Above: Some Awesome National, and World Outdoor and Indoor Champions with team KWM Team Racquetball
So I am watching the Womens’ basketball college championships last week and in particular I like to watch UConn because they are well-coached. By now anyone who reads the sport pages knows about the incident between Geno Auriemma and Dawn Staley. (for those who do not know, Geno was pretty rude to Dawn over some petty things and the incident smacked of “poor loser syndrome”)
Here is my take:
1. Nobody knows about the coaching grind unless they have experienced it. The coaches are all in on every play and every game. That leads to fatigue. These coaches were wiped out!
2. The players are literally playing on the biggest stages of their lives so they are all in too. They are also exhausted.
3. The winningest coaches tend to get full of themselves. They do make great coaching moves and they do experience success but sometimes they forget it is the players, not the coaches who determine wins and losses and those coaches cannot control everything no matter how hard they try.
4. The above three things lead to errors in judgement and heated words especially in losses. Coach Auriemma had a melt-down and said what he was thinking.
5. Every coach worth their salt has thought the same things during losses. Only difference is they kept their mouths shut; like professionals should. Geno Auriemma made a mistake and later apologized and owned it.
6. Coaches are human and the best of the best walk a fine line between losing it and creating winning situations.
7. What does this have to do with racquetball? Well, last week social media was imploding over the WRT incident when players physically came after each other. In the finals after a long weekend. Much like the national incident with the basketball coaches, cooler heads prevailed, the dust settled and everyone got over it……except the fans. They wanted to keep talking about it. Why? It is fun and fans can make their own “good guys” and “bad guys” out of such incidents. To me it is more like competition, the heat of the moment and not such a big deal.
The perps of these incidents, big time coaches and racquetball players, are all human and definitely not saints. They are deep down, sometimes like nasty junkyard dogs, who want to win and they are competitors. Do not get fooled by the “nice” that their public persona (and social media posts) looks!
Personally, I like the “all in” attitudes of all of them, losers as well as winners. The passion of excellence produces such incidents.
Get in there and go get’em tigers, but be nice–sort of..!!!