How has Noah Luskus used a growth mindset to become a nationally ranked collegiate Spikeball athlete?
Many high school athletes retire from competitive sport before entering college simply because they are forced to do so.
However, my guest on Episode 22, Noah Luskus chose to forego swimming competitively in college. Instead, Noah enrolled at his dream school, the University of Georgia as a student. As a freshman, Noah found Spikeball, which started as a hobby and turned into a competitive passion after much hard work and dedication.
Noah discusses his choice not to swim competitively in college and how he has found purpose in pursuing a new athletic endeavor. His efforts have led to a flourishing Spikeball Club at UGA that has won multiple national championships.
My suggestion to young athletes is to know that there are ways to remain competitive in college beyond traditional intercollegiate athletics. Trying a new sport or skill in college can create an athletic opportunity that you may have never imagined.
I want to thank Noah for his kind generosity and the wisdom he shared with The Freshman Foundation Community.
You can learn more about Noah on Instagram @yuckskus.
You can learn more about The Freshman Foundation on our website at freshmanfoundation.com.
Thank you for listening. We’ll see you back soon for Episode 23!
Mike: Hey Noah, how are you?
[00:00:03] Noah Luskus: I'm doing good. How are you doing?
Mike: Good. Thanks for coming on to the podcast. For those who are listening here, can you just tell everybody a little bit about yourself?
[00:00:12] Noah Luskus: Yeah, my name is Noah Luskus and I am currently a professional Spikeball player. I grew up not playing Spikeball because it wasn't a thing that existed. But I was actually a competitive swimmer for my whole life. I started competitively swimming at the age of six, and did it through the end of high school, and then kind of transitioned into spite ball when I found the club team at UGA, when I was a freshman there back in 2017.
Mike: Yeah, I know for those of you who may not know, UGA is the University of Georgia.
[00:00:46] Noah Luskus: Oh yeah, correctly.
Mike: That’s okay.
[00:00:49] Noah Luskus: Forget the people outside the South don't know what UGA always stands for.
Mike: I knew exactly what you meant and sworn to make sure everybody sort of knew what that was.
[00:00:59] Noah Luskus: Oh yeah, absolutely
Mike: Because Northerners don't always assume things about the South correctly. So interestingly enough, I was checking out your Twitter feed. And I'm not here to play gotcha I, but I saw that you've recently retweeted an Andrew [inaudible 01:13] tweet. And it said that he posted that he would never give up on himself the pipe despite what other people might think or do. So I was just curious like, what resonated about that tweet with you?
[00:01:26] Noah Luskus: You know, I think I just kind of liked it, because I think that's kind of like a mentality that I've always had. Like, I've never been somebody who like, really cares about what other people think as much as you can. I mean, I think there's a certain human nature to caring about what other people's opinions are. But I've always been somebody who has loved when somebody else has told me, I can do something. I've always been somebody who would love it. If you told me you can't run through a brick wall, and then I would, I would go after it and try to do it to prove you wrong. And I saw that tweet and I think it was actually in the middle of a series. They're playing the Braves too, which made me mad because they beat the Braves when he tweeted it.
Mike: Right.
[00:02:08] Noah Luskus: But it definitely like resonated with the kind of mentality that I have always taken towards sports.
Mike: Okay, so with that in mind, so I would imagine that you probably got some of those kinds of comments or some of that feedback when people kind of started to learn about your interest and your kind of involvement in Spikeball. Is that a fair assumption?
[00:02:33] Noah Luskus: Yeah, it's definitely fair and like on one token you have like family and friends who like don't like really know what Spikeball is, or like, know what Spikeball is like the product but like, don't know it's a competitive thing and when that was my girlfriend, or my parents or siblings or friends and they're like, what is this? This is like, so stupid. Like, why are you wasting your time? Like, why are you taking this so seriously like, you could be doing better things with your time and honestly, even now, like four or five years later, we're competitors like boys, such a more well-known thing and where it's like, a lot bigger than it was when I first started playing. Like, I still get the comments. And then like on the side of like people who like played around that like, are placed by Spikeball around and those terms are kind of synonymous and that community we refer to those around that so that's why I say the same thing as Spikeball. You know, I just, there's always been haters, there's always been doubters or people who will tell you can be something or tell you you're not good enough to do this or that and, so I think that was really what kind of resonate with me with three years is really like people saying like, oh, you'll never be this good or you're bad or whatever it is.
Mike: Yeah, for sure. Now I relate to that myself as well. So I liked it. I thought it was great. I was just curious as to what was behind it. So you mentioned that you were a competitive swimmer. Could you just talk about what that sort of looked like when you started and sort of how you kind of came up you know, through your youth and adolescent years?
