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Whitney Ennis grew up in Bloomington, Indiana. Softball has always been a part of her life, from t-ball at age 5 to now. Whitney went to Indiana University - Purdue University Fort Wayne for her first year of college to play softball. After her freshman year, she transferred to Tennessee State University in Nashville where she currently lives! She played softball her last three years at Tennessee State where she was the starting catcher. 

Whitney has always been the one on her team that was all out for softball and maybe borderline obsessed. That drive has led her to where she is today, coaching young girls to achieve their softball dreams. Dreams in Action provides one-on-one hour long private lessons. 

At Dreams in Action, Whitney strives to focus on each individual player as she works with them. She works on individual skills with each athlete and does not have a set routine. Whitney strives to be each girl’s coach, mentor, and friend as she works with them. 

Growing Up & College Softball

I grew up in a Chrisitan household and my family was pretty active in the church. I had friends who were also active in the church. As I have grown old, I have realized that was more of a childlike faith and I am growing more in wisdom. I am learning a lot more that my faith in college is not where I thought it was. 

My freshman year, I was definitely an outsider in my team. I went to church, but I also partied and had my freshman moments. Many times, I got bullied for that, mainly by nonchristians. I had a roommate who was spreading rumors about me and my teammates believed those rumors and lies. 

Thankfully, one of my best friends to this day, transferred in from a junior college after my first semester. We traded roommates so that we could live together and we were stuck together like glue. But eventually, we ended up getting bullied together a little bit. 

I remember distinctly, our seniors called a team meeting because we were about to start the conference tournament. You could tell there was some bad blood and negative energy on the team. So, the meeting ended up being a sort of bash Whitney and Jenna kind of meeting. 

And that was the moment that I knew I was done. But I didn't know I would transfer yet. In my mind, you didn't transfer. That was my mindset. I was just gonna stick it out because I was always told that you don't quit on something. 

At the end of our conference tournament, we lost our first game and had to wait a few days to fly out. Our coach decided to have our end of year meetings at the hotel. And she came to me, not in the best way, and I did not feel appreciated in that moment.

That was when I called my dad and said, “Dad, I need to transfer.” That Monday when we got home, I drove to campus and asked my coach for a release. She was very gracious and gave that to me. 

That summer, I started working out a lot and was really trying to figure out my path and where I was supposed to go. TSU came up and I visited the campus. I loved it and loved that it was in Nashville (a dream city of mine). 

To this day, I don't really know why I was the one being bullied. I wasn't the only one on my team who went to church. I don't know if it was intimidation or an insecurity, which I believe bullying stems from a lot of our own insecurities. But I think it was just something in their lives, that my teammates were going through. 

And that is something that you don't see on TV when people are playing games. You don't see the back end of the teammates and the relationships that are formed. You don't see the toxicity that sometimes college sports can bring. And you don't even see it on your official visit. 

That summer, after I decided to go to TSU, I began dating a guy that I ended up dating through the rest of my time in college. That relationship really grew my faith mainly because it grounded me. I didn't party as much after that. Whenever my teammates asked if I wanted to go out, I would say no. I only went to things that I felt safe at and things that I knew I could control myself at. 

Transferring Made Me A Better Teammate

Teammate wise, that made me want to be more of an encourager. I also felt like I held back in the relationship portion with my teammates. Not with everyone but I was very particular about who I shared things with. When I transferred, there was definitely a wall up at first. I really wanted to be that encourager, that leader, that servant because no one could really bully that part. That had nothing to nitpick at because I was only the encourager, I was only someone who served them. 

I was also greeting them at the door or high fiving them as they were leaving the field or something. Unfortunately, there were still some people who didn't like me. But I think that is a part of college sports, not everyone is going to get along. 

Not everyone is going to like you. That is what helped me grow my faith and be a better teammate is learning to be a servant. Sometimes, not everyone is going to like you, but that is not going to change how God feels about you and that is not going to change how you’re going to treat them. 

I don't think that everyone is meant to get along, but you are all there because of softball. You're all at the same school because of softball. It's about trying to get to those goals together. That doesn't mean you have to hangout together outside of practice or have to be the best of friends but you sports graciously hand you friends. And it is your choice on how you cultivate those friendships and which ones are positive for you and which ones you need to keep to just softball. 

Coaching Is A Safe Space

I am drawn to coach girls with drive. I think that comes from any background. I don't know their story at the beginning. I create a relationship and then they start to open up to me. And with them opening up to me, it makes me want to work ten times harder to make softball an enjoyable experience. Sports can so often become a negative atmosphere and what people once used as a get away can become something that can now cause them a lot of anxiety. 

I want to create a space for girls that makes them feel safe, but also that makes their drive ten times more than it was. And makes them more confident in themselves as a person and not just in a sport. I focus a lot on not just the girls' performance but how hard they work. I always tell them, if you give me 110% and you fail, I am not going to be upset with that. 

