The word “team” is used all the time. So much so that this extremely profound word has lost some of its luster and a lot of its meaning. A team, the team, your team is a constant part of almost everyone’s vernacular and its definition seems simple: a team is a group of people joined together in order to pursue a shared goal. Although this explanation is obvious, it’sinterpretation no longer holds that same level of common understanding.
Field hockey is a team sport and an incredibly fun one at that. With eleven players on the field at all times it seems insane that the definition of a team isn’t always applicable to the game. For in recent years, many athletes have started to neglect the “we” in team in favor of the “me”.
Rather unknowingly, we have all stepped into the Age of Entitlement in sports, and unlike the Age of Enlightenment, it’s not a very pragmatic era. Success, originally, was derived from the well doing of the group, not necessarily the individual. Yet over time, the importance of the individual has risen to aggressively high levels while the substance of the team has hit a precipitous drop.
The longevity of the game cannot be supported with this mentality—with everyone now focusing on them themselves, all others and that shared goal are quickly being forgotten. If you were to take ten players out of a field hockey game and left one girl to get the job done, how do you think she would fare? The answer is easy: not well. Field hockey is a team sport for a reason—you need everyone working in harmony and perfect togetherness in order to succeed. Even if one player ignores this fact, the whole group is liable to suffer and that end isn’t supported by any means.
Working alongside your teammates and friends is a right you have when joining a team; entitlement, on the other hand, most certainly is not. At times in might be hard to let go of your own ego to focus on the betterment of the team, but this mindset will come to bear many more fruitful results in the end. So whenever you step onto the field, always remember: any sport that involves more than one person relies on every person.