[00:04:02] Noah Luskus: Yeah, absolutely. Swimming was probably like the only sport that I ever did when I was little that I was like, really good at when I started like I played a lot of sports like I played soccer and basketball, and baseball. And baseball is probably the other one I took the most serious outside of swimming but all those other ones I was like I was pretty bad when I started and like really kind of like gradually got better like slowly over time. But swimming I was some of that was just really, really good at right off the back. I started I was like six and I just started doing my like neighborhoods summer league swim team. And the reason I wanted to do it was because like the swim team got to go to the pool before like the pool opened to just the rest of the neighborhoods. I was like ahh, my friends gonna be so jealous I get to go to the pool like two weeks early. And there's something I really good at probably like up until age I was like 10, 11 and that you just kind of hit, I kind of hit a weird period of time. There were you know, dudes are going through puberty or whatever, and I wasn't. And I started putting on like, a lot of weight. Like I got like, I got pretty big like, I've never been like a big guy, especially not as a kid I was really tiny. I put on all this weight when I was like 11 and swimming out really, really hard. And I was getting like, not faster like I went in for like a whole like year and a half, where I got to drop time and a single race. And that's like the time when all these other people that are my age are like, they're like shooting up, they're like getting taller, they're getting way faster, like they're getting big and I just wasn't. And that was like a super frustrating, like year honestly, probably close to two years. I'm just like, going through that and I almost quit. The only reason I really didn't quit is because my parents lied to me and said that they had signed me up for one more month. And then I had to finish out because I had already paid for it, even though they're just trying to get me to stick with it. Because it's something that I had done like for five or six years I've been to that point. And then like for there was like they did like two or three times like Oh man, I already paid for this other month like, you got to stick it out. And eventually I just kind of got to the point where I did kind of break through and start dropping time again and I changed pools and coaches and then I was certainly part of it. And I kind of got back like, I don't wanna say on track. But I don't think I've ever gotten back to like comparatively, where I was as good as I was when I was younger but certainly that's where I was respectable, or could have done it at division one level had I chose to do it.
Mike: Interesting. So when did your parents tell you that they made that story up to keep you going?
[00:06:38] Noah Luskus: Gosh, I think at first I really talked about was honestly probably recently, but I think I kind of realized what like what had happened when I was older, like Matt was like 11, like, by the time I was like, really like probably, like invested in when I was like 1617. And like, like looking at and thinking about something in college. I was like man like, they definitely didn't just pay for it. I was like they definitely were just pulling one, pulling fast one on me. But I'm glad I did it. You know, I wanted to quit and play other sports because I was going through a hard time and I was a kid and you know, I'm glad that they kind of had the foresight to be like, he's really gonna kick himself in the it gives up on this just because he's going through a rough stretch and because of a lot of things that were not necessarily like in my control.
Mike: Yeah, and it seems like, it was a great experience for you in the sense that you're able to persevere through a tough time, which it sounds like a lot of it was simply just biology, right? That is out of your control to a certain degree as you're going through puberty, and you kind of stuck it out and then went on to swim for what another three, four or five years through high school. So that's pretty, pretty cool that you were able to stick it out. So as you're going through high school, sort of, what are you thinking about your swimming career, you know, as your high school swimmer like, sort of what we talked me through kind of what it was like as your 9th, 10th, 11th grade, what you're thinking about maybe, oh, I'm gonna you know, think about competing at the next level in college.
[00:08:05] Noah Luskus: Yeah, I think I mean, the goal for me always was to swimming UGA was it was a Georgia. You know, there was always a goal from when I was little, my parents both went to Georgia, my grandparents went to Georgia, honestly, like my mom's entire side of the family went to Georgia. I grew up going to football games there and my family had season tickets grew up taking trips to Athens, we lived like 45 minutes away the middle school, so it was just always where I want to go was my dream school. So I was always kind of a goal and I busted my butt to do it. I worked really hard to get to that point and then I got to probably a certain point around junior year high school when I don't wanna say I realized it, but it kind of like, was becoming more and more apparent that I wasn't quite fast enough. I was close enough to maybe kind of stretch, a walk on me not quite fast enough obviously. But then it became a kind of a question from maybe middle of junior year about what I really want to do, is it? Do I want to go to Georgia, because it's a school that I've always wanted to go to? Or do I want to swim like a smaller division one school and, you know, I took recruiting trips and I talked to coaches, when I was eligible to do like NCAA guidelines, starting my junior year through like the first half of my senior year and obviously I ultimately decided against it but definitely, definitely probably the hardest thing that I've ever done to this point in my life was that like kind of stretch middle of first semester senior year when I was like really becoming a parent that I wasn't going to decide to continue swimming. Just because it was something was something that was such a big part of my life and such a big part of like what I identified as. It was a real mental struggle and it's something that I definitely didn't stop when I when I made the decision to quit swimming. But that's definitely there's definitely a hard time for me for sure.
Mike: So how long would you say that's sort of extended on right from that first part of your senior year? Obviously, you're wrestling with the decision. At some point that you're you make the decision to move forward, but it's still sort of hangs around with you Like, how long does it take you to sort of like just accept or get past the fact that like, it was going to just not be a part of your past and not part of what you're doing right then or in the future?
[00:10:29] Noah Luskus: I don't know like exactly, probably when, but I mean, it took multiple years. Well, probably I would think the time when it really kind of like started being something that I could kind of fully accept was honestly probably like the beginning of second semester of my sophomore year of college. And a lot of that had to do with Spikeball and like, why I was becoming with Spikeball, and like, but I don't know, that's my freshman year, even though I was getting involved in Spikeball and other things at school, it was really hard. And honestly, probably that like stretch of whatever that is, almost two years was probably the hardest time of my life. I don't think mentally I was in like a super good place and honestly, it's not something that I think I've ever really talked about with anybody to be honest with you. I'm not really somebody who particularly enjoys like talking about my feelings. So it's something that I kind of bottled up to myself, but it was a low point for me, because I think that so much of what I define my self-worth as was with success in the pool, because it was the only thing that I ever really done and worked hard at I mean, obviously, I mean, I did school stuff, and I always did very well academically, with like a fairly minimal amount of effort. And I say that not like brag, it's just, I was always very academically gifted and I am super fortunate to have parents who play such a high emphasis on my academics from a young age. So I was, and someone gave me such great time management skills, I think that I was able to pretty easily handle school and it wasn't something that I think I ever felt like a great sense of pride in when I did well in. But when I did well in swimming, that's what I felt pride in. And that's like I said, it's what I associated, being exists being a successor or being a failure and I spent, like I said that year and a half two years after deciding to quit, feeling almost like a failure, I want to say is how I think I perceived it at the time. It's certainly a high perceived anymore. But I felt like a failure because of so much like, I had this goal. Like I said, from the time I was six, to swim to Georgia to swim at the next level and continue on. And I did it, and I ultimately came up short. And I guess I don't frame that as a failure anymore. Because I think that's a poor way of looking at it. But in that short of time, that's what I did, and I definitely struggled mentally because of.
