Adversity

So, this wasn't the best weekend for ONU men's volleyball.

We competed in the MIVA Championships at Ohio State University this weekend. Against some of the best teams in the country, we finished the weekened with a 1-5 record. Not what we're use to.With one starter unable to play because of a finger injury, we experiemented with several different lineups and had different personel on the floor throughout the weekend.

It's difficult to reflect on tournaments like this, because as a competitior, I want to immediately erase this from my memory. However, these are the athletic experiences when we have the greatest opportunity to grow and learn as a team and as individual players. In the words of the great John Wooden, "failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be."

This quote by the legendary UCLA basketball coach could not be more applicable to our situation right now. Our season has not come to an end, and we have an opportunity to look at what we did this weekend and make the necessary changes before the national tournament in two weeks.

The national tournament is three days of nothing but volleyball. It's a race to the finish, and teams that run out of gas are left behind with no AAA to bail them out. Each team is faced with adversity during the three day event, and the teams that handle adversity the best are the ones that are successful. Our team didn't handle adversity as well as we could have this weekend.

So even though, I want to throw this weekend out and immediately take out the trash, I need to go through the junk and search for the important elements that I can't play without. Even in the eight short hours since the tournament ended, I've thought about the ways I need to be a better player, teammate and leader.

This year's team has something special, and I refuse to end this season on the same note as my two previous years as a Polar Bear. Even though, we're frustrated with the way this weekend played out, it could be a blessing in disguise. This could be the wake-up call that we needed, and the final lessons that we had to learn before our run to reclaim the national title.