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Female announcer: Welcome to "Becoming Your Personal Best: Life Lessons from Olympians and Paralympians," a resilient future for youth.

This series is about what families, teachers, coaches, youth leaders, mentors, spiritual leaders, and entire communities need to know about building resiliency for today's youth.

This series brings you experts in education and psychology, linked with inspiring Olympians and Paralympians.

Importantly, the series talks to young people to hear what they have to say.

This series is practical and uplifting, and it is for all of us, not just those who aspire to the Olympics or Paralympics.

♪♪ announcer: We're here today with Bill Hanzlik, 1980 Olympian, former NBA player, and current broadcast analyst.

Bill is the cofounder of Gold Crown Foundation, one of the largest youth sports programs in Colorado, supporting over 18,000 young people through athletic, academic, health, and wellness programs.

♪♪ announcer: Today, Bill is going to introduce us to some inspiring individuals that exemplify resiliency and why it's so important.

We will meet Miracle on Ice Olympic goalie, Jim Craig; Paralympians Tricia Downing and John Register, along with four-time Olympic triathlete Hunter Kemper.

Hunter is the host of our series and is teamed up with gold-medal sports psychologist Dr. Roberta Kraus, who will take us through the five aspects of resiliency, while we also learn from other influential members of the community.

Let's join Bill now.

Bill Hanzlik: Hi, I'm Bill Hanzlik, and I'm here to take you on a journey of some incredible stories about resiliency, none greater than a good friend of mine, Trish Downing and her incredible story.

Trish.

Tricia Downing: Thanks, Bill.

Glad to be here.

Bill: Trish, your remarkable story as an athlete started when you were four years old.

Tricia: Yeah, I've been an athlete my entire life.

It's really driven, I think, who I am and what I've done and the skills that I've built, especially when it comes to resilience.

Bill: Well, what you've done is quite remarkable, and I understand you had a great interview with a museum that we're gonna see right now.

Tricia: Let's take a look.

Tricia: I have felt like an outsider in so many different ways in my life.

First of all, I've got four brothers, and I'm the only female.

I am also biracial, and I was adopted by a white family, and now I have a disability, so I have spent my entire life feeling different.

♪♪ Tricia: My sports story started when I was about four years old, and my mom took me to my very first swimming lesson.

That's where I began to explore my physical awareness and my love for doing athletics, and I started competing when I was seven years old and loved it.

I swam breaststroke, and I was pretty fast, and I won a lot of blue ribbons, which was a lot of positive reinforcement.

In high school, I did a combination of swimming and gymnastics, and college, I moved to diving, and that was primarily because I grew to be 5'10", and I couldn't be a gymnast anymore.

But my life and my sports world changed when I was 31 years old.

At the time, I had become a competitive cyclist, and I was out on a training ride with a friend.

There was a car that was coming west.

I went for my brakes and didn't get to them quickly enough, so the front wheel of my bike hit the front bumper of the car, and I was launched in midair and then landed on the ground.

When I hit the ground, I immediately couldn't feel my legs anymore, so I knew that something was terribly wrong, probably that I was paralyzed.

I was in the hospital for four months, total.

I went into rehab, and when I got out, I knew that, you know, what really spoke to me, what I was really passionate about in life was athletics.

And I knew that people in wheelchairs could do sports.

I knew they were gonna be something different than what I had done before but that I would still have opportunities to compete.

I started swimming again.

I took up hand cycling, and before I knew it, I was entering local sprint triathlons in my area and just went to longer and longer distances and ended up being the first female paraplegic to finish an iron-distance triathlon.

From there, I had some shoulder problems, and so I switched sports to rowing, and that was a short stint that I was a rower, and then I came to my current sport, which is actually shooting.

♪♪ Tricia: I absolutely think resilience is part of the athletic experience, and I will tell you that getting through my injury, my paralyzing accident, was 100% easier because I had spent so much time being an athlete.

I think being an athlete requires you to be so mentally tough.

It requires you to try and fail and try again, and it requires you to be really mentally aware, physically aware, and emotionally aware of, you know, who you are and where you're trying to go and then to be able to take the steps to work toward that final goal.

♪♪ Tricia: I think it's difficult sometimes to find your own path.

You know, you come up through school, and you get used to doing what your friends are doing and what you think you should be doing, but it's really important to find your passions and to nurture those passions and to believe in yourself that the road that you're on is the right road.

As long as you are following your passion, as long as you are, you know, exercising your discipline and building your confidence, then you will get very far to achieving your goals.

Sometimes you're gonna fail.

Sometimes you're gonna succeed.

