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Wednesday, 25 August 2004
High hurdles.
We are all in mourning at the fall of Perdita. I truly feel bad for her. In May of 2003 I took my Floor Hockey team to the Provincial Championships. We had a good shot at winning it all, facing teams in our round robin that we have beaten in the past. The first game was supposed to be our toughest. We won with a great effort 5-2. The second game was a blowout, with us on top 7-0. As day one ended we were one win away from the gold medal game. Our third game was against a team we beat a month prior by a huge margin (9-2), so we were pretty stoked about our prospects. We lost the game 6-3, and were eliminated from the gold medal game. The team we would have been facing was a team that we had beaten 3 out of 4 times previously, they won the gold in a lopsided victory. I was bummed. In fact I was pretty damned distraught. I felt like I let down my players by not preparing them, by not making some tough decisions that would help our cause. I blamed myself and beat me self up about it for a long time. We began the next season about 4 months later, and came out of the gates firing on all cylinders. Despite the victory after victory, the tournament wins, the league wins and even the exhibition wins, that game, the critique's I heard after that game and the decisions I made prior to that game continued to haunt me. It wasn't until January 31, 2004 that I was finally able to put that loss behind me. We entered the Mississauga Invitational Floor Hockey tournament (which I began a few years ago and is now the largest tournament in Canada...not to brag...) undefeated in our first 11 games of the season. We won a smaller invitational in December, and after grabbing that victory the coach of the team we won against told me that he would need to bring some of his "B" players to our tournament in order to beat us. I shrugged it off. Now for those who do not know, Special Olympics seeds its teams based on ability - the highest being A, the lowest D, my team is a C team, and the tournament I run is for C teams. Winning is extremely important in SO, so much so that coaches will bench players who aren't good enough, or even cut them from their team. I always believed if you were cutting or benching players you weren't really winning. It is a philosophy that cost me (and I emphasize ME) a gold medal back in May, but it was a philosophy that I was committed too (despite strong temptations). So we won our first game against last years tournament champs 10-1. Our second game was against a weaker team, and we won 9-0. Our third game was against the team that knocked us out of the Provincials, we won 2-1 and advanced to the final. In the final we faced the team that were bringing the "B" players. They easily won their side and the match-up was set. They went with there 11 best players, not bringing, benching or replacing their other players in order to put in place a strong winning team. I went with 21 of my 22, as one of my guys didn't make it due to illness - he happened to be one of my best defenseman to boot. The opposing coach grabbed me before the game and playfully told me `you're going down'. I replied `we'll see'. We soon found ourselves trailing 2-0 going into the third period. With two shifts left to play one of my rookies floated a shot past their goalie to get us within one. In the last shift of the game I had my top goal scorer, who already had 6 goals on the day, ready and primed to get some more glory. As the last minute of the game approached I went to pull my goalie and had an extra attacker ready to go. I didn't need him as we tied it up with an awesome shot over the goalies stick side shoulder. A quick time out was called and I instructed the guys to kill the clock and get to OT. In OT we are allowed to throw our best 5, which I did. We pelted the net and were all over the opposing team, and finally, a shot from my top goal scorer is saved, but the rebound cuts across the crease where my captain is waiting for the easy goal. We went wild and I finally got over that loss in May of 2003. My team would go on to beat that gold medal winning team in our league championships later in the year, and when it was all over we had a 27-3-1 record. It was a great year, and the pain of our Provincial loss is long behind us...but I'm still looking to 2007...As for Perdita, if she has the guts and heart she will be back. Her interviews and post race composure gave us a glimpse at what she is made of. I expect we will be cheering her to gold in 2008.
But what does my Bastard Boy alter ego say:
All that training, all that hard work, sponsorship and government funding and she can't even jump one hurdle. Well I am pretty sure that without any training, any sponsorship or governement funding I could have fallen flat on my face too...and I would have taken out not only the Russian, but the other Canadian chick too.
But then again I am a Bastard...
Posted by Bastard Boy
at 12:14 PM EDT
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