The untold story of a player who doesn't get to play.
We were ranked 18th in the nation, a spot we earned following a one-goal win over Washington and Lee at the beginning of the season. The Spartans were ranked seventh. It had been seven years since Mary Washington’s women’s lacrosse team had beaten York College. The previous season, they humiliated us on our home turf in a 17-11 win.
The score was 10-6, and there were four minutes remaining in the game. A four-goal lead means almost nothing in women’s lacrosse, and four minutes is an eternity in turf time. Anything could happen.
From the way were playing, it was almost as if it were late May and we were fighting for the national championship. But it was a rainy and bitter cold Saturday morning in early April 2016. My teammate scored with three minutes and 36 seconds remaining, widening the gap to a five-goal difference. The promise of the win we’d been working and hoping for becoming more and more definite as the numbers on the clock ticked down.
York’s attack sent three more shots before time ran out. One shot went wide, and two were saved. My teammates looked at one another with grins stretched across their rain soaked faces. I tried to force a matching smile. When the final buzzer sounded, my teammates sprinted to the midfield to celebrate. I joined them, wanting to be just as happy.
This had been my goal all season. Back in preseason, when my coach asked me to write down what I wanted from this year, I’d jotted down in a notebook, “I want to destroy York on their home field.” But now that the moment was here. Why was I so miserable?
My sadness turned to anger at everything and everyone: my coach, the other goalie, my teammates, the situation and mostly myself. I recognized that what I was feeling was jealousy. I wish I had been on the field during those final winning plays and not on the bench. I didn’t like that I felt this way.
I had two options: come to terms with my position on the sideline or quit the team altogether. It wasn’t a difficult decision, in fact, it was hardly a decision at all. Sports have always played an important role in my life; the word “athlete” is as much an identifier for me as my own name. I didn’t know how to not be a part of a team, so I had to figure out how to make the sport enjoyable again.
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I reached out to Dr. Jere Palmer, a sports psychologist who works as a consultant with the University of Mary Washington’s athletic department, and explained my current dilemma.
“An athlete, whether it’s in individual sports or team sports, should only compare [herself] to the athlete [she] was yesterday,” Jere said. I was comparing myself to the wrong person because, as competitive as I was being with everybody else, I wasn’t getting any better. “It’s easy for athletes to fall down the rabbit hole of despair, and have all these negative outlooks on my team and my playing ability. But if it’s really about being a better athlete, you have to ask yourself, ‘does this negative mindset produce positive results? Does it make me better than I was yesterday?’ If the answer is no, you have to change the mindset.”
Change the mindset, I could do that. The next game was scheduled for Thursday, which gave me five days to change my mindset and become my personal best. I could do that, no problem.
Photo credited to Perfect Shot, LLC
Turns out, changing the competitive focus was much easier said than done. I had become accustomed to relying on comparisons to define my value as a player. It was difficult to gauge my improvement when I was constantly comparing myself to someone else’s skill level. The comparison had been centered around her for so long that I wasn’t sure how to establish a personal foundation to compare myself with.
I started to consider what about her I had been comparing myself to: she was better at saving low shots, she was a faster runner, she was better at clearing the ball out. Maybe I could compare my ability to perform those aspects of the game with the way I performed them yesterday rather than the way she performed them.
The first day at practice, I played with the notion in mind that this would be my starting point. I paid close attention to the way I was playing in the goal and made the effort to actively avoid watching the other goalie when she was in. I took mental notes on my performance in the three areas I wanted to focus on to serve as a reference for future performance comparisons. Everything was going according to plan.
Or so I thought. The next day didn’t quite produce the results I’d hoped for. I arrived at practice ready to compete with my past performance. I’m not sure if I was just having a bad day, but I definitely wasn’t playing as well as I had the day before. Every little mistake I made felt like a tremendous failure. I was dejected and frustrated with my inability to outplay yesterday’s performance. Rather than beating myself, I was beating myself up.
My coach called me into her office at the end of the week. I originally expected the conversation would involve how poorly I’d played during practice, but she had an entirely different intention for the meeting. She didn’t even mention my lackluster performance; her main concern was the bad attitude and habits I’d developed in response to my frustration with myself. I had become so determined to improve on the three areas I set out to improve on that I was not utilizing the abilities I already had. The areas I had been focusing on were areas I have always struggled with; it was unfair of me to expect to become an overnight all-star. It was then that I realized the issue was that even in self comparison, I was still unable to shift the competition away from being with her.
I told Jere where I think my problem started, with my coach stressing the importance of intersquad competition. I understood the purpose of the concept, I just think I’d gotten too competitive. He had something interesting to say. “Competition, by definition, is to strive together... Where people tend to mix it up [is by] pitting people against each other to make people work harder.”
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On game day, I sat in the locker room smiling like the Cheshire Cat, waiting for coach to read out the starting line-up. Yet, when coach said the freshman’s name instead of mine, my smile quivered and my stomach sank. I knew my name would not be called; my name hadn’t been called for weeks. I’d been preparing for this all week, so why was I sitting here, trying so hard not to cry? I excused it as a reflex and walked out to the field to warm up.
