Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 12 No. 2 | October 2019

The ropes course also taught them how to overcome failure. Not every student-athlete made it to the top on the first attempt, but they learned from their past errors and summited again—which, of course, good leaders often do. “The things we did at the Air Force Academy forced me to get out of my comfort zone, and I think it really helped me because I saw what I’m capable of,” Kozar said. “We were doing team building, and I had to learn that it’s not all about myself. It’s about the team. I usually like to be in control, but I had to cooperate with other people who were there, so that pushed me to think outside of myself.” Two different activities reinforced the importance of communication. During one ropes course activity, staff members split the 10 student- athletes into groups of three. Each group lost one of its abilities—sight or speech. The 10 of them thus needed to come up with a way to communicate to accomplish the tasks in spite of those obstacles. “We take communication for granted sometimes,” Rogers said. “Forcing certain aspects of that activity, for lack of better words and no pun intended, opened your eyes to how important good communication is. Not just talking, but listening. They say listening is the majority of communication, and I really think that’s the case … and the coolest part of that drill is applicable to individual sports and team sports, athlete to athlete, coach to coach, anybody could do it. That, I thought, was really cool.” The other activity took away the 10 student-athletes’ physical abilities and forced them to use their minds and communication skills. The instructor provided several different pieces of PVC piping, and then he told the group to come together and build a structure with their pieces of piping. The group started the process, and the structure was coming along nicely, thanks largely to Metz and Pocratsky—two pursuing degrees in engineering and thus with the perfect aptitudes for a task like this. But the instructor later threw in some curveballs. He instructed that only certain group members could speak. That took Metz and Pocratsky out of the equation at times, forcing the group to rely on others. “They could point and navigate, but they couldn’t lead the vocal charge,” Rogers said. “At one point, there was silence. Slade was the only one left, and he could talk. Then he starts leading. It allows you to be a leader in your own way, but you wouldn’t have found that out if everyone were still talking. That was kind of a cool experiment. “That allowed people that don’t have a strong personality or don’t really push themselves out there too much to step into the spotlight and take control of the group … So when you force them to be the leader, you see that they can do it.” White, Dr. Bennett and Miller also held leadership training sessions, which focused on developing habits of excellence as leaders for their respective teams. The training emphasized many aspects of leadership, including the importance of dealing with different personalities. The personalities within this group differed drastically, reinforcing the lessons of the staff. “You need to adapt,” Kozar said. “It’s not wrong that someone has different personality traits. We learned how to work with other people, and how to create habits, which helped me a lot. It was a lot of fun, too.” Continued on page 14 inside.hokiesports.com 13 IHS extra The contingent of Virginia Tech student- athletes who went on a leadership retreat to Colorado Springs in mid-August tested themselves in many ways, including taking two long hikes deep in the Rocky Mountains.