The Academy Insider Podcast - Your Guide to The Naval Academy Experience
The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families. Through the perspective of a community of former graduates and Naval Academy insiders, this podcast will help you learn about life at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. Through our shared experiences, Academy Insider guides families through the anxiety and frustration caused by lack of understanding, misinformation, and confusion. This platform is designed to better relationships between midshipmen and their loved ones. This podcast is not affiliated with the United States Naval Academy, the United States Navy or Department of Defense. The thoughts and opinions are exclusively those of your host and his guests.
The Academy Insider Podcast - Your Guide to The Naval Academy Experience
#097 From USNA to the MLB: Serving America While Chasing Big League Dreams (Part 2)
In this compelling continuation of our conversation with Mitch Harris, we explore the profound impact of faith, resilience, and the Naval Academy experience on overcoming life's toughest challenges.
Mitch shares his raw, honest journey of rediscovering faith after a moment of crisis, offering hope to those facing similar struggles. His story resonates deeply with junior officers and midshipmen grappling with their own spiritual doubts amidst the rigors of service.
Key Insights from Mitch's Journey:
- The power of returning to core beliefs during times of uncertainty
- How seemingly coincidental moments can shape our spiritual path
- Lessons from the Naval Academy that prepare us for life's hardships
- The critical importance of community and vulnerability in overcoming isolation
- Translating military grit into pursuing dreams in civilian life
Mitch's reflections on his time at Annapolis reveal how the daily challenges and adversities faced by midshipmen serve as crucial preparation for life's unexpected turns. His story is a testament to the enduring impact of the Naval Academy experience, far beyond just developing military skills.
From Annapolis to the Major Leagues
We also delve into Mitch's unique journey from naval officer to professional baseball player. His perspective on navigating the minor leagues as an older rookie showcases how military discipline and resilience can fuel the pursuit of lifelong dreams.
This episode offers invaluable insights for:
- Current and future midshipmen seeking perspective on their challenges
- Junior officers navigating faith and personal growth
- Anyone facing setbacks in chasing their aspirations
- Parents and family members supporting loved ones through military service
Join us for an inspiring conversation about faith, perseverance, and the unexpected ways our past experiences prepare us for future success. Mitch's story reminds us that with the right mindset and support, we can overcome any obstacle in our path.
If you want to check out Mitch's book, here is the link: https://a.co/d/4nQZmbE
The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families.
Grant Vermeer your host is the person who started it all. He is the founder of Academy Insider and the host of The Academy Insider podcast. He was a recruited athlete which brought him to Annapolis where he was a four year member of the varsity basketball team. He was a cyber operations major and commissioned into the Cryptologic Warfare Community. He was stationed at Fort Meade and supported the Subsurface Direct Support mission.
He separated from the Navy in 2023 and now owns The Vermeer Group, a residential real estate company that specializes in serving the United States Naval Academy community with nationwide consulting and connection.
We are here to be your guide through the USNA experience.
Connect with Grant on Linkedin
Academy Insider Website
Academy Insider Facebook Page
If you are interested in sponsoring the podcast, have an idea, question or topic you would like to see covered, reach out: podcast@academyinsider.com.
Hi everyone and welcome back to part two of this episode with Mitch Harris. If you have not listened to part one, go back to the previously released episode this past Friday. I'm excited for you to get to listen to part two. This is an incredible conversation and again, his book is titled my Private War an incredible read and so much to glean from it, from the Naval Academy experience to overcoming adversity and relentlessly chasing dreams. Go check it out. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoy the rest of this episode.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, they're gonna have to check out the book for sure, and I just I appreciate you sharing that story. You know, I think it's something really interesting because you talk early on in the book about faith and how important your faith was in your upbringing and how important your faith was in your entire life and kind of in that moment for the first time, you really felt it crumble. And so I guess kind of back to you is how did you, how did you call back? How do you find solitude and kind of reestablish your relationship with God and find your faith? And I think again, this is something that a lot of junior officers, a lot of midshipmen do struggle with is kind of finding a crumbling of faith due to a lot of the difficulties of life as a junior officer, and I'd love to just kind of hear how you went through that journey to re-find your faith. Yeah, it was not easy, you know. I think the hardest part was trying to to re-find your faith.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, it was not easy. Uh, you know, I think the hardest part was trying to. You know, just look inward and try to figure out who. Who am I at my core? Who am I? What, what do I believe?
