The Duke women's basketball coach spent a minute motivating her players in 2022. That short oratory has made a big impact in the two years since.
coach Kara Lawson keeps the messages sent to her over the last year and a half in a tidy three-ring binder in her office. They only tell a fraction of the story. Open social media, find her now famous"Handle hard better" video and scroll through the hundreds of comments:They keep going and going, nearly all of them applauding Lawson and the 2-minute, 49-second message she delivered to her team in the summer of 2022.
Though she first spoke the words in 2022, they have real lasting effects today, as her Duke team prepares for the NCAA tournament. The video message still gets shared on social media, and Lawson rarely goes anywhere without being stopped and asked about her speech -- even at the TSA line in the airport. She keeps"Handle hard better" bracelets either in her bag or pocket to hand out when the inevitable interaction happens.
William spent three days cooking. He was there to greet the team when the team bus pulled up. It was the first time he had met his daughter's college teammates. Robinson stepped off the bus, gave him a hug and said,"Mr. Lawson, you're the only dad that's not there." Though William Lawson didn't watch the George Washington game in person, the conversation proved to be a turning point.
Lawson had never thought about it that way. But all the life lessons she learned from her dad and Summitt could be poured into others. At the time, she was doing television work for ESPN and had dipped her toe into coaching. Lawson said that conversation recentered her, and she decided to pursue coaching to fulfill a lifelong dream.
When Steve Buches first saw the video, scrolling on X, he felt as if Lawson was speaking directly to him. As a formerfootball player and high school football coach, Buches always finds himself seeking out motivational videos to show both his kids and his players. This one, though, felt different.The Buches family had been going through significant challenges. One of his four children, Stephen, was born with a genetic mutation that causes intractable epilepsy.
"Even though Stephen is not here anymore, it was one of the first things that we thought of, that we have to handle hard better. We told the girls, 'This is going to be really hard,'" Steve said, fighting through tears."But slowly over time, we will handle it better. Then to see that ... it was really awesome."He was about halfway through his immunotherapy and chemo treatments when he saw the"Handle hard better" message on Instagram.
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