DAY 2
Chris Pollard
Chris Pollard is the head baseball coach at Duke University, having taken over the program in June of 2012. In his time in Durham, he’s led the Blue Devils to eight 30+ win seasons, five NCAA Regionals, and three NCAA Super Regionals.
In 2016, Duke’s appearance in an NCAA Regional was their first post-season appearance in 55 years. In addition, in 2021 Duke’s baseball team won the only ACC Tournament Championship in school history.
Chris pitched for Davidson College before a stint in professional baseball, before pivoting to coaching. He and his wife, Stephanie have two sons, Thomas and Brady.
Quotables
Click the “Click to Tweet” link to share on Twitter/X now, or copy and paste to post to Facebook & LinkedIn: include the speaker’s name, #theartofplayingwell and www.theartofplayingwell.com
Instead of always focusing on yourself, your drive and motivation and all the things that go in to make you successful, can you shift your focus to the people around you? And can you care about their journey? @coachchris14 #servantleadership #theartofplayingwell
Can you care about someone else’s success? Can you care about their struggle as much as you do your own, because in doing so, you lift up those people around you. @coachchris14 #theartofplayingwell
In focusing on others, you lift yourself up because you stop worrying too much about your own issues and get outside of yourself. @coachchris14 #servantleadership #theartofplayingwell
If you can take your energy, whether it’s positive or negative and shift it away from yourself and towards your teammates, it’s very cathartic and gets you back in a good head space. @coachchris14 #teambuilding #theartofplayingwell
At the core of relationships, really meaningful relationships, is vulnerability-based trust. @coachchris14 #relationships #trust #vulnerability #theartofplayingwell
In a team culture, especially in a championship team culture, you want a deeper level of trust. You want that trust where I trust you so much that I’m willing to be real with you, I’m really willing to be human with you. @coachchris14 #culture #trust #theartofplayingwell
You have to delegate. So you have to allow people to do their job. You can’t micromanage. When you give your coaches and your upperclassmen freedom, to be themselves and to take ownership, you really get the best out of them. @coachchris14 #theartofplayingwell
As a young coach I lamented the fact that we didn’t have any leaders emerging in our program. And one day I looked in the mirror and said, the reason is because I’m not doing a very good job of putting guys in a position to lead. @coachchris14 #theartofplayingwell