There Is "No Need to Fail when Success is Offered Every Day"

I've been thinking a lot lately about the nature of sport -- why it still exists, why it has such an important place in some of our lives, and whether it should.

Not so much another boring history of sport or even a review of it -- the supposed links to warriors or skills that translate to prowess on the hunt or in the field. Not why people started competing. But why they still do.

Why does sport play such a vital role in our lives? Why does it seem more and more important to many at a time when, realistically, physical prowess is less and less important to survival as an individual and collectively to a people? Why do others ignore or barely tolerate or just plain don't "get" athletics and competition? And, finally, when all is said and done, could our time and energy be better spent on other pursuits than another practice or game?

This all started when I attended, to the bemusement of some of my friends, the Mountaineer Athletic Club dinner in Charleston this past week. The MAC raises money for scholarships for athletes in all of WVU's varsity sports. I was impressed by the coaches and athletes who spoke, not just because they were articulate in thanking the donors for the contributions that made their teams and their opportunities to compete possible, but because of the palpable impact that sports, and in particular the opportunity to be a member of a team, had made in their lives. But the skeptical part of me couldn't help but wonder if all that was money could be better spent on research projects, new classrooms, or visiting professorships than on athletics.

Later in the week a gentleman I met at the dinner introduced me, via email, to Jeff Usher. The similarities between Jeff's life and mine are eerily (and, truth be told, a little disappointingly) similar: Jeff is an employment lawyer, soccer coach, and author (well, he's really an author; so far my writing is confined to this blog and some articles, not an entire book). I hope to have the opportunity to talk to Jeff and exchange ideas with him about his approach to coaching and seeing how sport fits into his life.

The dinner and then reading about Jeff made me think more about why sport is still essential to our lives: that it connects us in a common purpose at a time when it is so easy to be a loner among friends, whether  it's pursuing personal goals (attending college, getting a promotion, buying a house, starting a family) or just simply living our day-to-day lives conversing with clients or customers we never meet or touching base with friends and colleagues through one less-than-personal method or the other. But, at the same time, it can also be divisive and even dangerous, particularly when it comes to fans (after all, the word is short for "fanatic").

My epiphany came when, by chance, I saw a piece on ESPN about Jim Tracy, a high school girls' cross-country coach in California. Both Tracy and his team (ironically enough, another University High School, this one in San Francisco) have faced and continue to face substantial, and ultimately insurmountable, challenges, but overcame them at least temporarily in some extraordinary ways.

The piece that ran on ESPN's Outside the Lines is below and remarkably well done, as well as being visually stunning.

Tracy and his team exemplify why competition is still so vital to our development individually and collectively and how sport can help us meet -- head on -- the challenges we will all face. The bond between teammates, and between coach and team, is something that cannot be taught in a classroom. It has to be experienced. While winning is obviously important to Tracy and his team (and they are very adept at it) competition, teamwork, and mutual support are lessons that he knows his players will take away from his program that will better allow both him and them to face the obstacles that they will encounter in life. It is truly the means, not the end, that is most important.

"I'm a person who sees no need to fail when success is offered everyday" Tracy says near the beginning of the story. We can take that comment quite literally: that Tracy, with his multiple state championships, tells his girls every year that they have the opportunity to win another and should expect to.

I suspect, however, that Tracy is referring to something much bigger than just a cross-country meet or even a state championship. Each of us has within us the means to accomplish great things and everyday has the opportunity to do exactly that. Sport still has the unique ability to teach us to discover that talent within ourselves, and then reveal the will to push it to its absolute limit. That is a lesson that is learned only by preparing to compete, and then by competing.

Support Your Local Soccer Team

Because the vast majority of U.S. soccer fans of my generation didn't grow up playing soccer, they chose the sport rather than the sport choosing them.

This is not always a good thing.

Much as the former two-pack-a-dayer becomes the most strident anti-smoking advocate, so too many converted American soccer fans become soccer snobs, insisting on only following the best of European or South American soccer and deriding the level of play in MLS, let alone that of the lower division leagues in the U.S., the United Soccer Leagues (USL) and Professional Development League (PDL).

