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On Monday, Alabama softball head coach Patrick Murphy spoke to the Alabama football team and shared an ‘impactful’ message.

Defensive coordinator Kane Wommack shared what this message was when speaking to reporters on Tuesday as soon as the topic of tackling came up.

“Today was the first live work that we got,” Wommack said. “You saw our guys at the beginning of practice doing a really good job playing with passion and energy, and Patrick Murphy came in and talked to the team about Mudita, which is a genuine excitement for your teammates almost more than yourself. And so, that really was impactful yesterday when we heard that message, and it was something that we’ve kind of been talking about and searching for. And so, you saw that early within this practice as it went on that guys that started to kind of lose, they’re getting tired and starting to wear down and keeping that same energy as a defense as well. So, tackling and energy, all of that goes hand in hand of being an efficient tackling team.”

Mudita means vicarious joy. This was the mentality that Alabama softball played with last season. It is a mentality that is spreading throughout Alabama athletics. It’s a word that many Alabama basketball fans heard for the first time nine months ago when head coach Nate Oats talked about it.

“We stole a phrase from our softball team — mudita. It means vicarious joy. If you’ve got mudita, you literally have the same joy for your teammates’ success as you do for your own. I think we have it,” Oats said after facing St. John’s last season. “You see these guys getting super excited for each other.”

Mudita is making its way around Alabama athletics, and the most recent program to learn about Mudita is Alabama football.

Wommack said he saw some of the energy and passion today that Murphy was discussing on Monday, adding that the Crimson Tide did not have this kind of energy last year in the season opener against Florida State.

“As a coaching staff, our job is to physically get our players ready to play the game, and a lot of it is the energy and the juice that they play with as well,” Wommack said. “We didn’t do a good enough job at the beginning of last season, We got hit in the mouth early against Florida State, and we didn’t respond in the second half well enough to go win that game. And so, some of that, you could say is tackling, but some of it is the passion, energy and juice that you play with, and both of those things have to show up.”

Alabama is hoping for a strong showing in its home opener against East Carolina on Sept. 5.

This article first appeared on Touchdown Alabama Magazine and was syndicated with permission.

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