Mike: Well, I mean, first of all, I said let me say I appreciate you sharing that. And I think listen it, every athletes competitive run comes to an end. And that's a big part of like, what this podcast is about is understanding that you know, our identities are so a lot of times are so wrapped up in athletics right, and maybe some people go on to participate at the collegiate level and compete. But at some point that runs is going to end, and I think those feelings that you just described are, I think very common. And I've talked to other people on this podcast about that transition out of sport, whenever it is for them being really, really hard and I think it's just natural you know, and so I wanted to ask you about the good parts or the benefits maybe of not competing anymore. Like when you got the college obviously, you weren't associating as being a swimmer, but like, was there anything that was positive that came out of saying, oh wow, I you know, not swimming. I have this opportunity.
[00:14:08] Noah Luskus: Yeah, I mean, initially I think the big thing was just like, I felt like I had so much free time. I felt like I was like man, I was like I have time to have fun. Because in like high school, it was never like you know, I mean, like whatever was like parties or whatever it was like, wasn't really something that I was involved in, in high school because it was like, Friday night like man, I have I have practiced at six o'clock in the morning tomorrow, like I'm not going out and doing stuff but I'm going to bed. So I think I was honestly it's like a shell shocked like man, I've got so much free time that I can like, do whatever I want and like or you know, have fun or like just honestly be normal. And then obviously like the opportunity to like, kinda just expand out and do something new like, swimming was such a big part of my life, obviously it was like all that I did. So like to be able to kind of extend out of my comfort zone was obviously uncomfortable, but definitely something that was positive you know, just try to find like you know, a different thing to be a part of a different group of people to be involved with. But honestly, maybe a lot of that, to me looking back on it now a different perspective, I think that I definitely have probably weighed more negatives than positives initially. But I said the free time was, was definitely I always loved it when I was having a great time. I wasn't sitting there thinking about swimming.
Mike: Yeah. Do you feel like your free time worked to your advantage? I guess meaning like, were there instances where your free time maybe was a hindrance more than help?
[00:15:33] Noah Luskus: Yeah, I mean, anytime you start think about like, man, I should be swimming right now. It's kind of like, it's almost like a like a depressing feeling. And I think for me, it was never like, during the days that I really felt like that way, like overcome with like, whether you want to call it like a depression or sadness or like, like a sense of failure, because I was always doing something during days, like I started working out, like I started taking, like weightlifting seriously, like I was involved in Spikeball, like, not nearly as seriously as I am now and like, just doing whatever, like hanging out. But for me, I think it was mostly like at night. I think that's when I really struggled with it. It was like laying in bed and I was like, man, I was like, that's I don't know, there's so much time to reflect that thing when you just lay down to go to bed at night and just about anything. And I think that's always kind of when I hit me the hardest is like man, like, this sucks. Like I said, I felt like a failure. I was like, and you just beat myself up about it and you're laying there and then then you don't sleep and then it becomes like a whole this vicious cycle.
Mike: So yeah, I've been there too, so I can appreciate that. So tell me about Spikeball. So like, what was it like, when you got into it sort of like paint the picture for me? Like when you found that what did that look like?
[00:16:47] Noah Luskus: Gotcha. Yeah, so I found it, the way I found it was I just saw a flyer in the dining hall is like UGA, like Spikeball club. And I was like, man, this is cool. Like, I played Spikeball and beach or like, in gym class in high schools, like, oh man, I'm pretty good at this. Like, I'll go out to be a bunch of dudes like, hanging out playing Spikeball. Like, I thought it was gonna be a friend group. I was like, I was like, we're just like hanging out plants by ball, just like an excuse for us to like, do whatever make friends show up and it's like this super competitive thing and like, blew my mind how good these people were. And I shut up and I got humbled very quickly. I don't think I won a game. The first time I came out and played pickup with everybody was crazy to me. I was like, I suck. I was like, I'm good. Like, I was always like, one of like, the better people in my friend group in high school when we were playing around like, I don't even know the rules when we showed up to play competitively. So it was just unbelievable to me like, how competitive wasn't how seriously, people took it and now I'm one of those people. So I guess it's kind of ironic.
Mike: Well, it's interesting, because the first time we talked, you sort of told me the same thing right, like how humbling it was, how difficult it was when you first started playing with the club. And interestingly enough, I went out on the beach a couple weekends ago with my son who's not just about 13, and he played with me, and I was like, Oh my goodness, he's like showing me the rules. Like you can hit it up to yourself, you could do this, you can't do this. I was like, oh my God, this is hard, I have to practice a lot to beat him. It's kind of embarrassing. So I started to experience it on my own. But tell me about, I mean clearly you're at a point now where you're playing professionally, you started out sort of at the bottom, you know, bottom rung of the ladder, what was sort of your motivation to get better at it? Like how did that work? How did you go through the process of learning how to play and get better?