It's about creating that as a characteristic in them. Once you get into the real world, how much are you going to give to your job or how much are you going to give to your relationship or your friendships? Ultimately you are going to see the drive and success come into play with that.

What once was a safe space [sport] has become a place of anxiety. What happens, why does that happen? How do you coach someone through that?

I think that happens when we put our sport as our identity. When our identity is flushed with negativity or things that we are not used to or we put a lot of pressure on ourselves, that is what causes a lot of anxiety. 

A good way to compartmentalize that is something that Tim Tebow said is, “Success is about you, but significance is about other people”. I think that is how I coach a lot of my girls. I want them to be successful, but ultimately I want the significance of dreams and actions to be all about them. So when you start to think about your why and why you play the sport you do, it is never about yourself. It is always about other people. 

My biggest why when I was playing college softball was I went on a mission trip while I was in high school and I met this little girl named Maria. She doesn't have the opportunity that I do. And she was always my why. When I felt anxious or overwhelmed or when I was being bullied, I thought of her. I would thnk, she doesn't get these opportunities. She is stuck in a little town in the Dominican Republic with a dirt floor and a field that we put together while I was there. And that she may not have the opportunity to chase after the passion that God has placed on her life. Whether that be sports, school, writing, or singing, she doesn't have the opportunities that we do here. 

So, I think a lot of the time that anxiousness comes from us putting it all on ourselves. When we can take that opportunity to not think about us and think about, why did we start in the first place? 

What happens if our why is just to be the best for ourselves?

I think you need to look a little deeper into your heart. When I was 5, I was not thinking about being the best. I was just having a good ol’ time. I was having fun, I was running the bases, probably the wrong way from which I should have been running. I think you need to look back at that 5 year old self and think, “why did I start playing? I started playing because it was fun”. 

As I got older, I wanted to be the best I could, but why did I want to be the best I could? And then you go into your goals - why did I want to play Division I softball or D2 or NAIA? Why did I want to play at that level? You just keep going back to why you started in the first place.

One girl in particular stands out to me from TSU, she knew her role. She knew she probably wasn't going to get a ton of playing time. She was a walk-on on the team but she enjoyed it. She brought so much life and light to the field. You could go to her and she would give you the biggest bear hug after you just struck out. And I believe that she truly knew her significance was not based on her getting on the field or not. 

Although, yes, of course she wanted to be playing. She wanted to be doing that, but she ultimately knew that her role was to encourage all the girls on the field. I think we can learn a lot from her because she didn't put her worth in playing on the field. 

We can almost trace it back to that. If our sport has become a super anxious place, it is probably because we are basing our significance on success and not on others. Ultimately, significance is really tied to identity. If we are using our psort, as our identity, to feel like we matter. When we do not succeed, we are not going to matter. And that is ultimately setting us up to fail because there is not winning. Then when your sport ends, your identity and significance ends too. - Natalie Lawrence

When you think about the UConn women's basketball team who had a huge winning streak and lost a game. That game was all over the news, it was a huge deal, but for them I think it was inevitable. They were eventually going to lose a game. I think that success can be defined differently for different people. 

For my teammate from TSU, she was successful in her role. And that may not have been successful to her, but I found it to be extremely successful in her encouragement. Even when you fail, you are still growing. It is when you choose to just stay down that you are actually failing. I don't believe that ‘failure’ is a true failure until you quit trying. 

Turning Dreams into Goals

My mission statement is “elevating athletes, one dream at a time”. Focusing on how we can turn those dreams into goals and those goals into reality. In my initial lesson with each girl, I ask them, what do you want? Do you want to play college softball? Do you just want to have fun? Do you want to get better?

From there I break down each dream into a goal. You have long term goals and short term goals. With the long term goals, I usually make until the end of a season. With a big dream, like playing college softball, you have to have shorter long term goals within that dream. 

For example, you might want to bat 350 by the end of your high school season. A short term goal will always be connected to a long term goal. Short term goals are weekly goals - what can I be doing every week to achieve that long term goal? So short term goals will change, I try to change them about every four weeks. And then they get a new short term goal that coincides with the long term goal. 

Some long term goals, you are going to fall short of. I always challenge my players to make longer term goals a little bit of a stretch - goals that aren't easily attainable but they can get to with hard work. 

Ultimately those long term goals are going to turn into your dream becoming a reality because of all the work you put into it.

Wanting to play college athletics is a huge goal and there are a lot of things that go into it - confidence, performance, grades are all huge. I always have a confidence goal which every short term goal that goes with a confidence goal is always writing. I have them write 100 sentences a week that are the exact same thing, but write something that is so genuinely extraordinary that it is going to build their confidence. 

