I made a conscious decision a few days a week to actually spend time with a blank sheet of paper, and sometimes I would write things down, sometimes I wouldn't, but just reflecting and meditating on what is.
My role as a coach, what is my role as a.
Parent, How do I want to carry myself?
And what do I want them to learn by watching me.
This is the Reform Sports Project, a podcast about restoring healthy balance and perspective in all areas of sports through education and advocacy. This is Nick Bonacor from the Reform Sports Podcast. Today, I'm speaking with Jason Gore, wrestling coach, pastor, and sports parent. A former captain of the North Carolina State Wolfpack wrestling team. Jason's career path took him from the business world into full time ministry, and eventually to
serving as a pastor. Through it all, he has remained connected to his roots on the map, serving his community as a youth wrestling coach and instilling the life and leadership skills that meant so much to him growing up into another generation of kids and teenagers. Jason and I discussed balancing competitiveness with a healthy mindset, determining your value system, and approach as a parent before your child steps onto the field, or matt In teaching kids how to be
adults in today's world. Back in the Saddle, I got a guest that I'm really excited I had opportunity to connect with him this past wrestling season. My second oldest son, Tyler, was finishing out a senior year of high school and got to compete against his son. And man, he's a coach, guy's a pastor, he's a former absolute stud for the NC State Wolfpack, was a multi sport athlete in high school himself, and I'm just super pumped to have him.
Jason Gore coach Gore, Pastor Gore, Jason Gore, thanks for hopping on bro oh.
Man, listen. Couldn't be more excited to spend some time with you on here. Love what you're doing, and man, you got quite the family yourself.
Love.
I really enjoyed watching you guys interact and compete and just really enjoy something that some people seemingly get super stressed out about. And you guys are a joy to watch from afar And yeah, man, couldn't be more stoke to be on the podcast with you.
Well, dude, so that brings me to you know why after we you know, we met briefly. Of course, my son wrestled your son twice, but I just saw your engagement, right and and and and you know a lot of sports parents who listen to this, you know, youth coaches and of course athletes as well. And where you really caught my attention is, first of all, you're a physical specimen. You're you're excessively intended to look at. I'm like, do
the cage fighter, what's going on here? But but you're also a gentle giant, right And and what I love most about everything is watching you coach is you're passionate. You want your kids to do well. But this seems to be a tremendous balance. How do you balance, man, and you have a daughter that wrestles, you have a
younger son that's wrestled. How do you balance your competitiveness as a former athlete, a guy who wants to win see your kids be successful, while also looking at the big picture, especially man in a sport right wrestling, where it is so intense.
Yeah, it's a great question and one I'm actually passionate about. But I'll tell you the way that I balance it, honestly, Nick, is by learning from doing it the wrong way, just being perfectly honest with you. You mentioned, you know, competitive athlete in college, and we've got three kids to do it, and so our oldest are twins eight and Natty they're fifteen, and then Connor's twelve. It's not something I'll tell you that, and I certainly don't always get it right now, but
I didn't always get it right. But what I've realized over the years, and this kind of gets into sports psychology and something I've kind of nerded out about over the last few years, but the reality is none of us compete well, none of us do anything well when we're really feeling the pressure. And then the flip side to that is all of us are usually at our
best when we're laid back and relaxed. And so what I've learned as a parent and as a coach is you can go into these whether it's a wrestling tournament, a football game, and dump all these pressure and these high expectations on these young athletes or even on our elves as adults. Maybe that's all different podcasts, or we can go in say listen, I've prepared, I've trained life is supposed to be fun. Let's just go out there and let it fly and let the carters fall where
they may land. And I'm telling you, man, the relational connection, the success, all that stuff comes when you just approach it with a bit more healthy mindset. So I guess that's a long way of saying I think I learned by doing it the wrong way and learning, hey, this isn't really yielding us the fruit that we want to see. So man, let's just uh, let's let's take the pressure off and let's just go out there and let it fly and have a good time.
