Remembering the past, or living it?
Here's an interesting article from ESPN on the Seattle Seahawks, their Super Bowl loss to the Patriots, and how that game still is a burden (maybe) on them as they approach the postseason.
I watched that game pulling for the Patriots - not a Seahawks fan - but I felt for sure that Seattle was about to win the game with the ball on the one yard line. And then suddenly, the Patriots have the ball, and the game is done.
I still like the aggressiveness of the call, the pass for the win. I know that many have called it the worst call ever, but I strongly disagree. I believe everyone knew that Beastmode was going to get the ball, and that had he done so, the Patriots line would have swarmed him and knocked them back. I felt that pass was a quick inside slant that could have caught the Patriots off guard, and had the play worked, I guarantee that everyone in the sporting world and beyond would have called Coach Carroll the best NFL coach ever. Probably. But they would have lauded the guts it took to make the call, the brilliance at how it unfolded and caught the Patriots and everyone by surprise.
All my opinion. I still like the call.
Regardless, my question is this:
How long does bad loss weigh on your program, or boat?
I've been going through my memory, and the first bad loss where I was personally involved comes in high school. It's been 17 years and I still remember that night. We're playing the 6th ranked team in the state at their home, we're up 1-0 in the closing minutes of the game. The game clock runs out, the horn goes off, the ref blows his whistle, and we've won! And then one of their players kicks the ball into the net, and the other team celebrates. The ref consults with his side judge, and decides to award the goal. 1-1. We win that game and we're going to be league champs. Tie that game and we fall all the way to 4th place, and the game the following week suddenly becomes for a spot in the playoffs.
I remember the silence on the bus on the way home. 35 minutes of nothing. No one says a single word.
We protest the game and the result, and the fact that the referee turned out to be the father of one of the opposing players, but to no avail. The game result stands, and even though we fight our way into the playoffs in the next game in dramatic fashion, that game still haunts me.
That game along defined who I was, or so I thought. I'd spent four years in high school getting close to my first conference championship in both outdoor and indoor soccer, and each time the team I was on fell short. One year we lost in 4 overtimes, the game going till midnight. One year half the team got sick and we had to forfeit the final game because we couldn't field enough players.
So close, yet so far. Until 2002, my second year on my collegiate team, when the men's novice eight I'm driving wins the NCRC Conference Championship. My first, and only in my athletic career.
Funny story. As we're crossing the finish line, miles ahead of everyone, the boat is celebrating, and I'm just sitting there. I don't recall doing anything, but I do remember thinking about all the times the teams I was on fell short. And I suddenly realized that winning conference, winning that race was exciting, and I was happy, but it wasn't as satisfying as remembering the journey to get to that point.
The one athletic achievement I'd wanted for so long accomplished, and yet the most satisfying aspect of it wasn't the accomplishment itself, but everything I went through and experienced on my way to that medal.
Ok enough back story.
There have been plenty of times that I've taken what I felt at the time to be the best boats into championship races and come home empty handed. I wrote earlier this year that the women's novice four that finally knocked off WIRAs this past spring wasn't the best boat that I'd taken to WIRAs. In fact we weren't even thinking about WIRAs other than using the final result to determine which boats we'd take to nationals.
From a coaching viewpoint, I don't know that there is a race that we'll be involved in that will ever burden the program, or at least that's how I feel. There are races that are more important than others, but I have a few sayings that I repeat over and over again throughout a season, sometimes to the benefit of the athlete, sometimes to the benefit of myself.
- Winning a championship requires a lot of things to go right, many of which are out of our control. We control how we race, but we don't control the weather, we don't control the conditions of the course, and we don't control what our opponents do. Sometimes the best boats win, and sometimes the best boats that day win.
- I firmly believe that no coach can tell how how to win. Instead it's the job of the coach to put their athletes in a position to win. I tell the athletes that the best I can do is train them so that with 500 meters to go, they have a say in the outcome.
- We are not going to be defined by our wins and losses. Nothing we do in the sport should be considered, "life and death." We'll live to fight another day. Sometimes that's on the field, sometimes that's carrying the lessons learned forward and applying them to what truly matters.
Don't get me wrong. I hate losing. I hate losing more than I enjoy winning, and I love winning. And I suppose that I should leave the door open for certain instances. I can imagine losing in the finals of the Olympics as devastating. I can imagine losing a national championship in the final strokes as devastating. I can imagine falling short your final year as an athlete to be a sort of pain that won't go away quickly.
I've lost plenty in my career as both a coach and an athlete. I've had boats lose undefeated seasons in that final race. I've had boats lose that if we ran that race nine more times, we probably win all nine or come very close, and I've had boats that have dominated the heats and semis only to have a bad race in the final.
All painful. But as I learned in 2002, sometimes we have to recognize a win or a loss for what they are: a win or a loss. I believe that more than anything, it's the journey that got you to that moment that will carry more weight than the final outcome.