[00:18:47] Noah Luskus: Yeah, for sure. Well, first of all, I think I have to credit the people at Georgia and specifically the founder of our club team, then lambdas at UGA like does a great a great job with all of us when he was the president team and he actually is coaching now. He is such a big reason for the reason that I'm successful currently, but I think like what motivated me was that was just really, really bad. Like when I first started playing, I was nice, I was bad and I continued to be bad, like for a couple months. And honestly, I was gonna quit like I just wasn't super enjoying the sport like, I had fun like hanging out or whatever, like with the people like people were good, but I wasn't getting super close with them. Like everybody that was my age kind of came in with a friend like, they came in with a roommate or they came in with a friend from high school or they met somebody and they like joined together, and I didn't. So I was kind of always like, I felt like the odd man out initially like on the team, like everybody had some of their clothes too. And I was just like there and they like hung out at like did social stuff and I like didn't really go because I didn't like super fit in so I was gonna quit but I had already committed to playing in our college sectional which was in Athens and like October of 2017. I was like, well, I'm not gonna bail on this guy that I'm supposed to play with like, that would be like, pretty messed up with me, like, I'm not gonna do that to him. I was like, man, we'll come out and I'll like, we'll do okay, like, we'll win a couple games when a couple series like, and then I'll like, I'll tell him, I want to do it anymore. But we came out, we didn't want to game the entire day. We didn't win a single game the entire day and I left. And man, it was just I was my pride, I was like, I can't be bad at this. And I think a lot of that was because I was in such a poor mental state about something, I was like, I can't be bad at something else. I was like, I can't quit something else, and not be good at it. I just started busting my butt to get good at it and it certainly wasn't like an overnight fix. I wasn't like man, I'm gonna get good now. Now that I've got beat. It was a really long process, it was a really, really long grind and anybody who is involved in the community are in the sport that knows me could tell you that because I was really bad and I had a lot of bad performances, and I had a lot of bad results for years. And it's just been a real slow grind to get better and I honestly, I think back to that first tournament a lot. And I think that i think that's like swimming a lot when I when I practice for this stuff. I mean, that is what motivates me to want to be really good at this.
Mike: Yeah. Well, what that kind of says to me is that you really are somebody that does have a growth mindset, because it would have been really easy to say, I suck at this, like, I'm just gonna bail because you had nothing invested in it, right? When you started, like you could have just walked away, and nobody would have been the wiser, but you challenged yourself to get better at something that you weren't good at and I think that's, you know, that's really important. You know, I think that's really important to kind of point that out. Because, you know, you go from the kind of you know, I'm terrible at this. And rather than just sort of listening to that voice, you said, you know what, I'm terrible at this, but I'm going to get better, and you put the work in to get better. So what are some of the skills that go into being a good Spikeball player?
[00:22:05] Noah Luskus: Yeah, I think the first thing like the biggest thing that anybody that that plays competitively until you is serving as such a big skill. It's definitely like the dominant part of the game, I don't want to say it's the most important because I don't necessarily believe that the majority of people would tell you that it's the most important skill but just grinding serves. And being able to create pressure with your serves is so important because offense or like hitting, like receiving a serve and then receives that spike is very overpowered in the game currently, and it probably always will be in a game where you can hit a ball 360 degrees, there's only two people in defending. So the ability to create pressure on a serve to force a bad first touch or a bad services, whatever you want to call it is huge. Because if I can create a bad service ever get an A, it's like that's the easiest way for me to get a break. As opposed to playing defense, like I said, 360 degrees or two people, there's a lot of points where there's nothing you're going to be able to do. So grinding that and then hitting like I said, hitting is big. We talked about easy offenses, but offenses and easy unless you're a good hitter around the neck. Like if you can't put the ball away, like they don't have you know, a team doesn't have to have good serves to be able to get brakes on you because I can get you on defense. And then setting ball control, I kind of lump ball control and like setting and server see if like being able to control the ball. Like that, to me is most important skill and I don't think maybe a lot of other people in the sport would agree? But if I can serve receive well, I can set well, and I can just play clean with my partner, then then it's really hard to lose. And when I taught people at UGA this these past couple of years as a captain, I tell them man, I think everybody thinks a lot about serving because it's like I said it's so flat. It's the flashy part of the game. It's like Oh, you got this super cool a sort of the highlight reel moment. But I was like, if you just don't get broken, if you just in a break and spike Bowlby when you're serving, it's not like tennis, where you're not serving as a break breaks in Spikeball or when you're serving I should preface that to make sense because a lot of people get confused by that. But if I just don't get broken in the game, I was like, man, any idiot can stumble into breaks. Anybody can make their opponent get broken twice, your opponent's probably gonna mess up two times a game. So if you just don't get broken, that's all you need to win, you need two breaks and then you win 21, 19. So it's like if you guys just focus on being really clean, and having good control of the ball. Like you'll go so much farther than if you focus on being a super crazy server, or amazing hitter.
Mike: Yeah, I mean to me having been exposed to it in a very, very, very novice level, it would seem to me that the hand eye coordination piece of it is huge, right? The focus it takes to hit the ball on the right angle at a certain velocity to generate enough force to get the ball off is something that is probably not something we could do overnight, right? Like you have to practice and get better at it. Do you have any sense of like, how fast or like what the velocity is on some of the like the hardest hitters that you play against? I'm just curious.
[00:25:16] Noah Luskus: On serves, man, I want to say, to be honest with you, I am one of the hardest, like hitters answers in this sport, I would say the hardest, I would definitely say like in the top 5 or 10, I would say it's probably coming off served probably somewhere between 50 and 60 miles an hour would be the hardest. And then like hits are probably similar, maybe a little bit slower just because you're not necessarily generating as much torque with the rest of your body when you're hitting as when you're serving.
