The Coach Who Wrote the Playbook He Wished Existed
The Story
Hunter Price planned on coaching forever. That was until he felt pulled into something bigger.
By 26, he was a varsity head coach. By 30, he was Wisconsin Coach of the Year, holding school records for playoff wins and season wins. The trajectory was clear, and then, while mowing his lawn in 2022, he felt a quiet, unmistakable pull to walk away from the profession he had built his entire life around.
That moment led to Prepare to Compete: The Coach’s Guide to Connection That Wins The Margins, a book about what it actually takes to win when your roster doesn’t have the most talent or your program doesn’t have the biggest budget. It’s a book about caring, and why caring, done right, is the most powerful competitive tool any coach has.
“If you care about people — like truly care about people — you can outperform your talent. In any scenario where you’re just like, ‘I just don’t have the talent,’ whether it’s a sports team or something else, if you truly care about the culture and the team cares about the culture, you’re gonna compete higher than you’re capable of with just your talents alone.”
The Curiosity
After stepping away from coaching, Hunter launched a podcast for coaches. He had stacks of written material from years on the sideline. Hunter continued to test the material with different audiences, refine it, and watch what landed. What he kept coming back to was a gap he saw everywhere in sports and, more broadly, in leadership. Coaches were obsessed with talent, stats, and the visible wins, leaving the elements that actually moved teams: effort, communication, coachability, and attitude, ignored because they weren’t highlight-reel material.
“Whenever you turn on ESPN or get on social media, and you see highlights, you’re seeing the scoring plays. ‘Cause that’s what’s cool. But those don’t win you the games. It’s everything in between, what we call the margins in sports.”
That’s the book Hunter was determined to create. Not a tactics manual. Not an X’s-and-O’s breakdown. A framework for building the kind of culture where players run through walls for each other and where winning becomes a byproduct of genuinely caring about the people in the room.
The Effort
Hunter had spent years watching coaches often blame everything but their own shortcomings: Referees. Players. Talent gaps. He knew this because he had done it too. Approaching it this way didn’t win games or make better players.
His book asks for something different of coaches: Model the behavior and hold yourself to the same standard you hold your team.
“As a coach, if I want my players to be able to say, ‘I screwed up, I’m sorry,’ then as a coach, I need to be able to say, ‘I screwed up, I’m sorry.'”
He tells a story about a playoff game. The night before, Hunter decided to install a surprise new defense, something clever, something that would catch the other team off guard. Five minutes in, they were down 15 to 0. After the game, he stood in front of his players and told them it was on him. He told them that if anyone asked, they had full permission to say the coach cost them the game. It was the truth. And modeling that accountability, he says, taught his kids more than any scheme ever could have.
The Solution
When it came time to publish, Hunter didn’t want a transactional experience. He wanted a team that understood what coaches actually go through: the identity, the sacrifice, the years of building something with people who would eventually move on. He found that in ShareYourStory.com and their publishing arm, Streamline Books.
The fit felt right quickly. The company’s approach to storytelling matched the way Hunter feels about coaching: it’s about the people, not the presentation. For Hunter, it wasn’t about the product; it was about getting the message right and making sure it reached the coaches who needed it most.
The Journey
With Hunter’s research, he created the four-level framework at the heart of Prepare to Compete: heart of Prepare to Compete: the Sloth, the Vortex, the Ally, and the Heartbeat. The framework came from real players, real locker rooms, and real moments where he watched teams either pull together or fall apart. These weren’t concepts he invented sitting at a desk. They were patterns he had observed coaching in the basketball-talent hotbeds between Madison and Milwaukee, going up against programs with deeper rosters and bigger budgets.
The writing process gave him a structure for ideas he had been carrying for years. It also gave him a reason to formalize what he had been doing informally on his podcast, connecting with coaches across the country from Arkansas to California, Florida to the Carolinas, who were all wrestling with the same questions about culture, accountability, and what it means to truly lead.
Listen to the full episode here.
The ROI
Before the book even fully launched, coaches were already reaching out.
That’s the nature of material that cuts close to real experience. Coaches who read early copies or heard Hunter talk about the framework recognized themselves in the characters made up in the framework: The Sloth who never causes a problem but never helps you win one. The Vortex who lights up a game but slowly destroys everything around them. The Ally who shows up and works without needing the spotlight. The Heartbeat who makes an entire team function at a level beyond its individual parts.
The coaching connections Hunter built through his podcast, Voice Vision Victory, are already paying it forward. His book is being used as a staff resource by coaches across the country, which is exactly where it started: one friend, one early draft, and an immediate “we’re using this.”
What’s Next for Hunter Price
Hunter Price lives in Springfield, Illinois, where he’s now a pastor alongside his coaching and speaking work. He continues to host Voice Vision Victory, where a weekly Bible study sits right alongside coaching content and blog posts from Hunter and other contributors. He speaks to teams and leaders about culture, resilience, and purpose-driven performance. He holds open the possibility that coaching may come back around someday.
What Prepare to Compete has done is give the message a permanent home. Whether someone finds him through the book, the podcast, or a speaking engagement, the core idea stays the same: care about your people, work hard at it, and you will compete at a level your talent alone could never get you to. For coaches who are looking to build on more than just talent, the playbook is here.
Prepare To Compete validates what a lot of coaches already feel in their bones but haven’t had language for. That caring isn’t soft. That culture isn’t a buzzword. The margins, effort, attitude, coachability, and communication are exactly where games and seasons are decided.