No, the MLS is not the Premier League. But neither is the Scottish Premier League, or the Ukrainian Premier League, or even Ligue 1 (France's highest professional league).

At the end of every Mountain Stage, Larry Groce tells the audience to go out and listen to some live local music. He's not saying it will be as good as what you just heard on the show, but that's not important. What is important is the idea of local music, of supporting its existence and the people who are probably not even eking out a living performing it, but are doing it just the same and could use a little support while pursuing their dream.

The same goes for local soccer. Whether it's the Columbus Crew or the Portland Timbers or even D.C. United, MLS has to play an important part in the development and vitality of the game in America. U.S. soccer fans need to support MLS, through attendance or even just watching games on t.v., to increase the presence of the game in our national psyche, and especially its attractiveness as a marketing tool to potential advertisers.

Even more desperate for a little support are local soccer clubs. While the level of play isn't always great, the atmosphere and support of your team (even if it's your club only for that evening) is. Perhaps the two most enjoyable times I have ever spent at soccer matches were in York, England watching a pre-season match of what was then Third Division York City F.C. against Middlesborough and an overweight and fast deteriorating Paul Gascoigne, and in Charleston South Carolina watching the USL's Battery play at its wonderful Blackbaud Stadium.

Here in West-by-God Virginia's Charleston we have a PDL team, the Chaos. The PDL is, as its name indicates, a developmental league. Most of the players are local college players, looking for extra playing time in the summer and perhaps that "break" to move to the next level. The play is at the level of a good Division II college program.

No, you're not going to see Lionel Messi on the Schoenbaum Stadium pitch -- probably not the next Lionel Messi either. But there are few ways to spend more a pleasant evening than sitting in the stands, watching some local boys try to make good while the sun slides down the horizon behind the Appalachian Mountains leaving the sky streaked purple and pink.

So next time you find yourself at home on a Saturday or Sunday with nothing particular to do, go find a local game, drop a few bucks, and, as Larry Groce might say, watch some live local soccer wherever you may be.

The Drop

Every year around this time throughout Europe sportswriters and commentators and fans start talking about The Drop.  Relegation and promotion (or, I guess, promotion and relegation if your glass is half full) are features of almost every professional soccer league in the world not in the U.S. or Australia.

Rather ironic, since relegation is the most democratic, or Darwinian, of all sporting concepts. Each year in one or two or three of the clubs that finish in the bottom of the standings of a league will be relegated to the next division down, and the same number of clubs will be promoted, either by virtue of their finish in their league during the regular season or by a playoff, to the next higher division. So while clubs in, say, China will (theoretically) rise or fall each year on their own merits, those in the U.S. are among the few that are always safely ensconced in the highest professional division of the sport.

Because of the way professional sports teams developed in the United States, with a small number of clubs owned usually by one individual or entity, promotion and relegation never took hold here. In Europe, however, with its thousands of soccer teams and stronger local and regional ties, it was a natural development.

In recent years, the relegation battle, at least in England, is much more interesting than the fight for the championship of the Premier League. While the same two or three teams fight it out for the crown every year, several more are sucked into the abyss that is the desperate attempt to avoid the drop.

This year the races to the championship and to relegation are both shaping up to be interesting, thanks to the lack of a dominating club at the top and many middling to miserable ones at the other end of the spectrum. But while one of the usual suspects (either Man United or Arsenal) are likely to win the crown, nine or ten clubs, within six points of each other, are capable of playing badly enough over the last eight or nine matches of the season to warrant relegation.

Unfortunately for me and other Blackburn fans, one of those clubs that could face The Drop is the Rovers.  In the top ten and looking good just a few weeks ago, Rovers have managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, or at least a draw, on several occasions recently, including two weeks ago when they conceded a penalty in the last minute to lose 3-2 to Fulham, and last week when they had to come from two goals down at home to register a draw with Blackpool. Speculation has gone from wondering whether the club will be able to challenge for a Europa League spot to whether they will be playing in the Premier League next season.