Mike: Yeah, that's super-fast, right? So like, that's like takes a serious amount of hand eye coordination and focus to return a serve that's coming at you that quickly on an angle that you're not sure how that thing is going to bounce off the net.
[00:26:01] Noah Luskus: Oh, absolutely.
Mike: So it's really, really hard, right? So it sounds like it takes a long time to develop the skills right? When you started from the freshman year, right? How long did it take you to get to a point where you felt like, okay, like, I got the physical side of this game down, meaning like, I've got all sorts of the basic movements, I feel like it's automatic. It's not like me thinking about mechanics or something like that.
[00:26:28] Noah Luskus: Man, I don't know. But I still think like, to some extent, like today, like I think about mechanics, like a fine. And maybe that's because I'm like a very, like I don't wanna say like very technical player, but I think I have a pretty good like, mental understanding the games. Like, I think I analyze what I do, like in game a lot. Like, especially with serving, if I'm like missing servers, I'm like, Okay, what am I doing is like, Is it the toss? Okay, no, my toss is like good. It's where I want to, like, is it the way that I'm falling through my sling? Like, okay, I'm doing that like, okay, maybe it's my stance like, how am I setting my feet like, how is my weight distributed? Like basics like, I don't know, for me, it probably took longer than, than most people. Like I said, I've never been somebody who is super great. Like, it's taking up a new thing right away maybe to be like, just borderline like basic, comfortable. Two years, maybe to be honest with you, where I was like, okay, and even then like, services, like [inaudible 27:23] work was really, really sloppy. I didn't have a lot of control of ball, like, I couldn't set very well, I got talking about I think it's most important skill. Like, I feel like I've just kind of gotten to the point over the last, maybe honestly, like six months to a year where I'm like, okay, like, I'm good Saturday, like I feel, like I can control this ball, no matter where I'm setting up from, or I can line up across from somebody serving in the air, and I can control what it's doing, or I have good footwork, to be able to put myself in a position to get the ball. So it's ever developing and maybe that's just because as you keep developing, you keep going up against better players. So maybe it feels like it's longer than it is because like you mastered like playing at one level, and then like, boop, you get better and you're playing it's better people and then like, you're like, what do I do? Because they're just, there's so much better than what you're playing against before.
Mike: Yeah, and that concept applies in all sports, right? Like, we go from high school, you know, high school athletes go to college, and they're the, the stars of their team, they're all state their whatever. And then they show up in college, and they're just like everybody else, right? So then you have to continue to put the work in to elevate your game relative to your peers. So that's not surprising to me at all. I mean, I think I think what I was sort of building up to was the mental side of it, right. Because that's sort of my area of interest, right. Because when I think about learning skills, you know, in scientific research, we learn skills in a very mechanical way early on, because we don't know what we're doing. But at a certain point, it becomes much more automatic, because our brain understands what it needs to do. And it's not as there's not as much internal thinking about the mechanics of it, right? You're always trying to get better, but your body just does certain things automatically, right? So then it becomes more mental. So talk to me about the mental side. And we talked a little bit about this, I think when we first spoke, like Tell me about the mental side of playing in a Spikeball game where you're going how many points is in a game?
[00:29:23] Noah Luskus: So you're playing to 21, win by two. So typical games probably going to be 35 to 40 points probably. But I mean, I've had games that have gone like that I've won or lost like in the 40s, and so you play like three games in one almost. But typically, you're probably playing about 35 to 40 points. And mentally, I think honestly, it's pretty challenging and I'm super fortunate to have a background in swimming which is weird thing to say, because no physical skills translate over to the outside of maybe endurance like nothing physical translates over from swimming. Like it's not like a tennis or volleyball or something where we're movements are similar. But swimming is such a mentally dependent sport and you just have got to be so mentally sharp from swimming. And that's something I think I've realized in the past couple years is how much I've like really taken away from that and how much it helps me in everything I do in life but specifically Spikeball. But Spikeball can be so mental, because they're just days when you go out. And like, I mean, there's days when you go out and like you have your race stuff, I mean, there's like any sport, you've got your best stuff, like you have your best pitch or like your shot is on or like, your golf swing is there, like whatever it is, you just have days, and you're on fire and like everything's like automatic, like you talked about like, and you're just better than everybody because you're having one of those days. But man, there are a lot of days when you go out there. And I played I played pickup today and it was one of those days, it's like man, nothing is working. Like, I can't get a serve on that. Like, I feel like I'm not controlling the ball quite like I should and, and it becomes a grind. And I think I think mentally is kind of what makes or breaks players at like the very top level when you get in these tournaments where you're playing super competitive games all weekend, because the big tournaments are two days now. So you're going Saturday and Sunday of playing all a week competition. And if something's not working, like you've got to figure out a way to make it click immediately or to be able to like to kind of make it towards not a big deal for you. And I think the best example I have of that is serving, like if you're not serving well, I think a lot of people let it affect the rest of their game. Because like I said, you're serving as such, it's the flashy part, it's the part everybody wants to be good at, it's the part that comes with all the glory or all the clouds, or whatever it is, and you're not having a good serving day, I think it's really easy to get sloppy with your services like, man I didn't have to serve and you get served to and then you get a spy a serve, you shouldn't get a spy because you know your footwork or you didn't have your hands up or you just like weren't mentally locked in or the same thing with any other aspects you wish to hit or you had a bad Saturday, you made a poor defensive rotation. Because you're sitting there and you're thinking about what went wrong before and the ability to like let that go is huge. I mean, there are games that I've played in where I've been beat by my own mental. And there are games I've played where people that I've played again to beat themselves, they didn't give themselves a chance. And it can be more than disturbing it can be you get aced by whatever you get ace like two or three times by a good server and you're like man, I suck. And then you just beat yourself the hell and you're never gonna come back from that. The ability to mentally just be locked in and put one point behind you. I said you play 35, 40 and a game and you play 15, 20 games a day. Like one point is nothing so if you can just put it behind you, you'll do so much better.
