At a Glanz By Rich Glanzer
Learning from Losing
Since I was six years old, I've known two truths.
1)
I'm not a good athlete
2)
I'm usually one of if not the smartest player on
the field
I remember my first basketball season. I think I scored one point the whole
year. But I impressed the coach (my Dad)
and parents with one play.
At the start of a quarter they would do a jump ball. That's when the ref throws the ball in the
air and two people would try to tap it to their teammate. A few times both players would get their hand
on the ball and the ball would fall right down.
One of the players would pick it up and the ref would blow his
whistle. You see you're not allowed to
pick the ball up after you jump for it.
One of your teammates has to.
So one night I did a jump ball and sure enough the ball
landed right by my feet. Instead of
picking the ball up, I tapped it to a teammate.
It was totally legal. I remember
is hearing how smart I was by all the parents.
I didn't think it was that big a deal.
Fast forward to one of my first hockey seasons. I was struggling mightily. And this veteran player Kevin came up to me
and said, “You don't have to be the best player, you have to be the
smartest!” It was a lesson I remember to
this day. The reason I sucked, was
because I didn't know hockey. So if I
wanted to get better, I had to get smarter.
Fast forward to 2010.
My coed hockey team the Happy Little Elves were having a very
frustrating season in the Black Top Street Hockey League (BTSH). I'm not sure if my teammates were frustrated,
but I sure was. We had scored the most
goals in the league, but also had given up the most goals. We were under .500 and though most of our
games were exciting, I knew we had no chance to win the championship. But I also knew we had the talent, and as
captain, it was a failure on my part that I couldn't make this team better.
A bunch of us went to Ocean City Maryland to play in a
hockey tournament. Truth be told, I
cared more about the fun than the hockey.
I thought we'd probably get slaughtered.
The first game we played this team that was just flat out better than
us. We never had the ball and we lost
5-1. The next game was even worse. We lost 8-1, and teammates were yelling at
teammates. We were awful. I didn't even think the team that just
trounced us was that good.
The worst part was in two hours our next game was going to
begin. It was the elimination round and
we were certainly going to be eliminated.
After the game some of us went back to our hotel rooms and
others stayed to watch the next game.
That's when it hit me. I was
trying to put a square peg into a round circle.
Almost all the girls on my team could run all day, but none of them ever
played hockey before. So I thought, lets
put the girls on offense where they can run.
On defense I'd put the guys where hockey skill is more important. I brought the idea up to three of the girls
on the Elves, Melissa, Melanie, and Kristen.
Melissa and Melanie started yelling at me, and Kristen said, “WHAT?!?!?” It was at that moment, I knew this plan was
foolproof. Furthering my belief was my
friend Caroline from my travel team told the girls we should give it a try.
I excitedly went into the hotel room of my two best players,
Trevor and Nak. I explained the concept
to them and they loved it. Nak was even
pretending to draw a diagram on the ironing board. We were all pumped.
But before our game we received some terrible news. The team we were going to play was the team
that beat us in Game 1. This was not
going to be good. They were just so much
better than us.
But I had a gameplan and I was going to stick to it. Something amazing happened, that can only
happen in coed sports. During the first
period, they didn't outplay us. We
actually outplayed them. As the first
period was ending, all of us on the bench started banging our gloves on the
boards and screaming. It was 0-0 but we
felt like we had won. We were a team
again.
The second period was not so sweet. Our goalie Shaun (more on him next month)
gave up a very long goal and a goal from his side. I was pissed because I felt we were
outplaying them, and I didn't want one bad period by my goalie to ruin this
plan.
The third period I switched things up. I stacked my two best players (Trevor and
Nak) on the same defensive line, and put me and the other “old” dude
together. Well sometimes the captain has
to lead by example and that's what I did when I ripped a slapshot past their
goalie. We had a million chances to tie
the game but just couldn't find the net.
It probably was the only time after a loss, where I felt like I had won.
My toughest critic Melanie came up to me and said, “Rich,
you know how hard this is for me to say to you, but that was a really good
plan.”
I know it was Melanie.
And now I was going to prove it to the rest of BTSH. The New Elves Defensive Initiative (NEDI) was
born.
