Kent Place Winter Track Welcomes Coach Cardinale for a Discussion on Mental Preparation

Kent Place welcomed Coach Joseph Cardinale this week to sit down with the winter track team to talk about the engine behind the athlete: the mind. A former collegiate standout and championship-winning varsity baseball coach with more than 200 career wins, Coach Cardinale is dedicated to leadership and mental performance. 

Whether an athlete is feeling a surge of confidence or battling what he terms “race-day jitters,” Coach Cardinale emphasized that it all starts with awareness. He challenged the team to look inward with a “Mental Survey,” asking athletes to quantify how much of their performance is actually linked to their mental preparation.

He then introduced A.C.E.: Acting Changes Everything. 

“Confidence isn’t just a feeling; it’s an action,” he told the athletes. “If you act confident through your body language, your mind will eventually follow.” 

Coach Cardinale encouraged them to find confidence in their own individual process. He gave as an example the myth of Sisyphus, condemned for eternity to roll a boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down. He likened the story to the grueling winter season: “When that rock rolls back down, are you frustrated by the effort or fascinated by the process of getting stronger?”

The coach debunked the idea that confidence comes only from success. Instead, he said, confidence comes from preparation. To give the athletes a practical toolkit, he introduced B.F.S.

• Body Language: Eyes up, shoulders back. Walk the walk before you run the race.
• Focus: Stop looking at the next lane. Focus straight ahead on your breathing, your starts, and your handoffs.
• Self-Talk: Replace negativity with your “three or four magic words.” If you wouldn’t say something to a teammate, don’t say it to yourself.

The session concluded with a powerful reminder that by mastering routines and maintaining awareness, athletes can turn adversity into growth.

The impact of this mental shift was immediately evident at the Prep Championships meet on February 10 and 11. In a stunning turnaround, the team scored a total of 36 points and placed fifth overall. 

Eva Tezel ’27 secured second place in both the 1600m and 3200m with two new PRs.

Maddie Small ’29, Misa Glover ’26, Emma Shannon ’27, and Amel Jean-Baptiste ’27 powered their way to third place in the 4x4 relay.

Beyond the team standings, the Dragons are rewriting the school’s history books. Emma Shannon ’27 is now the fifth-fastest all-time in the 200m, Ellora Roberts ’28 is fourth-fastest all-time in the 55m high hurdles, and Aidan Dangler ’28 holds the fifth-best high jump mark in Kent Place history.