Photo by: Rob Moseley/GoDucks.com
Ducks Take "Growth Mindset" Into Season
07/29/22 | Football, @GoDucksMoseley
UO coach Dan Lanning met with media Friday in Los Angeles to preview the upcoming fall as part of Pac-12 Media Days.
LOS ANGELES — A week before Dan Lanning ascended to the stage at The Novo for Pac-12 Media Day on Friday, he ascended a much higher, much more meaningful summit with the program he now leads.
Lanning opens his first preseason camp as head coach of the Oregon football team on Friday, Aug. 5. Practice that afternoon will be held one week after Lanning met with media covering the conference Friday, and two weeks after the start of what Lanning said will be a new annual tradition for his program.
On Friday, July 22, the Ducks gathered as a team, after holding a celebration of life for teammate Spencer Webb the night before. Webb, who was entering his fifth season as a tight end for Oregon, passed away July 13 in an accident at a local swimming hole. Nine days later, the Ducks as a team ascended to the top of a landmark in south Eugene, Spencer Butte.
The origin story of the name of the butte, which ascends over 2,000 feet high, is murkky. For the Ducks, it has taken on a whole new meaning that is crystal clear.
"Our team has a void," Lanning said Friday from the stage at The Novo during conference media day. "We're missing a brother."
Preseason camp begins next Friday with all the usual storylines facing the Ducks. There's a starting quarterback to identify. Prominent players looking to re-emerge after recovering from injury. Elite recruits hoping to making an early impact now that they're in college.
But for Lanning and the Ducks, this offseason has been anything but usual. On a conference level, USC and UCLA have announced their intended departure, shaking the landscape of college football nationally. And for Oregon specifically, the trauma has been more acute and more personal — director of player personnel and recruiting Don Johnson had to be hospitalized after a medical incident in March, and his recovery remains ongoing. Then, in July, the unfathomable loss of a teammate in Webb.
"We spent a lot of time together as a family, mourned his loss," Lanning said Friday. "Something that you certainly cannot replace. But time, with the heart, it only grows fonder. We want to live. We talked to our players about (how) on your tombstone there's a day when you were born, a day when you pass. But what made Spencer special is how he lived that dash in between those numbers. We want to live, and create a dash that's meaningful."
Lanning said Oregon's theme this season will be growth, and he's borrowing a metaphor crafted by Oregon men's basketball alum, author and motivational speaker Greg Bell, "water the bamboo." The metaphor — that dedicated devotion to watering the soil will eventually lead to exponential growth once bamboo emerges from the ground — has been utilized by the UO football program in the past, and Lanning has rekindled it.
It applies to growth, and to grieving too. To a man, each member of the program will process the loss of Webb at his own speed. At some point, he will come to terms with it, and be able to face the future.
"You'll water that plant every single day, and at times you don't see the growth," said Lanning, who attended Pac-12 Media Day with UO seniors Alex Forsyth and DJ Johnson. "It hasn't come out of the ground. But at some point that plant breaks ground and it grows exponentially. I'm excited to see that investment in our team. I'm excited to see us continue to build, continue to grow in that effort, as we focus on the process and the investment in our players."
One change the Ducks will make under Lanning is to their practice schedule in-season. In recent years, Oregon returned to practice the day after games, and scheduled its weekly off-day for Monday. This season, the UO program program will be off on Sunday, and will return to practice Monday.
Those practices will be all about improvement, whether Saturday brought a win or a loss for the Ducks.
"Being in a growth mindset means you have to learn from successes and failures," Lanning said. "We talked about it at the program I was at before — we'd go to the doctor after a win on Monday morning. We're going to do the same thing here at Oregon.
"We have to figure out what we can get better at. Hopefully you go to the doctor before you get sick. That's certainly the goal for us."
With all that has befallen the UO football program this offseason, Lanning perhaps brought a different perspective to the looming departures of USC and UCLA from the Pac-12, compared with his fellow head coaches. If those departures have had any negative impact on Oregon so far, Lanning hasn't seem them.
"I have zero concerns from that angle, that front, just because I know how strong our brand and product is," Lanning said. "I share a vision that our leadership in the conference and our school shares. …
"There's some great, storied history obviously in this conference. I'm excited about that as that continues forward. The conference champions the last four years are still in this conference. That's something that I'm excited to see and compete against, especially for the next two years."
