By Joe Ulm
 
Imagine for a moment…imagine that you are trying to accomplish something big, really big, life-changing big, and you had 20 amazing people around you. People you hand-picked; people who were phenomenally skilled at their craft – people who are committed to your goal as deeply as you are. With all these people around you, you create a rock-solid plan. You consider every contingency, every variable, and you figure out answers to them all. Everyone is confident as you set off to accomplish your goal. Then things start going wrong. One thing after the next; everything begins to fall apart. You fight through each problem, but over time, the opportunity passes. You’ve lost. 
 
What are you going to do now? Now that you’ve lost? Are you going to start from square one and do all that work over again? Or are you going to move on to something else?
 
I don’t think there’s a right answer to either question (go after the same goal again or go after a new one), but I do think there’s a wrong answer: doing neither.
 
As adults, the idea that failure (i.e. losing) is part of life seems obvious. Likewise, we understand that if we’re to achieve our goals, we’ll need to pick ourselves up after we fail, learn from our mistakes, stand tall, and get after it again. Because we understand that failure is always part of the success and taking action is the best cure for failure.  However, with hundreds of kids in our Club, there are bound to be many who don’t understand these concepts.  It’s another reason why youth sports are so important – because sports teach.
 
So please, humor me one more time and imagine… 700 kids. More. 1000. 5000. Every one of them understands the relationship between failure and success. They have the resources around them they need to handle failure productively and they have new opportunities to dive into. And, of course, they have a United community of family, friends, teammates, and coaches to support them. Can you even imagine all they could do?
 
Stay United, everyone.

By Joe Ulm
 
     Imagine for a moment. Imagine that you are trying to accomplish something big, really big, life-changing big, and you need the help of 20 people to get it done. What kind of people would you want by your side? Can you picture them? Now, describe those people in just three words. Not easy, right? But humor me if you would, and give it a try. Got your three words? Cool. Now imagine you have 100 of those people around you. Or 1000. Or 5000. Feels like a pretty unstoppable force, doesn’t it?

       This is what we’re building here at PSU. And it’s not just me, Lati, Cari, Erin, board members, and our coaches who are building it, but all of us. We use the words Passion, Skill, and Character here because we believe they best describe essential characteristics of success AND they’re easily understood by our players.  For example…

      Take a team of 20 players. Each player on the team has a passion for the sport, is wonderfully skilled at it, and has the character to work hard, make sacrifices, support their teammates, and be resilient in the face of adversity. Not only will the team win a ton of soccer games, but they’ll also have a rock-solid foundation of skills they can apply to their other goals. Their dreams. The rest of their lives.

       Now imagine that same team of 20 players has 80 parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and coaches supporting them. 100 people in total – all of them part of a Club of 1000. All of them part of a community 5000 strong.

      Winning is part of being successful, for sure, and players here at PSU will win lots of soccer games. But they’ll also do a lot more than that. They’ll do big things, life-changing things. And their Passion, Skill, and Character will help them get there.  

Stay United, everyone.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this article next week!