Confidence

TyronePower3000 (2:03:04 AM): by the way...this needs to be our teams feeling in the spring:
TyronePower3000 (2:03:05 AM): "Nobody could give that kind of confidence to an athlete, except himself. It couldnt be faked, or called up at the last minute. You got it from everything you did leading up to the competition, so that on the day of the race itself, you looked around at all the other strong riders beside you and said, "I'm ready. I've done more than they have. Bring it on."

I just woke up and was going to get ready for work, but I have this little doozie awaiting me from Sean. We were talking about life last night, and just how at 2am, even though I wanted to be asleep like 2 hours ago I was going to end up staying up and reading about cutting to grab a piece of circular plastic, which a few years ago if you told me those are the types of things I'd do with my life I'd thought you were nuts. Not to mention, the book (The Bible, aka UTT, aka, Ultimate Techniques and Tactics), is written by a guy named Jim Parinella, who is one of the most succesful players in our sport. This is kind of funny, because before I knew who Parinella was, if I heard the name Jimmy P, i would instincitevely think rapist, drug dealer, or the underutilized child molestor. I also just re-read this last paragraph, and I'm not sure if there's a rational thought in there. I don't function well in the morning. Anyway, to something of substance...

My freshman year, we played Bucknell at their home tournament in Shippensburg. This weekend had many ups and downs, as Brody played with us, it was Sean's last college tournament for a long long time, there was a lot of controversy because Bucknell switched their roster mid tourny to stack up the team we were playing. It's amazing how I can remember the specifics of almost every game from a tournament two years ago but I'm not exactly sure what I did yesterday. Another moment from this trip, which has no relevance but I always thought it was funny. When we're driving down, Brody and Whitey are up front, and I'm sitting bitch between Sean and John Harden (You know, the token 29 year old spazzy guy who has since fallen off the face of the earth, and the last time I saw him he had a scruffy beard, a ripped tshirt, stained pants and was drinking straight from a carton of milk right in front of the Cathedral. I swear to god I did not make any of that up. Every team has one of those guys, right? Or at least I keep telling myself.) Anyway, Brody had a mix on and they were most U2 songs and stuff like that that everyone knows, and at points we all sung some of the songs under our breath. That is until "I like big butts and I can not lie" came on. See Harden knows every single word to this song, and I sat next to him, and listened to him recite every single word. Quite a moment. Haha, looking back I just wrote another paragraph with no real point. It had a point in the beggining, but I just got sidetracked. This blogging thing is actually kind of fun. Let's try this again.

So we're at Bucknell. We played this shitty ass old team from Harrisburg, who were being bitches because they had declared a jihad against college kids like 10 years ago. We played like shit, went down 7-3 at half, Sean yelled at us, before proceeding to accidently break some guys arm (the only actual nice guy on the other team no less), and we came back and won on universe point. I scored 5 goals that game, and the reason I know this is because it was one of the first games in my career I played with confidence. When I was cutting, I'd look at the guy defending me, realize he was half my age prolly had an artificial body part in him somewhere, and decided there was no way he could even fuckin touch me. In the final game against Bucknell however, this confidence, was not there so much. I'd match up against my guy, some athletic looking college kid, and be kind of intimidated. It wasn't so much that I was scared as much as I knew if I got beat in, Brody would yell at me, I knew if I got beat out, Brody would yell at me, and I wasn't really sure how to play defense, having only been playing the game for a few months. I think of games back then and can't help but think if I were a better player, we prolly could have pulled it out. I don't even really think that that is much the case, as much as if I were a more confident player, I think I could have made the difference and we would have pulled it out.

Fast forward to First Night of Flight, January of 2004. My team was pretty bad, because I was the second best player on it behind Pre. These days, I'd say that would make for a great start on a FNOF team, not to mention a helleva lot of fun, but back then I was still just a clueless rookie with a lot of heart and desire for the game, but not really much in the talent depot. Despite this, I played my heart out that night. On Pitt I was on the bottom of the food chain, as even though our team wasn't that good, most players were better than me. FNOF has a summer league type feel to it, as if you've played for a decent college team you're prolly better than most other people out there, except instead of the summer, its 4am in January. I remember after the second game I played really well, this guy who played for Jawbone who I didn't shut down, but defintatly contained, went up to Pre and asked him who I was. This was a BIG deal for me. Going into the next game, my confidence is at an all time high and Pre matches me up against Banyas, who at the time I viewed as an elite played because I had this thing about thinking everyone was on RUN had to be an elite player. I got a few D's on him, scored on him a few times, got open at will, and just played real well against him. Looking back now, the D's I got were prolly just because I was trying so much harder than prolly anyone there, the goals and getting open at will were prolly just because Banyas poaches the shit out of everyone, let alone someone who he knows has only been playing a few months, and containing Banyas at in indoor game isn't very hard because he prolly just hucked it all the time. I didn't know any of this at the time though, and the tournament as a whole started a new chapter for me as a player. I started on the D line every tournament in the spring, and thought I was one of the teams better defenders, not because I really had much of an idea of what I was doing, but because I began to play with confidence.

