It's 5:40am. I've been up for about an hour. Been awake since about an hour before that.
Cutting the booze and sugared goodies out of my diet (Lenten resolutions) certainly helps my energy level. But I'm pretty fiery at the moment...pretty fired up. Energized...a live wire.
It's volleyball day.
Our team is rolling through the season. Five wins in a row, two games left to play before the playoffs. Today's game will be the second toughest opponent in our division...a perennial rival of the school when it comes to sporting events. We went out to support the girls team last week and stuck around to scout the boys in preparation for today's match. They're no great shakes: a bunch of big kids with the same hairstyle who get by on their athleticism and some questionable calls from their home line-judge (need to make sure we're on the correct side of the court today).
I'm not terribly worried about losing the game today...losing could be a good check on my players' egos. I'd rather lose this one then our next game (which will be against the toughest team in our division). But if we do win today...which we should...I don't think we'll lose another game this year. Which is my preference, of course: I'm not really into the exhilaration of close, heart-attack inducing, knife edge victories. I'd rather just dominate, shake hands, and go home.
For our little school...that has a tiny trophy case and hasn't won shit in YEARS...it would be a tremendous feather in the cap to bring home the championship. But for the players? I want this so badly for them. For them to be able to say: yeah, we did that. No, it doesn't mean they'll go on to play in the Olympics or cure cancer or get elected President or anything. But it's unquestionably something that you'll cherish in your heart, years from now...as an adult, reflecting on the past victories (and failures and oh-so-close moments) of your youth.
This I know. I know it from my own experience as an old geezer, and I know it from talking to other old codgers. Little things like this stick in your brain...highlights between years of "stuff" that's faded into the grey malaise of lost memory.
Especially this group. Especially with the way they're doing it. The misfits. The "try-hards." The nerds.
In my youth, I would have fit very well on this team.
I want them to have that photograph in the trophy case so bad. Not a runner-up prize, not a second place finish. A championship. Because they are champions...just to come out and work hard and be good teammates to each other and to play damn good volleyball. I am so proud of each and every one of them. Even the goof-offs and screw-ups that fight each other in practice. Because when they come together on the court, they are one team, one entity. Just Panthers...the team in black. I want them to have that recognition...because it will leave a lasting impression in their hearts of what they can accomplish when they put aside their differences and complaints and come together with a single purpose.
That's a valuable lesson...one I wish I'd learned in my youth. My life, my journey...good as it has been...would have been a lot happier and more joyful along the way.
But it is sport (he writes as he wipes the tears from his eyes and refills the coffee cup), and the finality of sport is that sometimes you lose and sometimes you get bounced from the playoffs in the first round. Sometimes the other team plays better than you on a given day. Sometimes the other team IS better than you. And you have to understand that and accept that and take defeat with as much grace as you can muster. Because the real, hard truth is that life goes on (until it doesn't) and...win or lose...you've got to get up on Monday and go to school or work again. The daily grind goes on, regardless of the high highs and low lows that occur in our lives.
Which isn't to say sport and competition is useless in the grand scheme of life...quite the contrary! What we learn in sport...especially bits like teamwork, focus, practice habits, effort, consistency, gracefulness (in both victory and defeat)...is directly applicable to our day-to-day lives. Especially team sport...learning to get along with different people with different personalities, different backgrounds, different skin colors, different tax brackets, different talent levels...this is incredibly important. It is one of the most important lessons we can learn for the rest of our lives. One of the main reasons I volunteer to coach these teams is to make sure I impart that lesson to my own kids.
Well, that AND because I'm an insufferably competitive gamer.
; )
Okay, it's 6:40 (6:38 actually). I might try closing my eyes for 30 minutes before I wake everyone. Sofia's volleyball game at 9am (in Edmonds), Diego's at 11, then we're going to a teammate's birthday/pizza party (he invited the entire v-ball team), then Diego's soccer in the afternoon. A full day ahead of us.
Hope everyone has a great weekend. Thanks for letting me share what's on my mind.
Good luck to you and your team JB
ReplyDeleteThanks, man.
DeleteHope you pulled out a victory.
