I had more words than I knew what to do with.
Back in the spring of 2018, my program’s culture document was a massive, 23-page team plan. It had a program theme, a purpose statement, a list of expectations that ran on for pages, and complex breakdown charts. Every year, I printed it out. Every year, I handed it out.
I was young, and honestly, I was worried about looking good in front of the parents. I wanted to put on an elite display so that my athletic director would know he had hired the right guy. I wanted the families who stayed to feel like they had backed the right horse—unlike the families that had transferred out to do what they thought was best for their kids. I was completely consumed by trying to control my own narrative.
And every year, I watched my players fold that thick packet in half and stuff it into the bottom of their bags.
The problem wasn’t their buy-in. The problem was mine. I had built a culture that looked good on paper and sounded sophisticated in a parent meeting, but it couldn’t survive contact with a 3-2 count in the seventh inning. There was too much noise. Nobody could carry it.
Years later, one of those families who had transferred away came up to me after a game. Their son went on to have an awesome junior and senior year at another school, and they actually apologized to me because they didn’t know our program would become what it did. I wouldn’t let them apologize. They did what was best for them at the time, and they needed to be a part of their own story. But it taught me a valuable lesson: culture isn’t built by trying to perform for an audience or clinging desperately to people.
It’s built when you strip away the fluff and give your dugout a standard they can actually digest. Eventually, we boiled all that noise down to a simple, one-page vision and mission sheet. And on the dirt, we landed on three simple words:
Execution. Attitude. Trust.
That was the turning point.
What E.A.T. Actually Is
E.A.T. is not a slogan. It’s a standard.
A slogan is what you put on a banner. A standard is what you enforce on a Tuesday in March when nobody’s watching, and your best player doesn’t feel like giving full effort.
The difference matters.
Execution means did you do the thing the right way. Not almost right. Not mostly right. Right. It’s the 100 Percent Rule applied to the smallest rep in practice. Ground ball to your right—you attack it, or you don’t. Bunt coverage—everyone moves, or no one gets credit. Execution isn’t about talent. It’s about discipline. It’s the one E.A.T. standard where there’s no grey area.
When execution slips, you don’t yell. You reset. You run it again. The Red Dirt doesn’t hide sloppy repetitions—and neither does your culture.
Attitude is the one most coaches misunderstand.
They think attitude means enthusiasm. They think they’re building attitude when they’re blasting music in the cage or putting up a hype video before a game. That stuff is fine. But it’s not attitude. Attitude is a choice your players make independent of the scoreboard. It’s a kid who made an error two innings ago and is still showing up to compete in the next at-bat without needing you to manage his emotional state.
Attitude is what separates the players who make your program better and the players who just play for your program.
You cannot manufacture it. You can demand it. There’s a difference—and if you’ve been coaching longer than a week, you already know it.
Look at Griffin, one of our seniors this past year. He was a tremendous baseball player. As a freshman, he made our varsity travel roster as an extra infielder. The starting shortstop that year was Jack, an absolute horse who earned a scholarship to Harvard and has been their starting shortstop for the last two seasons. Griffin worked his tail off every single day, waiting for his turn to take over the position.
Then, an incoming freshman named Reid showed up. Reid was a day-one starter, a total stud who hit .435 with All-State honors as a freshman, followed by .363 and .402 seasons.
It wasn’t Griffin’s fault that a player of that caliber arrived. But he never let it deter him from leaving an unforgettable mark on our program. Griffin worked every single day, pushed his teammates to be better, and played whenever we needed him. On game days, he was a massive resource in the dugout. The second an inning ended, you would see Griffin running out to pick up his teammates’ equipment, every single time. The only time you didn’t see him doing it was when Griffin was the one on the field playing.
When we awarded him the Mike Kinsey Selfless Servant Award this year, I made it a point to tell all of our families: When an athlete fails to pick up his teammates in a game, they are failing our standard. Guys like Reid and Jack are terrific humans whose roles are obvious to everyone because they have a massive impact on the scoreboard. But it’s guys like Griffin who make the standard what it is. That is where you truly see a culture.
Trust is the one that takes the longest to build and the least time to lose.
Trust in a program has two directions. Vertical—your players trusting you to be consistent, to hold the standard for everyone, to not have a different set of rules for the guy hitting .380. Horizontal—player to player, the quiet confidence that says, “I know what you’re going to do in this situation, and you know what I’m going to do.”
You cannot fake that trust. You build it in reps. You build it by enforcing Execution and Attitude the same way for every player, every day. When your players see that the standard doesn’t bend for talent or politics, trust grows.
When it bends—even once—the whole culture knows.
How to Install E.A.T.
Here’s the practical piece. This is a Friday post, so let’s get to the work.
Don’t introduce E.A.T. as a massive new corporate initiative. Don’t laminate it. Don’t put it on a banner yet. Put it in your language first.
Start Monday. When a player executes a drill correctly, name it: “That’s E.A.T.—that’s Execution.” When someone shows up competing hard after a rough stretch, name it: “That’s Attitude. That’s E.A.T.” When a player backs up his teammate on a relay nobody asked for, name it: “That’s the Trust. That’s what we’re building.”
Three to four weeks of consistent language, and your players will start naming it themselves. That’s when you know the culture has moved from a document to the actual locker room.
One more thing. End every practice this week by asking three players—different ones each day—to point out someone who showed E.A.T. today and explain why. Make it specific. Make it public. You’re training them to see the standard, not just feel it.
I am incredibly grateful for each and every young man that God puts in my path, and I’m always stoked to recognize when guys step up and lift our standard. That’s how you build a championship culture. Not in a massive team meeting. In the daily reps, with a language your players can carry straight into a 3-2 count.
Three words. Every day.
Let’s get to work. — Coach O
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