Yikes

Earlier in the year we played the notorious Saint Doms. Every year when we play them the game always turns out to be a fight or we come out on the losing side. We knew going into that game that it would be difficult because they are two spots in front of us. As the game begins I can just tell that we have not came to play, guys are slow on their feet, we can’t hit the net, we didn’t go after the puck aggressively. I just knew that we were going to lose this game by our attitude in the locker room, guys are just joking around and they didn’t realize what we were getting ourselves into. You can’t do that against a team like Saint Doms because they know when a team isn’t ready to play, they capitalize in situations like that.

The first period comes to an end and we collect ourselves in the locker room, guys are blaming it on the person next to them instead of owning up to it. Coach comes in and is not impressed with our effort, we know we played poorly. Coach talks to us and we get ready to get back out, thinking we solved the problem. We get back on the ice and in the first fifteen seconds of the period, they net one. That’s when they put the dagger in our hearts, after that goal we were not the same team. After that they just kept running up the score because they want to make their point. I knew from that point forward that something had to change.

The hardest part of losing that game was the way that we lost. In the middle of the second period is when we decided to stop playing. After that goal in the beginning of the period we gave up, but they didn’t. That loss brought out somethings that I didn’t know people had in them, the other captain gave up, the coach gave up, everyone gave up. The biggest things that we took from that loss is we don’t know our identity. Our team was made up of a bunch of punks and quitters. We have never been in that type of pressure, we found out what type of team we had when we lost that game.

We came back that monday and people wanted to change, we knew what we had to do. We took that loss as a learning experience and found ourselves. I personally took that loss as a chance to reflect on myself and tell myself what I needed to do. The team did the same, we came back to practice on monday and it was not the same team saturday night. Everybody looked in the mirror and asked themselves what they need to do better. Because of that loss we found our true identity and became closer. If you find yourself laughing about every loss then they aren’t really learning experiences. I think this game was a learning experience for the whole team because we knew we were a better team then the team that played Saint Doms.

As the season continues we look back on that game as our learning curve, we are able to laugh about it now. It’s not always easy to be able to laugh about something like that. After you lose a game like that it builds on your character and forces you to take those experiences and learn from them. You have to be able to fail to become successful, you have to be able to look back on the moments that haunt you and look past it. To this day I don’t think that I would be able to look back at that game and not laugh.

Photo on Foter.com