You're gonna have scars.

You're gonna have failures, but those failures are gonna turn into successes, and you're gonna be that much stronger for them.

Bill: A friend of Tricia's, Paralympian silver medalist John Register, provides another inspiring example of resiliency.

John Register: I was a four-time track and field all-American at the University of Arkansas, twice went to the Olympic trials, and also was a Gulf War Army veteran, but on May 17, 1994, at 5:29 in the afternoon, I was one of the fastest hurdlers in the world, on my way to make the Olympic team.

At 5:30 in the afternoon, I would never run another hurdle in my life.

I went across the hurdle, dislocated my knee, severed the artery behind the kneecap and, seven days later, wound up becoming an amputee.

It was my family member, my wife, Alice, who said, "You know what?

We're gonna get through this together.

This is just our new normal."

And so I began using that as a springboard to move forward in life, so I started swimming for physical therapy, and I got so fast in the water that I've actually made the Paralympic swim team.

I saw athletes running with artificial limbs.

I wanted to do that.

I was a 27-foot long jumper while at Arkansas, and I had a leg made for running, and just four short years later, wound up winning the silver medal in Sydney, Australia.

Did I ever feel that I wasn't good enough?

I feel like that all the time, or many times, right?

Sometimes we call this "imposter syndrome."

We take on the persona of somebody else, and we think, "Oh, my gosh, I wanna be like that individual.

They have their life all the way together."

But we don't know what resilience they had to go through.

We don't know what hurdles they had to overcome to be in the place that they are in.

But what we're admiring is that they are showing up in their full authentic self, and that's what we desire.

When we think about achieving our personal best, what is that?

We can go really quickly to looking at somebody else's personal best, but we really have to measure ourselves against our own measuring stick of what that personal best is for us.

No one goes into the Paralympic Games or Olympic Games, wanting to win the silver medal or the bronze medal or fourth place or fifth.

Everybody wants the top spot.

I want the top spot, and so I trained for the top spot.

What happened was, I was one centimeter short of the world record, so I can be very satisfied with what I did in achieving my personal best, and even though it's the silver medal, you don't lose the gold medal.

You earn silver.

So we really have to think about "How do I show up?

What is my authentic self?

Who am I?"

And if I can't be satisfied with who I am, I'm never gonna be satisfied with tryin' to be somebody else.

Authentic self is when you're showing up on the playground or you're around your friends, and you're at your best, and they're embracing you and accepting you for who you are.

You don't have to pretend to be anyone else but yourself.

The challenge is, when you see somebody else has somethin' that you desire and you want that, you try to act or be like that other individual, thinking that's gonna get you closer to that goal, but you really have to show up as your authentic self, and you'll get that goal faster.

Bill: It's the 1980 Winter Olympics.

This is the iconic scoreboard, what became known as the Miracle on Ice.

It's 4 to 3, three seconds to go in the game.

Team USA pulls off the most remarkable upset in Olympic history.

A coach, Herb Brooks, getting his team and players to believe in themselves, fight through adversity, showing that resiliency that you had to have, and a special story about Jim Craig, the goalie, as a player and a person and his remarkable journey and how Team USA upset the heavily favored Russians.

Jim Craig: You know, most people think the Miracle on Ice was a miracle, but it wasn't.

It was a lot of hard work, and, you know, I always tell people, "There are some people who prepare to compete, and some people who prepare to win."

So here I am.

I'm five foot three.

I'm a senior in high school.

I'm an Irish-Catholic altar boy, and I go to Boston College, and I talk to the head coach, and I tell Coach Ceglarski I'd love to be on his team.

And he tells me I'm a fine, young man, but I should stick close to home.

And so I didn't have any place to go, but then, all of the sudden, I ran into a mentor.

He was an all-American goalie out of Boston College, who was getting his first coaching job, and it was at a community college, really close by, something I could afford.

And I remember going in, by chance, to get my goalie mask worked on, and his dad was there, and they asked me, "What are you doing next year?"

And I said, "Well, I really have no plans."

And he said, "Well, I'd love to have you come be part of our team."

And he told me, you know, he was head coach at Massasoit Community College.

I put this look on my face like I might've been too good to go there, and he said, "Listen, if you don't wanna come here, I don't even want you to come."

And then I stopped, and I thought about it, and I said, "Oh, my God, I'm a goalie.

I've got an all-American goalie who's the coach."

And he said, "You know, if you can make a commitment to the unknown, I'm gonna help you get to where you wanna go."

So I went to Massasoit Community College.

I grew 7 inches.

We won a national junior college championship.

