No More Panic Mode

January 20

We lost. To RPI, the team picked first in the Preseason Coaches’ Poll of the Liberty League (RPI), by a total of seven points, after winning for the majority of the game. But really, the only thing that is taken away from the game is that we lost. The bottom line is, there’s a one in the loss column now, not a zero.

Losing is awful. I absolutely hate to lose. Every athlete competing at such a high, intense level hates to lose. I’m not kidding you when I say that I DREAMT about the game last night, thinking of what I should have done so that we could be 3-0 in league instead of 2-1. Losing literally haunts me. But while we all hate it, we must learn from it, and we must take away the positives of it as well. We played pretty well for the majority of the game and we held a high-scoring offense to only 47 points. Now, we need to learn to put the pieces together to finish a game. We need to learn to not break down in the final stretch. And we need to learn to not panic just because the game is tight. When we were watching film tonight after practice, Coach pointed out to us that we would be seeing a lot of close games this season, including this weekend when we travel to William Smith and Hamilton in search of two more league wins. That being said, we can’t afford to go into this ‘Panic Mode’ at the end of every close game we play. Because the panic will just lead to the result we got last night: a loss. 2-1, instead of 3-0. But knowing this now, we’ll be working hard in preparation for this weekend to make sure that we don’t hit ‘Panic Mode’ ever again.

Starting Off 2010 By Making History

This weekend, we made history. It’s that simple. The women’s basketball program at Vassar has never, yes NEVER, had a 2-0 start in Liberty League play until this weekend. After a long trip north on Thursday night, we pulled out a 69-63 win at Clarkson University on Friday and held on for a tight 50-46 win over Saint Lawrence University the next day. It was the first time Vassar had beaten Saint Lawrence since 2001.

I can’t come up with a better word to describe the weekend other than incredible. Both games were an intense 40 minutes, both emotionally and physically. It certainly wasn’t perfect, we made our share of mistakes and had to overcome foul trouble in both games, but in the end we were able to stick it out and get the wins, and that’s really all that matters at the end of the day.

As a team, we’ve been discussing the idea of having expectations since we returned from winter break (which seems like forever ago) and we talked about it at length on Thursday night at the hotel as we prepped for Clarkson. The message was simple: expect to play well, and expect to win. Don’t sell yourself short with a ‘hopefully’ or a ‘maybe.’ Expect to do the things that you want to do in the game, and you will do them. Operate in confidence, not in fear. Expect the win and feel it before it has even happened. This was what we agreed upon on Thursday night in mental preparation, and we consistently reminded each other of it throughout the weekend.

I’m sure neither Clarkson nor Saint Lawrence expected the kind of play they got from us this weekend. Clarkson probably didn’t foresee a 26 point performance from Brittany or a double-double from Tori. Saint Lawrence probably wasn’t expecting a 21 point-10 rebound outing from House or the tenacious defense they felt the entire game. But all that mattered was that we expected it from ourselves. We saw all of it before it even happened. This didn’t mean we weren’t playing hard throughout the entirety of both games. It meant that we had confidence in ourselves and in each other that we WOULD play hard, and that doing so would lead us to victory. And it did. Twice.

So here we are, 3-0 in the year 2010 and 2-0 in the Liberty League, sitting at the top of the standings after weekend number one. But it is way too early to get comfortable. Tomorrow we go back to work to get ready for a tough RPI team. We’ll take it one game at a time, and we will continue to work as hard as we have all season. Most importantly, we’ll continue to expect things from ourselves; we will expect to win. Because what the mind can conceive, it can achieve. Just ask my teammates and coaches.

A New Year to Unleash "The Secret"

This week, Coach Brown gave each of my teammates and me a New Year’s present, a copy of a book entitled “The Secret”. I’m only two chapters in, but what I have learned so far is that ‘the secret’ is the law of attraction; the idea that if you have good, positive thoughts, good positive things will come to you. The things that you think about are attracted to you because that is what you are telling yourself you want. The idea is that by knowing this, we can exhibit some degree of control over our thoughts and therefore exert a much greater deal of control over the outcomes of our lives. By maintaining a positive ‘frequency’ of thought, our results will be positive as well. And while we cannot always control our thoughts, we can control our feelings and how we are feeling is how we communicate our thoughts openly. This, from what I’ve gathered thus far, is The Secret.

My teammates and I arrived back on campus on Sunday, January 3rd to rest up for double sessions that started on Monday. Practices have been tough; we’re working hard and trying to get back into basketball shape. But despite the seemingly endless sprints and defensive drills, we’ve also been having an incredible time together and really getting closer as a team, players and coaches alike. Team dinners (or really just meals in general), a practice of competitions only, and a swim workout that ended in chicken fights (Kristyn and I were unbeaten in that tournament by the way) are just a few of the things that we’ve done that have ended in some serious laughter. Despite being close to the only people on campus and despite the soreness and achiness that our muscles feel, we’ve been having a great time.

We play at John Jay on Monday and start CONFERENCE PLAY a week from tomorrow, and we are preparing ourselves physically as much as possible to win games. But mental preparation and team chemistry are also key components of winning, and we’ve been working on those, too. We will be more likely to win by applying our new knowledge, The Secret; by training our minds to think of good outcomes only and by training ourselves, as a group, to stay on the same positive ‘frequency’ as one another. We have only been back for about five days, but it is clear that we have approached 2010 with a new attitude. There is a renewed sense of energy within our team; and with the hard work that we have been putting in and the continual help of “The Secret”, we will reap the benefits of it very soon.