care about what got us there. I care about what we’re going to do next.”

This sort of leadership is the stuff we remember later in life. He’s showing them how to find a way through the chaos by helping to shape their identity under pressure, well before December.

Building for those pressure moments

Here is what consistently showed up in Morrison’s leadership, language, and behaviour, and the tools that we can all take into everyday life.

1. Process over performance. Morrison rarely talked about winning during the tournament. He talked about execution, habits, and trust. He understood something critical: elite performers are the ones who find a way to manage their nervous system and anchor to what is controllable. An overwhelmed brain needs small targets, not big visions. They focus on the next rep. The next conversation. And often, it’s the next breath. As Morrison put it, “Just like we teach passing and setting, we teach taking a breath.” And the thing about learning to take a breath is that it helps us create space for our intentional response. Here’s a good breathing technique to find some space.

2. Emotional honesty without emotional control. Players were encouraged to feel nerves rather than suppress them. But feelings didn’t run the show. This is emotional maturity. Feeling a lot, recognizing it, acting on very little. When we name nerves, we reduce their power. Instead of telling someone to calm down, Morrison redirected attention forward. Focus on what’s next. Always what’s next.

3. Collective identity over individual heroics. Morrison consistently redirected praise back to the group over individual performances. This built psychological safety, and that safety is what allows people to stay in the game when under stress. In workplaces, stress often causes withdrawal, but resilient cultures do the opposite by encouraging more communication, more ownership, more connection. We must build our teams and ourselves to be ready for those moments of pressure.

4. Expectation of difficulty. This might be the most underrated piece, because many of us don’t do it. However, it is a strategic lever for victory. The team expected significant adversity in every opponent they met and, because of that, they didn’t panic when it arrived. They invested in advance of the moment and trusted the tools they’d practiced over and over throughout the season. That is resilience in real time and Morrison knew that it had to be trained in advance. The victor is the one who can “handle the moments of tension for the longest”.

Texas A&M may have appeared to be underdogs, but they leveraged the most powerful tool: they understood that resilience is a competitive advantage.

That is the quiet truth about putting in the work now. It’s rarely flashy, often messy and sometimes even feels a little weird. But when that pressure hits, we’re ready. And we give ourselves the best chance for success.

Build for the hard road, and we’ll be waiting with a smile when it shows up.

Until next time friends, stay resilient.

Carré @ Resilient Minds

PS - It’s almost a guarantee that 2026 will contain more of what we experienced in 2025. Complex projects, challenging clients, unapologetic chaos. However, just like Texas A&M, when we do the work in advance, the team will be ready when the pressure arrives. Help your team prepare with a team resilience workshop or virtual webinar.