It's been a long time since I've posted - This blog has been on the back of my mind for a couple months now. It started as a way to keep friends back at home up-to-date with how I was doing during my college years in Boston, then basically was the place for me to write Dave each year on the anniversary of his passing. I want to get it going again, this time with a much more clear-cut purpose.
Saturday was my 29th birthday. Most people just look at this as the one-year warning before 30 hits - I've had 29 on my radar since my college coach passed away at this age. Birthdays to me are more of a reminder that I've made it one more year, which some people may look at as morbid, but while I don't fear death, I do realize that tomorrow's promised to no one and I have so many things I still want to accomplish.
When it's all said and done, I want to touch as many lives as possible before leaving this earth. I love competing in volleyball - I want to be the best I can be, and I hope that allows me to play at the AVP level one day. I don't do it for the glory, if you follow volleyball I CLEARLY don't do it for the money - if you have a passion for something and can establish credibility, people are more likely to take what you say to heart. Volleyball is my channel to do that. The last 9 months at Top Flight have been WONDERFUL being in the gym with kids all day, building confidence, showing them they can do things they had doubts about being able to achieve. I don't want to stop there though.
I plan on updating this blog frequently - sometimes it will be thoughts of my own, other times I may just write about a person that changed my life and the lessons I took from them. I don't know who will read, but if each post changes one person's outlook or even just helps pick them up throughout the day, it's worth it to me.
The Superbowl was yesterday and for me it consisted of falling in and out of sleep on the couch for the majority of the game - between 12 games of ball Saturday, waking up at 5 am on Sunday to run a tournament at Top Flight followed by shoveling the driveway when I got home for guests, I was running on empty. Most people today are focused on the results of the game, how bad the commercials were (and they were), or how they wish Monday was a National Holiday following the big game. One quote by Peyton Manning resonated through everything else to me. A reported asked him if he was embarrassed about losing 43-8 to the Seahawks. His response:
"It’s not embarrassing at all. I would never use that word,” he said.
“There’s a lot of professional football players in that room, that
locker room, who put a lot of hard work and effort into being here and
into playing in that game. The word embarrassing is an insulting word,
to tell you the truth.".
What an IMPORTANT lesson we should be bestowing to athletes, young AND old. So often we measure our accomplishments in sports by wins and losses - the reality is 50 percent of us HAVE to lose in competition, regardless of the fact that the losing team may practice just as hard as the winning one. I watch our athletes train every week at practice at a pretty consistent pace. Some weekends they are rewarded with victories, others just don't go their way and they lose.
When we win, the pats on the back come flying in, compliments about how well things went, looking forward to the next one, and so forth. When we lose? Calls/emails of concern, different demeanors but all the buzzwords typically similar - "Lost Confidence" being the biggest two of all of them.
Peyton Manning's a great athlete, but why I wish more kids would emulate him is because he is SO focused on preparation. Junior athletes should be focused on controlling the controllables, not getting caught up in the results but asking "Why?" "What did I do well" "What can I do better" and bring that to their next practices. But I remember the pressure I felt in High School - your success mattered more than the process, or at least that's how I viewed it.
There are times in life we're going to do everything right and still fall short of our goals. Other times we'll trip and stumble our way to an achievement we know didn't receive our best preparation/attention to detail. This is something I firmly believe both on and off the court. How we respond to adversity will be crucial in our everyday lives if we want to be happy. Focusing on what we can control and having peace of mind knowing that if at the end of the day we did our best, that's all we can (and should) truly ask of ourselves. I think Peyton's quote was a great way to relay that message. I'd like to think I teach that to my players. Hopefully someone reading this took something from this short novel I've written as well.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" - Winston Churchill
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