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.