You know, it's not called the Reform Sports project. You know, initially started off as a reform sports parent before it evolved and you know, trial by fire, you know, like I vividly remember, you know, my background. I played collegiate baseball. Out of the audience knows this, and I remember my son Tyler in particular. You know, he started getting into All Stars at the young ages, and I was coaching, and I'm I mean, I'm like, wow, I'm such a
great coach. Like my ego was totally involved. I mean, it was like ridiculous. And then of course I realized, you know, fast forward a couple of years, and I'm like, what in the God's name am I doing? Like it's not about me, you know, it's not about me, but it is hard at times to separate that. And you know, I remember, man, I mean, I know you met Tyler. Now he's eighteen years old, but I mean I remember
one time. Man, I can't forget it. I remember being in the in the car on the way home with him and telling him I was disappointed because the ball went through his legs. I think it was eight years old, and it was quote unquote a big game, you know, recit baseball game, and I was disappointed, and I'm like, I can't believe I said that. You know, I was agitated. It's like, here's a kid who's seven eight years old, who's probably got if I can visualize it right, he
probably had an orange Gatorade mustache at the time. He's probably eating a hot dog, and I'm sitting there telling him disappointing him from a ball going between his legs and and you know, but that was kind of like that moment I reflect, I'm like, what an absolute inbecilla was. So I appreciate you getting vulnerable and saying, man, I know I messed up, So how do you juggle though that car ride?
Man?
I mean go from coach to I've had people coaches, you know who are sports parents say they literally pretend they have two different has and they talk about the how do you juggle the car ride?
So for me, the way I juggle the car ride. And this is for all of us parents out there, if you don't prepare ahead of time as a parent and a coach, just the way we expect our athletes to because I actually view like my I coach on the field or in the matt room, and then I'm a coach slash parent on the way home. But you would never show up to a football game as a
coach unprepared, unplanned, without a game plan. And so, man, if we don't spend time as parents ahead of time saying okay, this is going to be my mentality after this is why we're competing. This is what we hope that our kids get out of this, this competition. And when you get in the heat of the moment, if you haven't planned, like what, and if you haven't really thought about what your values are and what you hope
to get out of it. When you get in the heat of the moment, you don't stand a chance because the reality is we are a little bit disappointed when
stuff like that happens. But I'll tell you one thing that I tell myself and I encourage other parents, you know, if I'm coaching their kids, especially at sport like wrestling, you got to realize, just by having a kid that was willing to go to practice every day this week and then show up and walk out on the mat with one other person, with tens hundreds, maybe at state term of thousands of people watching, they're already doing something that the majority of the kids on the planet would
just wouldn't have the guts to do.
To be honest, we wouldn't have them intal toughness.
So just by doing that, and listen, I'm not a participation trophy guy at all. Okay, so don't hear that, But we got to realize, man, just by them taking that step, they're already growing well beyond what the majority of the young people in our world are doing right now. And so when you can get that attitude of you know, and you can get your value system before you actually get in the moment, it really helps you when you get into it.
So I know that you. I want to shift gears a little bit because you brought up you know, competing kind of like that free spirit, like in the mindset of you know, having fun. And I know this because you know, it's one of the things I was like, Holy cal, I can't believe this dude actually did this. You wrestled Kyle Sanderson. I don't know how many times, you know, for those that don't know, if you're not familiar with wrestling, Cale is like, you know, he's he's
the Goat. I mean, I would say he's the greatest of all time, undefeated. I mean, he's the head coach of Penn State Wrestling. It's unbelievable. And you wrestled him, you competed. How were you you were still what nineteen
twenty twenty one years old at that time? How are you not nervous a standing in front of a guy like because I think it's important for people to realize, like it's okay to be nervous because we're all you know, you were wrestling the goat, but you know, we might be fifteen years old, you know, Tyler and Aidan wrestling to see who's going to wrestle for a third like they did for them in that moment that might have been that nervous moment. How do you mentally get yourself ready in that situation?
So a lot of time Pactor. First of all, yeah, man, going out, I've never felt so out of control of my life, probably as in moments in that match wrestling against Caley. Funny quick story. Then I answered the question, man, we go out there, we were wrestling Iowa and listen. It took me a while to get my head game right in college.
I got hurt when I was a freshman.
I was out for a full year. I was originally I beat out the starters here before it got hurt, was out for a full year. And then you know, wrestling Division one, you come back, you've been off the map for twelve months, that's you're gonna take a beatn when you first come back. And so I went from being incredibly dominant in the state of North Carolina to just being an average joe. And that really took a toll on me mentally. So it took me a few
years to really get the right mindset. But wrestling Calee my senior year, I had kind of finally landed the mindset thing a bit more healthy. I'm telling you that, as sure as I'm sitting here right now, I knew I was gonna be the one. I was gonna be the guy that beat him. You can probably go back and watch the match on YouTube. Anything but that happened.