I'm playing in a junior college championship in front of eight people, probably five of 'em from my family.

A year later, I'm playing at Boston University in a national championship at Joe Louis Arena.

So I really believe that, if you have the passion, that you put in the work.

You get a little lucky, and you have people mentor you.

And, you know, one thing I'd like to say about mentors, people always ask me, "How do you find a mentor?"

And I tell 'em, "You don't find a mentor.

They find you.

And the reason they find you is 'cause they see a little something in you that reminds them of them."

And I was very fortunate that I went from 5'3", with nobody wanting me to go to school, and went to this community college, went to night school, and then ended up at Boston University, and that's where my career took off.

You're only as good as your dreams are, but it doesn't mean, because you dream it, it's gonna happen.

It's a lot of hard work, and you need an architect of that plan, somebody who has the vision, and if you do it right, the person with the vision recruits the right people, and you create what I call a "recipe for winning," and that recipe for winning gets all these people together, and then they start believing, and then, when you start believing, then what happens?

You start committing, and then you start executing.

Herb Brooks prepared us to win, and he told us--and I remember it to this day.

He goes, "There is a way to win," and that's what really got us motivated.

Today, I think it's really important that you tell, especially young children, the "why," you know, the "how" and the "why."

So Herb explained the "how" and the "why," and we committed and believed in this journey that we were on, and the reason why we won is because we shared the same dream.

And by sharing that dream and not being so involved in an individual dream, we were able to execute, and in order for us to execute, we had to execute flawlessly, and we did.

So I wouldn't call that a miracle.

I'd call that a lot of preparation and a lot of hard work.

Well, you know, I always say you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable, but I don't think embracing change is good enough because, when you embrace change, you're following someone else, and so what Herb Brooks taught me is how to drive change, and don't wait for someone else to come up with an idea, and then copy it, and then embrace it.

And so what he did is he made the USOC uncomfortable the way he wanted to do things, whether it was the budget or the 61-game schedule, or the way he trained us.

♪♪ Jim: When you have people's best interest in mind and you can explain the "why," they'll put the work in because then they start to believe in you.

And I'm a true believer that winning comes in chunks, that you have to win a little bit here and there, and then it starts to build momentum.

You can't be resilient by yourself.

So that famous shot of me looking for my father after the game with the American flag on me, what people should understand is you can always celebrate, but you should appreciate.

And so my mother had passed away, and I knew my father would be thinking of my mother, and so I wanted to show him the respect that you should do for people who are part of your journey.

And so, as you look at these things here, it's really important that you understand that you can't do this by yourself.

♪♪ [buzzer sounding] [crowd cheering] crowd: USA, USA, USA!

♪♪ male: There you go.

Here you go.

Let's go, let's go, let's go.

announcer: Incredible.

What Jim Craig just shared is a story of individual and team resiliency, supported by a coach, Herb Brooks, countless family members and supporters, a community of believers.

But resiliency is not a moment in time or a special victory, but a lifetime pursuit.

That is what our series, "Becoming Your Personal Best," is all about, building a community of support for young people.

We know if we provide support for youth, boys and girls can learn to meet life's challenges.

That is why Bill Hanzlik is committed to young people and why he is joining Terrell Brown, founder of Hillside Connection, to talk about the need to build opportunities for young people.

Bill: Terrell and I unbelievably have a lot in common.

Although we're from different parts of Colorado, our passion to help kids through sports is what we care so deeply about.

And, Terrell, your commitment to helpin' the kids in your neighborhood through sports, tell a little bit about what you tried to strive to do with your kids.

Terrell Brown: Yes, definitely.

Thanks, Bill.

You know, sport is a tool if used correctly, that teaches you to build the right skills.

When I say, "skills," I'm talkin' "discipline."

I'm talkin' "resiliency."

I'm talkin' of work ethic that is transferrable no matter where you go in life, and that's what we're tryin' to build with Hillside Connection's youth.

Yes, we have great athletes, but most importantly, we're tryin' to develop great individuals that are productive citizens to their community, and ultimately the world.

Bill: Yeah, and, again, these kids, we could help so much.

I often talk about preparing kids for the game of life, and at Gold Crown Foundation, where I'm the CEO and cofounder, we often look at this, and like Terrell said, when you have a kid, and you teach 'em those life skills through sports-- team work, character, commitment, responsibility-- those are the carryover 'cause guess what?

The junior high kids that we most affect are kids analytically are probably not goin' on to play high school or college basketball, but can we help them with their everyday lives?

Yes, we can.

