Considering this is my senior year of collegiate athletics and ultimately last year of a true competitive sports season, now more than ever do I want to win. I get it, “winning isn’t everything,” but try saying that to any senior athlete and see what their response might be. Everyone wants to go out with a bang in their final season, why would you want to settle for anything less?
Here is an example, I am sure we all at one point in our lives have been put in the position of missing the season finale of one of your favorite TV shows. Something came up where you are unable to watch the show live. So what do you do? You shut off your phone, you avoid any public areas and social media, and you are so high strung that you would curse out anyone who even slightly mentions what happened in the show (guilty). Why do we do that? Why do we go through such measures to make sure our show isn’t spoiled? It’s because we dedicated and invested our heart and souls into an entertainment program and we want to be in control to see what happens and don’t want anyone else to ruin it.
The same concept goes for sports.
One of our captains on our team came up to me and showed me an article that she wanted to read for our team. As I read over it, I was blown away by the message that it portrayed. The theme was quite simple, all you have to do is hold the rope. How many teammates when you look around the room would you trust to pull you up from a cliff that would lead to your death. How many of those teammates would be willing to let the rope burn their hands and blood drip just to save you?
It is a powerful concept, and when we read it to our team it was clear that not everyone trusted one another to hold the rope for them. However that trust throughout our team has been building during our preseason and people are starting to buy into the concept of exceeding expectations.
Throughout my career whenever I came up short in making it to the big dance, I was extremely upset and disappointed but I always knew that there would be a “next time.” It’s been three years of me saying “we will get it next time,” but now there is no next time. No do overs. No shoulda coulda woulda. There is only right here, right now.
So when it comes down to winning it’s all pretty black and white. All you have to do is answer this one question. Will you hold the rope?