"I think the biggest way you control that narrative is you go and win games. That's certainly our job at Oregon.
Lanning opens his first preseason camp as head coach of the Oregon football team on Friday, Aug. 5. Practice that afternoon will be held one week after Lanning met with media covering the conference Friday, and two weeks after the start of what Lanning said will be a new annual tradition for his program.
On Friday, July 22, the Ducks gathered as a team, after holding a celebration of life for teammate Spencer Webb the night before. Webb, who was entering his fifth season as a tight end for Oregon, passed away July 13 in an accident at a local swimming hole. Nine days later, the Ducks as a team ascended to the top of a landmark in south Eugene, Spencer Butte.
The origin story of the name of the butte, which ascends over 2,000 feet high, is murkky. For the Ducks, it has taken on a whole new meaning that is crystal clear.
"Our team has a void," Lanning said Friday from the stage at The Novo during conference media day. "We're missing a brother."
Preseason camp begins next Friday with all the usual storylines facing the Ducks. There's a starting quarterback to identify. Prominent players looking to re-emerge after recovering from injury. Elite recruits hoping to making an early impact now that they're in college.
But for Lanning and the Ducks, this offseason has been anything but usual. On a conference level, USC and UCLA have announced their intended departure, shaking the landscape of college football nationally. And for Oregon specifically, the trauma has been more acute and more personal — director of player personnel and recruiting Don Johnson had to be hospitalized after a medical incident in March, and his recovery remains ongoing. Then, in July, the unfathomable loss of a teammate in Webb.
"We spent a lot of time together as a family, mourned his loss," Lanning said Friday. "Something that you certainly cannot replace. But time, with the heart, it only grows fonder. We want to live. We talked to our players about (how) on your tombstone there's a day when you were born, a day when you pass. But what made Spencer special is how he lived that dash in between those numbers. We want to live, and create a dash that's meaningful."
Lanning said Oregon's theme this season will be growth, and he's borrowing a metaphor crafted by Oregon men's basketball alum, author and motivational speaker Greg Bell, "water the bamboo." The metaphor — that dedicated devotion to watering the soil will eventually lead to exponential growth once bamboo emerges from the ground — has been utilized by the UO football program in the past, and Lanning has rekindled it.
It applies to growth, and to grieving too. To a man, each member of the program will process the loss of Webb at his own speed. At some point, he will come to terms with it, and be able to face the future.
"You'll water that plant every single day, and at times you don't see the growth," said Lanning, who attended Pac-12 Media Day with UO seniors Alex Forsyth and DJ Johnson. "It hasn't come out of the ground. But at some point that plant breaks ground and it grows exponentially. I'm excited to see that investment in our team. I'm excited to see us continue to build, continue to grow in that effort, as we focus on the process and the investment in our players."
One change the Ducks will make under Lanning is to their practice schedule in-season. In recent years, Oregon returned to practice the day after games, and scheduled its weekly off-day for Monday. This season, the UO program program will be off on Sunday, and will return to practice Monday.
Those practices will be all about improvement, whether Saturday brought a win or a loss for the Ducks.
"Being in a growth mindset means you have to learn from successes and failures," Lanning said. "We talked about it at the program I was at before — we'd go to the doctor after a win on Monday morning. We're going to do the same thing here at Oregon.
"We have to figure out what we can get better at. Hopefully you go to the doctor before you get sick. That's certainly the goal for us."
With all that has befallen the UO football program this offseason, Lanning perhaps brought a different perspective to the looming departures of USC and UCLA from the Pac-12, compared with his fellow head coaches. If those departures have had any negative impact on Oregon so far, Lanning hasn't seem them.
"I have zero concerns from that angle, that front, just because I know how strong our brand and product is," Lanning said. "I share a vision that our leadership in the conference and our school shares. …
"There's some great, storied history obviously in this conference. I'm excited about that as that continues forward. The conference champions the last four years are still in this conference. That's something that I'm excited to see and compete against, especially for the next two years."
"I think the biggest way you control that narrative is you go and win games. That's certainly our job at Oregon.
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