Mike: So you play so that the games are 30 can go to 30 or 40 points. How long is a game take?
[00:33:06] Noah Luskus: Yeah, so you're playing like 21 points for one team. But like if you're counting all the points nobody normal scores are normally like 21. Like I would say normally 21, 15 to 19 is probably like most common range obviously, once I go into extras, and you play more points, and you have ones that are blowouts. So the games only peak, like I say like 20 minutes apiece, but like I said it spends depends on the pace of play a lot. And some players like to play fast and play like to play slow. I think that's actually a pretty big part of the game is being able to control pace and a lot of that is mentally understanding of what tempo you play best that also, so like for me, like, I'm somebody who very much likes to play. Like at a slow tempo. Like I prefer to be methodical like when I have the ball serving, like sometimes I'll just like kind of like take a step away for a minute and really just like, take a deep breath and kind of like walk into like what I need to do to do good. But I've played with and against people who like, like to get the ball in their hand and they like they want to have their hand and like the next like three seconds. Like they just want to go so fast. And maybe that's because mentally they feel like, they're like ready to go. They want to get it done, but they don't want to sit there and think about it. And controlling the pace of the game is huge. I think I've lost a lot of games because people play too fast. And I've made other I've won games because I slow down people that want to play fast, right?
Mike: Well, it's like a pitcher in baseball right, controls the tempo, right? Some guys work really fast, some guys work slow. It's whatever works for you, right? But you've got to be comfortable with that pacing. I mean, the thing I think about is focus right, how do you maintain your focus through the course of a 30 or 40 point game where it's not like some sports where you're on a team where there's, you know, 5, 8, 10 guys, like it's you and your partner, and like you're in every point right? So you have to constantly maintain focus and not lose that attention. Not lose your attention to what's going on in the moment, and I would think that that's really, really hard to do, especially when you're not playing well.
[00:35:08] Noah Luskus: Yeah, for sure, especially when you're not playing well. And I just feels like, because it's so easy like, I know, it's like games are like long and they take long, but like, man, if you're not playing well, points go by like that. They just pop off, and you can find yourself losing three, four or five points a row. Like it's nothing like man, where did that go? Yeah, it's definitely a big part of the game.
Mike: Yeah, I talked to athletes about that all the time, regardless of sport, right. If your heads up your butt, you know, for even 2, 3, 5 minutes right, like the world passes you by and next thing you know right, you've just gotten, you know, spun around like a top and then you're always like what happened? Right? So like keeping present moment focus is really, really important in all sports. I'm just I've one more question just in general, right. So you mentioned sort of the day, what a day might look like right, play 15 games in a day, like talk about two parts. One, can you talk about the physical demands of it endurance wise, in terms of conditioning? And two can you talk about like, just sort of like, how much time you would put in to practicing and conditioning for Spikeball in a week, just like in the normal week?
[00:36:23] Noah Luskus: Yeah, absolutely. I'm starting with tournament's they are they're so physically demanding. And the big tour series, which is like the big circuit, which you people would call like this season, is over the summer. So first of all, it's so high, it's so hot. And also those tournaments are two days now. So the way that it works is, you'll have for the highest division, you'll have to play on Saturday. And the way pool play works is they try to make it to where there's four teams, and each pool obviously depends on number of teams that they come out. If it's divisible by four, that's like their ideal scenario. And you'll play a series so that the best two or three series against every other team in your pool. So that can be like nine games just there. And then you'll play after pool play, they see the bracket so the top two teams in each pool four will go to the pro bracket, and the bottom two teams will go to the premier bracket. And then you'll play bracket play after that until they get to the semis, and then on Sunday go to the semifinals and the finals. So Saturday's can be like really long, like you can like I said you can play like close 15 games or if you have like a smaller independent tournament where you're doing all pool play and all a bracket play in a day like, you could I mean you can be playing north of 20 games, like easily if you go to three o'clock. So I mean, they are long days, and I found play on Sundays, I am sore in my lower back, I'm sore through my hips, sore to the legs. And maybe part of that is because I work out the days before the tournaments. So and like shoulders and backs and whatever it is. It's definitely like, more physically demanding than people would think like I said earlier, like I think a lot of people think like, Oh, this is just a joke, this is just Spikeball. This is just like a fun beach game. But you go out there and play from nine to five, or whatever it is, or even if it's just nine to three, like you're playing six, eight hours in a row and you're out in the sun and it's hot. It's physically demanding, and then in terms of what I do the condition, I put in a lot of hours. I probably put in an hour, hour and a half in the gym six times a week. So that's, I would say probably a week I probably averaged about eight hours in the gym maybe. And then I normally play pickup for, I'd say three or four times a week for about two hours, that's another eight hours. And then I do hitting and serving practice, when I can find space, it's a little bit tougher. Now I'm in an apartment instead of my parent’s basement. I have a little less space. But that I mean, when I was at home before I moved into my apartment until weeks ago, I was after pickup, I would come back and I would hit spikes and work on spikes for a half hour and then I would serve another hour, like three times a week. So I mean, I probably put in close to 20 hours a week in terms of just overall like physical conditioning, which I count is going like towards bipod like that's what's driving a lot of what I'm doing.
