Sunday, March 4, 2012

Records Are Made To Be Broken


Pride is an admission of weakness; it secretly fears all competition and dreads all rivals.
~Fulton J. Sheen


I’m a competitive person. It may not always seem like it. Maybe I’m not outgoing or open enough for my competitive nature to stand out as one of my defining features but for better or worse I continually measure myself compared to others and I hate to lose. Much of the time this is good quality, it is something that motivates me to be the best person I can be. However, while competition may bring out the best in people, it also has the potential to bring out the worst. Some of the most damaging emotions stem from competitive pride; jealousy, resentment, fear, anger. There is a balance between using competition as a motivator and not letting it become about who wins and who loses. I know everyone can’t literally win but I stand by the notion from the Panther cheer “Clear Eyes Full Hearts Can’t Lose.”

An old friend of mine, Elizabeth Yetzer, writes a blog, and in it she recently posted about her roommate and how special their friendships is because they both genuinely rout for each other to succeed despite being really competitive. She writes, “It is so awesome to imagine that if we all really encourage others to be the best-version-of themselves, we will all play the role we are created for.”





I was reminded of this message this weekend while I was coaching at our indoor conference track and field meet. At big meets like this, records are in jeopardy, teams are pitted against teams, competitor against competitor, and often friend against friend. All too often all that separates one performance from another is a tenth or hundredth of a second, or a fraction of an inch. Yet we use the outcome to determine our worth. As an athlete I didn’t like to get to know my competition too well because it was more motivating for me to want to prove myself better than the vilified fictional version of them, than the real one which was certainly “worth” as much as if not more than myself. The game changes when you know the other peoples’ stories and the work do to be their best. You begin to relate to them and care about them…of course you still want to beat them, but it’s different, it’s weird.

It is weird coaching athletes who compete against my friends and former teammates from college. I want them all to be the best they can be but I don’t want them to have to beat up on my athletes to do it. Or even more selfishly, I don’t want their successes to have to overshadow my past success or erase the legacy that my team worked hard to leave. While all these complex emotions mixed together with the adrenaline and excitement of the competitive atmosphere I realized that a legacy by definition is a gift that is given and received. If you look at it in that way, great performances, and records and any other type of success are not really something you can pridefully own, you inherited them for a small time use them as motivation to do better, to be better, and then you pass them on to someone else so that they can be motivated to strive for something even better. A person’s contribution to the legacy isn’t devalued by the betterment of it, but it fact the opposite, the betterment of a legacy proves the worth of each individual contribution by making something worthy of strife.

Stepping back even further, I can see this is happening not just at the level of an individual competition, or an individual track and field team, or a track and field program, but also at the level of the MIAC conference, and the level of Division III, and all levels of the sport, or any sport. And if you really think about it, it’s what redeems competition of any form as a tool for good, rather than a recipe for conflict and war. It’s why we can’t lose when we live with clear eyes and full hearts.

Success is a gift and records are made to be broken.

Leave to a legacy worth chasing,

Laura



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