One late night when I was a senior at Deerfield, we were returning from a match against another school and I was sitting in the front passenger seat of one of the green vans the smaller teams used to travel. Mr. Reade, our coach, was driving, and he and I were talking quietly while the rest of the team dozed. I relished these conversations because Mr. Reade was one of those coaches who parsed out insights only when he felt you were ready for them, and I was always eager for another.
That night, I asked him about cheating. At that time, neither prep school nor college matches were officiated, and often there were players who tried to get away with almost anything in order to win. I was on a good winning streak, but I had struggled that afternoon against someone I knew was cheating.
I hadn’t said anything that afternoon to my opponent, but I told Mr. Reade that I really had wanted to. I had wanted to point out that I wasn’t being duped, and I wanted the boy to know what he was doing was wrong. I mean, shouldn’t cheaters feel bad about cheating? I asked Mr. Reade if I shouldn’t do something the next time; at some point, I hurried to add, the number of points lost could become significant and affect the outcome of the match.
As I waited for Mr. Reade to answer, I was hoping that he would tell me to stand up for myself. I wanted permission to go after the next boy who cheated me. But, instead, Mr. Reade didn’t say anything for a long while. We just drove on in silence. I remember watching the lights of the oncoming traffic and wondering after a time if I had said something wrong.
Then, finally, he began to speak and his answer turned my question on its side: “There are a number of things that everyone who competes must think about. Is winning at all costs the most important thing or is how you win an important factor? If you win, but no one likes the way you won, does that diminish your victory? These may seem easy questions, but there will be others and they will become hard.” Then he asked me one simple question more, though it was clear that he didn’t want me to answer. He wanted me to think.
In a sense, this conversation has both intrigued and haunted me throughout my squash career. A number of years later, when I first began to play the pro softball tour, I found myself often struggling with trying to reconcile the sometimes opposing aspects of three factors: sportsmanship, competitiveness and crowd appeal. Once I put my finger on these three things, more questions started to flow…
What kind of sportsman are you if you decide that you are never going to argue a call (because, after all, referees are human and some calls will go for you and some against you) but then the referee makes a mistake in your favor and you don’t say anything? What kind of competitor are you if after deciding to play the referee’s calls, you regularly lose multiple points because you can’t stop feeling guilty about playing double bounces without saying anything? How do you feel if people refer to you as La Machine because you need to focus in order to compete effectively?
What kind of sportsman are you if you regularly get into heated arguments with the referee but you just as regularly make calls against yourself? What kind of a competitor are you if you try to appeal to the crowd through humor, personality, and sarcastic remarks but wind up losing? How do you feel if people want to see you play more to see if you lose your cool or behave badly than because of your expertise?
What kind of sportsman are you if you stand up for yourself with a referee – shouldn’t you just play on regardless of what calls are made? What kind of competitor are you if you smile and shake hands after a particularly bitter loss – shouldn’t you show your intense disappointment? How do you feel if you demolish a vastly inferior player – shouldn’t you win without embarrassing the player?
Mr. Reade, of course, was right: there were more questions and they got hard. All of us, consciously or unconsciously, struggle with how the intersection of sportsmanship, appeal and competitiveness intertwine for us as individuals. I have been far more inconsistent than I would like to admit in how I have dealt with it, but in total, I am not overly embarrassed. Perhaps I would be, however, if I didn’t regularly see Mr. Reade’s face looking out the windshield with headlights flickering against his face as he asked me simply, “What’s important to you?”
