Water polo. I started playing again after essentially 8 years away. I realized today (well, I always knew this, but didn’t really want to think about it) that I was never the most gifted player, but I just liked to work hard. I’m sort of in the same boat today, but at least my shots are much stronger, so I’m happy about that! However, I no longer want that to be the only thing. I want to work hard and get better at all the weaknesses I had before…truthfully, even my strengths from before are weaknesses now, so there’s a lot of room for improvement.
We were going over different drives today (think basketball and those types of drives/picks/plays), and I was starting to get really confused. In high school, we named drives and we ran specific ones when necessary, calling the play name out loud. They were rather structured and sometimes players were strategically placed. We rotated the center player out consistently with these drives. I liked how organized and structured it was.
Today, we went over drives that were…rather unstructured. It wasn’t a free-for-all, but there was certainly no “calling drives”, and sometimes you just drove to open water. I could see that it was less controlled, and there was more room to just “play the game”, but there was much more of a focus on the center player. I asked myself — was I just incorrectly taught in high school? Or has the game changed that much in 8 years?
I was annoyed. I was frustrated. Not at anyone in particular of course, just the situation. I wanted to chase the coach down & ask him those 2 questions, but I couldn’t get to him. So I just sat with the discomfort. I dug deep in the shower in the locker room. I asked myself the hard question — what if I just suck? Now, obviously I don’t “suck”. I may not be great at quite a few things, but I have my strengths, & I have my desire to get better. I also haven’t played in 8 years — I don’t want it to become a crutch, but it is the truth. Anyway, I realized that I didn’t want that to be the truth. I didn’t want to face the fact that I’m not very good right now. I didn’t want to look at myself, I wanted to point my finger and blame the game, the coaches.
Truthfully, it doesn’t really matter if the game has changed that much — I need to adapt with the demands of the team and the level of competition anyway. I need to work on a lot of things as it is, so does the past really matter? Plus, there is no one “right way” to play the game. I mean, there are general concepts, but there are different playing and coaching styles. That’s the beauty of sports — the unknown. I’ve known for years that I do love practice (which is why I think I like weightlifting — it’s pretty much practicing all the time, and then maybe you compete, but if you don’t, it’s just practicing), because you can make adjustments in that controlled environment. I want to learn to love the game again for its openness.
I don’t really know how I came to this conclusion. I mean, I could even be wrong. But I’m also pretty sure that I’m right, that I’m very rusty. Knowing how you did things in the past doesn’t necessarily translate to the present. And even if I was wrong about this situation, even if the game has changed, or if I was taught incorrectly — I can’t change the way the game is now, and I can’t change the past. So if the conclusion I take is to work even harder to get better, then I’ll take it.
So today I realized two things. First, you can almost never be honest enough with yourself. And second, you could be wrong about a conclusion of a situation, but if it gets you to a solution that can sort of indirectly solve the problem, maybe that’s all you need. You can never be fully sure of a conclusion, I mean, that’s statistics-related, right? Can you tell that I’ve got statistics on the brain? (Help!). I think I’m going to have to work on that second conclusion, but I’m really happy that I got to work on this today. Plus, if you think about it, not being completely sure about a conclusion but being okay with that allows me to work on accepting a grey area & the unknown, two things I’ve always struggled with. Quite a lot of good lessons have come out of this :)
