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Soccer Banter

I Love Winning

9/13/2011

1 Comment

 
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As I write this week’s edition of my Blog, I'm still coming down from the high of beating BU.  They were ranked #20 in the country and considered to be one of the best teams in the northeast. It seems that this game could be an important deciding factor of what kind of team we will be. We had lost our last two games and I was afraid that we could begin to accept losing too easily. I don't know that anyone outside of our locker room expected us to respond the way that we did.   

That ride home from Cambridge after the Harvard loss was completely miserable.  So, the win definitely reinstated some lost confidence in the direction our season was going. We have three more non-league games and then begin a very tough A-10 schedule.  Ultimately it is our results in the A-10 that will determine our success, but if the BU game is any indication, we will be ready to compete for a conference title! More importantly, the BU upset has really brought us together as a team. There's a new energy and a new desire to prove just how good we are - and can be.

This win definitely put a new spark in me. This week has been particularly hard.  I am still not able to play and have absolutely no answers or idea when I'll be back. A CT scan showed a crack in my orbital bone and 2 more in my nose. It was a diagnosis that was much worse than I expected.  I got the call with the results while on the bus to Harvard (making that trip incredibly horrible for me), and it dashed my hopes that I could be ready to play against BU.  Right now, I live with a sort of permanent anxiety as I await my next doctor’s appointment on Wednesday.   I am holding on to the belief that surgery will not be necessary and I will get back soon.



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Not to mention I feel like the team’s equipment manager and I genuinely look forward to any on-field involvement, like my “quasi-assistant-coaching-job” during warm ups!  This is when I get to pass the ball in some drills and set up the cones. It is safe to say that sitting and watching my team struggle, with nothing more to offer than encouragement and cups of water, is a rotten feeling. The pride and excitement of winning Sunday has helped lessen a lot of this. Rather than looking forward to the upcoming week with dread (and thinking it will be more bad news like last week) I have to stay positive.  I believe that if things are going well for the team, then the rest will fall into place. My injury is what it is, I won’t be able to change that, so I just have to dedicate myself to doing everything I can to help the team.  Even if that means being the best cheerleader, equipment manager and cone-setter-upper I can be until I get back to action. 

These days just getting out of the dorm and watching other people act like fools is good enough for us freshman in Emerson. Not that watching movies and having mouthwash wars (a creative battle of who can keep Listerene in their mouth the longest) doesn’t get pretty crazy too! Especially when the next day you have no working taste buds. But we were all dying to change out of the sweatpants and t-shirts we had been wearing for the last month and put on some dresses, do some dancing and feel like girls again. Anytime we are all together is always fun. I am lucky to have such a great group of teammates, maybe all college teams are like this, but my guess is that we have a unique group. 

I've quickly learned that winning is the key in college sports. When we win, fitness isn't that bad, practices aren't as tense and everyone is happier.  It may seem pretty obvious, but you can’t underestimate the simple fact that winning makes life so much easier. People always want to believe that winning isn't everything but I think that those people probably have never won anything before. Give anyone the feeling of beating a nationally ranked team and I guarantee they too will become addicted to the euphoria. You win and you are well rewarded but the opposite is also true. If you lose, expect practice to be longer and the fitness to be harder.  It was sort of the same in High School and club, but just not as focused.  In college everything seems more intense, so the wins are bigger – and the losses more devastating.  The University of Maine is next, let’s hope we stay on our winning ways.


1 Comment
Just a Mom
9/13/2011 12:39:34 pm

We're pulling for you!

Reply



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    Becky Landers

    Landers is a freshman midfielder from Danvers, MA playing for the University of Massachusetts. She played her club soccer for Stars of Massachusetts. helping the team to 3 state championships and two Region I titles. 

    Follow UMASS Women's Soccer on Twitter: @UMassWSoccer

     

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