I assumed my position on the sideline and started to cheer for the girls on the field so loudly that I didn’t even hear the first whistle signaling the game had begun. The first goal was scored just over five minutes later and I was elated. The only problem was that the goal was scored by the other team. I tried to shake it off and screamed to the goalie, “That’s okay! You got the next one!” even though I really hoped she wouldn’t get the next one. And that’s when I had a hunch that this little experiment wasn’t working.
Not only did I lose the battle I was fighting with myself, but my team lost the game as well. While my teammates were reflecting on what had gone wrong out on the field, I was mulling over what I had done wrong on the sideline. I had been so supportive all week, what could have possibly happened that had caused me to crash and burn?
Later, I told Jere about it. “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he told me. “You are an athlete you want to compete. That’s the nature of being an athlete. Those thoughts, that’s just the competitor in you wanting to come out. The way to combat those thoughts is to recognize that you’re having them. You’re allowed to want to compete, but you have to remember that you want your team to be successful. You may have to tell yourself that over and over until you don’t have those thoughts as often, but part of you has to accept that some of it is okay.”
Jere explained that what I felt was shared by many college athletes as they make the transition from high school. “Typically, kids that go off and play college sports have always been dominant people on their team, and not just in high school, it’s always been that way,” he said. “So they enter into college, and, I hate to say that everybody is that good, but everybody is that good.” College sports teams are comprised of high school superstars. They’re used to being at the top. So having to adjust to being in the middle or on the bottom is tough.
Hmm, so maybe I wasn't alone in the way that I was feeling? I decided to ask a few of my teammates about their experiences and see if they could offer some advice on how I could combat the overwhelming feeling that I had failed somehow. Sophomore defender, Abby Bernhardt, struggled during her transition from a high school player to a collegiate athlete because she felt that she couldn't keep up with the pace of the college game. "I think the hardest thing was going from being a leader in high school to being an observer in college," Bernhardt said. "The game is drastically different in college than it was in high school and it's hard to understand every single detail." In order to increase her own skill level, Bernhardt had to take a step back and learn how to be okay with watching so that she could better understand how to play the game. After talking with Bernhardt, I approached Nicole Lind, a senior attacker, to ask about her collegiate experiences. "The hardest transition for me wasn't necessarily physical, it was mental. I was so used to being at the top and it was hard to learn how to mentally be okay with not being the best anymore." Lind had been a three year starter on her high school's varsity lacrosse team and one of the best players to go through the school's program. As a freshman, Lind showed tremendous promise. Her steep upward trajectory was halted by an ACL tear halfway through her freshman season. She was benched for the remainder of the season and had to start from the bottom when she returned for her sophomore year. "It was hard; there were times that I wanted to quit, but looking back as a senior, I'm so glad that I stuck it out. I've learned so much being on this team and, as I always say, I'd rather be on the sideline of a great team than the best player on a horrible team." Lind said.
I was the best player on my high school lacrosse team, just like every one of my college teammates had been the best on theirs. It’s difficult to go from playing every minute of every game to being lucky if I saw the field for two minutes in a game against the worst team in the region. It led me to question my talents. Did I do something wrong? Does the coach hate me? Am I not working hard enough? Do I suck? The answer to all of those questions was no. Most of the time, the reason I was on the sideline had nothing to do with my inability and everything to do with someone else’s capabilities. The reality was, there would always be someone who is better. I was starting to understand that I had been going about this experiment all wrong. It wasn’t about trying to be better than her, or myself, or any specific member of the team. It was about being better for all of those people. I had been looking at my teammate as an obstacle in my path rather than a bridge to help me to reach the final goal.
The next practice, I was struggling with saving low shots as usual. This time, I didn’t allow myself to become frustrated with or jealous whenever the freshman goalie saved a low shot. Instead, I decided to take a different approach. After practice ended, I turned to the other goalie, swallowed my pride, and said, “Could you stay after with me for a little? I’m having a hard time with those low shots and I could really use your help.”
After ten minutes or so of her helping me, we walked off the field together toward our respective cars. Just as I was about to unlock the door, she surprised me by saying, “Hey, would you mind staying after again tomorrow? I need to work on my high saves.”
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Photo credited to Perfect Shot Photos, LLC
No one tells you what it’s really like to be sidelined. The line itself serves as both literal and metaphorical divider between the best players on a team and those who are good, but not quite good enough. Success in sports can be attributed to a combination of physical strength, athletic ability, and mental toughness. As mentally challenging as it is to be a player on the field, being a player on the sideline requires a degree of grit that cannot easily be achieved.
The skills I have learned from being a sideline player have strengthened my person and allowed me to grow. It’s not easy to stand back and watch other people live your dream, but as I continue to tell myself to fight only myself and support the team, it’s gotten better. Because I am not the best, I have been able to become better than I have ever been.