College sport is a tough gig, in many ways. In most of the major sports it acts as a vital link between school competition and the professional or top level of the game. While in some disciplines children or teenagers can emerge from the chrysalis ready to take on the world, generally speaking the agea between 18-24 are crucial in a player’s development – but a period in which many are needlessly let slip through the cracks.
College sport is a tough gig, in many ways. In most of the major sports it acts as a vital link between school competition and the professional or top level of the game. While in some disciplines children or teenagers can emerge from the chrysalis ready to take on the world, generally speaking the agea between 18-24 are crucial in a player’s development – but a period in which many are needlessly let slip through the cracks.
The trouble with sending would-be athletes through the college is the potential for distraction. It must be hard to focus on your training with the siren call of nights out with two euro drinks, guaranteed absolutely savage, ringing in your ears. Any commitments with a society or, heaven forbid, getting entangled in a publication of some sort will make demands on your time. Lectures traditionally fall low on the list of priorities in a student’s first couple of years, but anyone with serious sporting ambitions will find even the holy grail of the bare minimum a lot to handle.
Anyway, that’s not really the point, because as this column has previously pointed out, the chances of us producing many elite athletes aren’t all that high anyway. Chaps like Leinster’s Jamie Heaslip and the cricketer Ed Joyce are generally the exception that proves the rule, and developed most of their skills outside these walls. Put another way, they would very likely have succeeded without ever having come to Trinity – we cannot be said to have “produced” them in the same way that a club, academy or better-equipped university does.
No, the major problem with college sport is the attrition suffered among average to poor competitors during the transition from school to college. Many people who played casually in their schooldays, whether because they were forced to or not, will drop that part of their life upon entry to college. This doesn’t matter much in terms of producing good teams, as the very best players will keep up their chosen discipline, but in the opinion of this column, the more the merrier. Each person lost to a game – whether it be soccer, cricket, sailing or table tennis – is a blow to that game, and indeed for that admirable but largely fictional notion of the “college community”.
On a personal level, though, the loss is more profound. It doesn’t matter, and should never matter, how atrocious someone is at sport – the pleasure to be found in the lower echelons of a sport is unique. Mega League soccer, volleyball, Third XI hockey – the sort of thing that no spectator could value but has a strange, seemingly inexplicable allure to the intiated. Michael Green’s classic “The Art of Coarse Rugby”, now decades old, is one of the most hilariously accurate accounts of the tribulations of the mediocre sportsman. It also provides a clue to his motivations. Buried in there somewhere is the explanation of just why people drag themselves along of a miserable evening or weekend to turn out for a really bad team.
It’s got nothing to do with keeping in shape or getting any better. Rather, it is a reflection of the mutable nature of sport. The amazing thing about it is the way in which even the most casual game, played with a thumping hangover, in a ground miles from anywhere, on a pitch more suited to grazing camels than anything else, is transformed into something that matters, for a time.
There are certain moments that are part of the rich tapestry of life, when the muscles ache and lungs are bursting and the contest is tight, and winning all of a sudden takes on a new importance. The snapshot image of the most laid-back teammate, never known to care about anything in his life, all fired up and dripping sweat, cursing his way through the last five minutes. The sight of people around you giving it their all, for no other reason than the pure joy of competition, which can transcend even the mundane and unlikely of occasions. That sudden flutter of pride in belonging to a team, the other members of which were mere acquaintances at the start of the collective ordeal. The sheer joy of a victory born not of skill, strength or a rigorous fitness regime – devoid of everything, in fact, but sheer bloody-minded determination.
This special sort of of adrenaline-fuelled camaraderie is impossible to hold on to but forms a bond that never really goes away. Everyone should experience those moments. Real athletes will never know how it feels to win something truely pointless and be ecstatically happy about it afterwards. If you can’t relate to all this in some way, you need to get out and play.
A lot of the time, admittedly, the other team turn out to be a lot bigger, stronger, faster and more skilful than you, win by some unreasonable margin, someone sprains an ankle, and everyone goes home in a worse mood than when they went out. It’s a bit like panning for gold – the good days are generally lurking in there somewhere, on a windy pitch in the pouring rain, or in some backwater competition that nobody wants to be at. The point is, you’ll never find them unless you look.
