Missed opportunities haunt you the rest of your life
Very few things in life hurt worse than missed opportunities.
When you look back on things you wonder what might have been, what could have been, and in your mind, what should have been.
These are defining moments for athletes, moments in which things either work out or they don't. You either make the play or you don't. It happens so fast when you're living the moment that you don't have time to think about it, you just react.
There's no real way to prepare for those moments because they rarely happen. At least they rarely happen in the context that makes them defining.
Like in a championship game.
Or in a game against a rival your senior year.
Or in your first varsity start.
Very few athletes have the experience of playing in enough high-pressure situations that they are able to relax to the point that their natural ability and mental conditioning take over.
That only happens through experience.
That's why it is hard to discount those athletes that "know how to win."
The Webb City kids for example. They are in the playoffs in almost every sport, every year. Football, basketball, baseball, softball, volleyball.Webb City has state playoff caliber teams in each of those sports every year and they play like it.
Their kids get exposed to pressure-packed situations over and over again, to the point where they aren't so pressing anymore.
Sure they also get the athletes. That's a different column for a different day. And there is no substitute for pure athletic ability.
But nobody can look me in the eye and tell me they had a better boys' basketball team than Nevada last season. Yet they won when they had to.
Same goes for volleyball.
I am not buying that Holden had a better squad than Nevada last night in Harrisonville.
Nevada came within two points of sweeping the Eagles.
But one of those defining moments came up.
Nevada responded with a net violation and a miscommunication that led to a ball dropping in the middle of three players for the final point of a game.
Looking back, there is no doubt all three of those players will wonder what they could have done, what they should have done.
After falling in that second game, Nevada tightened up in the third game to the point where they weren't having fun anymore. They were just playing, hoping Holden would make enough mistakes to keep them in the game.
Holden, being pretty good themselves to the tune of a 27-5 record, didn't oblige and now they, not the Lady Tigers, are district champs.
That's gonna hurt.
It's hard to explain if you aren't an athlete. It's easy to look on a situation from the outside and ask "what was so hard about doing this?"
But when you are the athlete, and you are in the situation, things change drastically. You know when a point means the difference between winning and losing.
You know when a tackle or a pass completion or a base hit, or a simple throw to first is going to decide the game.
Even though you may have run through the exact same situation in practice hundreds of times, or in your head thousands of times, things get all mucked up in your head when you start thinking about the gravity of a situation.
It happens on all levels of sports. A prime example is Alex Rodriguez in baseball. Great hitter. Great fielder. But put him in the MLB postseason and he turns into a liability, not a strength.
That's why it's hard to blame the Lady Tigers for not winning the district championship last night.
They know the situation. They know the opportunity was missed, and they are going to have to live with that for the rest of their lives.
I know from experience. I look back on my playing career in football and baseball and can remember a handful of experiences that I wish I had handled differently.
Experiences that I didn't handle like I wish I would have.
They haunt me. Worse than Halloween. Worse than any scary movie that might keep you up thinking at night.
Maybe it's worse for me because I am around sports all the time. But I still think about a pass I threw, a defense I didn't decipher, a pitch I knew was coming that I didn't hit.
Things I look back on and they are obvious, but at the time I was so mucked up in the head that I was lucky to put one foot in front of the other, much less perform to my ability.
Missed opportunities. Opportunities I will never get back. Opportunities I will never forget.
It's the biggest downfall of playing sports.