[Flasch186]

Aiden attended a Florida Gators baseball camp this past weekend which comes in the middle of a summer weight lifting program at his school. At the beginning of the summer lifting he started to show the coaches that he is a grinder/hard worker. He can lift with the best of them and always shows up consistently. Coaches have singled him out positively.

He continues to also hit with his coach after lifting a few times per week. And the coach, while speaking with assistant coaches or peers, has been vocal about Aiden’s work and hitting (with a few dayum moments) with the other coaches thus lifting Aiden’s confidence. He has said occasionally that when Aiden first came to the school he had doubts baseball wise but Aiden’s starting to give the coach confidence again.

This is good and bad but all Aiden’s own making. Aiden, of course, in his first full year showed some of his emotional and self defeating tendencies. Surely less than in the past but occasional nonetheless. Those moments seem to far out last positive moments in their heads so it’s like he has to overcome his own poor mentality moments all of the time.

Even now, with assurances that he’ll be on the A team this fall, they’re couched against, “unless someone showed up and completely outplays him.” I’m certain this is the equivalent of a coach saying, “No spot is guaranteed,” which is what I preach to Aiden but it stinks that his positives and determination and growth always seem to now be under an umbrella of, “who’s the real Aiden?” He did it to himself though.

We asked the coach if we should try it for multiple teams or if we were ok leaving all our eggs in one basket, the basket Aiden wants to be in and he replied that he didn’t see any reason that Aiden wouldn’t be with him this fall. But he left the caveat to protect the over promise. It’s hard though because Aiden’s given me such trepidation this time of year.

This was a new team with about 1/3 that have played together and he needed to come in and show them that he belonged and he didn’t make that crystal clear. Statistically he should but it’s more than that. It’s mental, it’s confidence, it’s grit and determination and while that’s showing up now it’s later than it needed to be to have a smooth glide path.

The path to reaching his goals are always harder the way he chooses to go about it. That being said he has recognized that all of the warnings I gave him about his bullshit would make things harder some day and here we are a few years later and they are. He’s said it out loud that he can see it now but it seems, for the time being, to have lit a fire under his ass.

Anyways he’ll just keep grinding and I tell him don’t let yourself get out worked.


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