Team Sweat
It’s March and the world’s gone mad. People who don’t even like sports are paying attention. And the NCAA tournament, per usual, is proving to be worth the watch. On both the men’s and women’s sides Davids are slaying Goliaths and players the world never heard of are taking center stage. Possibility’s nectar is so sweet and so strong!
We can’t help but be lured in.
I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve been asked over the last year if I missed it. I thought I would last October, as I’ve always been a practice girl. My happy place was in a gym teaching. I loved the progression of a plan, the Ah Ha! moments on the court, watching players become a team as they helped each other get through hard. Practice was what I looked forward to every single day. So it was weird that I didn’t miss coaching when October rolled around.
The collegiate basketball season began in November, and I thought for sure I’d miss it then. But I didn’t. Conference play started in January and I thought certainly I’d miss it then. But I didn’t. And then the first day of the NCAA Tournament rolls around and suddenly I feel a pang.
It came out of left field like a UFO. I was just running around doing all the stuff I do now, and without warning my heart was in my shoes.
The collegiate basketball season began in November, and I thought for sure I’d miss it then. But I didn’t. Conference play started in January and I thought certainly I’d miss it then. But I didn’t. And then the first day of the NCAA Tournament rolls around and suddenly I feel a pang.
I have a coaching buddy whose soul is in the profession but his head longs for the peaceful freedom of life on the outside. He asked me to describe it, this thing I suddenly felt. But I really couldn’t. It reminded me a little of watching my kids walk across the stage in their high school cap and gown, and a little like May 2nd every year since the day my father died, and a little like the day after we won our first high school state championship game. It felt like an important day that held buckets full of good stuff. A marker for a whole bunch of happy, but an anniversary of what was.
I’ll call it celebratory mourning.
The good news is, like those days I used to describe it, it didn’t last for very long.
After a pure night’s sleep, I woke up Friday morning on day two of the big dance, and I could see pretty clearly why the wave of emotion hit me when it did. I missed being in the middle of the wonder juice that drenches you when you tie yourself with others to a cause outside yourself. Team sweat has an addictive fragrance. And it flows like lava in the month of March.
While we get all wrapped up in the madness (rightly so!) sports is not the only place where this can happen. It just happens to be one that gets captured by a camera and streamed on live tv.
People steel themselves together for causes all the time. There are teams of nurses out there right now who know exactly what it feels like to climb a ladder and cut down a net. There are people building houses and running schools and toiling daily for non-profits who have their one shining moments, they’re just not in an arena where people have paid to watch them work.
But I secretly hope they yank their shirts off. And I hope they pour water on each other’s heads. And I hope they dance and laugh and cry and act the fool in their delirium because work done well together always deserves a moment like that. The trophies and the rings are nice, but the feeling is what everybody is after.
And that’s what I was wistful for on the first day of the dance.
I remember this wave of emotion that hit me as my son and his wife ran through the exit line toward his truck following their wedding—I was so happy! I was so sad! I have no idea where my husband was, but the best man put his arm around me and hugged me as I cried. I didn’t want anything back. I wasn’t worried about anything moving forward. My emotions were just haywire because I understood everything that was at stake. I knew what her parents had poured in to making this woman-child, and what we had poured in to making this man-child, and what the two of them had poured in to making this life commitment. All of us were invested in a thing outside ourselves. And it was rewarding and daunting and miraculous.
That’s what happens when you’re a part of a team.
You put pieces of yourself in without a thought of getting them back. And you understand that what you’re doing together takes on an impactful life of its own. Hardly anything is better than the feeling that comes from knowing that you did that, with your team.
Except, maybe, doing it.
How about those Peacocks?
Sherri Coale
P.S.