He kicked my butt up and down the mat. But I will tell you that I had the mindset going into this thaying like I'm not going into this with the mindset of I must win and beat Cale Sanderson. Was to train and to do all the little things right. And I believe I've done all the little things right up until this point. Now it's time for me to go out there and trust my training and have a blast. The funny story about that is we go out to Iowa, we got this duel meet against them, and I come
out on the map. They call my name and it's there's there's thousands and thousands of people at their home wrestling matches, right, And so I go out the lights, The place blasts out all right, and then all of a sudden, you just hear people are stomping on the bleachers and clapping. The spotlight comes up, it goes down on him, and it's like, for a moment, it feels like this feels like a gladiator.
Is entering the ring to slaughter a lamb.
I mean this a bit and but you know, it's it's all part of the deal. And uh, but yeah, I mean in that situation, it was just I'm here to compete and let a fly man, it's an honor and a privilege. Like we get to compete, we get to wrestle, and if we have a competition mindset, we're telling ourselves, hey, just being out here competing is helping me sharpen my skills that aren't just valuable here on
the map, but also valuable in life. As it relates to my kids, I really try to give them the same Montra man, like, competing is an opportunity to actually show what our training really can do. And so just to be out there is the opportunity. So take advantage of the opportunity. Win, lose, draw, try to win every second. Now, I will say I've learned over the last two years and then this year specifically as it relates to wrestling, we don't talk a whole lot anymore about winning matches.
We talk a lot about controlling the second, being aggressive in the moment. Let's win the second, let's score the next point. The wins and losses will take care of themselves. And what happens is that takes a lot of pressure off because if you're losing four nothing, all you're doing
is worried about winning the next second. If you're up five to nothing, you're just worried about winning the next second, And so you don't have to carry all the pressure of what's going to happen at the end of the match.
You just do what you need to do in the moment.
And we've found a lot of success with our kids and then with some other with other athletes that I've worked at, specifically in the last couple of years, just focusing on the next second.
Listen, no one has more impact than the parent. I'm the child, you know most of the time, but a coach is right there as well. So do you try to coach when you're at practice and parent at home? Like, for instance, when you're doing the mental preparation, is that something that you're really intentional about, Like you know with all the kids that you coach at the high school level, or even you know your younger son, like you mentioned Connor,
your daughter Addison, like, are you intentional? Because I feel like it's so easy to go and you drill and you do all the physical components, the conditioning, go live whatever. How much time do you allocate towards really doing you know, the mental the attitude, you know, focusing on effort and such.
Yeah, great question again, man, So two things I'll say about that. So remind me to come back to wrestling mindset and hopefully hopefully well remember to come back to it. Sure, so we just going into Chris just before Christmas time. And again this is going back to me being honest, but I don't always get this right. My daughter and I we were at Mark Adams Christmas Tournament, and I
don't think at that point she had lost. She's wrestling in the finals against Teresa Kennedy, who is a just a dear child.
She's a great, great young lady.
She's a senior. She was a state runner up last year. And Patti took her down in the first period, as went into nothing in the second period. It was kind of even. Third period, Addie goes down quite honestly, makes a pretty dumb mistake, you know, reaches back for a leg gets a little sloppy, leaves her head by her knee, and Teresa's a very savvy wrestler, slapped a cradle on her, took her back, and pender and, man, I'm gonna.
Be honest, I was. I lost my cool a bit.
You know.
She came up to matter, what the heck? Well, I won't use the word, I probably use you know, what the heck are you doing doing something sloppy? You know, we don't teach that. We don't. And she looked at me and she said, why are you acting like this? I made a mistake. It's like, okay, wait, wait a minute, this is uh. I got to call I gotta calm down a little bit. And so it's probably I'd liking that to the ball going between the legs. And so that happened just before Christmas. And so if my wife
are on here, she would tell you the truth. I told her. I said, man, I've got to do some work myself. We ask these athletes to prepare mentally and physically, and as a coach and as a dad. And I would say this to any parent who's listening, or any coach, if you expect your athletes to perform well.
In the heat of the moment.
