Measuring Competitive Success

6/5/2025

How does one measure competitive success?

Victories? Championship trophies? Athletes’ post-season recognition? College commitments? Intangibles? All of the above?

By any measure, Collegiate’s varsity athletic teams held their own during the 2024-2025 school year. Girls cross country, tennis, swimming/diving, and soccer won VISAA titles. Boys soccer and girls tennis, cross country, swimming/diving, and soccer finished atop their leagues, and the Cougars placed third in the Prep League Director’s Cup standings.

In the past four years, 18 Collegiate teams have earned state titles, eclipsing the previous four-year mark of 16 set between 2003 and 2007 and equaled in the stretch between 2020 and 2024.

Sixty-four athletes earned all-league citations, 57 were all-state, seven were cited as All-Americans, and eight were all-metro with the selections for the spring season pending.

Twenty-three seniors were three-season competitors during their final year, 10 of those wore the green and gold for all 12 high school seasons, and 25 graduates will take their talents, hopes, and dreams to college programs.

While the numbers tell a story, there’s more to athletic achievement than statistics. One afternoon recently, Andrew Stanley, Collegiate’s Director of Athletics, reflected on the program he’s led the past three years and the direction he hopes it will go.

What’s your definition of competitive success?

Certainly, you want to win every game. Certainly, you want kids to achieve the opportunities they pursue. But whenever somebody asks me that question, I think about the sentiment that (legendary coach and AD) Charlie McFall shared decades ago: “You have to take care of the children in front of you.”

I was really pleased this year with the way our teams and coaches took care of each other and controlled the moments they could control. Our teams competed at a very high level. They didn’t always get the win, but they played the game the right way. What does it take to be successful? Did the kids walk off the field at the end of the season feeling that they’d emptied their tanks and left it out there? I think largely that our kids felt that way.

I’m very proud of the effort they put forward. I’m really excited about the platform it created for us to move forward into the summer and next year. [The competitive athletics experience] isn’t supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to be special. For most of our kids and most of our teams, it was a unique and special opportunity that’s left people excited about what’s to come.

What do we have to do to improve?

We’re doing very well. We’re having success. The more we focus on acknowledging where we are and how to take the next step, not to look 50 yards down the field but the next three-and-a-half yards, we will be better more consistently and the better we’ll feel about every single opportunity.

Focusing on what’s right in front of us and taking those next three-and-a-half yards will be our key to long term, sustained success. That’s the way we were all brought up to coach here. It’s never been about the end of the process. It’s been about this practice, this drill, this rep in this drill. If we stack those positives day after day after day, we’ll feel really good at the end. So, what do we need to do to be better? We need to get comfortable being present in the moment and owning what’s right in front of us without excuses.

Which means?

It’s almost cliché at this point, but controlling what we can control in the work we do, the attitude we bring, and our willingness to be coaches. The energy we bring to practice every day and in the off-season is hugely important. As coaches, we have to continue to be excited about raising the floor every single day, knowing that that’s how we’ll build a new ceiling at the end of the process. We must continue to focus on the daily grind and improvement to be the kind of program that we all want to be: one that’s consistently moving forward.

Collegiate has had its share of stellar, high-profile athletes. Role players, though, have been the backbone of teams for years.

We’ve had the top-end athlete, but what’s always made us very dangerous has been the two- and three-sport kids who work hard and bring their team to a new height because they provide the juice and the support. You can talk about [star quarterbacks] Russell [Wilson], Jake [McGee], and Wilton [Speight], but the key to Russell and Jake and Wilton was the way they could get kids who were willing to play their roles to play just a little bit better. The willingness of those students to grind and participate in multiple seasons has been paramount to the success of our program over time.

Every coach has his or her way of saying, “Make each other better.” Right?

When we’re at our best and where we need to get even better moving forward is the willingness to show up every day and challenge ourselves and challenge each other to be just a little bit better than we were the day before, simply because a little bit better is there to be, not for a trophy, not for a championship, not for an Instagram post…just because the opportunity exists.

One of the most important parts of my job is giving coaches permission, encouraging coaches, expecting of coaches that they push kids to be better today than they were the day before and create an environment where kids are not willing to let themselves or each other off the hook. They need to understand that they’re going to miss. They’re going to fall. Doesn’t matter. Get up, and go again.

It’s also cliché, but the road to excellence has no end point. Correct?

We were at our best this year when we did what we could control and didn’t worry about who we were playing, where they came from, or what their jerseys said. When we challenged ourselves to be better and compete up to our potential, we were the best versions of ourselves that we could be. We’re doing things well. We just have to lock in, move forward, and focus on what we can control to be our very best.

~Weldon Bradshaw

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