Sports have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. From paddling to soccer, to equestrian, to swimming, I have checked a lot of boxes in the world of competitive sport. But basketball? Basketball stole my heart. The first time I stepped on the court, I was five years old – I played every season, every summer, underwent countless injuries, until I stepped off the court for the last time in 2022, ending my basketball career as a Saint Mary’s University Husky. 

It’s emotional to reflect on even now, but not for the reasons you may think. Yes, it was hard to say goodbye, and there are times my competitive edge tries to convince me I’m still in university basketball shape. But it’s not because I miss playing – it’s because when I look at my life now and the success I have found, basketball still has a hand in it all. 

Here are 3 lessons life as an athlete has taught me – lessons I believe are foundational to finding success in our work. 

Hard Work Is Not Optional – It’s the Baseline 

As an athlete, you learn very quickly what hard work actually feels like. You know those moments where you’re pushing so hard you can taste blood in the back of your throat? Where your legs feel like concrete? Yeah – that stays with you. 

In the workplace, hard work just looks different: emails instead of sprints, deadlines instead of tournaments, meetings or manager 1-on-1s instead of film sessions or coach pep-talks. The mentality is what stays the same. Having a “sports mentality” means doing the work with everything you have, even when it sucks or you don’t want to. Why? Because it’s not an option to let your team down, and we never act from a place of ingratitude when we’ve been given a job to do. 

This is when you learn that motivation is great, but unreliable. Discipline is what carries you to show up every day, whether for the pay, for your family, for the next move up the ladder, or for the dream of starting your own business. Hard kills motivation, but discipline thrives on it. 

Teamwork Means Working with Everyone – Not Just the People You Like 

Very rarely do we get anywhere alone. We need a team. 

As a Human Resource Professional, I believe that to be successful in anything, you need people – people to run a business, people to give you a chance when no one else will, people to encourage you in your failures and successes. But people are complex and, therefore, so is teamwork. One of the biggest misconceptions about collaboration, I think, is that it should be easy. Spoiler: it’s not. 

Like in the sports world, you don’t get to choose your co-workers. You may love them or, on the contrary, they may know the exact email to send that makes every ounce of professionalism go out the window. But applying a sports mentality to this means you work together anyway for the common goal, the common dream, the finish line, the trophy. You compromise, adapt, take their feedback, and do your best to apply it, even if you (and everyone else) know it’s a bucket of you know what. 

One truth remains always: business is built from people, for people, by people – and success is not individual. You must be both willing and disciplined enough to collaborate with those you don’t like in the same way you collaborate with those you do to truly be successful. 

You Have to Get Back Up 

In my last year with the SMU Huskies, we lost the semi-championship game by 3 points to the Acadia Axe Women. It was devastating and one of the hardest failures to swallow as a team. However, despite it all, that event revealed something more important than any stat: resilience and the ability to keep going is at the heart of a bright future. The following 3 years, SMU won the AUS championships, not only once, but 3 years in a row. In essence, being innovative, forward-thinking, and hopeful for future successes and your team’s potential is at the heart of both individual and organizational success.  

Just like you lose games, miss foul shots, miss a provincial swim time by 0.03 seconds, or fall off the horse, projects flop, plans change, you get passed over for promotions, or lose clients. The true essence of the character sports build is this: you become incredibly determined, but also more efficient and adaptable, turning every setback into a smarter, more strategic path for the future. 

Wrapping It Up: Sports Mentality Makes for Better Professionals 

These skills are not just “sports skills”, they’re life skills, work skills, and leadership skills. They are skills I see and continue to develop every time I step back on the floor to coach my U14 girls, or log onto my computer to tackle the workday ahead of me. 

None of this is to say that non-athletes can’t or don’t have this mentality. Some of my closest friends and co-workers are the furthest you could be from sports enthusiasts, but they have continuously challenged me to unlock my greatest potential. 

It is to say, however, that at the end of the day, success in sports and success in the workplace share the same foundation: teamwork, resilience, discipline, adaptability, and a relentless drive to reach the goal for a purpose greater than yourself. And this correlation, I believe, is foundational to being successful in any and all of our professional pursuits. 

 

Rheannon Richards is an HR Associate at uptreeHR, an outsourced Human Resource department for small to medium-sized businesses. Rheannon and the team are based in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

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