Badass Women

 This past weekend I visited Nerd HQ, an awesome event outside of Comic Con held by Zachary Levi’s company, The Nerd Machine.  They hold a bunch of fantastic panels with casts from different shows and movies and raise a crazy amount of money for Operation Smile.  One of the panels I got to see was Badass Women featuring Yvonne Strahovski (Chuck/Dexter), Retta (Parks and Rec), Missy Peregrym (Rookie Blue), Jennifer Morrison (Once Upon A Time), Ming-Na Wen (Agents of Shield/Mulan) and Sophie Turner (Game of Thrones).

Look, I don’t know these people personally, but in listening to them talk I’m going to say that it’s a group of really strong women on and off the screen.  And what struck me as they answered questions was how familiar their answers were.  The things they talked about—knowing who you are and what you believe in, having conviction in that, the courage to be vulnerable or to go outside of your comfort zone—are things that we talk about so much in the USA program as we try to learn and grow and become better athletes and people.  It honestly felt like a session from one of our mindset meetings.

That isn’t all that surprising because I’m really lucky that I get to be surrounded by a lot of strong women every day.  But it was cool to see how important it is to find that clarity and acceptance of oneself no matter who you are—woman or man, athlete or actor.  Because that is the foundation of strength.   And, in my opinion, the key to being a successful person.  Success here, by the way, having nothing to do with money, fame or winning, but rather being the best human being you can be.  The people I admire and respect the most never seem to have to impose themselves on others to feel strong; it just flows from them as they live their truth.  Because doing that—living honestly and openly, with conviction and love—that’s the strongest thing there is.  That’s the strength I want to strive for every day and clearly these women are doing the same.

Also, they’re hilarious.  Really, go watch it right now.

The Real Team USA

You might think that playing on the National Team would be a pretty awesome job.  And you would be correct.  We get to put on the red, white and blue and play in front of thousands of fans, to take pictures and sign things for the very people that we’re working to represent and to do what we love with people that we love.  How cool is that?

But the coolest parts of our job are often the ones that you don’t even think about going in.  While we were in Hawaii they took us to the USS Paul Hamilton, an active Navy ship docked in Pearl Harbor awaiting deployment in a few weeks. 

We got to go to the bridge with the captain and hang out with some of the crew.  And the more I listened to them talk the more I realized that the core of what they do and what we do is fairly similar.  Don’t get me wrong, what they do is way more important and impressive and dangerous and everything else.  But the crew of a ship is really a team that is operating in a high pressure situation.  Every member has a role and needs to perform in order for it to work.  They have to rely on each other, to learn quickly and to work efficiently as a unit  They train hard so that when they get to the real thing all they have to do is what they do every day.  And they do that really well, which makes them the best in the world.  It’s a pretty great example for us in what we’re trying to accomplish.

They were pretty excited to see us but I’m going to say we were the ones who got the most out of the visit.  As we walked up to the ship I saw a group of crewmembers on the deck.  I assumed they were working until they saw us coming and started chanting

“U-S-A”

I’ve heard that chant quite a few times in my life by now.  And it really never gets old.  But hearing it come from military men and women on the deck of a Naval ship is probably going down as the greatest…getting cheered on by the real Team USA.