OK, so...I've been going back and forth about whether or not I should post this. Some of my more attentive readers might have already noticed that I mentioned I made a mistake in Boulder this last weekend, and I did. But I've decided since I'm making the pursuit of my dream so public already, writing about this mistake is something I need to do because I learned a valuable lesson, and I don't think I'll ever forget it. I think not writing about it would be the cowardly thing to do. I'm the kind of person who faces his mistakes head on because I understand that if you hide and turn your back on them, sooner or later they're going to catch up to you. Anyway, enough with the dramatic intro. I've decided to write about it.
On Friday night in Boulder after our 4-3 win in overtime, I asked my assistant coach if I could go out to eat with some friends who came to watch my game. He said, "Of course." Then, I asked what time I should be back, and he told me, "Whenever. You're a man. Just be a man about it." So, I went out to eat and then went back to one of my friend's apartments to hang out for a little while. It was fun. Pretty soon it was late. Some friends from the team came from the hotel (which was right on campus and could be considered entrapment, but that's a story for later on in this post) to join me, and we just weren't thinking. We weren't drinking or doing drugs or anything, just having fun, and then I got a call from my coach. And my stomach dropped. I didn't even realize what time it was, but I knew it couldn't be good if my coach was calling me. I answered, and he asked where we were. I was honest and told him. We had missed our room checks and were in trouble.
We made it back to the hotel double time and walked into our assistant coach's room. He was very disappointed in us, understandably. We all had a choice to make and made the wrong decision. We'd broken our coaches' trust. Our assistant coach just said, "We'll talk about in the morning, but you guys made a mistake and you're gonna have to live with the consequences." I left the room with a sick feeling in my stomach and it lasted all night and all the next day.
Our head coach didn't talk to us until just before lunch on Saturday. He called us all down to the lobby for a team meeting. There, he explained the situation to the team and told them that we had broken trust, one of the most important things in any relationship. He said we would have consequences, but ultimately the discipline on a team should come from the team. He told us that on any team, the rules of the team and a love for each other should always come first. We put ourselves before the team, which is not OK. He said we wouldn't play tonight, and there would probably be more consequences besides that. And then he asked me if I still wanted to be a captain on this team. I said yes, and told the team why I believed I should still be their captain. Then, the other kids who broke curfew with me took their turns saying sorry. And we left the room. The team, then, voted on our captaincy.
It definitely was not worth the stress and anxiety to just hang out with friends for an hour or two. In the end, though, the team unanimously voted that I should remain a captain, which was very heartening, but also a big responsibility because I need to reprove that I'm worthy of wearing this "A", which I feel I'm fully capable of and fully ready to do.
After the team meeting, our coach talked to the five of us who broke curfew individually. My meeting was pretty short. He said to me that he knows what I did was extremely out of character because he knows the kind of person I am after coaching me for 2 years. It's natural for a 20 year old not in college to be curious about what his friends in college are doing, but he said as a captain I can't be going behind his back and just doing things. He would have rather had me ask him if I could go hang out with some friends for an hour, and he would've been fine with it. He told me that I made a mistake, but at the same time I have to keep in perspective that the mistake I made was not a very big one--a mistake nonetheless--but there are many other worse things I could have done. Knowing the home team puts the visiting team's hotel right across the street from the University of Colorado's freshman dorms, I'm sure many other teams mess up a lot worse than we messed up. That very well could be entrapment, but we were the idiots who took the bait and had to live with the consequences. In the end, it was our fault. Our coaches had trusted us as adults, and we proved we were stupid kids, which I don't like to think I am, yet my actions that night proved that--yup--I am still a stupid kid. Sometimes. Everyone makes mistakes, though.
I learned some very good lessons last weekend. And I'm glad I did. Our coach could have gone three directions: he could have disciplined us in a way that we not learn a lesson, he could have turned his head and not taught us a lesson, or he could have taught us a lesson in a way that makes us better men and makes us learn from our mistakes. I'm very lucky to have a coach who prides himself on the kind of men he makes, not how much success he has. Of course, he likes succeeding, but he knows that good men often create success. I've heard of kids kicked off teams for less serious offenses.
When it's all said and done, possibly the worst consequence I had to face last weekend was disappointment from my mom. Obviously, she wished that I had been smarter. I had a lot of people coming down to watch me that night, and now I couldn't play. She was more worried about all the other people my stupid mistake was affecting than how my mistake was affecting me. I hate disappointing my parents. It's the worst feeling. So I called everyone that I had heard was coming down to see my game, apologized, and told them why I wouldn't be playing, and that they shouldn't come to the game anymore. The silver lining to all this, though, was that I got to watch the game on Saturday night with my mom! Still, I would have rather been playing, and I think she would have rather been watching me play.
Moral of the story: I learned a lesson in Boulder. Am I embarrassed about it? Definitely. Am I disappointed in myself? Very. Will I be a better leader and person because of it? No doubt. Will I ever make that mistake again? No way!
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