Mike: Yeah, so in essence right, like just pick, you just because it's a club sport and not an intercollegiate sport. You're still a student athlete, right. You're still putting in an immense amount of time every week working on your game working on the things that you have to do to get better. So with that in mind, like as a student athlete, like what were the biggest challenges for you like once you really got into the Spikeball and you're putting in this time like, what would you say were the biggest challenges for you as a student athlete?
[00:39:58] Noah Luskus: Gotcha. The biggest challenges probably for me is the fact that we had like run our team and like administratively like, we were the ones taking care of that, because it was like an official Club Sport at Georgia. So we had like meetings and we have like stuff that we have to do for our clubs, sports department. And those guys, they're great, but they're also strict, and there's a lot of stuff to do. And there's a lot of very specific processes that we go through with them. And then go into that and you know, we're not also we go to like practices, which we add twice a week, or we go to like pick-ups, which we host on our non-practice days. You know, there's a big balance between like, how much time are we putting in towards ourselves like as, like top level players in this club? And how are we getting better so that we're making the club better through our own performance? But also, how much time are we putting into new people that are coming in, or where people that have been here that maybe are a lower tier you know, when you don't have a lot of time, when you get three or four hours of official club practice a week, like, how much time is going to yourself? And how much time is going to everybody else? And, and how do we balance that to what's best for our goals as a team competing for national championship. And then just like making those decisions, I mean, we're 18, 19, 20, 21 year old kids, were trying to, like, make these decisions. It's not like, like you said, an intercollegiate sport where you have, you have a coach, and you have an athletic department. And also when you have those things you have, you have trainers, and you have medics and you have people that are, they're constantly making sure you're feeling good and performing your best. And when it's a club sport you know, those things are all on me. You know, I mean, I'm not, I don't get to go do lifts with a weightlifting coach, and we don't have nutritionists that are telling us how to eat for peak performance. And those are things that we're not only having to come up with on our own, but also things that you have to execute on your own. And it's a lot harder when you don't have you know, a coach or somebody in your ear being like, hey, you're not going to do good if you do this. And you know, trying to be that presence for yourself, but also for the rest of the team and passing on the information like, how important that stuff is to younger people or new people who may not necessarily like think that like Spikeball is the thing they need to take that seriously.
Mike: Right. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like you put in an awful amount of effort, right motivation, and there's nobody telling you what to do. So not only are you practicing and working on your own game, and putting in the time you discussed, you've got your classes right, your academics, but you're also effectively, you have a job. I did an administrative job that goes on top of it, running the club making choices, which I imagine was really hard and challenging at times, I'm guessing it was also probably really valuable right, in terms of learning lessons about how to run a, you know, a business, right? It's not a business in the traditional sense. But you've got a budget, and you've got choices to make, and you've got to deal with administration, I'm sure. So with that in mind, like what was the most rewarding part of being a student athlete, particularly a non-traditional one who wasn't kind of running through an intercollegiate, you know, setting?
[00:43:13] Noah Luskus: Yeah, I think the most rewarding part is probably just seeing like, us grow as a team and then seeing like I said, newer people grow. And then you know, I mean, seeing personal growth is great for me as an individual, and obviously I love that. But seeing our team grow twice to the point where we were able to win a national championship in 2019. And then again, this past year in 2021 to be able to grow from where we started, and to be able to kind of have an outside perspective. On both of those years as being like, man, if you look back in August, like we were not this good. And like April May rolls around, and you're like, Man, what we have like done and what we've accomplished together and getting an entire group of 30 college age kids to kind of buy into what we're doing and see the process and trust in us to lead them to a point that say at the beginning, they may not even be something they care about. If they're new, like they feel coming in, they don't think about like winning a national championship, they think like this can be a fun thing for them to make friends. And to see that growth is super rewarding, especially this past year, because I was a president of the club and I was a captain, and obviously just a really challenging year dealing with COVID and all kinds of things, and it was I think it was wild on all fronts. It was crazy for everybody. You know, there's always something going wrong this whole year. And being able to pull together as a team and April when restriction started happening and be able to win a national championship for the school that I've always loved. Super rewarding, that super proud moment for me for sure.
Mike: Congratulations, that's awesome. And I probably could or should have mentioned this at the outset but the way that I got connected to know was that I saw him on ESPN playing and in, in a major tournament on I think it was a collegiate, right. It was like the collegiate tournament, and I reached out to him. And I just thought that was so cool. I mean, it's not only a testament to what you guys did, but just a testament to anybody who's involved in that sport, to take it from something that's kind of just a regular old beach game to something that's on TV, and that has stakes and is really, really cool to see something like that grow and flourish in our country. So as a lot of credit do there. Just a few more questions. I don't know if you've ever thought about this and I know based upon what you were saying, when we started talking earlier about sort of just reflecting on your swimming career. I know that was a little bit challenging for you. But have you ever thought about how your college life would have been different? If you would have decided to swim versus not or deciding to play Spikeball? Have you ever like sort of like thought about that looking back?
