Reflecting on the life lessons sports can teach us
Individual sacrifices for the greater good lead to victory in sports and in a pandemic
Driving my daughter to a houseleague playoff game a couple of weeks back, I noted we were a little late and she might still be getting her skates on when the coaches came into the room.
She said she knew what he would say, anyway: “Don’t worry about the score. Win the battle. Win the shift. Do the little things and the big things will take care of themselves.”
This struck me as funny, in part because hers was a last-place team, the result of house-league balancing gone wildly awry.
It was her first season in Bantam-midget, and her relatively young group was frequently getting thumped by grown-ass women. What do you tell a team that scores 35 goals and gives up 63? You tell them not to worry about the score.
But it was also funny because these are exactly the lessons I hear coaches impart at the very highest levels of the sport. There is a religiousness about teamwork, about self-sacrifice, about the importance of doing small things correctly in pursuit of a larger goal. This is why players who make millions of dollars will find themselves benched if they fail to skate hard on a backcheck or run out a ground ball. Not putting the team first? That way lies chaos and doom.
Sport has been utterly put on hold by the coronavirus. On Friday morning, Augusta National Golf Club announced that the Masters would be postponed until, hopefully, “some later date,” knocking another of spring’s signature events off the calendar. With the NHL, NBA and MLS temporarily shuttered, the NCAA basketball tournaments scrapped, and all manners of golf, tennis and racing events forced to fall in line as authorities seek to limit large public gatherings that could facilitate the spread of COVID -19, we are entering an unprecedented period in modern history in which the rhythmic distractions of sports are simply gone. And yet, as we contemplate just what these next few weeks are going to be like, it is this time without sports in which sports, and those lessons about teamwork, have a deeply important lesson for us all.
Do the little things. Think about the big picture. A bunch of small individual sacrifices will help in pursuit of an important, larger goal. Win the shift. Win the small battle.
So much of the confusion of recent days has been steeped in the uncertainty about just what, exactly, we are supposed to do about all this. What is the pandemic primer at a time when almost none of us have lived through one? There are, of course, better people to provide such guidance than sports columnists. Listen to health authorities, and follow the advice of doctors and medical professionals. Take guidance from politicians who are themselves guided by the medical and scientific experts, and be skeptical of the politicians who are not. Drink water. Wash your hands. Do not buy 12 cases of toilet paper. (Please.)
But there are applicable lessons from sports here, too. The somewhat maniacal emphasis on the importance of team can be a bit much at times, to be fair. There are instances when a coach or general manager will cite team play as though it is a magical solution that will turn a bad team good, when the real problem is the team does not have enough good players. Or that the opposing team had Lebron James. Or a hot goalie.
It isn’t all vague motivational blathering, though. Before the NBA season came to a crashing halt thanks to the blunderings of Rudy Gobert, the Toronto Raptors were providing a case study on the value of teamwork. Unless you are deeply committed to avoiding basketball, you know the story. A championship team loses its best player, and it is widely assumed they will bear a faint resemblance to that squad this season. Instead, despite a host of injuries, they perform at an even better pace than last year, with players up and down the roster making important contributions night after night.
As a team under coach Nick Nurse, the Raptors have played like the collective embodiment of guard Kyle Lowry, who is the ultimate do-the-little-things guy. It’s a group that dives for loose balls, that gets its hands in the way, that makes the extra pass. They play team-first. That stuff works.
Conveniently, they share a building with a hockey team that provides a useful contrast. The Maple Leafs are blessed with extraordinary talent, and yet they bumbled through a season in which they far too often failed to provide the effort or interest level expected of a group of professionals. When things have gone poorly, which has not been rare, there has reliably been talk about the need to play a better team game. Win the shift. Win the battle. That stuff matters.
Good sports teams become undone when players think the rules for the whole don’t apply to the singular. It is something worth keeping in mind, in these uncertain times. Everyone has a role to play. Stay home if you are feeling ill. Ask for help if needed. Help others if asked. Wash your hands.
Help the team out. Do the little things, and the big goal becomes easier. Be the Raptors. Don’t be the Leafs. Stay safe, everyone.