You know how much work it takes to get them ready to do that, Expect the same amount of yourself. And so I made a conscious decision a few days a week to actually spend time, like with a blank sheet of paper, And sometimes I would write things down, sometimes I wouldn't, but just reflecting and meditating on what is my role as a coach, what is my role as a parent, how do I want to carry myself? And what do I want them to learn by watching me?
And when you spend that time in preparation, I mean, and the brain, and the mind is just like any other muscle, it's stronger in the moment. And so I would say, how much time do you need to spend I don't know. I mean a couple guys here talking how big of a bozo are you as a parent? I mean, are you the guy that's sitting behind home plate hounding the official after every call? And whether you know it or not, you're teaching a kid that they can go to work one day and badmouth their supervisor.
Like at some point, somebody's in charge and it's not you, And you got to learn how to deal with that. So yeah, man, I actually literally I had to spend time, you know, throughout our Christmas break and over China and throughout the month of January, and I'll tell you it radically changed my perspective. And if my daughter were on here, she would tell you like her second half of the season with me as her coach Dad was so much
more of a joy. She did end up wrestling Teresa again as a side note, in the regional finals, lost to Teresa again, but I think it was much closer match. Well, I mean it was close until the end of the first one, but but yeah, it was like, man, We're just going to go out here and have a good time and let it fly, and totally different feeling come at home after that tournament.
When we return, Coach Gore and I dive into the wrestling mindset before we go to break. I've got another exciting announcement for you. Team Snap, the leading provider of
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and fans to engage on and off the field. The combination of the two industry leading consumer tech platforms also creates the most comprehensive suite of B to B tools available for youth sports organizations, including powerful content distribution capabilities to drive adoption of coaching and training programs, registration tools,
payment processing, organizational management tools, and much more. To learn more, visit WWAW dot teamsnap dot com and set up a free demo to learn how Team Snap can help your organization this season. Where we left off, Jason and I were about to discuss his approach to helping his athletes prepare mentally almost as much as they prepare physically before stepping onto the map. We'll get back to the wrestling
mindset everything in a minute. I want to touch on Addison right there, Like, man, kids have a way of teaching us.
Man.
It's like, just when you said that to me about Dad, why are you doing that? I'm like I felt that, and I'm like yeah, because i know I've done that before. You know, Like and if whoever's listening out, there's a
sports parent. You know, if you've never felt that way, but like the maturity it kind of you know, it's got to make you feel like, man, I must be doing something right for my daughter to feel confident enough in that moment to kind of humble me, or to be or to be able to help advocate and share her feelings in a very appropriate way. Because how many times do we see kids lose? They're throwing stuff off
the met they're cursing out this one and again. Kids make mistakes, right, just like adults do whatever, but kids have should have more leeway. But I mean for her to be mature enough in that moment, that's still got to feel pretty good as a parent.
Yeah, it does. I mean she said to me like after that, the next thing she said to me was, I mean, really, do you do you think that I wanted to lose? I was like, oh, gosh, no, I
know you. I know you didn't want to lose. So yeah, no, absolutely, man, I mean, and that's that's what this is all about, right, We're not I mean, look, I'm gonna say this in in complete humility here, by God's grace, you know, our kids love to compete in athletics, and they're they're pretty dang good, you know, given their age and and so there is a possibility that they and even a likelihood that they will compete at the next level in whatever
sport they continue to apply themselves to. But the reality is most kids aren't going to be professional athletes, and nobody really wants to hear that. But even if they are professional athletes, how many professional athles fleets do we know? To make a ton of money, blow a ton of money, end up on somebody's social media, end up on the news clips because they handle themselves in an inappropriate way.
So it's just so easy to lose sight of what's really most important, which is really teaching our young people how to be adults in today's world. And because there's a lot of people in today's world that don't know how to be adults. So that's a long way of saying, yeah, incredibly proud. I mean that was a that was a moment of like, man, we slipped up in this wrestling match, but yeah, she's got some good things.
Going for man.
I freaking love that, and real quick, I think it's important because it's just as important for kids to learn from a competitive mind to learn about the used to call that the wrestling mindset, but I think that can apply to any sport. How far do you take, you know, being intentional of really helping these kids become better in their mind to prepare to compete.
Yeah, so here's here's the thing. But so wrestling mindset. And you may or may not know.
I know the company, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah so, and.
