Coach Paul Assaiante on the Longest Winning Streak in NCAA History, Perspective, Courage

Michael Gervais (0:09)

All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais.

And it is so great to have these conversations with people who are just flat out exceptional and switched on.

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And this conversation, it's a gem. It is really good. It's with coach and professor Paul Assaiante. Now, he's known as having the longest winning streak in college sports history. So first off, imagine what it's like to build a culture and to build talent and to build a system that can hold that title. That's flat out exceptional. And the other part of it is that might be kind of hidden is that sometimes being way out in front, there's a unique pressure in that as well of holding up those standards.

He's also created winning cultures for 15 NCAA championship titles. And he's done all of this as the Trinity College head men's squash coach. He's also twice named the United States Olympic Committee coach of the year.

So he's done it. I mean, like flat out on the world stage and there's no rhetoric in this conversation. So it's real and it's honest and he is real and honest. And that's exactly what I hope to take away of this conversation is.

Okay, he's also with fellow author James Zugg written a book called Run to the Roar with the subtitle, Coaching to Overcome Fear.

And the reason I wanted to get into this conversation with coach is that I wanna understand how he thinks about winning, how he thinks about success and failure and fear and the strategy that he's employed to create a culture that supports and challenges people to become their very best and to do it over and over and over again. And what I hope that we all take away from this is the process of being able to identify what you're most passionate about because that's the stuff we'll work for and from.

And I think the idea is if you love growth, you'll also love the moments that promote growth, that promote change and promote learning. And that oftentimes comes from moments of pain. And for Paul, that's why losing is so fascinating for him.