Lessons & Reminders from the 2024 NCAA Women's Basketball Championship Game

1. Own your mistakes/failures.?There is no sustained success without personal accountability.
2. Never allow a single outcome to define who you are.?Both success and failure are temporal; those "points in time" can not define us. Instead, the way we conduct ourselves afterward draws a more accurate picture.
3. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond.?We must learn to transmute the negative energy of disappointment into the positive energy needed for transformational growth.
4. Your ecosystem matters; Who's on your bus??Be intentional about who's in your locker room. Surround yourself with individuals who also share a champion's mindset because, in your weakest moments, they will remind you of who you are. When you look at them, you'll see a reflection of yourself, a champion.?
5. Be your authentic self.?The most impactful way to contribute to a team (or organization) is not to become like someone else but by simply being the best version of yourself (e.g., you don't have to be an elite scorer to have an unquestionable impact on the final score). Being unapologetically and authentically you will open doors that will never open while attempting to be someone else.

If you are a basketball fan, whether your team won or not, you may still be recovering from "basketball coma" caused by the NCAA Women's Final Four last weekend. One could easily argue that this year's women's tournament has captured far more interest than the men's. There were many stories, plots, and subplots to follow, but yesterday's final put an exclamation point on one of the subplots that is worth noting.

A viral video from last year's tournament captured one of the most prolific scorers in NCAA basketball history irreverently signaling to a member of the opposing team that her shooting skills were so poor that she didn't have to guard her (see video below). I suspect no one realized that video of South Carolina's early 2023 tournament exit would also serve as the first step towards their undefeated 2024 Championship run.?

Raven Johnson is the South Carolina player Caitlin Clark unceremoniously waved off in the video. After the upset loss and becoming the focal point of the viral video, Raven practically admitted she could have easily become a permanent pitty party participant with the viral footage playing perpetually in her head. In that seminal moment, she instead CHOSE to enable the disappointment and embarrassment to fuel one of the most storied championship runs in NCAA Basketball history. Instead of crumbling under the pressure, that was the moment her self-entitled "Revenge Tour" began, which culminated on Sunday with the University of South Carolina's third national championship.

In the championship game, Caitlin was on fire in the opening quarter, scoring 18 points, putting her on pace to surpass her 30 points per game tournament average. Raven put her signature on the game, not by scoring but by holding Caitlin to 3 points in the second quarter. Caitlin (one of the all-time best at the collegiate level) still finished the game with 30 points, but Raven's defensive pressure made it difficult to impose her will as she had done most of the season. Caitlin was held to 27% (3 of 11) from the floor, totaling 7 points while turning the ball over four times when Raven was guarding her.

Instead of allowing the loss and unflattering video to play perpetually in her head, Raven chose to transmute all of the negative energy that moment generated into a year's worth of "bulletin board material" that fueled a commitment to address the areas of her game, the prior season had exposed. She also noted that her coach, Dawn Staley, has created a team culture in which no one in the organization would allow her to stay down. Put another way, her resilience and ability to overcome this significant hurdle was a team effort.?

I thank and salute the coaches and players in this year's tournament; history will record it as one of the best ever. In addition to displaying excellent basketball skills, I also appreciated the lessons on resilience and how a "champion's mindset" seizes the day.

https://youtu.be/8VhQNvCHXj8?feature=shared