ReplyDeleteI did a lot of sports as a kid and the defeats stick with me. Not the important ones the silly ones. I remember clearly a lose in middle school basketball versus a team we always destroyed. The bus ride down we all talked about how bad we would crush them and then we lost. The hour bus ride back was brutal. But I remember more about that game and the bus ride than any other.
Ha! Thanks, but unfortunately we lost. However, I’m going to use the loss as a catalyst for the rest of the season.
ReplyDeleteThe team we played against has a (well-deserved) rep for cheating, and we played on their home court with a ref who was an alumni and made several bad calls (and more than a few bad “non-calls”)…and the players were rightfully angry afterwards.
However, we did not play well, and the place they need to FOCUS their anger is at themselves. We made stupid mistakes, played too loose, and let both the ref and our own poor play get into our heads.
It’s on me, too, as a coach. I did not rein them in at practice last week like I should have, and I won’t make that mistake this week. Our next opponent is very, VERY good and will be the toughest team we face this year…it will be an excellent test to see how we bounce back before entering the playoffs.
Hopefully the renewed focus pays off. A big win before the playoffs can be real motivation.
DeleteHi there,
ReplyDeleteOdd question . . . You work hard to instill the laudable concepts of teamwork and coming together with a single purpose in your children and their sports teammates, but you also mention yourself as being "an insufferably competitive gamer." Those things can easily coexist in a game like Dungeons and Dragons, but I wonder, how do you feel about cooperative board games like Pandemic or Forbidden Island? To me, D&D is something can get behind to work together to "win" as a group, but board games to me are something else entirely, something that only one person wins, or maybe two people tie in a few oddball games here and there. Intellectually, I can appreciate how some people can enjoy the cooperative board game style, but the insufferably competitive gamer in me just is not interested.
I've not played Pandemic, but I've played both Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert quite a bit. In these games, the competition is against the board (or, rather, against the game itself) and cooperation is necessary to succeed...for ultra-competitors (like myself or my son), we take that cooperation quite seriously. Losing a cooperative board game sucks just as much (or just as little) as losing any 'competitive' game, and both those "Forbidden" titles (especially Desert) can push HARD in the more difficult modes.
DeleteNow, not everyone is as big into "winning" and "losing" as others, and games that have enjoyable game play are fun, in and of themselves, to play (if they weren't, we wouldn't play them...). For me, as a mature adult, I *can* "dial it back" and not play so cutthroat in non-cooperative games...but it's hard for me, especially if/when I get caught up in the game being played.
If anything, I think being a long-time DM has helped me: when I run a D&D game, I *am* the "board" against which the players compete. And it's not my job to "win;" it's my job to push the players so that they MUST cooperate in order to succeed/survive. As a player, the competitive aspect comes in not only "can I survive" but "how well can I accomplish my objectives" (i.e. getting treasure, leveling up, acquiring power, etc.)...but for the DM, the only person I am competing against is MYSELF. How well can I design an adventure? How smoothly can I run the game? How excited or thrilled or scared or intrigued can I make my players? How much pain and suffering can I inflict on them and yet they still say they had a 'good time?'
There is a similarity in sports/athletics at its deepest (most mature) level. With self-reflection/introspection...or just longevity...athletes begin to realize that the practice of sport is simply the honing of one's own abilities. How can I be the best [insert sport] player that I can be? That's the true objective...that's the way of true mastery. The opponent against whom we compete is not the goal...beating an opponent is not the goal. The opponent gives us the opportunity to test ourselves, to test our skills, to see how far we've come in our journey...hopefully an enjoyable one, i.e. one we had fun playing.
Hmm. Probably all that is more than you were asking for. However, I'll add one more thought to the pile:
Competitive board games, for me, eventually pale...certainly they pale faster than cooperative board games (at least, cooperative board games that have an objective). Because the game play is...by design...limited in scope and, thus, quickly mastered and after that winning and losing is mainly determined by the introduction of a degree of luck. But the sheer factor of having to work with teammates in a cooperative fashion adds an additional element of variety to the game play that allows the game to stay "fresh" longer. This is (partially) why D&D, with its near endless potential possibility in game play, makes it the King of Games.