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Play Hard, Have Fun, No Mercy — And Six More Lessons Every Athlete Needs to Hear

  • tbdomann
  • Jun 15
  • 6 min read

From Pro Mindset® Podcast with Host Craig Domann, featuring Valerie Alston, mental toughness coach, former Division One softball player at the University of Minnesota


There's a moment in almost every athlete's career where the physical game stops being the problem. The body is ready. The training is done. And yet, when it counts the most — bases loaded, first inning, all eyes watching — something goes wrong that no amount of reps in the batting cage can fix.


That's the moment Valerie Alston knows better than most.


A former Division I softball player at the University of Minnesota, Alston grew up in Southern California where she earned her spot not by being the most physically gifted athlete in the gym, but by mastering the one thing most coaches never put on the practice schedule: the mental game. Today, she is an author, podcaster, and sports psychology coach who has spent the last 18 years working with athletes, military personnel, parents, and coaches — helping them build the mental toughness that separates good from great.


She joined Pro Mindset® Podcast host Craig Domann for a conversation that covered everything from her defining moment of failure to the six principles every competitor needs in their toolkit. Here's what stood out.


Valerie's story starts with a strikeout. Her sophomore year of high school, state tournament, bases loaded, first inning, no outs — and she stood at the plate and watched strike three go by. Looking back, the facts are clear: one at-bat doesn't lose a game. But facts don't live in a teenager's head. What lives there is identity, and Valerie's brain decided that strikeout defined her.


By her junior year, the hesitation had set in. Her dad Greg — her primary coach through those formative years — noticed it first. "You're playing very hesitantly. That's not you." He was right. The fear of repeating that failure had quietly become bigger than her belief in her own ability.


Greg introduced her to a sports psychology professional, and what followed changed the trajectory of her entire life — not just her softball career. She learned the language of performance: deep breathing, emotional regulation, and attention control. The tools gave her something to hold onto in high-pressure moments. By the time she arrived at Division I, she had mental skills that some of her more physically talented teammates simply didn't have. That was the edge.


"I fell in love with that side of the sport," she said. "And now that's my profession."

Ask Valerie what her father taught her, and she doesn't reach for a textbook. She reaches for a phrase that she and Greg still say to each other every time they get off the phone. Play hard. Have fun. No mercy.


It sounds simple, but Valerie unpacks each piece with precision.

Play hard means the only thing you can control is your effort. Not the outcome. Not the competition. Not the ump's call. Effort is entirely yours, and giving anything less than everything is a choice you'll feel later.


Have fun isn't about being carefree — it's about remembering why you're there. It's celebrating the wins, leaning into the bus ride chaos, and being present with your teammates. "Enjoy that journey as much as you can," Valerie said, "which doesn't mean every moment of that journey is going to be pleasant."


No mercy is perhaps the most misunderstood of the three. It's not about being mean. It's not about running up the score to embarrass someone. It's about refusing to play down to your competition, about keeping your processes intact whether you're up ten or down ten. "Play as if they are the best team ever that you've ever faced," Valerie said. You compete hard. You respect your opponent. You never let off the gas.


It's an inside game, not an outside one.


Craig pushed Valerie to go further — what would she add to those three principles now, two decades later? Without hesitation, she offered two more.


The first: let it go. After 18 years working with military personnel on mental toughness and resilience, this might be the lesson she's seen matter most. Once you've mined an experience for what it can teach you — whether it was a triumph or a disaster — you have to release it. Dwelling doesn't improve your next performance. Moving forward does. "Learn from it, grow from it," she said, "and then let's not stay in it."


The second: you're not alone. This one cuts against the myth of the lone competitor grinding in isolation. "Life is not a solo sport," Valerie said. "It's a team sport." That means your coaches, your parents, your teammates, your friends — whoever makes up your support network — are not a luxury. They're essential. The ability to reach out, lean on people, and accept help is not weakness. It's a prerequisite for sustained high performance.

Craig added his own two: be fully present (don't time travel to past mistakes or future catastrophes during competition), and remember that you are not defined by what you do. That seventeen-year-old version of Valerie didn't lose her value when she struck out with bases loaded. Athletes who tie their entire identity to performance put themselves in a fragile position. Parents who make their love feel conditional on outcomes make that problem worse.


One of the most practically valuable parts of the conversation was Valerie's breakdown of why athletes who perform brilliantly in practice fall apart in games. The answer usually comes down to two things: they've never actually practiced pressure, and they don't have the tools to regulate themselves when it shows up.


"Dealing with pressure is a muscle like anything else," Valerie said. Coaches — especially volunteer youth coaches who aren't formally trained — often run practices as skill drills with no consequence, no stakes, and no simulation of what a big moment actually feels like in the body. So when athletes get into the real thing, the elevated heart rate, the jittery hands, the racing thoughts are all completely foreign. There's no reference point and no toolkit.

Her prescription for coaches is concrete: build pressure into practice intentionally. Reset drills so athletes are always starting from a difficult situation — two outs, bases loaded, down by a run. Add consequences, even arbitrary ones like a lap or a set of burpees, because consequence creates stakes. Gamify it. Make it competitive within the team, so that the experience of digging in and fighting when something is on the line becomes familiar before it ever matters in a real game.


She also reframed the concept of positive self-talk in a way worth repeating. "I'd change it to productive self-talk," Valerie said. Telling yourself everything is fine when it clearly isn't doesn't help. What helps is honest acknowledgment followed by a pathway forward. "That sucked. I was trash today. I recognize that now. Here's what I'll do differently." That's not negative — that's productive. And productivity moves you forward.

The conversation kept circling back to one truth that both Craig and Valerie agreed on completely: no amount of mental skills training replaces the coach-athlete relationship. "They don't care what you know until they know that you care," Valerie said.

Research bears this out. Somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of the value in any coaching or counseling relationship comes from the rapport itself — not the technique, not the framework. An athlete who knows their coach genuinely believes in them can absorb criticism, push through hard practice sessions, and even forgive the occasional bad day. An athlete who feels like a cog in a wheel gives the bare minimum, even when they're technically talented.


"Every athlete filters the coaching they receive based upon whether or not they have a relationship," Domann added. The same instruction can land as encouragement or punishment depending entirely on whether that relationship exists.

It's a reminder: “Building culture isn't separate from building performance. It's the foundation of it,” Craig Domann.


Valerie Alston came to Pro Mindset® Podcast as someone who had lived all of this from the inside — the pressure, the failure, the recovery, the transformation. What she carries into her work today is the conviction that mental skills training shouldn't be a last resort. Athletes don't need to hit a crisis before they start building resilience.

"The time to repair the roof is not when it's raining," she said. Train the mental game now. Build the tools before you need them. Because you will need them — every athlete does, at every level, at every age.


The physical gifts will only take you so far. What happens between the ears is where champions are made.


Listen to the full conversation with Valerie Alston on https://www.promindsetpodcast.com/podcast/episode/77cb4dac/conquer-pressure-and-achieve-greatness-with-valerie-alston or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqA4hYZnuOY&t=2s and connect with Craig for coaching opportunities at Craig.ProMindset@gmail.com. Find Valerie at https://www.confidentcalmclutch.com/quicklinks and follow along for resources built for athletes, coaches, and the parents who support them.



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For more information about Craig and his keynote speaking, coaching, or athlete representation, go to www.CraigDomann.com 



 
 
 

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