Leverage Advanced Tools to Become More

Expand your toolbox to increase your probability of academic, athletic, and career success. Commit to becoming a lifelong learner, using more an better tools - better habits, inspired process, and advanced helpers such as AI and mental models.

"You own your paycheck." Your work, your output, will define your role and results. George Clooney wasn't getting many or his desired roles. He "rethought" his auditions, fashioning himself not as an actor looking for work but as a solution for directors needing workers.

Want to get into a particular college or field? Want more playing time and a bigger role? 

• What would that look like?
• How can I train for that? 
• Am I willing to pay that price? 
• Who can help me? 

Harness the power of AI or it will replace some of your work and possibly your job. 

Let's connect AI to the Banquet. We need a "prompt" and AI then "predicts" or "hallucinates" a response based on having read trillons of words - the essence of a "Large Language Model." 

Here is one possibility (from Chat GPT Plus):

Prompt: "Melrose Volleyball (MVB) holds an annual banquet, a celebration of the hard work and achievements of the players and coaches. In a world of ordinary and extraordinary inputs, how can the banquet help leverage performance and inspire young athletes to become their best? Please provide three specific ways, acting as a mentor for these young people."

ChatGPT said:

Here are three powerful, specific ways the MVB banquet can move beyond ceremony and become a performance lever—a night that plants seeds young athletes will carry for years.

I’m framing this as if you’re speaking to them as a mentor: someone who’s seen how habits, attitude, and character shape outcomes long after the trophies fade.

1. Show young players what excellence looks like — and make it feel attainable.

A banquet gives something practice cannot:
a living model of who they can become.

When seniors share their stories—grit, setbacks, breakthroughs—young players hear:

• “She didn’t start until junior year… and now she’s all-league.”

• “She battled injury but led with her voice.”

• “She learned to serve tough by taking 200 reps a day.”

Those narratives are blueprints, not fairy tales.

They turn “excellence” from an abstract idea into something concrete, human, and possible.

Mentor message:

“You don’t become great by magic. You become great by choices—one day at a time. What you celebrate tonight is not talent. It’s work, resilience, and self-belief. And every one of you is capable of that.”

This is modeling psychology at its purest:
Exposure to real achievement expands belief in one’s own potential.

2. Reinforce the identity of MVB as a legacy, not just a season.

Young people rise to the expectations of the cultures they join.

A banquet says, without needing words:

MVB is bigger than any one team.
You are part of a long red-and-white line.
And your turn is coming.

Displaying past championship banners, highlighting alumni, honoring traditions (MVB 25, “Do the Work,” the middle–libero pipeline, signature drills, the culture standards)—this gives every player:

• A sense of belonging

• A sense of responsibility

• A sense of upward trajectory

Identity is the strongest performance driver in sports psychology.

Mentor message:

“You inherited this program from the women who came before you. Next year, you hand it forward. What do you want the story to say about your chapter?”

When athletes see themselves as caretakers of a legacy, their daily standards elevate.

3. Translate recognition into fuel — not comfort.

The banquet is a moment of recognition.
But the mentor’s job is to flip recognition into motivation.

You do it by connecting achievement back to process:

• A Most Improved player? Highlight her habits, not just the result.

• A Defensive Award? Praise the consistency, communication, courage.

• A Role Player Award? Hammer the unselfishness, reliability, and culture impact.

• A Senior Leadership Award? Emphasize daily standards, composure, emotional intelligence.

This ensures players walk out thinking:

“If I adopt those behaviors, I can take the next step too.”

Many teams “celebrate the outcome.”
Great teams codify the behaviors that produced it.

Mentor message:

“Awards don’t define you. What you did to earn them does. And those habits are available to every single player in this room.”

By reframing awards as evidence of replicable habits, you turn a banquet into a motivational accelerant instead of a pat on the back.

In Summary

The MVB banquet can be a performance engine when it:

1. Models excellence through authentic senior stories.

2. Strengthens identity by reinforcing MVB as a legacy to uphold.

3. Turns recognition into motivation by spotlighting habits, not just achievements.

Done right, the banquet becomes not just a celebration of who they were this season, but an ignition point for who they can become next season.

This blog can’t make you a better person, more effective student, or an elite volleyballer. The work that you do and your capacity to translate thinking into action separates you. 

How good do you want to be?