Max’s Story

In this blog, I’m going to tell you about my journey and ultimately what led me to where I am today. Maybe I’m not a former pro athlete, I’m not a psychology major, and I didn't even have a successful college athletic career. What I have done is flipped myself from an unsure mess to a disciplined leader.

I was born in 1998 in Thunder Bay, Ontario. I grew up playing baseball, hockey, basketball, and football literally anything I could be competitive in I would be into. I played all sports throughout high school and attempted to play them all at the highest level I possibly could. After high school, I decided to pursue baseball attending the University of Winnipeg to play at the NAIA level.

I mentioned that I went to play baseball there. Notice how I didn’t mention my academics? I enrolled to study kinesiology with the hopes of one day becoming a teacher. Why did I want to become a teacher? At the time I think I just wanted other people to be happy and that seemed like a respectable job.

So I start my first year of baseball I spend my entire first semester skipping classes and putting off assignments until the last minute. I scrape by and pass every class (barely). So what I passed don’t D’s get degrees? In semester two it finally caught up to me failing my first class with a porous 46%. That class was psychology (I promise I’m qualified for this!!). While this is happening I’m also putting in half effort in my baseball career. In the fall I got a chance to showcase myself as a hitter in hopes of being a two-way player. When I say I was intimidated that is saying it lightly. In my first 4 at-bats, I believe I saw a total of 12 pitches striking out all four times. It felt like my first time seeing players who could actually pitch and I wasn’t prepared.

Instead of facing my battles, I decided I wanted to get rid of hitting and just stick to pitching as I found some success with that early on in the first couple of weekends. Fast forward through the season, I’m up to 230 pounds (and no that’s not because I was getting my work in with the weights I was skipping that too) It’s because I was the guy who ate garbage, didn’t put the work in, and would rather go out to the bars on Saturday nights instead of spending extra time in classroom/gym.

The end of my first season came along and my teammates and I found out that our program was getting cut by the school. It was devastating. We were all upset we all became so close and we knew that most of us would not see each other again which was extremely sad. At that time I received a notice that I was going on academic probation which would have disallowed me from playing baseball the following season.

So what did I do next? I stayed in school and partied for another year. Not putting in the work getting bigger and bigger, caring less and less. By the end of that year, I was up to 245 pounds. I decided to drop out of school after the next year moving home because of some mental health issues (correlation to my lifestyle!!)

Upon arriving home I started to give back to my community by coaching baseball with 11 and 12-year-olds. It was rewarding, I had a ton of fun and wanted more so I decided to take on travel baseball the following season. I stayed within the travel organization for 4 seasons working all the way up with the same group. This led me to a coaching opportunity with a team I played on growing up, Team Northern Ontario. JG Larocque who coached me when I played in 2012 was head coaching again in 2022 and asked one of my team’s other coaches to help him coach. He said no which led to me reaching out and asking if I could apply. At the time I only did it because I was pissed off that someone else was offered the opportunity instead of me. Now I am insanely grateful I was taken on.

After the event, JG offered me a job coaching baseball at his academy in Sudbury. I took the job. My girlfriend and I moved across the province excited for me to become a full-time baseball coach. The only problem was when I arrived I wasn’t full-time at all. I was working 20 hours (if that) at minimum wage trying to pay $750 a month in rent. Let me caveat this by saying JG and I have no hard feelings and he has taught me more and given me more opportunities than I could imagine. But at the time I was quite pissed off with my new situation. I remember a text JG sent me telling me that from the miscommunication and change in my life, I would become better for it. At the time I called BS, looking back now he was 1000% correct.

Fast forward to today, I’m down to 170 pounds, working full time at the academy, I’ve completed my mental performance certification through Brian Cain on route to building this platform, and I am even back in University to finish my English degree. I look back now on wanting to become a teacher and think about if that’s really what I wanted back then and if I was on the right track. I look at myself now and see myself teaching in this way and know that THIS is what I’m meant to be doing.

So again, maybe I’m not a pro athlete, maybe I don’t have a psychology degree but what I do have is the ability to learn and grow just like YOU. My mission is to help YOU find your true potential by being all YOU can be from moment to moment.

Let’s continue to close the gap together.