Back in my tender high school years, I played football, the proud
second-generation Riverwood Raider that I was. My sophomore year, we
went completely winless, 0-10, only pulling one victory when it was
discovered that an opponent plied the use of an ineligible substitute.
It
was a rough year to be sure, but we hired a new coach the next March,
Harris Rainbow (seriously), a young, energetic soul with real vision
for the program. Old coach Rainbow, all of 25, set about trying to
instill a sense of pride and toughness into our listless program. He
did a good job in the preseason.
Then crunch time came around: The season started again, and so did the losses.
But
coach Rainbow pressed on, assuring us over and over again that if we
worked hard, did our jobs, executed, etc., our day would soon come. He
even promised to run wind sprints the night we finally broke through.
Problem
was that our early schedule was too tough, we weren’t nearly deep
enough and a glitch in the system had us playing up a classification
all season. We were getting killed every time we walked off the bus –
and in those first few games, we should have been.
Coach Rainbow
kept on keeping on, giving us all the motivation he could think of to
go along with the day-to-day coaching. We heard it all: speeches,
highlight videos, inspirational stories, etc.
The losses piled
up. We went down every way possible – big, small, thin, wide, red,
green and some others I’ve forgotten. Point is, we weren’t winning.
After
a time, those early beatings, tied with our inexperience with winning
and the aforementioned lack of depth, with our fragile, 16-year-old
psyches took its toll, and wonder of wonders, we began tuning the good
coach out.
We did this not purposely or maybe even consciously.
But when you keep trying your hardest, improving in small increments
and frankly working your butt off, and the losses just keep coming,
it’s hard to find comfort or inspiration in anything, especially when
defeat is all you’ve known.
These Hoosiers are starting to remind me of that team.
They
try hard, they improve in small increments and by all accounts, they
listen to what their coaches have to say. But the losses keep coming.
Tuesday’s
loss makes it seven in a row with the same result, and they’ve come in
so many different ways: blowouts, close losses, blown leads, home
games, away games – you see the point.
The comparisons continue. This team has flaws, 3-point defense lately prominent among them.
What’s
important is that these Hoosiers don’t turn into those Raiders – beaten
before the game even starts, ready to slide face first down the slope
toward subconsciously throwing in the towel.
The only good that
can realistically come from this season, at this point, is the steeling
and molding of many of these young Hoosiers into leaders before their
time.
Nick Williams, Tom Pritchard and Verdell Jones need to be
ready to step up as hardened veterans when next year’s heralded
recruiting class hits campus.
That doesn’t happen purely with
winning; it happens with being able to see the victories. I’m not
talking about moral victories – such things do not exist. I’m talking
about seeing through losses, that are now a reality, to see the
improvements, however small, earned through the hard work the Hoosiers
displayed.
What happened to those Raiders is that we never learned how to see anything but the losing. That can’t happen here.
Anyway, that’s just a story about my high school football team.
See you Friday.
RUNNING THE FLOOR: IU must see through the losing
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