Hall of Fame basketball player Bill Russell once said, “Concentration and mental toughness are the margins for victory.”
We hear coaches talk about toughness all the time, and I am sure most of you probably think, how can a team not be tough, certainly a player has to be tough to play in this league. But being tough is not for just one moment, it requires being able to overcome adversity and still focusing on the task at hand. It means being able to not worry about the future and doing your job.
At this point of the season, we are finding out which teams have mental and physical toughness to overcome bad starts, bad series, bad halves and bad results.
In a classic battle of experienced and tough versus young and skilled, the former prevailed. The common thread between these two teams was that we were both coached by a great coach, Ekrem. However, during the course of the game it was clear that one team really understood and emulated Ekrem’s work, while another was still trying to work out the kinks.
The match was an extremely competitive and physical one, that unfortunately ended against the Rinos. However, the loss came almost exactly as had our earlier one to Norvan Pacific; the Rinos had a lucky goal scored on them in the first 10 minutes and then let in another one in the last 10 minutes. In the 70 minutes between these two tragedies, the Rinos played lights out! We won every ball in the air, we were the first ones getting to 50-50 balls and pressured every pass. On the other hand, we had nothing to show for this effort. We barely took 7 shots, and of those 7 only 3 were on target. This leads directly to our recurring issue which is ripping the Rinos apart; our lack of scoring. Having only scored 2 goals through 6 games is worrying, as it constantly puts pressure on our defense and keeper to stone wall the other team match after match.
In the end, this game came down to mental toughness, physical fitness, and experience and unfortunately UBC Metro weighed in heavier in all three of these factors. The Rinos ran all over the field chasing down UBC players and didn’t have anything left in the tank to mount a comeback. The Rinos have the heart to play from behind, but the mental toughness to do so is going to come with experience and concentration! Can we rise to the occasion? It will be a test and will require that every day there is a commitment to improvement, not winning. This is not going to be a quick fix and will take the mental and physical toughness Russell talked about.