For example, If a girl wants more confidence in catching in general. I am going to have her write 100 times a week, “I am the best catcher in the United States of America”. Something so big that will slowly start building her confidence more and more. Soon she will start feeling like she is the best catcher on the team and that confidence will continue to grow. 

Ultimately, we go from dream -> long term goal -> short term goal but we have different types of long term goals with confidence, performance, and grades/school. I always do grade checks with the girls I coach. Any grade less than an A or B is normally some sort of running punishment because I want to keep that standard for those girls. Because you wont get to play in college if you don't keep your grades up. 

One flame crosses another flame and it makes it bigger. And when people unite around that flame, it makes a massive fire. Ultimately that makes a bigger light and Jesus is light. So when we all come together, it makes it bigger, more noticeable. 

Growing in confidence

Confidence has a lot of different parts to it, but I think one is being able to visualize it and write it down. Writing it on paper is something that you can go back to and look at whenever you feel less than or not up to that standard. It also has to do with how you perform. When you start to see all your hard work paying off, that builds confidence as well. 

But when your confidence is in the Lord, you are more confident in everything. Just because he is then flowing from inside out and that confidence seeps into different parts of your life. 

It kind of comes back to the flame. When you are confident in the Lord, have mental confidence, and all of this confidence comes together to make one big confidence flame. 

Coaching a Dream 

You have to have dreams that scare you but not dreams that are going to make you feel unworthy because you are not going to get there. Like the long term goals, you want a challenge that's a little bit of a stretch to get there but I think that with dreams its almost like you have tiered in a way. Like if a soccer player wants to make it to the USA team, first they have to make it to the college level. 

I think that dreams can also be long term and then broken down. But it is also important to open our eyes to see all the options. There are so many Division 1 softball schools outside of the conferences that are shown on TV. And you don't need to be on one of those teams to be noticed or to achieve the USA goal that you might be wanting to get to. 

For example, Steph Curry went to Davidson College which is not one of the big schools shown on TV, but he is currently one of the best players in the NBA.

Faith, Goals & Coaching 

Dreams in Action is all built on Phillipians 4:13. I think sometimes we look at that verse a little bit differently. Philippians 4:13 is often looked at in a way of “God give me the strength to successfully hit this at bat” or “successfully strike this girl out”. But it is really we can do anything because of Christ’s strength in us. He has already given us the strength. 

We already have the strength that Christ has given us, so now we have to go forth with all the work we have done, knowing that we have the strength of the Lord on our side. 

I talk to the girls I coach openly about my faith. Not all of the girls I coach are there and that's totally okay, but I want to show them where I stem from. And in a way, goal setting and confidence wise - those are things that I have learned from my faith. 

In a way, they are learning the words of the Bible and the way God works throughout my coaching without being in your face about it. Because I think that can be overwhelming for young girls. 

So I make it known that my faith is what drives me but I really strive for them to be a well rounded female that can go into the world and spread kindness and love, have a drive that is 110%, have confidence that whatever they put a lot of work into Christ’s strength is with them. 

Does Stronger Faith Equal More Confidence?

Yes - I really do think so. I know how I am now compared to when I thought I had a relationship with the Lord. My confidence is so much more in who I am. I have always been who I am, but my relationship with the Lord has really boosted my confidence. Which has carried over into how I coach and softball. 

There are so many softball coaches in the world and so many coaches that coach catching. All of these girls could choose to go to someone else, but each time I get a new athlete I tell them, “you are a part of my family, no matter what”. I think that statement comes from confidence in the Lord. 

It doesn't matter if a girl is going to leave more or if she comes to me or any of those things, my confidence is still in him. And he gave me the opportunity to coach them for a little bit. 

Ultimately, if a girl were to ‘fail’ I want her to have confidence in the fact that the Lord is the one who defines her. That missed play or that strike out or that dropped ball does not define who they are.

Rapid Fire Questions:

What are you loving right now?

• I just came out with a podcast so I am loving that. It is called Coffee with Friends. It is meant to show females what a true authentic friendship in which you can talk about true, raw hard stuff. In the first episode we talk about heartbreak and how you can use that to build a relationship with the Lord. And how he can move you out of that rather than turning to the things of this world.

  What are you listening to right now?

• My go to is Maverick City.

  What motivates you?

• Something I heard in the book I am reading, Chase the Lion, it talks about being so fearful that I am going to come to the end of my life and that God didn't use me how he meant to use me. So that's what motivates me, I want to reach anyone and everyone I can to talk about the goodness of the Lord. 

  What is the best advice you have been given?

• My dad always told me “you can't lead a dog to water if it doesn't want to drink”. When it comes to teammates, you can always be an encourager and leader but that doesn't mean that everyone is going to listen. We can't put our worth in that.