"I got so much better at throwing strikes once I just stopped believing I was bad at throwing strikes."

That quote is from Luke Deschenes, my guest on a new episode of The Freshman Foundation® Podcast.

Luke pitched at Division II Seton Hill before transferring to the University of Pittsburgh, a “Power Four” program.

e matter-of-factly said this to me, but sit with what he said for a second. Because it wasn’t a mechanical fix or a new drill or even a new self-talkmantra.
​

It was an identity shift.

Luke and I covered a lot valuable real estate:

His freshman fall at Seton Hill.
His redshirt injury year.
Second-guessing himself against older teammates.

But the piece that stuck with me was a story about baseball that had nothing to do with baseball.

During an off-day this summer in Vermont, Luke went cliff jumping with his teammates.

He started down a twenty-foot drop into a swim hole.
His legs were shaking.
He couldn’t see if the water was deep enough.

Luke equated it to pitching.

That's the mound.
That's every bases-loaded jam.
That’s every time he wondered if he could throw strikes.

And Luke's answer for how to handle it — for how he built the trust to let go of the ball — is exactly the kind of thing I want every parent of a pitcher to hear.

You can catch that portion of the conversation around the 53:21 mark.

We also discussed transfer portal decision-making, why "being where your feet are" isn't just a nice phrase, and what actually separates guys who bounce back from a bad inning from guys who spiral.

This episode drops tomorrow, Wednesday 8/5, at 5:00 am. Get it at michaelvhuber.com/podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

All conversation. No filler.

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