Robert Grilli (Mississauga, Ont.) with the University of Houston Cougars.

By Robert Grilli

Canadian Baseball Network

Intro:

My name is Robert Grilli, I recently graduated from the University of Houston where I was a student-athlete on the baseball team. I grew up in Mississauga, Ontario and my journey can be categorized as taking the road less travelled. Coming out of high school I only had one offer to play baseball at the collegiate level after playing for the Mississauga North Tigers, Mississauga Majors, Georgetown Eagles, St. Michael's College and the Ontario Terriers.

I am what most scouts/talent evaluators would deem “undersized” but what about 99.9% of people can’t quantify is my heart and determination. I knew that if I wanted to play at a top 25 Division 1 program, get a Tier I Education and play in a warm weather state, I would have to take a different path. Therefore, I chose to attend Salt Lake Community College (SLCC) for two years as a student-athlete and subsequently earned a scholarship to attend the University of Houston for my junior year. I was fortunate to have a great support system of teammates and coaches during high school, at SLCC, and UH. These relationships are the ones that helped to shape me into the person that I have become and that I will cherish for the rest of my life.

Robert Grilli with Salt Lake Community College Bruins.

This past semester, while enrolled in a full course load and being “in-season,” I wrote a book called “The Playbook, A Student-Athlete’s Guide to Success.” My goal is to help equip current and prospective student-athletes with a set of tools and life lessons that they will be able to utilize throughout their college tenure.

Why:
During my senior year at university three events occurred in my life that led me to the path that I am on:

1) A professor had asked me to do a video for class regarding the lessons, tools and tips that enabled me to achieve success in this class given my rigorous student-athlete schedule. I didn’t think anything would come out of it as it was basically a small favour that I did for a great proffesor.

Interestingly enough, I had students approach me in class (including student-athletes) introduced themselves while saying “Hey you’re that dude in the video”. Immediately I thought to myself, “shoot what did I do wrong?” but they went on to say that they had implemented into their daily lives some of the tips that I had spoken about in the video.

2) My younger brother Thomas was starting to go through the recruiting process and was on the verge of attending university. Knowing this, over the past year and half, I had been jotting down notes in my I-Phone on lessons/tips/experiences that I’d had throughout my career as a student-athlete and that he would be able to draw upon, implement, and empower him to have success.

3) Our athletic department at the University of Houston had freshman/senior success groups whereby seniors would address questions and inform the freshmen on “what they know now that they wish they knew then”. These meetings are critical for incoming student-athletes, as they truly want to know what they are getting themselves into and were very receptive in asking great questions. I thought to myself, unless you develop a “best friendship” it is going to be extremely difficult to know what these youngsters are dealing with, whether it be handling success or failure.

Solution:
I wanted to assist in allaying some of the many concerns that student-athletes have in the classroom, in sport and socially while adjusting to life as a student-athlete. It’s one thing to identify these concerns but yet another to address it and assist in empowering student-athletes to find success. I felt as though I had identified a need, and I mulled over how I wanted to address it. I first considered building a subscription based website but upon doing further brainstorming, I decided that a book would be the best vehicle to get my tools/tips/experiences consolidated and reach the targeted audience.

I didn’t know the first thing about the process of writing a book other than to just start writing. I then started to think about a publisher, endorsements for the back cover (Paul Quantrill, Maxx Tissenbaum, Lauren Dubois) a foreword, formatting, building a brand, leveraging social media: (@playbook_rg & @grilli1) and how I wanted people to access the book (Available on Amazon:) I reached out to a lot of faculty members at UH, and a close friend to whom I am forever grateful that they were open to meeting with me, hearing me out, and imparting some knowledge on this wide eyed kid who said he was thinking about writing a book. A special thank you to Dr.Felvegi and Dr. Scamell for their selfless guidance and mentorship throughout this process.

Another aspect that was challenging was not telling anyone about it. On Mondays I didn’t have anything until 4pm, Wednesdays until 1:00pm and this is when I would do the majority of my writing. Also, I utilized our time travelling on airplanes to write but I had to make sure my teammates who were sitting beside me were asleep or my brightness on my laptop was really low. I kept this project hush hush as there were times throughout the semester that I didn’t even know if I would complete it. Balancing school, baseball and writing a book were all very time consuming and I didn’t want anyone constantly asking about it as I didn’t even know if this was something I actually wanted to do.

Book:
The book attempts to cover each aspect of a student-athlete’s life with a sports theme carried throughout the book. The title “The Playbook” embraces this theme as the chapters start off with some of my favorite quotes, are identified/numbered as innings, and have bolded words/sentences highlighting important points. The book starts with an intro offering a unique perspective to the reader and then goes into an interactive goal setting exercise.

From there I begin to discuss tools and tips that will allow the student-athlete to successfully balance the “student” part of being a student-athlete, utilizing a calendar/agenda, note taking, studying techniques, tutors, extra credit, homework, and engaging professors. One of my favorite parts of the book is the chapter titled “Golden Tools for A Student-Athlete” whereby topics include everything from meal preparation, courses transferring if you’re going from a Junior College to a University, to dollar fluctuation, which can really affect international students.

Vision:
Simply put the primary purpose of this book is to help others. It started off with me wanting to help my younger brother but upon realizing that there were so many more individuals who could benefit from this, it’s a really fulfilling feeling to be able to bring it to a wider audience. My goal is to have this as a “go-to” resource for every student-athlete in every athletic department in North America and for every prospective student-athlete, no matter which sport. Having taken a unique journey, it allows me to speak on a variety of levels and I have received a ton of great feedback. With travel sports organizations and universities (University of Houston) having already placed orders I know that I am on the right track in empowering and assisting student-athletes in their respective sports throughout their time in college.

Amazon purchase link

Social media accounts: @playbook_rg & @grilli1

Infielder Grilli turns author to help others on college road