Terrell: I agree, and it's openin' their eyes to the possibilities of what they can become, and a lot of kids right now, they don't have access to extracurricular activity that can help with their further development.

So as Hillside Connection, the name, resonates because we're bridgin' that gap, right, from the have nots to a different lifestyle that can change the trajectory of both young men and young women's life.

And the challenges extend far beyond sport, right, Bill?

These kids are comin' from single-parent households.

We have kids, you know, on the borderline of homelessness.

Food insecurity is a challenge.

Access to internet is a challenge for a lot of these kids, so it's bigger than sport, and sport is definitely a tool that, if used correctly, can change, again, a trajectory of a kid's life and the family's life, buildin' that resiliency at a early age.

♪♪ Bill: I'm excited to be here today with two outstanding individuals that are gonna talk about resiliency and what it means for families, communities, and young individuals.

First, Dr. George Houston, a former high school principal, a high school basketball coach, and a contributor to the Center for Creative Leadership, along with Hunter Kemper, a four-time Olympic triathlete and ranked number one in the world.

We're gonna start off with you, George.

If you were talkin' to today's kids and youth about resiliency and how you can help 'em by your journey, what would you tell 'em?

Dr. George Houston: I think the first thing I would tell 'em is that, regardless of circumstance or condition, there's always a way out.

There is a way up.

And I think the research is showing more and more that it helps with our self-esteem, it helps with our psychological well-being, it helps with our ability to connect and work with others.

All those are critical to that whole piece of resilience.

Bill: I think you're right.

Thank you, George.

Hunter, you've had a remarkable story yourself, and your journey with kids and youth, including your own, you have a lot of stories that you can tell.

Hunter Kemper: Yeah, I can, and I can also say that this series that we're doing here on resiliency, on becoming your personal best, is a really big deal.

It's a lot of practical advice.

It's a lot of inspiring stories, not only just to get kids uplifted, but also families, educators, leaders, coaches, to teach them and equip them.

And so with this practical advice, Dr. Roberta Kraus is gonna lead a five-segment series.

She's an Olympic and Paralympic sports psychologist for Team USA.

She was also the sports psychologist for the 2016 Wheelchair Basketball Team, the men and women's gold-medal-winning wheelchair basketball team, so she knows her stuff, and she's doing a five-segment series on physical resilience and mental resilience and emotional resilience, and other topics as well, so I'm excited right now actually to throw it to Roberta and let her explain and share about what she's doing with this series.

Dr. Roberta Kraus: I'm gonna make two points, which are the framework for this entire series, and I call these BFOs.

It stands for "Blinding Flash of the Obvious."

They kind of just hit ya right here.

The first BFO is this: Resiliency is not just a personal issue.

It is a family and parent issue.

It's an educational issue.

It is a community issue.

It is a professional issue, and you know what?

If we're gonna be totally honest, it is also a life issue.

And parents need to teach young people how to have resiliency to learn from all of what life has thrown at them.

The second BFO is this: We're at a time this world where we don't have much reference for this from our past, and it's going to stir up a lot of different memories for us, a lot of different emotions for us.

When we throw in social issues, there isn't one right way to feel right now, and as things change, feelings are going to change daily, weekly, and monthly, and because there's no right way to feel right now, no one should tell you how to feel.

That is okay.

In teaching our Olympic-Paralympic athletes resiliency techniques, we teach them about being consistent top performers, meaning how do you perform your very best on a consistent level, regardless the pressure you face.

And what we teach in this, regardless of what has happened to you in the past, regardless of what pain and challenge you're facing now, it is important that you build up your own personal bank account of resilience techniques to help you be at your personal best.

And those dimensions are physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual.

A gold-medal performance, for me, during this series is I wanna help you customize a resiliency tool kit that works for you that allows you to be at your personal best under pressure.

We're gonna do that a couple ways.

One, I am going to actually teach you the techniques that our athletes use to handle pressure situation.

I'm going to actually teach you the stories about athletes that have used these techniques to handle pressure and adversity, and I'm gonna share some of the brain science behind these techniques of why they work.

Hunter: But there's more.

We have more than just Dr. Roberta Kraus.

We have three segments with educational experts.

Dr. Houston is one of our educational experts.

We also have Dr. Newsome and Dr. Benight, that are gonna be leading that series.

We're also talking to kids and getting their reactions of what resiliency means to them.

And so we're equipping, and we're teaching, and we're giving practical advice to those families and to those educators and to those leaders that are lifting up our communities.

Bill: Hunter, fabulous.

The whole process of these series of educational videos to help kids, families, and communities at the United States Olympic-Paralympic Museum is gonna be fantastic.

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