In Part 2 of our powerful conversation with Michigan soccer player Josie Owen-Kren, hosts Julie Jones and Kortney Harmon dive deeper into the mental challenges of college athletics. From overcoming "the yips" to learning how to communicate with different coaching styles, Josie shares how she transformed from a tentative freshman into a confident starter. This episode explores the crucial skills of adaptation, communication, and finding your voice while still being coachable - lessons that extend far beyond the soccer field.

Josie opens up about experiencing what she calls "the yips" - a period where she couldn't connect a simple pass for four straight days. This happened because she was so focused on not making mistakes that she actually made everything worse.

The Pressure Cooker: "I have four days to prove that I can play. So I didn't want to do anything wrong. So now I'm trying not to do everything wrong and I'm actually doing everything wrong because I'm trying not to do it wrong."

The Breaking Point: Even simple decisions like playing the ball backward to her center backs or goalkeeper became impossible. She was so mentally locked up that she would only play forward - directly to the opposing team.

The turning point came when Josie made a controversial decision that actually saved her mental game: she temporarily stopped listening to her coaches.

Finding Her Game Again: "I kind of stopped listening to my coaches for a minute... I was like, I'm just gonna play my game. I started doing that and started enjoying soccer again."

This wasn't rebellion - it was about quieting the mental noise and getting back to her natural instincts before slowly incorporating coaching feedback.

Working with Julie, Josie learned how to take coaching instructions and translate them into her own language and movement patterns, rather than trying to completely change her game.

The Key Insight: "It was more of, like, almost taking what she says and turning it into, what am I good at? And how do I apply it to what I'm already good at?"

Josie had to learn to communicate with Brian, a male assistant coach whose harsh, direct style was completely different from what she was used to. The lesson? Coaches won't change their communication style for you - you have to figure out how to work with them.

The Reality Check: "Any time he said something, it was hard for me to take it in because I didn't quite understand what he was saying. The way he said it wasn't how I would have received it."

Despite feeling confident going into spring meetings, Josie received lukewarm feedback from coaches who still weren't sure about her abilities. But instead of getting discouraged, she used this as motivation.

The Meeting That Stung: Her coaches said her confidence was up but she was still indecisive, and they needed to "see how the games go."

The Breakthrough Moment: In her second spring game against Notre Dame, Josie not only started but received Player of the Game honors from her captains. She started every game after that.

Coach's Surprise: "You know, like, I kind of just threw you in there to see how you would react. And you hung with everyone. Like, you played great. Like, nobody was expecting it."

A crucial element in Josie's transformation was remembering why she loved soccer in the first place.

Back to Basics: When they did 1v1 defending drills (something she loved from her club days), Josie found her zone again: "I just loved it. So there was like a few practices where we do 1v1. So I was just like in my zone. I was loving it."

Julie's Insight: "When fun goes away, it's work. And you didn't go there to work soccer. You went there to play soccer."

Josie shares how her club team's early emphasis on academics (requiring report cards, teaching communication with teachers) prepared her for college better than expected. This became one of the easier transitions, showing the value of early preparation.

The Lesson Learned Early: A B grade in PE/Health in 8th grade taught her to over-communicate with teachers - a skill that served her well in college when missing classes for travel.

Josie's mindset going into her sophomore year shows tremendous growth:

Comfort and Trust: "I'm comfortable with the team. I have players I know I like playing with. I know the team knows me and trusts me too."

Grace and Perspective: "Just giving myself grace and understanding, okay, I can have a bad practice here, I can have a bad practice there, but as long as we're on a steady incline, I'm okay with how the season goes."

Josie's Reality Check for Incoming Freshmen: "Jumping from being a senior in high school to a freshman in college is a huge life change. And even if you think you have it handled, you probably don't... Something will go wrong... It's very rare that a freshman plays 90 minutes and is a standout... You're seeing the one or two freshmen who are playing, but you're not seeing the six or seven others who aren't."

The Universal Truth: Every single freshman athlete in the country has something that makes them question themselves - even those who appear to be thriving.

"The indecision came from me not wanting to do anything wrong. The second I started making my decisions and actually focusing on what I wanted to do... I actually kind of stopped."

"How can I take that and use it to advance my game rather than change my game for what they want to do?"

"Coaches aren't changing for you. You have to figure out how to communicate with them."

"Everybody has a horror story from freshman year of something that went wrong, something that wasn't perfect and that they had to adapt to."

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