I watched that game pulling for the Patriots - not a Seahawks fan - but I felt for sure that Seattle was about to win the game with the ball on the one yard line. And then suddenly, the Patriots have the ball, and the game is done.
I still like the aggressiveness of the call, the pass for the win. I know that many have called it the worst call ever, but I strongly disagree. I believe everyone knew that Beastmode was going to get the ball, and that had he done so, the Patriots line would have swarmed him and knocked them back. I felt that pass was a quick inside slant that could have caught the Patriots off guard, and had the play worked, I guarantee that everyone in the sporting world and beyond would have called Coach Carroll the best NFL coach ever. Probably. But they would have lauded the guts it took to make the call, the brilliance at how it unfolded and caught the Patriots and everyone by surprise.
All my opinion. I still like the call.
Regardless, my question is this:
How long does bad loss weigh on your program, or boat?
I've been going through my memory, and the first bad loss where I was personally involved comes in high school. It's been 17 years and I still remember that night. We're playing the 6th ranked team in the state at their home, we're up 1-0 in the closing minutes of the game. The game clock runs out, the horn goes off, the ref blows his whistle, and we've won! And then one of their players kicks the ball into the net, and the other team celebrates. The ref consults with his side judge, and decides to award the goal. 1-1. We win that game and we're going to be league champs. Tie that game and we fall all the way to 4th place, and the game the following week suddenly becomes for a spot in the playoffs.
I remember the silence on the bus on the way home. 35 minutes of nothing. No one says a single word.
We protest the game and the result, and the fact that the referee turned out to be the father of one of the opposing players, but to no avail. The game result stands, and even though we fight our way into the playoffs in the next game in dramatic fashion, that game still haunts me.
That game along defined who I was, or so I thought. I'd spent four years in high school getting close to my first conference championship in both outdoor and indoor soccer, and each time the team I was on fell short. One year we lost in 4 overtimes, the game going till midnight. One year half the team got sick and we had to forfeit the final game because we couldn't field enough players.
So close, yet so far. Until 2002, my second year on my collegiate team, when the men's novice eight I'm driving wins the NCRC Conference Championship. My first, and only in my athletic career.
Funny story. As we're crossing the finish line, miles ahead of everyone, the boat is celebrating, and I'm just sitting there. I don't recall doing anything, but I do remember thinking about all the times the teams I was on fell short. And I suddenly realized that winning conference, winning that race was exciting, and I was happy, but it wasn't as satisfying as remembering the journey to get to that point.
The one athletic achievement I'd wanted for so long accomplished, and yet the most satisfying aspect of it wasn't the accomplishment itself, but everything I went through and experienced on my way to that medal.
Ok enough back story.
There have been plenty of times that I've taken what I felt at the time to be the best boats into championship races and come home empty handed. I wrote earlier this year that the women's novice four that finally knocked off WIRAs this past spring wasn't the best boat that I'd taken to WIRAs. In fact we weren't even thinking about WIRAs other than using the final result to determine which boats we'd take to nationals.
From a coaching viewpoint, I don't know that there is a race that we'll be involved in that will ever burden the program, or at least that's how I feel. There are races that are more important than others, but I have a few sayings that I repeat over and over again throughout a season, sometimes to the benefit of the athlete, sometimes to the benefit of myself.
- Winning a championship requires a lot of things to go right, many of which are out of our control. We control how we race, but we don't control the weather, we don't control the conditions of the course, and we don't control what our opponents do. Sometimes the best boats win, and sometimes the best boats that day win.
- I firmly believe that no coach can tell how how to win. Instead it's the job of the coach to put their athletes in a position to win. I tell the athletes that the best I can do is train them so that with 500 meters to go, they have a say in the outcome.
- We are not going to be defined by our wins and losses. Nothing we do in the sport should be considered, "life and death." We'll live to fight another day. Sometimes that's on the field, sometimes that's carrying the lessons learned forward and applying them to what truly matters.
Don't get me wrong. I hate losing. I hate losing more than I enjoy winning, and I love winning. And I suppose that I should leave the door open for certain instances. I can imagine losing in the finals of the Olympics as devastating. I can imagine losing a national championship in the final strokes as devastating. I can imagine falling short your final year as an athlete to be a sort of pain that won't go away quickly.
I've lost plenty in my career as both a coach and an athlete. I've had boats lose undefeated seasons in that final race. I've had boats lose that if we ran that race nine more times, we probably win all nine or come very close, and I've had boats that have dominated the heats and semis only to have a bad race in the final.
All painful. But as I learned in 2002, sometimes we have to recognize a win or a loss for what they are: a win or a loss. I believe that more than anything, it's the journey that got you to that moment that will carry more weight than the final outcome.
Comments