This isn't a I don't work for them. I've had some conversations with some people that do. We've actually considered becoming a client of theirs. We haven't done it yet. But one of the things that they point out is we spend so much time focusing on the physical side of any sport, all right, so it doesn't have to
just be wrestling. This group, you know, primarily focuses on wrestling, and like, if you think about it, probably ninety nine percent of what you do at a wrestling practice, or at a baseball practice or a football practice is working on technique. It's working on the schemes, it's working on the philosophies and working on conditioning. But most people would say a sport like wrestling, let's just make up a percentage here
because we can do that is at least fifty percent metal. Right, Like, if you go into a match knowing you're going to lose, or if you go into a match super stressed out, the likelihood of you winning that match is greatly reduced. And I would say, if somebody thinks they're going to lose, it's like you have no chance of winning. And so we've got to find ways to spend more time focusing
on the mental aspect. Now, when you ask me specifically how much time I would say in the room, I really with our head coach at the at the at Garner High School, so I was technically the assistant there this year, the head girls coach. By the end of the year, I would say we were spending maybe the last five to seven minutes of a two hour practice
just talking about the mental game. Probably not enough time, but I will tell you there's a number of athletes on that team that went out of their way to let me know how much that actually changed the way they approach competition. Now, for me personally, at home, I have the luxury of having, you know, our athletes, our children in our house, and so we very rarely talk technique at home, but we regularly talk about the mental
approach to the game. So I don't know how to quantify it, but I would say as a parent and at home, I spend more time talking about the mental side. And I would say to a parent out there, especially if you're not a coach, get your athlete around coaches that you trust. If you don't trust them, that's a whole nother problem. But get your athletes around coaches that can build into the physical side and hopefully touch the
mental side. But nobody is going to really be able to speak to the mental side to the emotional side like a parent, because a parent really knows the athlete, probably better than the coach does, so you actually know what their real insecurities are. You really know what their true hopes are in life overall. And so I would say at practice, you probably need tend to like inresting mindset, will probably say, man, let's try to get closer to twenty percent mental. That can be a lot. You got
a limited time. But I would say at home, as a parent, I think we need to focus more on the mental approach, way more than we need to be talking about the physical side. And even the Wins and Losses coach.
I freaking love this. I love listening to you. You got a podcast? You know people want to follow you, they want to see what you're doing. Where can they connect with you and listen to your stuff?
Yeah, yeah, I'm on Instagram, just Jason Gore. It's pretty easy to track down. And then if you're looking to track with this on a podcast, We've got We launched a new podcast last year. It's just called Hope in Real Life with Jason Gore and Our Desire. We've got a whole team. Their primary focus is actually bring hope
into the real, everyday moments of our lives. And so whether that's talking about marriage, whether it's talking about parenting, where it's talking about finances, where it's talk about leadership and success in the marketplace, we bring in different subject matter experts and just talk about man, how can we find growth? How can we find hope in the everyday
moments that all of its experience in everyday life. So you can go wherever you download digital content, you can find us on Instagram or wherever you check out podcasts, just Hope in Real Life with Jason Gore, and you'll see a bald guy with a beard, and yeah, man, check us out.
You know, I can attest to the bald guy with a beard and the cauliflower ears and the shoulders that look like a damn eighth And I will tell you that from my run ins with you, you're a guy that I want to have if I was walking down a dark alley and a guy wouldn't want to run into.
But just like most guys like you who can tie someone up in a pretzel, you're extremely gracious, humble, and man, I'm really grateful that I got the chance to meet with you, that our son's got to connect Tyler couldn't speak high enough about Aiden, and we didn't get to talk much to your daughter Addie and such. But I mean, it's gonna be fun following your family and keeping up
with you as the years continue on. So I really can't thank you enough for coming on coach and means the world, hey right.
Back at you. They can listen. These types of conversations are conversations that need to happen, man, So I applaud you, and I've enjoyed checking out the podcast as well, So keep it up and let's do it again sometime soon.
That sounds like a planing coach. Thank you so much. That's Jason Gore, former NC State Wolfpack wrestling team captain, high school wrestling coach, pastor, and sports parent. Thanks for listening to the Reform Sports Podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode, we would appreciate it if if you took a moment to rate and review our podcast. As we work to grow our community of supporters and advocates for more reform sports content, please subscribe to our newsletter and blog at
Reformsports Project dot com. You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn