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Oct 3, 2026
Episode 01: The Lessons That Shaped My Coaching
Episode 01: The Lessons That Shaped My Coaching
00:00
17:00
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Transcript
0:01
I spent nearly a year working to get back on the mound after elbow surgery. In my first outing back, I threw roughly forty pitches and only recorded one out.
0:10
On the bus afterward, I kept asking myself the same question: How could I work that hard and look that unprepared? Later, I earned the opportunity to pitch in the Cape Cod League in that same season.
0:21
In my first appearance there, I threw two and a third scoreless innings. Between those outings, I had to change everything I went about the game, my confidence, my preparation, and my own ability.
0:31
I'm Ryan Egan, and this is the EPD Podcast. We're gonna talk about pitching development, the mental side of competition, and the experiences that shape an athlete long before anyone sees the results.
0:43
Today, I wanna explain how I went from feeling completely out of place in a Division I baseball program to competing in the Cape Cod League.
0:50
Because if you're a player questioning whether you belong or a parent watching your child struggle, there's a part of this story I think you need to hear.
0:58
Baseball started with my dad and my grandfather, playing catch, being outside, wanting one more rep before we went in.
1:06
I was a little kid diving for balls, and my parents probably wished I would just settle down, maybe sit in front of the TV every once in a while.
1:14
Being competitive is something that stayed with me throughout my entire playing career. Um, in Little League, I always wanted to play on the All-Star team, um, even when the next town over would just beat us.
1:26
I wanted to keep playing and just find out how much better I could get, like just in every aspect. Um, by the time I got to Morgan High School, uh, I was comfortable.
1:35
I was playing as a freshman, pitching and enjoying the community, um, but I started to wonder what would happen if I put myself somewhere and demanded more of me, both academically and athletically.
1:47
Um, I wanted teammates that I could learn from. I wanted to see a standard that I hadn't reached yet. Um, and that's what led me to the Taft School.
1:55
A coach came and watched me that summer when I was also catching, um, and the admiss-admissions process actually moved pretty quickly for me. I was accepted about a week before school even started.
2:06
At fifteen, I was preparing to leave home. Um, I remember after our tour at Taft School, I remember
2:16
seeing the buildings and the community and loving this, and then all of a sudden when we get back in the car, she just starts crying. And I asked her why. Her answer was simple: I was leaving.
2:28
Till then, I'd been thinking, um, about what I was moving towards. She understood that I was moving away from something. My family had always supported me completely, but that didn't make this transition very easy.
2:41
Um, I missed them. Looking back, honestly, I don't think I could have got everything I did out of the first year.
2:49
Um, I had chosen a more demanding environment before I fully understood what living in it would actually require. That's an important distinction for families considering these options.
3:01
A school can create amazing opportunities, but the athlete still needs to learn how to use them. My path worked for me eventually. Um, another player may need a different environment.
3:12
The decisions deserve more thought than simply choosing the most impressive name. Um, actually, during the disruption of COVID, I became more intentional about my training. That period was difficult for so many people.
3:28
For me, it also created time to reassess how I was working and what I wanted. My recruiting conversations picked up. Um, I remember stepping away from time with my cousins and taking calls from college coaches.
3:41
Uh, the opportunity I'd imagined, uh, was becoming very real. Um, then I went to a prep baseball report futures game and played for Team Connecticut. Um, I came away disappointed with how I pitched.
3:53
I remember driving home with my dad and was convinced I hadn't taken advantage of the opportunity. That really could have jump-started my playing career or my college career, honestly. Um,
4:06
that's when a message came in from Fordham. A coach wanted to talk. I'd been judging my outing by everything I thought went wrong. Someone watched it, had actually seen enough, and wanted another conversation.
4:20
That experience kinda taught me to be careful about treating my own immediate reaction as the final assessment. I could be disappointed in a performance without knowing exactly how someone else evaluated it.
4:33
As I got to know the Fordham coaches, the fit felt right. The academic opportunity mattered to me, and so do the relationships.
4:41
I committed before my junior year, grateful to know where I was headed so far ahead of time that most people don't have that opportunity.
4:48
But committing to Division I baseball, um, and learning how to compete, they were two very different experiences. I understood that almost as soon as I arrived. Um, I went to Fordham with high expectations.
5:01
In my head, I could become the Friday starter.
5:04
Um, then I stepped away into a setting where everyone had been a good player from somewhere else and the best player on their high school team, and that wasn't something that I was nec-necessarily familiar with.
5:15
The fastball that had carried me through high school wasn't enough by itself anymore. I had to develop as a pitcher.
5:21
I knew that logically, but emotionally, I started interpreting the adjustment as evidence that I didn't belong. I overanalyzed every throw. I questioned my mechanics every throw.
5:36
I became consumed with improving every detail that I struggled to make a normal, committed pitch. Looking back, I recognized that feeling was actually imposter syndrome.
5:49
I had earned the opportunity, but I kept suspecting that someone had made a mistake by giving it to me. I remember our opening weekend at Dallas Baptist, it made that feeling so much worse.
6:02
We used a lot of pitchers that weekend. Like, it was a good team. Um, I was one of the guys who never got in. I'd struggled leading up to the season, and I understood why I wasn't pitching. Understanding
6:17
that I didn't belong didn't make it any easier. Eventually, something shifted. I was tired of trying to solve my entire future before throwing the next pitch.
6:28
When I got the opportunity to pitch against Old Dominion, I competed. I remember learning, um, that my slider was actually a weapon, and I walked off the mound feeling confident in myself again.
6:41
That outing didn't answer every question, but it gave me something more useful in that moment, evidence that I could do the job.
6:50
I went on to get regular opportunities my freshman year and made my first college start actually against St. Joe's. I was learning. I was moving forward.
7:00
Then that summer with the New Britain Bees, I felt a pop in my elbow. I was pitching in Pittsfield. After the pop, I tried another pitch, and it was clear something went wrong.
7:12
I was about ten miles an hour down from my previous fastball. I came out of the game. After a couple MRIs, it had shown that I had a partial tear in my elbow. I tried to work my way back through re-rehabilitation.
7:26
Um, as my throwing program progressed, pain kept interrupting it. I would reach a new distance. You know, if I was throwing at sixty feet, tried ninety feet, I struggled, I'd back off, it would hurt, and I'd try again.
7:42
I wanted the situation to improve so badly that I kept looking for reasons to believe it was improving.
7:48
Before my sophomore season, while warming up to return to live pitching, having just a week to play the number one team in the country, Wake Forest at the time, um, I felt another pop.
8:01
I made a throw and sailed my partner by about fifteen feet, and I felt a pop. Further evaluation led to UCL reconstruction. I'm simply describing what happened in my case. I don't look back at this as a period
8:19
of, um, you know, a lesson to try and push through pain. I look back at how difficult it was to separate what I wanted to be true from what the reality actually was.
8:31
After surgery, the work became repetitive, and the outcome felt distant. I spent time in the training room doing the work and still asking whether any of it would pay off. At one point,
8:45
I talked with another player who was also recovering from surgery. He was considering quitting. I admitted that I had been thinking about it too. We were both exhausted by the uncertainty.
8:56
But then he asked a question that stayed with me: "What if it does pay off?" He couldn't promise me a successful return. Neither could I.
9:09
But that conversation made me recognize that I still wanted to find out what I was capable of, so I recommitted. I worked through my recovery and my return to throw.
9:20
I got stronger, and eventually, I actually made the opening travel roster to NC State just shy of a year after surgery.
9:28
That was a meaningful milestone to me, but I had attached an expectation to it that I hadn't fully examined. I thought the amount of work I had done should show up immediately in the results.
9:42
When my name was called against NC State, my legs were shaking. My thoughts were racing. I had imagined returning to competition so many times, but standing on the mound felt so overwhelming to me.
9:54
I struggled to throw strikes. Roughly forty pitches, one out. After everything that had gone into getting back, that was the performance that I had to sit with on the bus.
10:08
I texted my mom and my girlfriend, who's now my fiancée. Couldn't understand how I worked that hard and pitched that poorly. Then I made the next week harder for myself. I assumed I wouldn't pitch again,
10:23
so I let my preparation slip. When I was called upon against Northwestern, I had already felt panicking. I hadn't prepared the way I needed to. That outing went badly too.
10:37
The lesson there is uncomfortable because it requires me to own my response. I couldn't change the NC State outing. I could have handled the days afterward differently. Back in New York, the distress became frightening.
10:51
I had a chest pain and called my mom. An ambulance had to come. After assessing me, the responder told me I was just experiencing an anxiety attack. My heart rate was fifty-two beats per minute. I was embarrassed.
11:04
I didn't tell my coaches or my trainer what had happened. Kept going to practice while pulling away from the people there. From the outside, I was still participating. Internally, I was questioning everything.
11:18
I'm sharing that because a box score would never tell you how much I was struggling. Eventually, my mom encouraged me to talk to someone. I asked my coach for a contact and started working with a sports psychologist.
11:33
One of her first questions was what made me good at baseball. I answered, "My slider." She said, "No. What makes you really good at baseball?" I said, "My fastball up in the zone." Not that one either.
11:49
She pushed me to think about the preparation behind those pitches, the work, the repetition, and the reasons I had earned the opportunity in the first place.
11:58
I had become so focused on my recent failure that I was disregarding the rest of the evidence. Those conversations helped me change how I spoke to myself and how I approached competition.
12:12
I didn't need to pretend a bad outing was good. I needed to evaluate it without turning it into judgment about my entire ability. My season improved substantially.
12:23
Um, I actually earned a lot more opportunities, and eventually I received a contract to play in the Cape Cod League.
12:29
Um, a season that had started with me questioning whether I could continue had actually created an opportunity I thought was so beyond me. But then I arrive to the Cape, and I look at the roster.
12:42
Florida State, Clemson, Vanderbilt, LSU, next to my name, Fordham. The same thought came back, "Do I really belong here?" I was letting the names of the other people's schools become an assessment of my own ability.
12:58
At first, I even hesitated to talk to other players because I felt I was beneath them. But this time, I recognized what I was doing so much sooner than I had in the past.
13:10
I'd been through this before, the familiar feeling like I had felt this before, and I no longer had to treat it as a fact. I reminded myself how I got there. I prepared for this opportunity.
13:22
When it came, I threw two and a third scoreless innings. What mattered to me was how much more quickly I had found my way back to competing. The doubt had returned, but my response improved.
13:36
That's where I want to finish this story because I think it's a part that matters most to developing an athlete. For a long time, I treated each performance like a verdict.
13:46
Uh, a good outing meant I was capable of anything. A bad outing made me question whether I should even keep playing. That gave me an enormous amount of power to a very small sample of my career.
14:01
I needed a more stable way of evaluating myself. I could acknowledge a poor performance, identify what needed attention, and prepare for the next opportunity. I didn't have to rebuild my identity every time I struggled,
14:15
and I didn't have to work through every difficult moment alone. Getting support became an important part of how I learned how to compete. Looking back, I wish I'd spoken up sooner.
14:28
These experiences influence how I coach at Egan Pitching Development.
14:32
I want to understand the athlete in front of me, what they're trying to accomplish, what they're struggling with, and whether the instruction they're receiving actually makes sense to them.
14:41
Sometimes the next step is a mechanical adjustment. Sometimes it's a clearer plan. Sometimes I need to listen more carefully before deciding what actually needs to be changed.
14:52
My own experience has taught me how easy it is to overreact to a bad result. I want to help athletes make thoughtful adjustments and understand the purpose behind them.
15:02
I also want them to feel comfortable saying when something isn't working or when they're struggling. If you're a player listening, think about your last difficult outing.
15:14
Describe what had happened as accurately as you can. Then separate that description from the story you started telling yourself about it. Walking hitters is something you can evaluate.
15:26
Saying you'll never be good enough is a prediction that outing cannot prove. Choose one useful action for your next practice. Talk it through with someone who can help you.
15:38
Give yourself a specific task you can commit to instead of carrying a vague fear that everything needs to change. If you're a parent, remember that your athlete may be experiencing more than they're explaining.
15:52
My family's support mattered throughout this story, especially when I finally admitted how difficult things had become. Making room for an honest conversation can matter well beyond the field.
16:05
I began this episode with an outing that made me question a year of work. When I was sitting on that bus, I couldn't see that there were still meaningful opportunities ahead of me. I only knew how bad that day had gone.
16:18
If you're in a moment like that now, give yourself the chance to respond before you decide what it means for your future.
16:26
That's why I started this podcast, to have honest conversations about development, including the parts that never make the highlight video. If this episode brought a player or a parent to mind, send it to them.
16:38
Follow the EPD podcast for more conversations about pitching, preparation, and navigating the next stages of your career.
16:46
If you want to talk about your own development, send Egan Pitching Development a DM with the word EPD. I'm Ryan Egan. Thank you for listening. Your next opportunity deserves your preparation. Give it that chance.
16:58
I'll talk to you next episode
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