By Texas Sports Academy

Look, the way most parents and kids chase a D1 scholarship is backwards.

They obsess over the outcome: What club team? What tournament should we go to? What’s my vertical jump right now?

This is a recipe for burnout. 70% of elite young athletes quit before college. That is a massive failure rate.

They focus on the finish line, but they never build the daily machine to get there.

At Texas Sports Academy, we teach our kids to obsess over the process, not the outcome. The framework we use is called the Harada Method. It is how the best baseball player on the planet, Shohei Ohtani, built his own success.

The Harada Method is a self-reliance system developed in Japan by a former track coach named Takashi Harada. It is about discipline and independence.

It takes an abstract goal—like "be a D1 athlete" or "get a 4.0 GPA"—and turns it into 64 measurable, daily tasks. This process makes the impossible goal feel possible because the kid is only asked to focus on the 64 small things they can control today.

This is what makes the Harada Method different from a simple list. Harada says success is not just about skill. It requires balance across four interconnected parts of life:

You cannot achieve high-level technical skill without a strong foundation in character and daily habits.

The Harada Method's core tool is the Open Window 64 Chart (OW64). Ohtani used this in high school, setting his central goal as "To be the best baseball player in the world."

He surrounded his goal with eight key pillars that supported it. These were not just about athletic skill. The pillars included Fastball Velocity and Hitting Technique alongside non-technical factors like Mental Discipline, Human Nature, and Good Luck. The power of this is the understanding that achieving elite physical status is impossible without a fortified mental and personal foundation.

Ohtani treated luck and character as things he could work on daily. For his Human Nature/Character pillar, he had daily micro-tasks such as: "Show respect to umpires and opponents," "Care for team matters," and the now-famous micro-action, "Pick up trash."

For his Good Luck pillar, his tasks included: "Cleaning the room" and "Reading books."

Ohtani knew that picking up trash and cleaning his room are acts of humility and discipline. These acts feed his mindset, which lets him focus better in training, which then builds his Skill. He wasn't waiting for luck, he was building the habits he needed to be successful.

We use the Harada Method at Texas Sports Academy because it directly counters the biggest problems in youth sports: burnout and a lack of self-ownership.

The core principle remains the same for our middle school scholar-athletes: You cannot achieve the D1 dream unless you manage all four domains—Spirit, Skills, Physical Condition, and Daily Life.

Here is how the method works in our system:

Shohei Ohtani’s career didn't just happen overnight. It is the predictable outcome of 64 tiny things done every single day. If your kid is serious about playing at the next level, their week has to be structured by a system that links character, academics, and skill work. This is the only path to self-engineered mastery.

At Texas Sports Academy, we’re not just another school—we are the place that commits to doubling your child’s odds of receiving a D1 scholarship. We do this by combining elite athletics with superior academics, giving your child the best pathway to D1 success.

This starts with academics: our students learn twice as much in 2 hours compared to traditional schooling. The first step is our educational software that tests for any learning gaps, then creates a personalized curriculum based on those gaps.

To ensure our students have a solid foundation, we have a mastery-based standard where students must show they’ve mastered the subject matter before progressing.

We also have the best way of motivating students in the world. We tell our kids “hey, you can play sports all afternoon but only if you focus and finish your academics first“.

Give a kid that deal and he’ll zip through all his academics.

For athletics, our commitment is that we’ll double your child’s D1 odds. The way we do this is by focusing on skill development and holistic athlete training from the best coaches in Texas.

All of our coaches are professionals who’ve already sent athletes to D1 programs.

When your child joins, they run an assessment to identify any skills gaps your child has in the sport and create a personalized training program tailored to them.

We also focus on holistic athlete training with the science of Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD). This ensures your child can excel in any sport and also greatly reduces the chances of future injuries.

In this newsletter, you will receive a new email every week so you always have the latest insights to guide your young athlete’s training and nutrition.

This newsletter will include:

If you're ready to take the next step toward your child’s future, come take a tour and meet our coaches. Click the link below to get started!

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