BULLS NEWS

BUFFALO, NY - This past weekend, University at Buffalo coaches and student-athletes met with Jeff Janssen, M.S., a motivational speaker who travels the country speaking to high schools, sports clubs, businesses and colleges about the skills necessary to build a championship team.

Janssen started his career at the University of Arizona, working with the softball team as the Peak Performance Coach and Assistant Life Skills Director. From there, he went on to create Janssen Peak Performance and has since worked with some of the top coaches in the country, including Pat Summitt (University of Tennessee women's basketball), Mike Krzyzewski (Duke University men's basketball) and Mike Candrea (University of Arizona softball).

According to Janssen's website (www.jeffjanssen.com), Janssen Peak Performance is "a professional consulting and speaking firm which provides high level sports and business teams with the insights, strategies and tools they need to perform to their potential."

Janssen spoke at UB on three separate occasions - on Sunday afternoon to all student-athletes, on Sunday evening to team leaders and Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) representatives and on Monday morning to the entire UB coaching staff.

Janssen's Peak Performance Seminar was designed to give student-athletes the tools needed to master the mental game for success. He gave the athletes two goals for the workshop: help minimize mental mistakes and maximize your potential. The athletes took part in numerous exercises during the one-hour workshop that were to targeted toward how to stop mental mistakes from taking them out of competition.

During his evening session with the team leaders and SAAC representatives, Janssen spoke about leadership again, but this time he was more in depth about what it means to step up and be a leader.

According to women's basketball senior Allison Bennett (Springfield, OH/Kenton Ridge), what Janssen spoke about was very helpful, especially to her because she is a team co-captain this season. "What I learned is that it is not always just one team leader, but lots of people stepping up," she said. "People can step up in different ways, too; each individual can lead in her own way to bring the team together."

Senior Talia Merlino (Newtown, PA/Notre Dame (NJ) HS), the other co-captain of the women's basketball team, learned about how to be a better team leader. "I learned that you have to get to know what motivates each teammate and what makes them different in order to be a good team leader," she said.

When he spoke to the coaches on Monday morning, Janssen focused on how difficult it is to be a leader and how coaches can make it easier on the student-athletes by giving them the tools to be successful.

Head men's basketball coach Reggie Witherspoon knew about and has been using Janssen's philosophies before Janssen came to UB. "I have been using Jeff's mental approach to the game for quite some time now, and all of his ideas go a long way in the development of a successful program," Witherspoon said. "His ideas are terrific, and also very underrated and undervalued."

Head softball coach Marie Curran has also been using Janssen's philosophies with her team and believes that what Janssen teaches can be used outside of the sports arena as well. "What he is saying is not only about sports, it is also about life lessons," Curran said.

Janssen's visit was arranged as one of the first steps to emphasize professional development initiatives that the UB head coaches expressed at a summer retreat. Janssen is scheduled to return to UB in late January for a follow-up visit.

~ Written by Stacy Ross, UB Athletic Communications Intern