I think playing with confidence is one of the most important, if not THE most important aspect in the game. Sean goes out and knows he can break anyones mark. This is a confidence thing in my mind. Obviously he has the throws too, but if you don't have the confidence to break the mark, you're not gonna do it, throws or not. Think back to Boston, and the huck that Sean threw me that I jumped 10 minutes to early for against Pike. Jaeger was defending me, I'm intimidated as shit of Jaeger, and because of that it made me play differently. Blaze has done numbers for my confidence the past two years, and I'm sure it helped Sean as well, because it shows that we can play with those guys. I may not be as good a defender as Jaeger or Dono, Sean may not have Walt's composure with the disc, and we may not be as fuckin sweet a person as Reavy, but we both felt like when we both stepped on the field with players of that caliber, we belonged. That's a big deal for two up and coming college players.

Playing with Burgh this past fall definatly hurt my confidence, and I think set me back as a player. Punishment or not, I was a bench player for the team, and that's something I've never dealt with well, especially since I felt like I should have been playing every D point. When I was in there, because it was limited oppurtunities I felt like I had to make something happening, rather than just playing my game, which set me up for more critism and failure. Just an overall miserable experience, but I think that the main reason it was such a bad experience, besides Burgh just being retarded, was I had no confidence.

This leads me to nationals. Brent was by far our best player at nationals last year, and I think that's because Brent never loses confidence in himself. If a guy fronts him, he doesn't care, he's going to get open under anyway. A disc is floating, his defender is taller and can jump higher, Brent doesn't care, it's his disc. I can't think of a time Brent ever lost this confidenc, while for everyone else at one point or another throughout the tournament we each had a deer in headlights issue. I think most of our players from last years team can play at that level. We had the skills, we had the athletism. The main three things we were missing were experience playing at that level, confidence to play at that level, and Stu, who I think always has that confidence in him no matter what. I think for players like me and Sean, it wasn't that we lost confidence in ourselves, as much as our team. Being unable to get the turn and score and watching players like Tony and Reed get torched over and over again doesn't do much to help you're teams confidence.

You can read all the motivational material you want, listen to all of Sean's pep talks, or listen to Rage Against the Machine or Hanson before a big game all you want, but I still think confidence has to be acquired and experienced. This can happen at any moment to any player, is smaller or larger capacities. I played Jack from GW a few points at Deleware, and I didn't think he did shit against me. I always viewed him as being this big bad ass player, and being Andrew's matchup, but I now have a, fuck that, I'll own him mentality. I could have fired myself up to matchup up against him all I wanted, but that confidence is something you can't acquire until you've earned it.

We didn't entirely sub the Maryland game to win. If we had, Rob would have been on the field for the D point on universe point. Instead it was me Andrew Sean and 4 rookies. (Btate, PHam, Jake and Nick. I know Jake and Nick aren't rookies in the true rookie sense, but they've never played for this team at this level, so they're rookies) We needed to lose a game, everyone knew it, but I think the biggest reason I didn't want to lose that game was because Pat got a layout D on the goaline on universe point that came back. If he got that D and we turned it around and scored, that definatly would have been one of those moments for him, the kind you never forget, and that set a tone for the rest of your career. Talk about what a confidence boost it woulda been for a rookie to get the game saving layout D on the goaline, and then help march it down to field to score the game winning goal. For a kid we're expecting to matchup with against Beau at nationals, that confidence boost might have been one of the best things that could have happened to this team.

Those moments that push your confidence to the next level are hard to create or replicate. They just happen, and when they do you have to recognize it for what it is and stuff up to the plate. When the moments come, whether it's at the first tournament in the spring, or the last, you have to be prepared. That's what I took the Lance quote to mean. It means when it's universe point and you're matched up against you're guy, which one of you is going to get the better of the other one. The preperation for that is an incredible amount of work, realizing that guy you're matched up against is working just as hard, and then doing an incredible amount of work on top of it. For many of us, our window for that confidence moment might not come till Nationals. When the time comes, we need to be prepared, because the oppurtunity might not come across again.

Haha, this is soooooo long. Holy shit. Plus I need to be at work an hour ago, eating my big ass salad with salmon from the salad factory. Till next time...