I have to admit, though, that whether it's the glass-half-empty Rover fan, the masochist, or the republican (yes, little "r" republican) in me, I relish the fight to dodge The Drop. Nothing more energizes a fan base than supporting your club to survive to fight another day. And, I have to admit, I always relish the opportunity to chirp when a "Big Club" (like Newcastle two seasons ago) goes down.

How cool would it be to get to see an American pro team (insert team name here -- mine would be the Cowboys or the Yankees) struggle to maintain top flight status? Can you imagine the glee if Jerry Jones was faced with the prospect of a half-filled billion dollar stadium while his Cowboys play some semi-pro team from Waco?

I'll be there on Saturday morning, biting my nails and hoping the Rovers can pick up three or even one point against Arsenal (yeah, right) that would go a long way to avoiding The Drop. But I'll be pulling just as hard for West Ham and Birmingham (two self-proclaimed "Big Clubs") to lose and sink a little farther toward oblivion. What could be more American?

Mes Que Un Club

While I may live or die with every Blackburn Rovers' win or loss (and there have been more of the latter than the former lately), I have to admit that Rovers are not my absolute favorite team to watch. That distinction rests with F.C. Barcelona.

Mes Que Un Club ("More than a Club") is the motto of Barcelona. It refers to the fact that the club is much more than simply a soccer club. And while the club also has basketball, handball, hockey, and futsal teams, it refers to much more than that as well.

Barcelona is the team of Catalonia, a region of Spain that has at various times in its history enjoyed cultural and political autonomy or oppression courtesy of its various rulers, most recently Spain. During Franco's rule, the Catalans in general and Barça in particular were singled out for punishment as a culture and institution that were anathema to The Generalissimo's idea of a unified Spain. 

Catalans were prohibited from speaking their language and Franco installed a series of handpicked toadies as Barça's president after his militia executed its duly elected president in 1936. Real Madrid's status as Franco's club and Barça's as the club of the Republicans have always been reason enough for me to root for Barcelona and despise Real (and that was before Real bought Cristiano Ronaldo). Even today, the colors of the Catalan flag appear on Barça's badge, shirts, and its captain's armband.

While there are political and cultural reasons why I began supporting Barça, there is a simpler reason I prefer to watch them over any other team, even Rovers: they play the most dazzling soccer on the planet.

Barcelona plays the game the way I think it ought to be played. Pinging passes around the pitch, probing for openings, dominating possession, looking for that little window or slight angle that provides the killer through ball. With plenty of determination and grit, but no cynicism. They have two of the best center midfielders in the world (Xavi and Iniesta) to run the show, one of the best forwards, David (that's "Dah-veed") Villa to score goals, and the best player in the universe, Lionel Messi, to provide the magic.

And here's the kicker, at least for me: all four are under 5'10" tall. Villa, at a listed 5'9", is the "giant" of the bunch. Xavi, Iniesta, and Messi are all purported to be around 5'7", although I'm skeptical of even that measurement. 

As a vertically challenged individual, and perhaps more importantly, the father of two vertically challenged (former) high school athletes, I've always been sensitive to coaches or organizations that are quick to dismiss someone just because of their height. That certainly didn't happen to these four -- instead, they comprise the most lethal soccer attack in the world. How cool is that?

I watched Barça dismantle Arsenal in the Champion's League Tuesday and came away with one thought: everyone who thinks soccer is boring needs to watch this match. While Arsenal are generally a team that like to possess the ball (before and after the first leg of this two-match contest they were often referred to as "Barça Lite") they saw virtually none of in the match, reduced to desperate defending and great goal keeping to keep the score close. 95,000 fans cheered every pass, and Messi scored a goal that only Messi could score. 

So, for all of you out there who still think soccer is boring, here's a little (pun intended) Messi for you. And I'll be happy to loan you my dvd of the entire match if you'd like. Seriously. Just remember to give it back. They're more than just a club you know.

Sing The Changes

I've felt more than the usual push-pull over work, this blog and other social media venues, and life in general over the past few weeks -- issues that I've debated whether I should or should not share in any forum other than conversations and emails with family and friends.

