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Case Study | Liberty Mens Soccer 2025

 

How authenticity, vulnerability, and conscious performance reshaped a program and carried them to their deepest postseason run in conference.

 

 

1. INTRODUCTION

 

 

In early 2025, Liberty University Men’s Soccer found itself at a crossroads — strong athletes, committed coaches, and a proud institution, yet a team struggling with fear, inconsistency, emotional pressure, and a lack of internal unity.

 

In stepped The Sharing Experience: a human-performance approach rooted in truth, consciousness, vulnerability, and the belief that performance rises or collapses based on the unseen mental, emotional, and spiritual world within the athlete.

 

What began as a mentoring relationship with Head Coach Kelly Findley evolved into a program-wide transformation, reshaping identity, leadership, emotional honesty, communication, and match-day performance. The result was a historic postseason breakthrough — but even more importantly, a shift in who these players became as men.

 

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2. STARTING POINT: WORK WITH HEAD COACH KELLY FINDLEY

 

 

Kelly entered the season carrying deep internal weight:

 

  • Pressure to lead a Division I program

  • Fear of not meeting expectations

  • Tension between his inner truth and external demands

  • Moments of isolation, emotional fatigue, and doubt

 

 

The work focused on:

 

Emotional honesty and responsibility

 

He confronted internal patterns of self-doubt and fear that had been shaping his leadership for years.

 

 

Faith vs. fear

 

He learned to move from “What if this goes wrong?” to “Even if it does, I remain aligned with Highest Truth within me.”

This became a defining moment.

 

 

Leadership from authenticity, not ego

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He began leading with clarity and inner authority rather than pressure or expectation.

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Courageous communication

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Staff interactions, decisions, and player conversations became grounded, direct, and deeply human.

 

This wasn’t sport psychology.

This was inner leadership development in real time.

 

As Kelly changed internally, the entire emotional climate of the team shifted.

 

 

 

 

3. TEAM INTEGRATION: A HOLISTIC HUMAN-PERFORMANCE PROGRAM

 

 

By mid-season, the work expanded across the roster. This included:

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• Weekly 1-to-1 calls with players

 

Exploring fear, identity, shame, pressure, confidence, and conscious awareness.

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• Daily voice-note support

 

Real-time emotional regulation, reframing, grounding, and truth-based guidance.

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• Match-day grounding structures

 

Athletes entered games centred, composed, and aligned with themselves.

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• Mistake reframing and emotional processing

 

Errors were understood through awareness, learning, and Highest Truth — not shame.

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• A rare safe space for total honesty

 

Players opened up about fears, emotional burdens, identity struggles, and internal conflicts they had never shared before.

 

The result was trust, unity, presence, and emotional freedom — and it showed.

 

 

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4. THE EMOTIONAL THEMES THAT TRANSFORMED THE TEAM

 

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4.1 Fear → Courage

 

 

Many players were living in quiet fear:

 

  • Fear of losing their spot

  • Fear of mistakes

  • Fear of disappointing family, coaches, or themselves

  • Fear of not being enough

 

 

Through ASCENDS and conscious grounding, they learned to replace fear with courage, stability, and freedom.

 

 

4.2 Shame → Vulnerability

 

 

Shame thrives in silence.

But when vulnerability is safe, shame dissolves.

 

Players began:

 

  • Sharing their internal truth

  • Releasing emotional pressure

  • Playing with honesty rather than suppression

 

 

As one player said:

 

“It was the safest space to share my deepest fears — and still be met with truth, not judgment.”

 

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4.3 Identity → Presence

 

 

Players detached from:

 

  • Roles

  • External expectations

  • Starting positions

  • Old narratives

 

 

They stepped into:

 

“I am aligned with Highest Truth, with nothing to prove.”

 

This changed everything — especially under pressure.

 

 

 

 

5. INDIVIDUAL BREAKTHROUGHS (Player Quotes)

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“When I lost my starting spot, your encouragement and perspective changed everything.

You helped me through the hardest patches with truth and clarity.”

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“You challenged the way I think.

The ‘even if’ approach changed my mindset on and off the field.”

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“I learned to play freely, grounded in Highest Truth rather than fear.

It was the safest place to share everything — and be met with Highest Consciousness and clarity.”

 

These weren’t performance tweaks.

These were identity shifts.

 

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6. THE POSTSEASON BREAKTHROUGH

 

 

Liberty’s OVC playoff run became a mirror of their internal transformation.

 

The year before, they fell at this same stage.

This season, they broke through emotional and psychological barriers that had held them back.

 

 

What changed?

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Not tactics.

Not formations.

Not athletic training.

 

But:

 

  • Presence

  • Courage

  • Emotional honesty

  • Internal unity

  • Conscious accountability

 

 

This was performance rooted in Highest Truth, not fear.

 

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7. THE COACH’S TRANSFORMATION

 

 

Kelly Findley described his experience as:

 

  • A mirror revealing internal truth

  • A breakthrough in emotional clarity

  • A shift out of fear and into conscious leadership

  • A reconnection with his highest self

  • A new, grounded presence with his players

 

 

He began leading as a man aligned with Highest Consciousness, not expectation or fear.

 

This set the tone for everything that followed.

 

 

 

 

8. THE METHOD BEHIND THE TRANSFORMATION

 

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ASCENDS: The Seven Stages of Conscious Performance

 

 

  1. Awareness – Seeing truth

  2. Sensitivity – Feeling truth

  3. Confrontation – Facing shadow

  4. Expression – Speaking truth

  5. Navigation – Grounded movement

  6. Discipline – Alignment in action

  7. Source / Service – Living from Highest Truth

 

 

This became the team’s internal operating system.

 

 

 

 

9. RESULTS

 

Performance

 

 

  • Deepest postseason run in program history

  • Emotional consistency

  • Improved decision-making under pressure

  • Increased resilience and composure

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Culture

 

 

  • Greater honesty, unity, and trust

  • Players supporting each other’s emotional and inner growth

  • A culture rooted in truth rather than performance anxiety

 

 

 

Individual Development

 

 

  • Identity-strengthening breakthroughs

  • More awareness, emotional stability, and grounded leadership

  • Freedom from fear-based mindsets

  • Connection to Highest Consciousness

 

 

 

Program Impact

 

 

Liberty gained what most Division I programs lack:

 

A holistic, consciousness-based human performance system

that transforms athletes from the inside out.

 

 

 

 

10. WHY UNIVERSITIES CHOOSE THE SHARING EXPERIENCE

 

 

We offer what no traditional service provides:

 

  • Deep human-performance mentorship

  • Conscious leadership development

  • Emotional and identity coaching

  • Real-time support

  • Truth-based, fear-free performance education

  • A system that integrates psychology, spirituality, and human behaviour into one

 

 

No university has this internally.

Almost no programs have access to it externally.

 

 

 

 

11. CLOSING SUMMARY

 

 

Liberty’s 2025 season stands as proof that when athletes and coaches operate from Highest Truth and Highest Consciousness, fear loses its power and performance becomes an expression of inner freedom.

 

The Sharing Experience didn’t just help Liberty improve results —

it transformed who they were as men, leaders, teammates, and human beings.

 

A Division I program reshaped by authenticity, vulnerability, courage, and conscious performance.

 

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