For Father's Day, I'll Let Him Speak for Himself

Sam’s lacrosse team has gone to the championship game of the state tournament three times in the past four years. Always his team is a mixed bag of boys who have played some lacrosse before, and many who never have. Because of the ski season, they start playing two to three weeks later than all the other teams in the league. And because we are a boarding school, these boys play together as a team for the first time here, unlike some of our opponents who have been playing together for years. In recent years, the team has tripled in size from what it was when Sam first arrived at our school. And while he usually has one other young ski coach around to help drive vans, and keep the stats in the book, maybe do some drills with the kids, Sam coaches by himself. Other teams we’ve met in the championship game have had a sideline full of coaches. We just have Sam.

Photo credit: Jill Maynard Nolan

Two years ago, we won the state title in a game that was, literally, unbelievable. We’d had a great season. We’d lost only one game in the regular season and then beat that same team in the semi-finals. The year before, the boys lost by one in the final game, and so in 2012, they were primed to win. But we were down by one goal as the clock started to run out; I couldn’t believe it was happening again. I couldn’t believe we’d made it to the championship a second year in a row, only to lose again by one goal. But then the unfathomable happened: with only 1/100^th of a second left on the clock, one of the boys put the ball in the net and tied it up. We lost our minds. And the momentum of that tying goal was enough...with almost no time elapsed in the sudden death overtime, we scored and won the game. It makes me tear up just thinking about it. 

Last year, we lost in the semi-final, but that was a minor hiccup in the long view of these past four years. When this season began, last year’s season-ending loss faded in the distance as we won game after game after game. We won all eleven games of our regular season this year. And then we won the first two of the championship tournament. In our semi-final game, against another strong team, we won with ease; the boys played beautifully, connecting with each other as if they’d been playing together for years. Our record going into the championship final was 13-0...an accomplishment the school has never seen before.

Two years ago, when we won the title, I was determined to write about the victory here, but somehow I never did. I wanted to record the story, for the future Quinn, of what a great coach her dad is, and what a good luck charm she seemed to be: since her arrival in the Gumby fan base, they had gone to the tournament both years. That year, 2012, the only game they lost was the one she didn’t attend. When they won that emotional championship game, after the boys dumped a cooler of water over Sam’s head, after Sam, who is relatively unemotional on the field, hugged players all around him, I handed the not-yet-two year old Quinn over the fence to our Athletic Director who set her down on the turf, and I watched as she worked her way through the legs of giants to find the legs of her dad. He picked her up and held her in his arms when the team posed for photos, and he held her in his arms as the team accepted its trophy. 

Amazingly, she seemed to know what had just been done.

This year, the championship game had a different feel. We hadn’t lost a game all year. We had already beaten the team we were playing, but still we knew it could be a tough game. What we didn’t know going into it is how things outside of our control would affect the outcome of the game. We didn’t know that we wouldn’t get credit for one of the critical goals we would score, because we never could’ve imagined that with four referees on the field, it would be possible for such a goal to go unseen. Evidently, it was. And evidently, the ample photo and video evidence, and the reaction of the stadium full of people would not count for anything. Evidently the goalie for the other team was never asked whether he’d let one it, and evidently he didn’t feel compelled to tell anyone. The game was tied with three seconds left on the clock when the other team scored a goal. It was the 7^th goal they scored in the game. We “scored” one for them by having a ball fall out of our goalie’s stick and drop in behind him; so the scoreboard, for our opponents, said 8. We scored 8 goals, but only got credit for 7. 

In the days since this game, I’ve been struggling to make sense of the disappointment and my sense of the injustice of it all. Struggling to deal with my frustration for the lack of accountability for the refs who altered that game. Sam has been going over it again and again too, but he has done so with the composure that so many people who encounter him on a lacrosse field always notice. When he asked me to proofread the letter he wrote to his boys, the night after the game, I knew immediately I wanted Sam’s thoughts to be the thoughts saved here for the future Quinn (with his permission):

Guys,
I’m assuming lots of you are still feeling some of the sting from last night--I know I am. I also know, from my time on a lot of lacrosse fields, in a lot of places, over a long period of time, and also from life in general, that this sort of disappointment is part and parcel of being an athlete and being a human.  Things don’t always work out--we don’t always get the results we want, or even the results we deserve. The goal that the officials missed last night hurt us--through no fault of our own.  That’s deeply frustrating, but it’s also part of being alive and being a competitor.  There will always be factors that are out of your control.   

And the truth is, before we start crying too hard over our fate, there were a lot of factors in our control, factors that we didn’t turn to our advantage.  It’s hard to make sure that every factor you can control works out for you in every game, over a fourteen game season; you guys did an incredible job of doing this for thirteen straight games--in the end, the one game where we didn’t do our job as well as we could have is also the game where some other factors came into play.  Unfortunately, this game is the one we wanted the most. 

It’s clear that the officials (or at least the person who is responsible for the officials) are well aware that factors beyond our control impacted last night’s outcome, but it’s also clear that that is not going to change the result.  Perhaps knowing that will change how you feel about it--that’s something each of you will process in your own way, individually. 

What I am feeling is just an enormous sense of gratitude for having had the opportunity to work with all of you and to go on the sort of run that we went on this spring. I imagine that each of you will undertake future endeavors that will follow a similar sort of trajectory--a whole lot of hard work, leading to a whole lot of success, but in the end, the ultimate goal might (or will) prove elusive.  Would you go back to the beginning and stop yourself from starting in the first place? I hope not.  This is where we learn resiliency, determination, toughness. It’s also where we learn about the value of the relationships we form with teammates.  Those relationships are far more important than whether we won or lost last night. Looking at how that game, and its result, unfolded, each of you should be able to see that a single game’s outcome can be totally arbitrary (up to the gods, if you will) but the work you and your teammates share is not.  That’s the real result I hope you’ll focus on.   

Again, thank you for giving me the chance to work with all of you guys this year. I’ll leave you with two quotes, from a couple of my favorite people--one is a former president, the other is a spaced out kayaker who has done some incredible things on this planet. 

Take care of yourselves, and each other, 

Sam 

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”  -Theodore Roosevelt

"You've got to be big enough to be small enough to let the world be awesome and it will"  -Jim Snyder

Photo credit: Jill Maynard Nolan

Congratulations team, on an incredible season. You made us all proud.