A Life Learned Through Sport
by: Josh Leddy
University of Minnesota 
 

Sometimes I do not even know what to think of sport. Playing sports gives me a lot of joy, but at the same time, causes so much heartache. As a child growing up, I played sports because they made me feel good, they were fun, and I got to be with my friends. Nothing else mattered for me. I just wanted to play. I participated in hockey, baseball, soccer, football, tennis, and water sports to name a few, but the list does not stop there. As I made my way through youth sports and into a more intense world of competition, sports began to take on a different role in my life. People started to notice my talent and picked me to play on “all star” teams in the offseason. I was the happiest person in the world to be recognized as a talent and chosen to play on these teams, but this ignited my quest for perfection and I would never look back. Slowly but surely, the fun aspect of the game began to trickle out of the forefront and perfection became the frontrunner. I believe that it is important to recognize talent and to utilize that opportunity, but at what price? The enormous amount of emphasis we put on winning needs to be redirected back to simply giving one’s all in any athletic competition. Ultimately, I believe sport is necessary for everyone to participate in, but the emphasis must be put on trying your best instead of having to be the best.         

I can specifically remember when my emphasis in sport started to venture into the realm of perfection. In hockey, I was the captain of my bantam “A” team as a 9th grader, and led my team in goals and assists in route to a district championship and a regional birth.  During this time, I never thought of myself as above and beyond anybody, but I knew I was an elite player because I played with the top kids in my age group during the offseason. This all changed when I was put on first line during my sophmore year on the varsity team.         

I went to a big school so it was somewhat of a rarity to have a sophmore play on the top line, but I went with it. I was nervous at first, but once I started scoring goals, they became the source for everything that was good in my world of sports. There were all of these different websites that kept track of statistics throughout the state and would have all the teams ranked. Needless to say, I became obsessed with these websites and wanted to be at the top of the list in every category. It is important to keep track of statistics because they are a strong determinant regarding a player or teams’ skill level. However, statistics also become the fuel for everything that is bad in sports. There are no stats kept track for the amount of fun experienced in a game. Only stats that determine the loser, and I hated being the loser. Luckily for me, I played on a team with all of my friends and my relationship with them kept my mind in the right place. I played for my friends and everything else was secondary.         

After my sophmore season, my teammates and I vowed to be one of the best in the state for the upcoming season. We were all great friends who loved to compete together so this was not considered a chore by any means. As a unit, we were the essence of human bonding. (Bergmann Drewe, 20003) inform us that human bonding is the bringing together of human kind, resulting in the recognition of our shared humanity (p. 33). The extensive bond that we shared on and off the ice allowed for great chemistry while we were competing. Even though some players were infatuated with statistics, we all took pride in striving together to achieve our goal of a state tournament birth. As stated by Bergmann Drew (2003), striving together results in each participant achieving a level of excellence that could not have been achieved alone, without the mutual striving, without the competition (p. 50). We had star players on the team and we had role player on the team, but everyone worked together for the same common goal. We all wanted to win together.         

At the time it seemed like this was the only thing to do and I did not have any negative thoughts about it. Winning was our goal. We even vowed to not cut our hair until we lost two games in a row. That promise solidified us as teammates because we only lost three games that season and had horribly beautiful mops on top of our heads to show our unity. Throughout the season, our team was ranked #2 in the state behind Elk River as well as #2 in the nation behind Elk River. Interestingly enough, the team we had to play to achieve our goal of going to state was Elk River.         

We lost that game and Elk River went on to win the state championship 8-1 over Moorhead. We all felt was disappointment over the loss, and the fact that they walked through the state tournament made it a lot worse. However, we did not lose sight of the fact that we accomplished more than any other Armstrong team in history. We had the best record, scored the most goals, and had the most Division-I college players from any previous team. The bottom line is that we saw the greater good of what we accomplished. It hurt badly inside, but it also felt good to go through this with this group of friends. I am reminded of Halberstam (2003) when he wrote The Teammates, a book about the Boston Red Sox during their glory years. His focus was not about what they accomplished on the field, but what they gained from the experience of playing together. He quoted John Pesky as saying, “But baseball had provided a wonderful, rich life. The pleasure had always been in the doing, the sheer delight in going out there every day and playing, being paid to do the thing you loved to do. And the richness had come from the friendships, he said. How many people in other professions have friendships that last so long—unusual friendships because when you see each other, you were instantly taken back to another time, when you were all young, and some big game was on the line (p. 200).” I feel like my high school team is my version of this Boston Red Sox team.         

With the presence of my friends, my high school hockey career was much like that of The Teammates. I worked hard everyday and loved coming to the rink to be with my friends. There was nothing in the world that I would have rather done with my time. However, this feeling would become a distant memory as I made my way through the junior ranks. High School hockey was a lot of fun, but now all of a sudden it felt like individual statistics were the only one’s that mattered in the end.          