Cindy and I watched "The Social Network" the week before last and afterwards, putting aside questions of how much was fact and how much fiction in the film, we discussed the very real issue of whether social networking, particularly Facebook but to some extent blogs as well, has become a substitute for genuine relationships and the honest expression of emotions.

Two predilections are at work in social media that seem to undermine interpersonal relationships and the need to communicate simple truths or profound thoughts: first, the compulsion to post regularly one's status on Facebook; and second, the need to post regularly to a blog, lest it become a blog without readers. Both, as the movie seems to conclude, are the antithesis of genuine communication and are at best a poor substitute for the personal sharing of substantive thoughts, ideas, and emotions.

These critiques caused considerable personal introspection last week. We received a call last Sunday morning informing us that a good friend of Kelsey's had died in a rappelling accident in California.  Matt was a wonderful young man with an infectious smile and a twinkle in his eye. He had battled some substantial demons in his life and had won; through determination and pain, no doubt, but I wouldn't have put it past Matt to have charmed the Devil himself as well.

The news of Matt's death hit our entire family hard. Kelsey had stayed in touch with Matt and they had gone hiking and rappelling in West Virginia over the Christmas break. Matt had always been exceedingly kind to Ethan, even when it would have been easier to simply treat him as the annoying little brother. They had seen each other at a 5K last year and Matt told Ethan he hoped they'd run into each other again soon. I had only seen Matt twice in the last five years, but for both Cindy and me, Matt's place in our children's lives as they went through middle and high school made the news tough to take and last week a long and emotional one.

During the week I kept my Facebook posting to a minimum and made no direct references either to Matt or to what we were going through as a family. The last thing I wanted to do was to appear to attempt to take ownership of his life, his passing, or the incredible grief that I knew his family was feeling.

After reading an impossibly positive and life-affirming story about Matt last week and then attending a celebration of his life on Saturday at which the warmth, compassion, courage, and caring of those who spoke about Matt was awe inspiring, I decided to post something here about Matt and honor and celebrate his life.

These thoughts aren't very original and are often repeated at times like this. But they are all things that Matt taught us in his too short thoroughly lived life:

Tell those that you love that you love them, sincerely and incessantly.
Enjoy creation, regardless of by Whom or how or why you believe it was created. Preferably in its wildest, most unspoiled and majestic state.
Embrace change.
Be kind to strangers.
Serve the less fortunate.
Play and don't keep score.
Love Life.

And next time, don't change your status, write a letter to a friend. In longhand. Don't "Like" a post. Give the person a call. Don't admire the pictures in someone's photo album. Go take your own.

There were a lot of wonderful quotes that were shared over the past two weeks regarding Matt and the impact that he made on a lot of people. I'm more pop culture than high culture, though, so rather than e.e. cummings or Bertrand Russell I give you some Paul McCartney, in honor of Matt:

Sing your praises
As you're sleeping
Feel the quiet
In the thunder.
Sing the changes
Calling over.
Everybody has a sense of
Childlike wonder.

What Gets You Excited?

These are exciting times for two of my favorite soccer teams, at least as far as I'm concerned.

The U.S. Men's soccer team played its first match of the season last week and four of the starters and seven players altogether earned their first caps (a "cap" is the term used for a full national team appearance, for all you soccer-challenged readers). One of them, Zach Loyd,  a 23 year-old outside back, was named Man of the Match. Another, Teal Bunbury, a 20 year-old forward, scored the only goal for the Yanks in a 1-1 draw with Chile.

Teal Bunbury.

By my unofficial count, 12 players on the U.S. squad who saw action in the match were 23 years old or younger. Landon Donovan, Tim Howard, Clint Dempsey, and many other National Team veterans were nowhere to be found.

Meanwhile, in Lancashire, Blackburn Rovers have just concluded the January transfer window by adding four players, one of whom is a former team member (forward Roque Santa Cruz, a Paraguayan international), an American defensive midfielder (Jermaine Jones) and two young offensive players (Mauro Formica, 22, from Newell's Old Boys -- is that a great club name or what? and Ruben Rochina, 19, from one of my other favorite clubs, Barcelona).

