A Mindful Approach to Success

3/20/2026

They’re talented.

That’s for sure.

Talent, you see, runs in the Collegiate Cougars’ swimming family.

This past winter, Coach Mike Peters’ girls team won its fifth consecutive League of Independent Schools and VISAA championships. All told, they were the 17th league and 15th state title in program history.

Emory DeGuenther and Jasper Jones earned LIS swimmer of the meet honors. Addison Barnes, Kate Boutry, Gabby Carvalho, Savannah Harris, and Ana Linkonis were also All-LIS honorees.

In state competition, DeGuenther, a Duke commit who was cited as swimmer of the meet, won two events (100 free in 50.97, 200 free in 1:48.42), anchored the victorious 200 free relay (following Linkonis, Harris, and Jones) in 1:33.70 and 400 free relay (following Boutry, Carvalho, and Jones) in 3:28.69. Boutry, Harris, Margaret Hepper, and Linkonis also teamed to win the 200 medley relay in 1:44.27. Boutry, Carvalho, DeGuenther, Harris, Hepper, Jones, and Linkonis earned all-state citations.

Collegiate’s boys team placed second in the Prep League meet and third in the state. Jamie Arcarese, J.D. Chen, and Taylor Hoffer were All-Prep. Chen was cited as swimmer of the meet. Arcarese, Chen, Crawford Craig, Hoffer, and Justinas Petkauskas earned all-state recognition.

The Cougars achieved their success by training diligently and swimming fast. No question about that. The secret sauce, though, had little to do with the long hours and myriad laps in the pool or the strength and conditioning program that was so vital to their preparation.

Instead, it was their mindfulness training, conducted under the guidance of Jake McDonald and Collin McConaghy, founders of The Peavey Project, that proved a difference maker.

One morning recently, Peters spoke of his team’s emphasis on the mental approach to training.

How did your connection with the Peavey Project begin?

I’ve known Alex Peavey (the namesake of and inspiration behind the organization) for years and have really loved talking to him and having his calming presence. I called Collin and Jake four years ago right before the championship season about coming in and talking to the kids about how to handle stress in championship meets. No matter how good you are, the kids are nervous. Sometimes, the best swimmers are a ball of nerves before that meet. They put so much pressure on themselves. They focus on one or two races but forget about the process that leads up to it. I wanted to get someone in who could help them approach each day as a new day, to take your wins or your lessons.

How did the initial session go?

We sat down for about 30 minutes. Some of the kids asked if they could do it more often, so we tailored our Tuesday practice around it. We did it for all of January the first year. This year, I wanted the message sent that mindfulness isn’t just a championship meet thing. It’s something they should carry into everything they do. Starting the first week of practice, the focus was resilience. How do we become resilient when things aren’t going our way? They sometimes think of swimming as an upward trajectory, and you’ll get faster the whole way through. That’s not realistic. There’re going to be peaks and valleys, but if you do the right things, more often than not you’re going to be successful. A lot of our kids can be their own worst critics. Part of coaching is helping kids get through the mental part.

What the Peavey Project teaches is so relatable to kids. It’s not about meditating in a room. It’s about taking 30 seconds to take a deep breath. It’s being in the moment and accepting that you’ll make mistakes and figure how you’ll do something different the next time. It’s not that you have to be perfect.

How has your mindfulness training evolved over the years?

A few years back, our focus was controlling your controllables. All you can control are your attitude and your effort. If you do that, everything else will do what it does. I love being able to refer back to that, especially when things get hard at practice or in a meet. This year, we had a word or phrase that’s the focus of the week, like resilience, or consistency, or grace. At the beginning of the season, the focus was giving yourself time to get back into the season and knowing you won’t feel the same way the first week that you did the last week the year before. Give yourself time and grace. Collin and Jake interweave the focus of the week with what they’re doing with mindfulness.

How do you measure success of the mindfulness initiative?

It’s helped in little ways that have added up to big differences. I don’t think all our kids are no longer nervous, but they have some things in their toolbox for when they do get nervous. We want those things to go well beyond swimming.

It’s training for swimming, then, but more important, training for life?

We’re trying to train kids on the soft skills that will transition into other places. Kids will be successful in a sport if they learn how to be resilient. They’ll have bad days, but that’s going to be the same thing when they get a job. There’re going to be things in their job or in their personal lives that they don’t want to do, that stress them out, that overwhelm them. We tailor mindfulness to swimming, but the skills they learn are transferrable to anything that they do.

~Weldon Bradshaw

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