Speaker 2:And you know, thankfully having a great foundation, uh, from my childhood, from my upbringing, I just went back to the core of what I believed and I just thought, all right, god, I do believe in you.
Speaker 2:I don't understand what's going on, I don't know why things are happening, but, man, I'm just going to trust that it's going to work out in your plan. And really, quite frankly, that's all I felt like I could do. And as I just, kind of, to your point, just kind of crawled back, slowly but surely, I was just like, all right, I need help because, man, I don't know which way to turn, I don't know what way is up. Each day is a struggle but, man, I'm just going to rely that you're going to continue to give me strength each and every day to get through this and give me hope and peace for what's to come. And, man, that helped and seeing that come to fruition day in and day out, when there was tough times, and just kind of going back and be like I just I can't in these moments, I just I just can't God without you, and that was, that was a big thing for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, absolutely, and I think it again. It's really interesting too again, as someone of faith and a believer too right, just the power of the Holy Spirit to kind of just give your mom that push to like feel something in the moment, just to give you a call, right, like just to call you in that moment yeah, there's quite a few things in my story that you know.
Speaker 2:If you don't believe, um, hey on you. But uh, you try to tell me. There's that many coincidences. One story I don't know, uh, you know, and that's where it's like dude, you know, there's so many things that happen and obviously, obviously, my mom calling literally as I'm grabbing the door handle was one of the big ones. And her knowing, just having that mom instinct, knowing something's not right, asking the right questions, and then me just quite frankly losing it on the phone with her, the phone with her, um, yeah, I mean it's, it's interesting how, how he works in in in mysterious ways, man and and puts me with the right people at the right time and and have people you know cross paths at the right time. So many of that's you know happened throughout my story and, um, you know, it just leads me back to him every time. I think of these things. It's just, yeah, it's my story, but hopefully people see him through my story, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1:Um, and you know, obviously we have a big Naval Academy audience on this podcast and so I do want to almost tailor this back a little bit to your time in Annapolis. And you know, do you ever look back on the struggles, the daily grind, the difficulties, like the ups and downs, the adversity you faced in Annapolis, and look back almost in gratitude that it prepared you to handle some of these like really tough life moments, not just about the Navy but about life? Does that ever come back to you? Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, some of my darkest moments up till you know, the ones we just spoke about were at the academy. I mean it's hard for a reason. I mean college in general is difficult, you know. Being away for the first time, making new friends, having situations, facing failures, it's tough.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, there's many times where, man, I realized that, man, I need support, I need accountability, I need close friends and people that I can trust to keep me in check, to be like, hey, dude, don't have those negative thoughts, make sure you're staying positive, keep pushing. These are the things that we learned at the academy, not only about ourselves but about our people around us. Who do we surround ourselves with, who's in our corner, and so that was a lot of things that it took time again to get there, but then I realized, like man, I'm not. First of all, I'm by myself. This loneliness is not good, you know. And so I got to keep the people around me and keep the right people that are going to kind of push me and hold me to the standards that they know that I hold myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1:Again, it's something that I talk a lot to midshipmen families about, right, like I have a lot of parents, like midshipmen parents, reach out to me concerned, worried because their son or daughter's having a really hard time Like they're.
Speaker 1:They're they're really struggling, right, and you know it's always it's great to hear these stories and it's great when people have the vulnerability to share the adversity they go through, the struggles they go through, because, again, this is what I talk about, the whole power of the midshipman experience being, about being in Annapolis, is becoming someone who handles the hard moments of life better, right, and it's not just about the direct translation to Navy skills, it's the ability to to waddle through a bunch of BS, to handle difficulties, to handle the downtimes, to handle those moments where you want to go into isolation, but you know you need your tribe. You know you need to ask for help, because that is universal in life when you're going through struggles, right, and what's beautiful about the Naval Academy is sometimes those are isolated. You know you need to ask for help, because that is universal in life when you're going through struggles, right, and what's beautiful about the Naval Academy is sometimes those are isolated, like or not isolated, but they're in a bubble right, like we're going through really difficult times but you're in a safe environment, and to be able to get practice at that, fighting through adversity, asking for help. You know, not allowing it's something you said to me off air. Actually is this idea that isolation breeds temptation and when you're going through really difficult times, instead of staying in that isolated state, the beauty of the Naval Academy is that there are people there who understand your struggle and understand your feeling and you have a tribe there. Yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 2:It's too often, especially during you know you, you come back during the winter. Uh, you know the dark days dark days baby.
