She’s made 7 baskets all year. But she’s a critical part of a team with title aspirations
· Yahoo Sports
This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak’s newsletter here.
The other day, one of Sarah Graves’ teammates on the Texas women’s basketball team ran up to her in the locker room.
Visit amunra-opinie.pl for more information.
“I was trying to be like you today at practice, Sarah,” she said. “I was trying to be really enthusiastic and just be a Sarah.”
The teammate then lay on the floor.
“And I’m so drained,” she said.
Graves is a senior walk-on guard for third-ranked Texas, which means she almost never plays. She averages just 1.3 points per game and has made seven baskets all year. She’s the last person on the bench for a team with championship aspirations, and yet, she’s carved out an identity and a role.
At practice, she’s the first one there, going all out on every drill. During games, she leaps off the bench after every big play, never missing a moment to cheer for her teammates. She went viral multiple times this year, for her antics on the sidelines and for finding ways to rally people together off the court.
“There’s a hack to having infinite energy,” Graves said, “and it’s just to stop keeping it for yourself.”
It’s a familiar role for a walk-on on a top college program, a thankless job with little glory, but after four years of committing herself fully to the job, Graves had an epiphany. She knew exactly what she was.
A personality hire.
In the business world, the term might sound like a backhanded compliment — the person hired for their charisma rather than their skills or expertise. But underneath the self-deprecation and TikTok memes, there is a deeper lesson about team building.
Anyone who has ever played sports understands the value of energy givers and culture setters. They boost morale, strengthen team bonds and push others to greater heights. But the role might still be underrated — and misunderstood.
Vanessa Druskat, an associate professor of management and entrepreneurship at the University of New Hampshire, does not like the word “personality,” in part because the definition feels too narrow. And research has found that personality doesn’t necessarily dictate behavior. Situation does. Yet when it comes to someone like Graves, the secret to great teams can still be found in the traits and actions that they exhibit.
“We have this fantasy that if you just put a group of smart, capable people, or capable athletes together, that they’ll just perform well,” Druskat said. “And we don’t tell leaders how to build a team.
“This is how.”
There was a simple reason why I was interested in Graves and the idea of a personality hire: I was one.
I just didn’t know it.
I spent my childhood swimming competitively and earned a scholarship to Towson University. I was never the most naturally talented swimmer, but I made an effort to always be the hardest worker and the most enthusiastic in any room.
Sometimes I felt sheepish about my energy; my family still calls me “Sue Heck,” the relentless, optimistic sister from the ABC sitcom “The Middle.” But when I got to Towson, I started to notice what that energy did for our team. So I memorized my teammates’ goals, cheered louder during sets and stayed longer in the trainers’ room to keep my teammates company during treatment.
It made me perform better, too.
When I was wrapping up my swimming career and applying for graduate school, I asked my coach at Towson, Jake Shrum, to write a letter of recommendation. In it, he shared something that surprised me. When he recruited me, he said, he wasn’t always sure about my times, but he saw me as a “personality recruit.”
When I listened to Graves, I immediately related.
“I think most people hear personality hire and think it sounds like an accident,” Graves told me. “Like someone showed up for fun and got lucky. But it’s the opposite.”
Graves had other Division I offers from smaller schools, but she wanted to attend the Texas business school and major in finance. When she showed up as a freshman, she knew she wouldn’t be playing much, so she tried to challenge herself in other ways. She wanted to be the same energetic, positive person at 5:00 a.m. on a Friday morning in August as she was on a game day in March in front of 10,000 people.
“She does the little things some people don’t want to do,” said Vic Schaefer, Graves’ head coach at Texas.
Some days, Graves thinks of her mother, who raised five children and never seemed to lose an ounce of energy. Other times, she leans on a mental trick she developed to keep her energy high: When she feels exhausted, she looks for another teammate who is dragging. Then she makes it her mission to pick them up.
“I don’t know if there’s data to prove it,” Graves said, “but when you push that energy towards someone else, it somehow circulates back to you.”
Actually, research does support Graves’ argument.
The “broaden-and-build theory,” developed by social psychologist Barbara Fredrickson at the University of North Carolina, states that positive emotions, such as joy and curiosity, help people think more creatively and work better as a team. In short, feeling good can make teams more effective.
“If you’re a coach and you’re only building your roster around the core production,” Graves said, “you’re missing the thing that holds the production together.”
After 30 years of research, Druskat has landed on three core ideas for how leaders can build teams with a great environment:
Build belonging: Show care and give recognition in small ways.
Lead through values: Cheer people on, put in extra effort and go all out even on small things.
Take time to understand the situation: Behavior is driven by culture and situation, not personality alone. People respond to feedback and push themselves when they feel supported and valued.
“I think it is a smart idea for a coach to say, ‘I need some personality hires,'” Druskat said. “‘I don’t have any leadership personalities on the team.'”
By the numbers, Graves plays a small role for Texas, but after four years, her career has taught her an overwhelming lesson.
“Someone has to set the temperature in the room. Someone has to be constantly focused on the synergy, the culture, the mentality,” she said.
“Talented people are more prone to burnout. Every coach needs to have that one person who can help pick them back up and give them energy.”
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Texas Longhorns, Texas Longhorns, Texas Longhorns, Sports Business, Women's College Basketball, Culture, College Sports, Peak, Sports Leadership
2026 The Athletic Media Company