Ok, I realize that I am wayyyyyy late on updating and giving a recap on Midwest Throwdown. There’s not an easy way to explain all that’s been going on in the past four weeks, specifically with the women’s team, but I’ll do my best to keep this concise and…. bias-free? I don’t know if that’s the right word, but we’ll go with it. I’ll probably have to add another entry after this one because there’s just too much to talk about.
About four weeks ago, I went in to see my physics professor, Dr. Tinsley. I knocked on his door and asked if we could talk, not about special relativity or any kind of weird crap like that, but about life. The dude reminds me a lot of my own physicist father so I didn’t feel much shame as I vented out my frustrations. He told us awhile back that our class, Modern Physics, was one of the few small joys he had left on this campus. And that it made him a little concerned and sad that sometimes, we’d half-ass our homework and our labs. That resonated with me. I remember thinking, well, sometimes I just don’t have time to finish your homework. I don’t have time to come during office hours and ask the 50 million questions I have because I was being dumb way back as a freshman in deciding that a physics minor was a good idea. But the homework is still required, right? The labs are still required, right? You gotta do the work if you want to succeed… right?
Then I made the mistake of relating all that to frisbee. I feel like we’ve hit some serious speed bumps this semester, more so than usual, and more than I expected. The numbers aren’t showing up to practice, so much so that in the last three weeks before spring break, we haven’t even had enough to scrimmage. Here we have a team that thinks it’s ready to split into two… but how can that happen if a second team isn’t showing up anymore?
So Dr. Tinsley. Doesn’t that piss you off when we half-ass our work? Doesn’t that piss you off when we don’t turn in completed homework and completed labs, especially when we are your one small joy left on this campus? Because I’ll tell you one thing, it sure as hell pisses me off when the numbers don’t show up. It makes me angry when I’m notified at the last second that someone can’t come because of a poorly formed excuse. I have to be there, too. I always have to be there, even if I don’t have the time. Why? Because I love Ultimate. And as captain, it’s my job to be there.
Yes. It does bother him when we half-ass our work. Well. Glad to see we can understand each other.
I went in to talk to him for a specific reason. I had been called out on some stuff. I had been called out on how I run practices… That I at times, I can be too harsh and too… negative. And even though we need the discipline and we need the tough love, it was time I received some tough love and was told what was up: negativity was killing the team.
I was devastated to hear that. To think that the love and effort I put into this team in trying to make us stronger… wasn’t being executed in the right way. And wasn’t what the team wanted. I had always turned to my teammates to find satisfaction in being captain. It wasn’t working anymore –I wasn’t doing my job effectively. Maybe I wasn’t meant to be captain. And maybe I needed to step down.
As I struggled to fight back the tears that welled up in my eyes as I explained this to Dr. Tinsley, he put it to me gently and simply: You can’t turn to your teammates for satisfaction. They can provide with some satisfaction and some happiness as you go about doing your job, but if you rely solely on them, it will only leave you disappointed. And that’s what I had done. My injuries have stopped me from playing and I couldn’t take it any longer. I could feel myself getting angry on the sidelines, unable to play, unable to show them and instead just telling them. It killed me that I couldn’t lead by example. And as a result, I would let things get to me. I was just a lot more negative than the usual goofy and happy person that I am. It was unlike me. It was weird. And it needed to change.
A lot of the problem also had to do with the distinctions between friend Reena and captain Reena. There have been times when those distinctions have blurred together and I’ve often felt like I didn’t receive the support I needed from my friends… who are also my teammates. A lot of them had forgotten that when I have to exercise discipline and I have to be tough, it’s coming from the captain and not from the friend. It was something that we had to sit down and talk about to make sure that feelings weren’t hurt and that I receive the support I need. (In case you were wondering, these issues have been resolved… I just can’t make this post too ridiculously long.)
Dr. Tinsley doesn’t turn solely to his students for satisfaction in teaching. Because he knows he’ll probably be disappointed more often than not. Instead, he turns to his love of teaching, and his love of physics and theory, to motivate him and to keep him positive. What is my love? Playing. Have I been able to play? No. Therein lies the problem and the answer.
I think a lot of it also has to do with a team realizing that if it wants to be competitive and successful, it has to have a certain level of dedication and discipline. And that does, at times, involve me being a captain, and not a friend, to my teammates. It’s a hard lesson that we’re still trying to learn, but I think MWTD did a lot of good for our team.
It was time for me to change my attitude, even if I hadn’t been able to play. I was going to play at MWTD and I was going to like it.
So here’s the official recap of Midwest Throwdown:
MWTD was exactly what our women needed. Some of us were feeling defeated, some of us just didn’t have the motivation to play. After HUX, and the dip in numbers and performance at practice, it seemed like our team was in a bit of a rut. Along with the above mentioned events that had occurred, even I wasn’t feeling it. I wasn’t sure if I could lead this team over the weekend. All I could think about were the mistakes I had made and may have kept on making. The weather was miserable. It rained all the way on the drive up. I couldn’t believe how cold it was. My toes were frozen and all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and sleep by a fire. Imagine having to motivate people when you yourself can’t be bothered to move. The first game was slow. At one point, I talked to one of my teammates who has supported me from the get-go, from our freshman year. I told her I wasn’t sure if I could effectively lead this team after all that had gone on in the previous week. She pulled me aside, knocked some sense into me, and from then on, I did what I needed to do. We played and I don’t think this team has ever played this well since my freshman year. We were never shut-out, and we beat Oberlin, Colorado College B, and Notre Dame B. We had close games with WashU B and DePaul as we lost at ultimate point in both. Sure, our rankings were close to the bottom, but for us, it was a success. And the girls were able to see their hard work pay off. They were able to see why it is that we work so hard and what that hard work can bring us as a team.
We learned a lot from the skills clinic. It gave us the chance to talk to some incredible coaches and players, not just about skills, but about leading, and about being a part of a team. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say we all got the sound advice that we needed to hear.
My thanks go out to Dr. Tinsley. You were right: I would have kicked myself in the ass if I had decided to walk away from something I love so much.