Run Your Own Race: Helping Athletes Avoid Comparison This Season

As new softball and baseball seasons kicks off for our athletes at 360U, there’s a lot of excitement. New teams, new opportunities and new expectations. But right alongside that excitement from tryouts, practices and new teammates, often comes something else - comparison.

Who made what team?

Who’s playing what positions?

What’s the lineup?

And before we know it, athletes (and parents) start looking around at how they stack up instead of getting better.

“Run your own race.”

It’s a simple phrase - but something that always really helped me back when I was an athlete. The minute we get consumed with ‘what someone else is doing’ is the minute we stop focusing on our own growth and development. We get distracted by what’s happening around us, instead of seeing the task right in front of us.

This common pitfall for young players is one of the easiest ways to drain their confidence and stall their personal growth. As adults, parents and coaches, we need to offer them a different perspective and a different response to these feelings of comparison and self-doubt.

Use Comparison as Fuel, Not Doubt

We’re not going to eliminate comparison completely, and that’s okay. What we need to do is build time into practices and conversations at home to teach our athletes how to use it the right way, rather than avoiding feelings that we know they're having.

Instead of thinking:

“They’re better than me”

“I’m behind"

We can help athletes ask better questions:

"What are they doing well?"

"What can I learn from that?"

Coach Scott talked about this a few weeks back in a video, and he couldn’t be more right. He suggested a different viewpoint - one that looks at comparison as an opportunity to motivate ourselves to do and be more.

Embrace Your Role

This is something I learned first-hand when I got to Wisconsin, a DI softball program with players from all over the country who were a lot more polished than I was. I started my career as a walk-on who barely played summer ball growing up (which I STILL thank my parents for providing me that balance throughout my childhood—a true gift!).

My first day of practice I looked around and saw girls who:

• Were stronger than me

• Hit harder than me

• Threw faster than me

• Knew far more about the x’s and o’s than me

  
  

And this was really, really hard...UNTIL I embraced my own, unique strengths and re-defined my role on this new team.

I asked myself:

“What did I do better than anyone else?”

I knew I was really fast. I was a lefty who knew small ball (but until high school mixed it in occasionally) and could steal bases. I wasn’t afraid to run balls down and dive in the outfield. And I was a great teammate.

Was this glamorous? No.

Was this exciting and flashy? No again.

Was this my new role? Yes.

And was this role important to the success of my team? YES again!

I leaned into my God-given strengths and re-defined my role. I no longer had to worry about hitting as hard as our #4 hitter or throwing as hard as our 3rd basemen.

The freedom this gifted me was incredible.

Immediately, I felt:

• Less pressure

• Clearer goals

• Freedom to compete

My coach fully supported me and encouraged me to take ownership of this new role with pride and purpose, and I was blessed to start in the lineup for 4 years playing centerfield.

"Once you truly own your role, you give yourself a chance to be great at it."

Stay Process-Driven

Now that we’re in season, this becomes everything.

Results will always fluctuate, whether we like it or not. Hits, errors, playing time, batting average—they’re not fully in an athlete’s control. When our discussions on the ride home revolve around these things, we are reinforcing the wrong things with our athletes. We’re looking at the game from a lens that doesn’t tell the whole story.

We become consumed with the numbers and let those drive our approach (this is something we are all guilty of—throw away those stat sheets parents!). I promise, I’ve been there, and knowing my batting average in college did NOTHING but put pressure on myself to either:

A) Maintain my average if I was having success

B) Improve my average if I was struggling

Athletes who tie their confidence to results will ride a rollercoaster of emotion all season. But athletes who stay focused on the process stay steady—and over time, they improve faster and enjoy the game more.

Instead of asking,

“Did I get a hit?”

We can shift to:

“Did I put the ball in play hard?”

“Did I stick to my approach?”

“Did I do MY job?”

That’s where real confidence is built. We need to ask the right questions to show our athletes we’re on the same page and same team as them. So be careful what you ask before, during and after games."

“The questions we ask our athletes show them what’s important to us.”

Parents — This Starts With Us

This mindset doesn’t just happen—it’s 100% shaped by the environment we put our athletes in.

The conversations after games matter.

The tone and discussions in the car ride home matters.

The way we talk about and evaluate other players matters.

If we want athletes to run their own race, we have to help them stay focused on their own path.

That means shifting conversations away from statistics that don’t tell the whole story and toward effort, learning, and shaping their response to failure.

It means carefully guiding comparison instead of feeding into it.

It means noticing the signs of comparison before it becomes a problem and addressing it.

And it means reinforcing their role—no matter how flashy or how exciting—and reminding them what they bring to the team and why it matters.

“Run your own race. Embrace your role. Trust your process.”