I was not deterred by this at first because I started out on fire scoring 29 goals and 43 points in the first 22 games. Also, my team was 18-1 in league play and were ranked 2nd in the entire nation of Canada. Needless to say, things were good. The early portion of the season felt a lot like my high school team, but everything changed when we went on a losing streak in December. We lost seven games in a row and I also found out that some of the Division-I teams who were interested in me did not have enough funds to come all the way up to Saulte Ste. Marie, Ontario to watch me play. This led to much frustration and I requested a trade to the Tri-City Storm of the United States Hockey League. I did not care about leaving, because it was my understanding that junior hockey was all about the individual and I had to earn a spot on a D-I team on my own.         

I got my wish and went to Tri-City and immediately hated it. I had six points in my first four games, but I kept being a healthy scratch because I was the new guy on the team. Never in my life was I a healthy scratch and I did not know how to react to this. I tried to keep my head straight, but I could not even practice well with all of the pressure. I felt like I had to be flawless 100% of the time. Hockey was no longer fun and I struggled to even find the will inside me to play. Then, shortly into my stint with Tri- City, I broke my foot from a slap shot and tore my ACL right before the playoffs. How could this have happened?         

I took the injuries with a grain of salt and started my way back to the top. The injuries disappointed me, but the hunger to play D-I hockey was still there, so I went back to Saulte Ste. Marie because I felt like it was my duty to go back and finish where I started. It was a long season, but I played well and achieved my lifetime goal of playing Division 1 hockey. Boston University wanted me to come play for them and at that moment, the fun came back for me. All that hard work and perseverance paid off and I could finally just play hockey again.         

Now that the pressure to play college hockey was off the table, I was able to channel my hard work towards helping my team reach the Canadian National Championship, the Royal Banc Cup. It was not like I did not play for my team before I was offered to play for Boston, but now I could play a little more loosely which I hoped would translate into more success. It was also around this time that our team became really close with one another. Once the trade deadline was over, we all started hanging out more and became what resembled my high school team again. We were having fun at practice, in games, as well as off the ice and you could sense something special building between us. Sure enough, we made it to the Dudley Hewitt Cup where the winner of this four team tournament would go onto the Royal Banc Cup to represent central Canada. We lost the first game to the Aurora Tigers who were #1 in Canada and favored to win it all, but we were not out of it. The game one loss, however, meant that we needed to win this next game or the season was over.         

We wanted to win this game for each other because it meant that there would be a strong possibility of our team being flooded with scholarship offers. I especially wanted to win for my teammates because I already had my ticket to the next level. As the game began, I took a vicious hit into the boards ten minutes in that left me crawling back to the bench. I could not put any weight on my knee and I knew something terrible had just happened, but I did not care. I went out for my next shift and every other shift after that until I got the primary assist on the game winning goal during triple overtime in a game that lasted almost six hours. It felt great to win, but now all I could think about was my knee. It hurt worse than the two previous times that I tore my ACL, so I assumed that’s what happened. The game ended shortly after midnight and we had to play the next game at 9:00 a.m. so there really was not any time to think about what happened. A trainer at the rink told me that I hyper extended my knee and that no further damage could be done, and that’s all I needed to hear. I played the following morning with my leg wrapped from heal to hip with the intentions of giving my all. I could barely stride, but I continued to play until it was over. Little did I know, but it was over for good. I played my last game as a hockey player and did not even know it. I put myself through hell for two years for one goal and now it was over. Hockey had just become fun again, and now there was no fun to be had. My heart was broken.         

I still have not gotten over the fact that I accomplished my dream only to never fully realize it, and I do not even know what to think about it. As MacIntyre (1983) would describe, I was too caught up in external goods that the internal goods I experienced were not strong enough to help me through the tough times. External goods are achievements such as fame, money, or something that other people can see as a result of one’s success, while internal goods are experienced by the participant who gained knowledge, skill or piece of mind during their practice. I struggled to find the positives out of my experience, but I knew I had to dig deeper. I believed that there was a way to view my experiences as beneficial to my future rather than as a deterrent, but it did not come easy.      

Fortunately, the values instilled in me at an early age fostered my development into an adult and I am successfully moving forward. Wooden & Jamison (2004) claim that success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming (p. 87). I know that I worked my hardest and that I should have peace of mind, but to this day, I still cannot figure out why it happened. I guess it just goes to show that if you put external goods in the forefront of your life, you are bound to experience heartache until you can recognize the importance of internal goods. This is why I believe that every athlete should only be concerned with how hard they tried during competition. Because even if you lose, you can still go home knowing that you gave your all. 
 
 

REFERENCES
1- Bergmann Drewe, S. (2003). Why sport?: An introduction to the philosophy of sport. Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing, Inc.
2- Halberstam, D. (2003). The teammates: A portrait of friendship. New York: Hyperion. pp. 200.
3- MacIntyre, A. (1983). After Virtue: A study in moral theory. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. pp. 181-203.
4- Wooden, J & Jamison, S. (2004). My personal best: Life lessons from an all-American journey. New York: McGraw Hill. pp. 87. A Story of Sport 1