Ruben Rochina.

Rovers' new owners, Venky's, an Indian poultry company, made noises about trying to sign David Beckham or Ronaldinho to "strengthen" the team but whether they were truly interested in either, or whether they were just trying to realize some media profit for their recent investment, fortunately neither will wear the blue and white halves.

No doubt there are casual fans of both the U.S. team and Rovers who would have welcomed the veterans back to or into their squads. But not me.

It's probably the coach in me, but nothing is more exciting to me than the introduction of young and (hopefully) talented players to a team. The opportunity to mold a group of individuals into a winning, entertaining team is much more interesting than watching some "big name" past his prime earn a last few paychecks.

The same is true with our national team.  I'm sure Howard, Donovan, Dempsey et al. will still play a big part in the near future, but it's way more exciting to get a glimpse of what 2014 and beyond may look like than trotting them out for another friendly.

The introduction of young talent to an established team isn't something that happens all that often in the business world. After all, the goal there is to keep valuable employees for a working lifetime, which is normally considerably longer than an athlete's viable economic life.

That doesn't mean, however, that management and the employees themselves can't try to inject a breath of the unusual or extraordinary into the workplace. Team meetings, lunches, social events, or bonus or other incentive plans based on unique criteria are all ways that you can try to give your workplace a jolt of newness, even when the roster doesn't change as dramatically as it did recently for two of my favorite teams.

An Extraordinary Leader

"War is Hell" of that there can be no doubt.  But out of that Hell emerges extraordinary leadership, sometimes from unlikely sources.

Richard "Dick" Winters was a smart, mild-mannered, college-educated man from Pennsylvania who, at the age of 23, three months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, enlisted in the Army. He underwent basic training, then was selected for Officer Candidate School.  He joined the paratroop infantry and was assigned to Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Division. The first active combat he saw was on June 6, 1944 -- D-Day. That day the Company Commander was killed when his plane was shot down and Winters became the acting commanding officer.

Winters led his troops during the Normandy Invasion and on his first day of command led an assault that destroyed a battery of German 105 mm howitzers which were firing onto the causeways that served as the principal exits from Utah Beach, an attack that became known as the Brécourt Manor Assault. The attack is still taught at West Point as an example of a textbook assault on a fixed position.

He went on to lead his troops through several of the major campaigns in Europe in 1944 and 1945, including Bastogne. Many, many years later Winters' heroism, as well as that of most of those with whom he served, was depicted in Stephen Ambrose's book Band of Brothers and a television mini-series of the same name.

The real Dick Winters, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Dick Winters passed away last week at the age of 92. Consistent with his self-effacing manner, he had requested that news of his death not be made public until after his memorial service, which was held last Saturday. As I read of his death, and reminded myself again of his extraordinary life, I reflected on the words of his comrades and Major Winters himself on what made him such a great leader.

And it's really pretty simple. Most importantly of all, Winters cared about his men and made sure that they understood both what he expected of them and how proud he was of them. One of the men who served under him summed up Winters and his leadership to the Associated Press this way: "He was a wonderful officer, a wonderful leader. He had what you needed, guts and brains. He took care of his men, that's very important."

Winters himself wrote of his view of leadership this way in an article in American History Magazine: "If you can, find that peace within yourself, that peace and quiet and confidence that you can pass on to others, so that they know that you are honest and you are fair and will help them, no matter what, when the chips are down."

Most of us, as coaches, managers, human resource directors, or lawyers are fortunate to not find ourselves tested on the field of battle. But the rules of engagement with those working under us are largely the same, just not a matter of life and death. We don't need to be Dick Winters to be at least good leaders. Caring for those we work with, and letting them know that, is the hallmark of a good, if not great, leader.

Nor must we be Henry V of England, or William Shakespeare, who wrote the St. Crispin's Day Speech, delivered by the character of Henry V before the Battle of Agincourt, from which Band of Brothers borrowed its title. That speech is a fitting epitaph to Winters and that Greatest Generation who are leaving us day-by-day:

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother