"I jump into a sand pit for a living"
This is the day
I was very struck by this extract from Joe Ehrmann’s bookThe Syracuse lacrosse team was struggling that day. They had had a long bus trip, the April rain and chill made the field sloppy and the ball slippery, and a flu bug had hit the team, to boot.
the Orangemen were down 7-3 at halftime and their opponents were sensing a huge upset victory. Coach Simmons walked into the locker room and surveyed his team. They were dripping with rain, wiping mud off their uniforms, listless. They grew silent, waiting for his halftime speech. He opened his mouth, paused, and studied them again. Then he went over to the blackboard and wrote the following in big, thick figures: 118-24.
He turned, looked each player in the eye, and suddenly smiled. His players looked shocked for a moment, and then started to smile slightly, too. They didn’t know what to make of it—was this a play or formation that Coach had just come up with? Coach spoke: “Psalm 118. Verse 24. This is the day that the Lord has made, so rejoice and be glad in it. He noticed the players’ shoulders easing, their bouncing legs grow still, and he heard a few exhalations and chuckles. “That’s it, men. Win, lose, or draw; enjoy. Let’s get back out there and play like you love the game and each other.”
After that game, Coach discovered the numbers 118-24 written on the chalkboard before every game for decades. He never knew who started the tradition—or which players continued it year after year.
Coach laughs recalling another anecdote about that Psalm. “Years later,” he says, “the coach of a team we beat regularly came up to me at a coaches’ convention. He said, ‘Roy, I just want to ask you one question. Every other year, you come and beat us on our field and after a few years I started to go into the visiting locker room to see if I could discover any secret from something you left behind. And there is always this play on the board: 118-24. What is that play, Roy?’”
Coach Simmons put his arm around the coach and laughed. He shared his secret play willingly, and the coach shook his head and laughed, too.
Inside Out Coaching, Joe Ehrmann, New York, Simon and Schuster, 2011
Pages 50-52