[00:45:59] Noah Luskus: Yeah, I definitely do. I see friends of mine that do swim in college or friends I swim with in high school. Honestly, I say I talked about how upset I am now. I'm like, man, I could never get back in the pool and put in the work. I was like, man, well we did was so hard. The work that we put in high school for something was so hard. And I kind of joke that I'm grateful that I quit obviously. I met swimming tremendously. I miss the relationships that they gave me I miss the sport itself. But I don't know, man, I don't know the last time I seriously sat down thought about it would definitely be different. I definitely have a lot less free time. My life probably would have been a lot more structured. But I don't know, I think that I made the right decision. I know I talked about well, I don't think I know I made the right decision. I know I talked about earlier feeling like a failure for multiple years and that's totally true. I definitely did. I think I went I got to the point where I started enjoying Spikeball more, and I got better at speedball I realized that it was kind of like where I felt like I was meant to be. I think I also kind of got to a point where, honestly recently, where I really could reframe what I thought was a failure. And you know, I think that I look back on it. And obviously like, the result was disappointing, and it's not what I like wanted, and it's not what I like set out to achieve and it was disappointing, but it certainly wasn't a failure because of all that I got to take away from it, and how much it's made me grow and how much of a better person and how much of a better athlete that makes me now doing something new.
Mike: Yeah. Well, I think it's great that you're able to reframe that on your own. I mean, you know, I think it takes a lot of people to have that sort of outside perspective, and I do this a lot with athletes is helping them to think about things in a different way, right? You know, a lot of times we will look at ourselves as a failure, or we'll really be hard on ourselves because we weren't able to do something that we thought we should do. And it takes a lot for that athlete to be able to look at it differently and say, hey, you know what, like it just didn't work out the way that I expected it to. But look at all the things I've accomplished, you know otherwise, and it sounds like you've kind of gotten that I pointed made peace with it now. You're really invested in something new that you've gotten really good at. So what are your plans for or Spikeball going forward into the future?
[00:48:22] Noah Luskus: Gotcha. Well, like short term plans, competing and the 2021 SRA, which is Spikeball round net Association, and their tour series that started at 10 when I called tour stops, and three of them have happened. I've played in two of them, and I've actually podiumed in the pro division and both of them I got third and two of the first three, which is super cool to be able to be on podium at the highest division. But I actually just teamed up with a good buddy of mine from Texas grant Laughlin and we're going to play the rest of the season together as a team, as Outside Smoke will be our team name. And we're going to team up and try to make the pro division and nationals. And we actually will play in our first tour stop together next weekend and brought our July 10th and Rock Hill, South Carolina. And we'll play a couple more throughout the couple more tour stops throughout the country for the rest of the summer. And then like I said, hopefully be competing in the pro division nationals in October.
Mike: That's awesome, that's really cool. I wish you guys the best of luck. Last question, if there's one thing or one piece of advice that you could give specifically to any high school athletes out there, what would it be right? It could be anything but maybe looking at looking at it through the lens of making that choice right, of whether to move forward and participate in sport and college. Like, what piece of advice would you give to somebody who's in high school now?
[00:49:54] Noah Luskus: Gotcha. The base piece of the advice I would definitely give to anybody, and it definitely pertains athletes but it really could pertain anybody but i think is to not beat yourself up. You know when things don't go your way, I have always been somebody who has treated myself, I've always been my worst critic, I've always treated myself super harshly. I've always beat myself up about bad performances. And not only beat myself up just absolutely just beat myself on the ground and don't even let me breathe or are living down. Recently, I know we talked about this, when we talked on the phone a couple weeks ago, I kind of made it like a new year's resolution for me to not necessarily stop being my biggest critic, because I think that that's important. But reframing the way I critique myself, and also becoming my biggest supporter in the same token of being able to acknowledge like, hey, like, yeah, you made a mistake. Like you know, you shouldn't have done that. But also being your biggest supporter and being like, its one mistake. And whatever sport it is, there's so many reps that you go to in a game or practice and like, you're gonna make mistakes. And just trusting in yourself that, trusting in your game and the skill set that you've developed in your sport, and realize that you are good and you can do what you're setting out to do as long as you put yourself in the right mental space, and you bring you lift yourself up, instead of pushing yourself down. Because if you beat yourself in the ground, you don't even give yourself a fighting chance. If I had been as I think positive as I am with myself today, back in high school, my life would be different. And obviously like I said earlier, I'm glad that my life isn't different. I think I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. But being having a positive attitude, and just like letting yourself live down the mistakes is huge. And it just puts you in a better mindset to be able to think about things and whether that's thinking about whether you want to go on to play a sport in college, or whether you want to quit. And you just treat yourself like you would treat somebody else who made a mistake. You're going to be able to make a much easier decision and a decision that you're so much more satisfied with. Like I said, I made my decision to quit on me and it [inaudible 52:16] me. It [inaudible 52:17] me for years. I mean, I hated me for years, it drove me into the hardest time of my life. If I was able to like look back into like, man, no, you worked so hard at swimming and just because you came up short of what this initial goal that this lofty goal that you had set when you were six years old, doesn't mean you're a failure. Then I would never would have gone through a phase like that in college where I was disappointed with myself or upset with myself or had this kind of messed up notion of what success and failure was.
Mike: That's I couldn't, I mean, that's a great way to end and that's great advice for anybody out there is listening. So now I appreciate you coming on to the podcast. It was great to talk to you. I learned a lot today about you and Spikeball and all the things that you're doing. So this is great, I really appreciate it and let's stay in touch and hopefully you can come back on in the future.
[00:53:12] Noah Luskus: No, absolutely. I really appreciate you having me on. I love getting to talk about this stuff. I love getting talked about Spikeball by any chance I can get in and obviously I think the mental side of sports is something that is so interesting to me and so important and I'm super glad you reached out and we'll absolutely stay in touch and anytime you want me back on I'll always be down to do that.
Mike: Thanks Noah, take care.
[00:53:33] Noah Luskus: Yeah thanks, you too.