In the past 24 hours I had the opportunity to watch my daughter-in-law, Taylor, compete in Las Vegas in the APA Women’s 8-ball tournament World Championship. If you like spending your time knocking acrylic balls around on a table covered in felt, this is a VERY big deal. She and several of her fellow players from Atlanta won the city championships a couple of months ago, and that qualified them for the Vegas extravaganza.
You should know that Taylor hasn’t been playing very long. (Hell, at her age she hasn’t been doing ANYTHING for very long.) Her remarkable grasp of the game has been fun to hear about and to watch. She puts in hours every week trying to master a very difficult game. For Christmas last year, my son told us that if we really wanted to make Taylor smile we should try to find her some pool memorabilia signed by Taylor’s favorite player, Jeanette Lee, the “Black Widow.” (The idea of associating the word “widow” with my son’s wife was a little unnerving, but in the end we decided there wasn’t an ulterior motive here, so we made the purchase.) And she smiled.
A few days ago they headed to Vegas to face the best players in the world. My son was able to hook up a camera and streamed the games which took hours to complete. The first match was very close, but the “Jackalopes” from Atlanta fell to a team from Kansas City. That put them in the losers’ bracket of the double elimination tournament…a daunting task in any tournament, but with more chances to come.
In the second game that started a full twelve hours after the opener, they got involved in another nail-biter. This time it was a team from Pennsylvania standing in the Jackalopes’ way. Eventually, I had to hit the sack, and my son’s last comment was “Taylor playing a win-or-go-home match at World’s.” The match was essentially tied after all her teammates had played, and if she could pull it out, they’d move on to round 3. I woke up at like 3:30 a.m. and checked my phone to see results. Nothing. That seemed ominous, and it turned out to be exactly that. After a couple more hours of sleep, I opened the streaming file and watched the end of the match.
During the first game I had watched earlier that day, I spent considerable time yelling encouragement at my phone, though it turns out technology has failed to account for the idea of a father-in-law yelling at a phone to any effect. During the closing of the second match there was no screaming. I silently, tensely watched pretty much knowing that it wasn’t going to end well. If they had won, I calculated, I would have gotten an excited 2:30 a.m. phone call.
In the last rack, Taylor was winning. She’s shooting stripes and got down to the 8-ball while her opponent still had 3 solids on the table. She was left with a very tough position (I’m not the expert here, but from the angle I had, there really wasn’t a chance to make the 8-ball, but she could play a defensive move and hope her opponent didn’t run the table.) She studied the shot for a very long time. I couldn’t pick up the chatter, but at some point, the opponent’s team raised a red flag, and the tournament official came over. After a brief conversation, Taylor lined up the shot. She had to make contact with a well protected 8-ball and then either the 8-ball or the cue ball had to hit a rail.
She leaned over the table and sent the cue slowly toward its target. Then disaster hit. She missed the 8-ball by what had to be the slimmest of margins and the cue ball made its agonizing trickle toward the corner pocket with just enough steam to fall in. She had scratched. She lost the game. The team lost the match. The tournament was over.
I watched Taylor’s face for any sign of emotion. My Italian self would have let loose with enough profanity to make even a Vegas crowd blush. I might have broken my cue over my knee…or my head…not sure really. But Taylor? Nothing. She went to the opponent and offered congrats and retreated off camera. I wanted to reach out, give her a hug, and offer some meaningless words of encouragement because I absolutely knew she was devastated despite her stoic demeanor.
I have done a lot of coaching over the past 40 years and I think the biggest challenge of my career was to find ways to console and inspire the truly exceptional athletes who didn’t quite live up to their own expectations. The best athletes don’t really need a lot of motivation. They got great because they have motivation built in.
I can recall one of the greatest compliments I ever received as a coach after one of the most disappointing games I was ever part of. While coaching baseball at Boyne City, we were locked in a real doozy with our arch-rivals from Charlevoix. Boyne City hadn’t beaten Charlevoix in a while, and the Rayders were stacked. We were in the bottom of the last inning and the score was tied. Charlevoix loaded the bases with one out. I brought my centerfielder into the infield and stuck him right behind second base. He was a tremendous 3-sport athlete and I knew that’s the guy I wanted to get the ball. Any ground ball had to be thrown home and then we’d take our chances with two outs.
Just like I knew what I was doing, the batter hit a sharp grounder over second base right to my centerfielder who fielded it beautifully and proceeded to make the throw home…except he airmailed it over the catcher. Game over. In the frantic celebration by the Rayders, I made my way out to second base where my guy was standing there with his head down…feeling the same utter devastation that I’m sure Taylor was feeling last night.
The compliment I still treasure? My assistant coach said to me after the game something like “I learned tonight what kind of coach you are…when that game ended you sprinted out to second base and made sure the one guy who felt the worst knew you had his back.” I recall nothing of what I had said out there, but I knew that guy didn’t deserve to carry the weight of that loss on his own.
So today I want to do the same for Taylor. As a coach, it’s certainly true that each athlete is unique. There is not a one-size-fits-all way to deal with celebration and disappointment. It doesn’t matter to most of the good ones that I could point out that the team never would have even been in the position to win without all the things the player had already contributed before the shocking end. For the competitor, it’s that one moment that will hang over their head forever. If they let it.
So unless that one disappointing moment defines the rest of a player’s career, there has to be a way to appreciate the beauty and intensity of a competition that elicits the kind of emotion felt on that field in Charlevoix or on the felt in Vegas.
It’s not really my place to be either proud of, or disappointed in Taylor. I have had nothing to do with her amazing accomplishments in her short pool career (other than that Black Widow signed cue ball.) Her journey has been her own with a lot of encouragement from my son.
It would be sad, however, to see her allow that one scratch to define her level of love and dedication to the game. Next year, I’m going to Vegas with them so she can at least hear my screams of encouragement!
The Grumblings 
Leave a comment