Speaker 2:And it is tough because, man, you just come off of a high of of Christmas and and having family and the closeness of everybody, and then, like you said, that isolation, man of, like man, I've got to go back to school and you know the relationships and all the other things and if you don't have the right group around you or people that you can trust in to just say like, hey, you know, I need to talk about this, or hey, let's go grab a coffee, or hey, let's go grab lunch, or whatever man, those are, it's tough, you can't do it on your own and I can't stress that enough to people Um, man, grab someone, go to steerage, go go to to dog and go somewhere and and and share a meal, share a coffee and just and just kind of man, you don't have to be ultra vulnerable, but man, just open up the slightest bit and just let them know like, hey, I'm just having a rough time and I just wanted to tell someone because I just want to change my mindset a little bit and hopefully having this conversation will help.
Speaker 2:But something that small makes a massive impact and so hopefully, if someone is listening that's going through that and having those moments, or you know someone who's having those moments, call out. You reach out to them and talk to them and just let them know that you're thinking about them, because those do go a long way.
Speaker 1:Never underestimate the impact you can make with small action, man. Exactly that's what it all comes down to that little bit of care, that little bit of attention, that little bit of effort to show that you're thinking about them and care man, can make a huge, huge difference and, like you're saying, coming back to the dark ages, driving over the Naval Academy Bridge, knowing you're going back to prison.
Speaker 2:I'll never forget the days coming over the bridge and just thinking God, not again.
Speaker 1:Oh, man, well, yeah, again. I think the beautiful thing again when we come back to your book and your story is that you do. You fight through. You fight through this adversity in a relentless chase of your dream right, which leads to Major League Baseball, and so I want to give you the opportunity to turn it over. Now is like everything that we've talked about for the past. You know, 35 minutes in this get together. How did it prepare you then, now out of the Navy to fight that grind which is Minor League Baseball, and how was that experience for you?
Speaker 2:Well, just to give you kind of perspective, I was older than my manager on first season, so that was an interesting dynamic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so, and our, you know, our number one draft pick that year was an 18 year old and I was 27. So I mean, that was the clubhouse, I mean it was. It was a very interesting dynamic, but, man, it was cool because it gave me the perspective of like man. You know what like here it is. I get to grind for what I've, what I've been chasing my whole life and all this work, all this anticipation is for these moments and I either can, you know, mope and complain and say, oh, I'm not, you know, it took too long, I can do all that, or I can just, you know, put my nose in it and just get after it. And I had a blast, I had a lot of fun. It was a lot of hard times, a lot of humbling times, especially when I got back to spring training, my first season, I was grunting, maybe getting at 83 to the plate and just trying to figure out how am I going to get this muscle memory back.
Speaker 2:And we did everything, we just tried to put as much work into it as we could to try to figure out how can I make the opportunity available to get to the big leagues. And all that comes from the grind, from the academy, from the, the Navy and the upbringing, all that I kind of took in culmination and used it when I was in the modern leagues, knowing it was going to be a grind and you're not ever guaranteed a spot. But I knew, if I could just kind of put my work ethic into it, the grit that I knew I had used and gone through, you know, through the Navy and the Naval Academy, that I could achieve whatever I put my mind to. And you know I was going to make them peel that jersey off of me. And you know, thankfully, because of all the experience of, like I said, my upbringing, the Academy, the Navy, it immensely helped the challenge, which was, you know that that that model, the grind though, was short lived. Thankfully it was. It was, it was a grind for sure.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Academy Insider Podcast. I really hope you liked it, enjoyed it and learn something during this time. If you did, please feel free to like and subscribe or leave a comment about the episode. We really appreciate to hear your feedback about everything and continue to make Academy Insider an amazing service that guides, serves and supports midshipmen, future midshipmen and their families. Thank you.
