So the U.S. women’s World Cup team thrashes Thailand 13-zip, the most lopsided result in World Cup history. A squabble ensues over whether all those goals, and the jubilant celebrations following each one, exceeded the norms of sportsmanship. My interest is elsewhere. I wonder about Thailand’s coach. What if I had her job? What would I say to my team post-game? Fortunately, I know nothing about the coach or the team (or about soccer, for that matter) so my answer isn’t encumbered by pesky distractions like facts.
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Today we’ve been blessed with one of the most important experiences anyone who aspires to excel at something can have. We have been given the opportunity to examine just how much we have to learn and grow to be a champion contender. Also, each of us has been given the opportunity to examine three vital questions, our answers to which will serve us for our entire lives.
- Why am I here?
- What is the purpose of this team?
- What must happen for each of us to look back on this World Cup competition with satisfaction, gratitude, and joy?
I’m going to tell you my answers to these questions. What you need to ask yourselves is whether my answers can be your answers as well. If they can, if they are, then we are going to have a wonderful tournament. Even if we lose every game.
Why am I here?
- To learn about myself through participating in something that asks me to be the best I can be every single moment.
- Hardship, no matter how it shows up, means nothing except an opportunity to strengthen my ability to respond well to whatever comes my way.
- By “learn about myself” I mean honoring what I’m skilled at, as well as identifying and taking action on those parts of me that deserve loving attention.
- In short, I’m here to demonstrate with every choice I make who I am committed to being or die trying––and to do that in the context of being a member of our team, a member of our nation, and a member of the human family.
What is the purpose of this team?
- We represent our nation’s commitment to competing in women’s soccer at the highest level.
- We, as a program, have a ways to go to fulfill this aspiration. How long that will take is unknown. How we get there is not.
- Each of us is helping to build the foundation upon which some future Thailand team will be considered a well-respected competitor for any other opponent in the world.
- This foundation is one of focus, commitment, comradeship, ruthless honesty, sacrifice, and an unwillingness to quit. Also, kindness toward whomever we meet, even when we are attempting to destroy them on the field.
What must happen for each of us to look back on this World Cup experience with satisfaction, gratitude, and joy?
- There are those who say the Americans were out to humiliate us. I don’t believe that’s true. Such a motivation is small-minded, petty, and ultimately self-destructive. And even if that were their intention, whether we are intimidated or not has nothing to do with them, and everything to do with how we feel about ourselves. My view is the Americans respected us, and themselves, by playing the best they could for the entire game. And after the game, one of their captains put her arm around our goalie as they walked together off the field. That’s exactly what we must ask of ourselves.
- We are an example to all Thailand girls and young women; indeed, to all Thailand, and even to the world. It is our obligation to represent the kind of integrity that is possible for every human being.
- If we do that, we will forever celebrate our participation in this World Cup.
Perhaps the most important thing to acknowledge is that everything I’ve just said you did not need to hear. You know this. Every word of it already resides in your heart. It is my privilege to remind you who you really are.
It’s always refreshing to see someone looking where no one else seems to in the moment of reaction.
You may or may not remember that I played little league as a kid. I can’t honestly remember how many at-bats I must have had over two years of play…maybe 16 or 25 games per season, with two to four cycles down the lineup, but without any long-division I can calculate my batting average all the same: .000.
On the team I played for, I don’t ever remember an eye-roll from my coach. I had friends on the team that would smack a double or triple at every third time at the plate, and I never remember hearing any of them groaning or sighing when I was headed to the box.
It was always “You’ve got this one.” or “Today’s your day.”
I was smaller and younger…and I probably closed my eyes every time I swung that bat–but none of those things bothered anyone but me. We were a team, and all the support I could have asked for was always right there in front of me, reminding me that every at-bat is another opportunity, and that every space in-between is a chance to practice the fundamentals.
While it seems like a shame not to have realized it then, it’s really only a gift that I know it now–outside the diamond and away from the field, in every situation I face. A great team can remind us, even long after the season is over, that there is always someone, somewhere asking us to keep our eyes open and swing.
How beautiful, Joe. Thank you so much.