“The quality of results produced by any system depends on the quality of awareness from which people in the system operate” (Sharmer, 2013, p.14)

In university settings student athletes's face unique challenges. Unfortunately, the totality of a student-athlete's stress load is unknown by coaches, professors, and administrators, making it difficult to recognize when a line is being crossed. Coaches, parents, trainers, teammates, and anyone else invested in a SAs wellbeing should practice cultivating greater awareness and strive to adopt an ecosystem model of thinking. The “Fuel Your Spark” workbook is designed to address cracks within a hyper-competitive athletic environment by providing opportunities for independent reflection and team-wide engagement. The following pages prompt questions, dialogue, and a new language that the entire team and coaching staff can implement together. The workbook is a tangible object that can help integrate student-athletes body, heart, and mind and begin to heal broken relationships that are too common in high performance environments.

My hope is that this workbook operates as a system for increased self-awareness, ownership, and meaningful communication between student-athletes, teammates and coaches. It includes tactical focuses (training logs, goal settings, calendars) and monthly core principles with reflection questions and application challenges that help facilitate deeper awareness of self and team using servant-leadership principles as a guidepost.