I'm working it out though, and my inspiration comes from an unlikely place ... the Green Bay Packers. (gross)
"It's easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when you're a winner, when you're number one. What you've got to have is faith and discipline when you're not yet a winner."
- Vince Lombardi
Like Vince said, winning isn't a sometime thing -- it's an all time thing. You don't do things right once in a while or whenever it suits you -- you do things right all the time. You work hard and you prepare yourself to be a champion no matter how high the odds seem to be stacked against you -- that's what I learned from Coach Coale, AT, and the girls at Oklahoma. You don't throw in the towel because you don't think things are going to work out your way -- you just work that much harder.
I never allowed myself for a second to accept that just because we graduated so-and-so that we couldn't still be a good team and qualify for Nationals. You can say what you want about the situation, but I didn't know I was supposed to go belly-up, wave the white flag, and treat last season as a rebuilding season. I didn't know I was supposed to lower my expectations for myself or for my team. As torn up as I am that we didn't make Nationals, I sleep okay at night because I know that I pushed myself harder than I've ever pushed and I pushed my body and my game to whole new levels. You can say whatever it is you want to say about me, but I'm pretty proud of that. But just because one or two or three or x number of people have that attitude and give you 100% doesn't guarantee that everyone else on your team will too. It's a team thing. It's a team attitude. A team is not successful because one player is sickeningly good -- look at any of the National Champions on the women's college side in the past ten years. Not only were they all multi-dimensional teams, but I'm willing to bet that all of them, as a team, accepted the challenge, the hard work, and the sacrifice that it took to become a champion.
There are days and nights when I'm hurting, both emotionally and physically, just like this one when I think it's time to say goodbye to this game and just leave the anger, the bitterness, and the depression behind. There are days and nights when I get really tired of chasing my dreams, but I know I won't be happy until I can either conquer that dream or at least be able to stand toe-to-toe and eye-to-eye with it and be able to honestly say that I believed and worked hard and gave everything I had for it. So here I am, and here I continue to go ...
Work hard, dream big.
