Coach Andy Lopez’s first year at Arizona began with a question.
Not about mechanics.
Not about scouting.
Not about the next opponent.
About identity.
During the week leading into a Pac-10 series, one of Coach Lopez’s handouts appeared in our lockers.
At the top:
How do you want to be identified?
Below that question were Arizona’s Pac-10 conference records from the previous five seasons:
2001 — 12–12
2000 — 8–16
1999 — 13–11
1998 — 12–18
1997 — 13–17
58–74.
A .439 conference winning percentage.
The numbers were not hidden.
They were not softened.
They were right there on the page.
The past was written plainly.
The question was what came next.
The Record Was the Context
The handout was not really about the numbers.
The numbers were the context.
They showed exactly where the program had been.
There was no pretending.
No rewriting the recent history.
No avoiding the reality of the record.
But Coach Lopez did not stop there.
He immediately shifted the focus from what had happened to what the team was going to choose next.
How do you want to be identified?
That changed the conversation.
The past could describe the program.
It did not have to define the next team.
Identity Before Results
It is easy to let results create identity.
Win enough games and people call you successful.
Lose enough and people start expecting more of the same.
Coach Lopez’s question worked in the opposite direction.
Choose the identity first.
Then behave like it.
If you want to be identified as a championship program, the standard has to show up before the championship does.
In preparation.
In practice.
In effort.
In accountability.
In how you respond when things are difficult.
In how you carry yourself when nobody is watching.
Eventually, results become evidence of the standard.
But the standard comes first.
The Choice in Front of Us
The sheet repeatedly used the word:
Champion.
Beside it were alternatives.
The exact wording was blunt.
That was part of the point.
Coach Lopez was forcing the team to think about the identity it was accepting through its actions.
Not the identity it claimed to want.
The identity it was actually building.
Every practice contributed to that answer.
Every repetition.
Every series.
Every decision.
The question was not:
What do you want people to call you?
It was closer to:
What are you willing to become?
The Past Does Not Get the Final Word
Every program inherits something.
A record.
A reputation.
Expectations.
Traditions.
Problems.
Successes.
None of us gets to choose everything that comes before us.
But we do get to choose what we add to it.
That is what makes this handout so powerful years later.
It did not ask the team to erase the past.
It asked us to decide whether the past would continue.
A few years later, the direction of the program looked very different.
Arizona celebrates a super regional victory that sent the program back to the College World Series in Omaha. Newspaper clipping preserved inside a 2004 University of Arizona Baseball program; used for historical and editorial context.
The Answer Is Behavior
One of the themes that ran through Coach Lopez’s locker notes was that answers were not supposed to be verbal.
They were supposed to show up in how you lived and competed.
You can say you want to be prepared.
Then preparation has to show up.
You can say you want to be mentally tough.
Then your response to adversity has to show it.
You can say you want to be a leader.
Then other people have to feel the effect of your leadership.
Identity is not something you announce.
It becomes visible.
Why I Kept the Sheet
I kept many of Coach Lopez’s handouts.
This one has always stood out.
Partly because of the question.
Partly because of the numbers underneath it.
Together, they capture a specific moment in Arizona baseball.
A new coach.
A program with a recent conference history that needed to change.
And a team being asked to decide what it wanted to become.
At the time, it was a sheet of paper in a locker.
Years later, it became an artifact of a philosophy.
The Lesson From the Locker
The lesson is simple.
You cannot always control what you inherit.
You can control what you build next.
Before the results change, the standard has to change.
Before the reputation changes, the behavior has to change.
Before anyone else identifies you differently, you have to decide what you are willing to become.
How do you want to be identified?
The answer comes later.
In the work.
Lessons From the Locker.
Built on Generations of Baseball.