This Week it's All About Inspiration

I've been on the hunt for some major inspiration of the sporting variety. I am 8 weeks post-baby (we had a beauty of a baby boy!) and ready to get back in shape. Then there was the most spectacular goal scored in this weekend's Portland Timbers vs Vancouver Whitecaps match, which fired up anyone who saw it, and kick started my search for videos of some cool sporting moments. I thought I'd share the inspiration:

Camilo Sanvezzo's scissor kick goal in the MLS Whitecaps vs Timbers match



The single most anticipated event of the Olympics is the 100m dash, and here is Jamaican Usain Bolt crushing it at 2008 Beijing! He writes in his autobiography, "It is said that the population of the earth is 6.8 billion, and that approximately 107 billion have lived on this planet since man came into being. It doesn't get any cooler than knowing you are the fastest of them all."



The event that catapulted women's soccer into the world's consciousness was the 1999 World Cup in the USA, symbolized by the penalty kick knocked home by Brandi Chastain, and the celebration that ensued.



Ronaldo's fancy feet...

Earn Your Right to Play

Last fall, the University of Portland (the greatest university on the planet :) threw a celebration for the 10-year anniversary of our 2002 NCAA National Championship winning team.

A consistent theme that we were constantly reminded of throughout the weekend's festivities and during speeches by former players, coaches and administration was our coach Clive's philosophy of "Earn Your Right to Play". 

Clive's motto was also the inspiration and anchor of my article about the history and culture behind the University of Portland Pilots women's soccer program in the first-ever print version of Our Game Magazine. If you're a high school player, it will give some insight into things to think about as you decide on what program to choose to take you to the next level, whether it's UP or elsewhere. If you can, subscribe to the magazine and get your global soccer news and stories all year long. 

Here's a sneak peek...

Earn Your Right To Play: The Portland Pilot Way

The University of Portland women’s soccer team has been winning games with frightening consistency ever since coach Clive Charles was leading the Pilots in the early 1990's. Today the home of the Pilots is one of the most feared college stadiums in women’s soccer, with sell-out crowds of extreme fans. The small private college program punches well above its weight as one of just three programs to have won multiple NCAA Division I titles. The program had three alumni win medals in last summer’s 2012 London Olympics and will feature professionals in the upcoming National Women’s Soccer League.

The evolution of the Pilots soccer program is a beautiful story.  A rich story that begins in the 1980’s and, like every good story, it has powerful characters and key moments that came to define the program. 

(Subscribe at Our Game Magazine to keep reading!)

Ideas that Inspire: Intent

+ Intent: The idea of intentionality is to focus on the experience we want to create, being mindful of the impact of our thoughts and actions.

Taking a purposeful approach to something has been driven into to me as an athlete by all the coaches I've been fortunate to have - each drill, practice, running session was built around a specific purpose = to help us show up best on game days.

My parents introduced intentionality to me in many ways, but the one that sticks out the most is healthy eating - they always led me and my two sisters and brother to really think about what we were eating and how it made us feel.

The first step in my career in sports, with the single most influential mentor on my career, was at ground zero of Canadian Sport 4 Life, a program developed by Richard Way and Istvan Balyi that promotes the intentional delivery of sport to improve the quality in Canada. Over the last 10 years or so, their framework has been adopted by a majority of Canada's national and provincial sport organizations.

My first full-time job, was shaped around the "intentional use of sport to teach kids life skills and build communities" (Right To Play). Sport can be an instrument of great (positive) influence especially when used intentionally, and Right To Play's programs are prime examples.

While studying an MBA (at the best school on the planet, the University of Portland :), I was introduced to the idea of Strategic Intent. It inspired me in a massive way. It's about setting bold audacious goals that allow us to envision the future. Then, we operate from the future backward, to create the future. The idea proposes, from a biz perspective, that companies should expand their resource base to meet its ambition: "Realistic goals promote incremental moves; only unrealistic goals provoke breakthrough thinking." Hamel and Prahalad (1989, HBR).

This is a pretty powerful idea to infuse into our lives too - envision what your ideal life looks like, connect the dots from the now to the vision, and then go about making it happen.

Intent, it's might just be one of my favourite words.