One on One

I have spent the better part of my life being a basketball player.  For those of you living under a rock, basketball is a team sport.  Very much a team sport.  Five on five.  May God have mercy on the weakest link on each team. 

I have recently been watching some grass court tennis and Olympic swimming trials. The head-to-head nature of tennis and swimming makes these two sports very different for me to watch compared to my own sport of choice.

But  I think I may be converting to a head-to-head sport fan.  While the team nature of basketball (along with the essence of the game itself) will always hold some amount of interest for me, I can freely admit that I do not enjoy watching it as much as I used to. 

More and more I find myself attracted to the person-to-person combat of individual sports.  There is something that I find intriguing about what is lurking beyond the surface of the immediately obvious in these races and matches.  The mentality of the participants is a huge part of their success or loss.

It's not that that's not also true to some extent in team sports, but it is possible for a team to do well while one member is struggling.  The same is virtually impossible in an individual sport.

In college, I kept playing basketball long after I stopped really loving the game because I loved my team.  It's not that I didn't want to let them down.  It's that I didn't want to miss being a part of what they were, what we were.  It was worth it.  Every second of it.

 (Well, except maybe those several thousand horrendous seconds when coach kept sending us out of the gym during an early morning practice to come back in more cheerful and full of pep.  And then there was the time when he expected us to run 10 double-downs in 2 minutes because we could all run 5 in 1.  Except for those seconds, I have no regrets.)

Tennis players and swimmers have the ability (or not) to single-handedly best their opponent.  They deal with fatigue, injuries, bad calls, crowds, and intimidation all on their own.

To me, this is impressive.  And I would have to think long and hard about it.  But I might even say that they are the superior athletes because of the mental strength they must possess in addition to their physical assets in order to win.

But my team, my girls... I would not trade my experiences with them for any amount of athletic superiority.